A Feather of Stone #3 (5 page)

A flight attendant offered him a drink.

“No, thank you.”

Evil. His darkness spoiled everything he touched. He put his head back and closed his eyes, feeling more wretched than he thought possible. Almost as wretched as that night so long ago, when he’d watched Cerise die. Everyone had felt the lightning shoot through them, filling them with light and power, but that same power had killed Cerise as she birthed her daughter. He remembered Melita’s triumphant face, flushed and beautiful. She had run off that night. She’d destroyed the huge oak tree and the Source. Marcel had tracked her through the darkness, like a panther. He’d caught up to her, and he’d struck her down. He’d stood there, panting, howling inside with anguish and grief, as Melita lay facedown in the mud. The rain had pelted her dress like bird shot. His heart, his life and love had been destroyed, so it was only fitting that he destroy the cause.

Then Melita had raised her head, had turned to look at him. She’d wiped mud out of her eyes as he’d stared at her, speechless. She had laughed at him.

Enraged, he’d raised his mattock again—but she’d thrown out one arm, speaking dark words that whipped around him like strangle vine. And just like that, she’d taken hold of his soul.

And she’d kept it, for years and years.

Thais

I pulled off my cute school top and searched for an old T-shirt, suitable for drudgery. “How about strawberries?” I asked as Clio came and lounged on my bed. “Planting strawberries—I could get behind that.”

“Too late in the season,” Clio said.

I rummaged through a drawer. “When will Petra be home?”

Clio groaned. “Who knows? Once she was gone for almost thirty hours, and then one time she went out to a case and was home in an hour. She said the baby just popped out.”

I made a face at the mental image, and Clio grinned wryly.

“Listen,” she said. “We still have to figure out who was trying to harm us. I mean, it seems like the attacks have maybe stopped, but it would strengthen our position to know who was actually behind them. Let’s do another reveal spell before Nan gets home.”

“Oh,
that’s
a good idea. What else needs burning down?” Last time we had tried working magick, we’d almost destroyed our home.

“Very funny,” Clio said, then sat up. “Hey, maybe we should do it right outside Luc’s apartment. I bet lightning would hit it or a meteor would drop on it or something.”

I tried to smile. Luc was still a very sore subject, despite how hard I was working to put him out of my mind.

“What do you mean, strengthen our position?” I asked. “Our position on what?”

Not answering, Clio raised one arm and trailed it along an Indian-print bedspread that I had hung over my window. It was weird, seeing myself performing these natural but dramatic gestures—like a hyper-feminized me.

I pulled on an ancient tie-dyed T-shirt. “Waiting, here.”

Clio looked at me. “The whole immortality thing.”

“What about it?” I asked warily.

“Have you been thinking about it? I mean, this whole huge possibility was just dropped into our laps, and we haven’t really talked about it.”

I stared at her. “Yes, we have. We talked about how we didn’t want any part of it, how Daedalus was awful or crazy, how we wanted the Treize to leave us alone.”

“No, we didn’t,” Clio said seriously. “Maybe
you
said something like that, but we haven’t really talked it all out. I’ve been thinking about it more and more.”

“Again I ask, what about it?” I wasn’t liking the direction this conversation was taking, and I headed out of my room and went downstairs.

In the kitchen I took an apple from the bowl on the table and bit into it. “Man, apples suck here,” I muttered. Clio came in and poured us a couple of glasses of iced tea. She and Petra didn’t drink sodas much—they called them soft drinks and never bought them at the store. Maybe they weren’t natural enough or something. “You haven’t tasted a real apple till you taste an apple in the north, where they’re grown.”

“Okay, someday I’ll make a point of it. Thais, don’t you want to be immortal?”

There. She’d said it. Now I couldn’t ignore the white elephant in the room. “Well, no.”

The expression on her face said she couldn’t believe I had said that.

“Thais! Immortality! The more I think about it, the more I want it. I want to freeze right here. I don’t ever want to die. And I don’t ever want
you
to die.”

“I don’t want us to die either,” I said. “But the idea of the rite terrifies me, especially considering what happened at Récolte! There’s no way I would go through the actual rite. We have no idea what could happen!” Wishing she would just drop it, I got up to put more curtains in the washer. Then I paused, suddenly seeing Petra’s face in my mind but unsure why.

“I feel—” I began as I heard the front door open. I realized what it had been. “Petra? I sensed you!” I said, amazed. “I sensed you before you came in!”

“Hi, girls,” Petra called, heading back to the kitchen.

Excited, I glanced at Clio, but she looked upset and even angry. “We’ll talk about this more later,” she said, and started loading the dishwasher.

“Pretty cool, huh?” said Petra, entering the kitchen. “You sensed my aura. It’s easier the better you know someone, but you can do it with strangers too or even animals if you concentrate.”

“Huh,” I said, impressed.

“And hello to you too,” said Petra, kissing Clio on her cheek. “Your powers are awakening, my dear. As time goes on and you learn more, your powers will increase. Then having a heightened awareness of everything about you will be second nature.”

She dropped her large macramé purse in a chair. “I noticed the front garden. You two have been working hard.”

“It was Clio,” I said. “Clio and Melysa. She said to tell you she’d talk to you later.”

Petra poured herself a glass of iced tea and leaned against the counter, looking tired.

“Hard day?” I asked, gathering an armful of curtains off the table. I opened the back door to get to the tiny room attached to the side of the house where we kept our washer and dryer. The outside walls of the little add-on room had been scorched, but luckily the appliances inside were fine.

Back in the kitchen, Petra put her empty glass down. “Yes, it’s been a long one,” she replied. “I’m going to change. Then we can think about dinner.” Giving us a smile, she went into her small alcove room under the stairs.

“Thais,” Clio whispered. “Please, just think about it. This is really important to me. Say you’ll think about it.”

I sighed. “Okay. I’ll think about it.”

Clio nodded, then went back out to the front yard.

Leaving me feeling totally uneasy.

Not to Be Trusted

Axelle rang the doorbell. On the second floor, a casement window cranked open, and Sophie leaned out.

“Oh—hi,” she said. Axelle knew why she was surprised—she and Sophie and Manon didn’t usually socialize. But then again, this wasn’t exactly a social call.

“Can I come up?”

In answer, Sophie pressed the buzzer that unlocked the downstairs door.

Upstairs, Axelle looked around. “This is nice,” she said. There was one large room, a small kitchen off it, and then a hall that Axelle assumed led to bedrooms. “Do you get tired of moving?” she asked, surprising herself. She didn’t usually give a rat’s ass about what Sophie or Manon thought.

Manon came down the hall, wearing a short silk dress. Axelle had the fleeting thought of the huge sum Manon could make as a child prostitute, then felt a little abashed. Manon never would, of course. But she
could
make a fortune, and it wasn’t like she was actually a child, anyway.

“What’s up?” Manon asked, sitting in an armchair.

“Axelle just asked if we were tired of moving,” Sophie said, seeming confused.

“That’s not what I’m here for,” Axelle said, sitting on the couch. She leaned back against the arm and put her feet up.

“Do you want something to drink?” Sophie asked politely.

“God, yes,” said Axelle. “What do you have?”

“Um, tea or . . . or we have some wine open, and I think we have some Cointreau. Manon was cooking with it.”

“A little Cointreau would be nice,” said Axelle. “ Thanks.”

“What’s this about our moving?” Manon asked.

“No—I’m here to talk about Daedalus,” Axelle said, taking the small glass from Sophie. “Thanks. It’s just, when I walked in, I thought about how many apartments I’d lived in over the years, and I had a one-second thought about whether anyone else got tired of moving.” Now she felt exhausted, having this stupid conversation. This was why she didn’t socialize with Sophie and Manon.

“I get tired of it,” said Manon, leaning her head back. Her fair blond hair spread across the chair like in a shampoo commercial. She would have been a knockout as a grown woman. It was too bad.

“There was a place in Provence, before it became popular,” Manon went on. “We loved it there.” She looked at Sophie, and Sophie smiled and nodded. “We would have stayed forever, but after a couple of years, people always start to wonder why I’m not getting older.”

A dark bitterness lay beneath her words. For the first time it occurred to Axelle that Sophie and Manon might have different agendas. She glanced again at Sophie, saw her face was drawn and sad, though she was trying to hide it. Axelle took a slow sip of her drink, inhaling the intense orange scent, letting the liquid burn slowly down her throat. Frankly, she preferred vodka. Vodka you could just knock back.

“I know what you mean,” Axelle said. “The longest I ever stayed in one place was eight years. It gets tiresome, moving all the time.” She paused, shifting. Did it matter to her plan if they wanted different things? Should she approach this differently? She didn’t know. She was tired of thinking about it. Might as well throw it out there. “So, when Daedalus told me of his plan, of finding the twins—well, it all seemed to make sense to me. We all have something to gain from doing the rite, no? But lately I’ve been wondering if Daedalus perhaps has some other plan that no one, not Jules nor I, knows about. To tell you the truth, I’ve been wondering if he can be trusted.”

Sophie and Manon just looked at her solemnly.

“And not only him—Petra also. She’s so concerned about the twins and their safety that she might not be seeing the big picture. She might not care what Daedalus is up to as long as the girls are safe. I’ve been worried. I feel like I need a backup plan. Like we all need a backup plan. What do you say?”

“What do we say to what?” Manon asked, eyebrows drawn together.

“Forming an alliance,” Axelle said, impatient. “The three of us. If we know that we’re guarding each other’s backs, we might be able to relax a bit, not worry so much. I mean, we’re dealing with the Treize here. Who among them can you trust?”

“Yes, I see,” Sophie said slowly.

“I don’t know what Daedalus is planning,” said Axelle, putting her empty glass on the coffee table. Her stomach felt pleasantly warmed by the Cointreau. “I don’t know what anyone is planning. I want to talk to everyone, away from Daedalus. I want us, at least some of us, to be standing together when his plan goes down.”

“That makes sense,” said Manon, looking at Sophie.

“Well, you think about it,” said Axelle, standing up. She smoothed her Lycra skirt over her hips and slipped her feet back into her high-heeled sandals. She remembered the horrible, ugly shoes everyone wore during World War II and shuddered.

“Think about it, talk it over, and let me know, okay?”

“Okay,” said Sophie, walking her to the door. “Thanks for coming to talk to us about it.”

Axelle paused, one step down, and looked up at Sophie. “You and I are different and always will be,” she said. “After this drama is over, we might not speak again for sixty years. For the most part, I don’t care what your life is like or what you two do with it. But if this situation is dangerous, if Daedalus is planning to use us for something, the way Melita did, then we need to stand together, tightly together, you know?”

“Yes.” Sophie nodded, seeming sad again.

“Okay. So, later.” Axelle went down the stairs and out onto the quiet neighborhood street. She took a deep breath, then stopped to light a cigarette. Goddess, that had been hard. It was so much harder to be sincere than to spin a web of half-truths that wouldn’t hold up to the light. It was so unnatural. She shook her head, blew out a long stream of smoke, and headed to her car.

Clio

Thais would take some convincing. That much was clear. I needed to come up with Thais-like reasons for her to do it. Like, if she were alive long enough, she could figure out how to cure cancer. Something like that. Or if we were immortal, we’d never have to worry about anyone attacking us again. We could laugh at muggers and light posts. How could she not want that, and right
now?

I would talk to her about it later and maybe do some more research. But first I had my other quest, my other spell.

In my vision of Cerise dying at the rite, I’d seen runes and sigils glowing on the ground for a split second, right before the lightning hit. They had burned like fire. Some of them I’d recognized—some I hadn’t. But they all had to do with Melita’s spell—

“Clio?”

So much for my sensing skills. I jumped at Nan’s voice, then turned to see her in the doorway of my room.

“Sorry—didn’t mean to startle you.” She looked a bit bemused that she’d been able to.

“Working on my ROA,” I said, gesturing to my Book of Shadows, the notes spread everywhere.

“Then I hate disturbing you,” she said. “But could you do me a favor? I’m showing Thais some basic centering spells, and I’ve realized we’re all out of blue candles. I really think they’d help.”

“You want me to run to Botanika?” I said, loving the idea of getting out.