Redemption (25 page)

I open my eyes and smile at Guillaume. His fingers stroke my hair and his face contorts. He’s wiping away the tears in his eyes with the back of his hand and then looks at me with wonder.

“How did you do it?” he asks.

“My ancestors guided me,” I whisper. “I’m … am I healed?”

I try to sit up, but he holds me down. “You have to be careful,” he says.

“I think I’m fine, actually.” Or at least I would be if he would only let go.

I push myself up and smirk. “See,” I say.

I’m totally caught by surprise when he wraps his arms around me. He holds me close to his chest and strokes the back of my head. This is nice. It’s comfortable. I rest my head in the hollow of his neck.

“I was so scared to lose you,” he whispers in her ear.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

I breathe out and reluctantly push against his chest to detangle myself from his arms. We remain motionless, face to face, only a couple inches apart.

He leans in and places his lips on mine. Time stands still. I respond to his touch and my lips part a little. No. I’m not going to do this. I move away from him.

This isn’t about me. It’s about Marguerite. Almost losing me opened up some wounds for him. I’m not going to be a dead girl’s replacement.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” I say.

39

Guillaume

She was right, but I struggled with control. I struggled with doing what was a good idea. It didn’t help that I didn’t even know what I should be doing anymore. I knew that I couldn’t let this girl out of my sight again. Not only because something could happen to her, but because her very presence pounded against the barriers that were set in my heart, and threatened to collapse them. I wanted her to.

There was something new compelling me to keep her close now. An ancient power I had been familiar with for the better part of eight centuries. I didn’t resent it as I once did. This was right. I should protect her.

“I’m sorry if this brings back bad memories for you,” she said while looking at her hands.

“What do you mean?”

“Marguerite. How did she die?” she asked.

She was infuriatingly observant. This was why she wouldn’t kiss me, and yet how could I tell her about
Marguerite? It would only highlight how much of a selfish monster I’d been. My heart constricted, and looking at Aude I realized how horrible the way I acted was; what I had taken away from Garnier.

“She jumped,” I answered. I wouldn’t tell her the details. I couldn’t.

Her eyes watered as she looked at me. “I’m so sorry.”

“It was a long time ago.”

She nodded.

I stood up and she looked at me and gasped, quickly turning around.

“Do you ever wear clothes?” she shrieked.

I laughed, not only at her indignation but at the fact that neither of us had noticed my lack of clothing until that point.

“This could be a problem.”

I didn’t have any clothing stashed nearby and I no longer had the essence to shift at will.

“I think I’ll have to keep to the shadows to get home.”

She glanced at me, and then looked away again. “Umm,” she said.

“Are you sneaking a peek?” I teased her.

“Noo! We need to do something, though,” she exclaimed.

“What do you suggest?”

“Why don’t we call someone?” she held her phone.

I remembered then that an ambulance was on the way. We called Antoine and set up a meeting point in an adjoining alley.

Antoine showed up around the same time as we heard the ambulance pull up in the next alley. We slid into the car and drove off.

“Where are my clothes?” I asked.

“You didn’t ask for clothes. Just to get here as soon as possible.”

“Well this is awkward,” I said.

Aude giggled.

Once we were parked at home, Aude began to rifle through the car trunk.

“How about this?” She brought me a cardboard box.

“You’re joking, right?”

She laughed. “Unfortunately, I’m not.”

Antoine watched us with a strange expression. Shock and nerves had made us unusually giddy—maybe even silly. It was a side of Aude I hadn’t seen before.

We would have to walk past security. I considered using my mind voice to ask Vincent to bring me some clothes but didn’t have the patience to wait. Especially since I couldn’t really care less what the security guard thought of me.

I opened the door to the building, and Antoine walked to the elevators first. Aude hesitated.

“What’s wrong?”

“You’re wearing a cardboard box,” she said.

“If I remember correctly, that one was your idea.”

“Well you couldn’t walk in naked!”

“So I’m wearing a cardboard box and I would like to get home to change.”

I walked ahead of her and nodded at the security guard who glanced over his newspaper. He did a double take, shook his head, and returned to his paper. Good man; he knew when to mind his own business. Aude, who was still lingering by the door, ran over to catch up with me. This elicited another look from the security guard and a raised eyebrow. I shrugged at him and waited for the elevator.

We rode in silence, though I could tell Aude was stifling a laugh.

“I guess I haven’t formally introduced you to Antoine,” I said.

She greeted him. “Oh, what a great first impression I must have made,” she said to him, her tone a mixture of embarrassment and amusement.

Once inside our apartment, I took Aude by the hand and tried to drag her past Garnier and Vincent, lounging in the living room as usual. Don’t these guys ever get out?

Garnier jumped to his feet at the sight of Aude, then noticing she was okay, started laughing at me.

“Do I even want to know?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, dead serious. “You will all want to know.”

“Vincent, do you have some clothes Aude can wear?”

He nodded, and disappeared to his room.

“Why don’t you take a shower,” I told her, showing her to the bathroom. “My bedroom is across the hall and Vincent will have some clothes waiting in there for you.”

I threw on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and went to join the others. Vincent joined us shortly after.

I took a deep breath and went right to the heart of the matter. “The de Rouen witch line is not extinct.”

Vincent raised his eyes to me. “I would say it is impossible,” he said. “But I feel it in her.”

My gaze shifted to the closed bathroom door. “She’s finally accessed her essence.”

“I feel it too, but it can’t be right. Even if Aude is an essentialist, she can’t possibly be a de Rouen witch. She must be a stray or something. The Native power is doing strange things,” Garnier said.

“No. She’s a de Rouen witch, and Alice’s great grand-child.”

“Alice only had one child, and Marguerite’s dead! I don’t know what game you’re playing, Guillaume, but pretending that Marguerite didn’t die will not bring her back,” Vincent said.

“Alice had a second daughter when she was forty years old. Her name was Audrée and she was Aude’s grandmother.”

“How do you know this?” Antoine asked.

I told them about Aude’s grandmother’s journal and the discovery I made at the cemetery. I didn’t hold back, even filling them in on the details of Aude’s run-in with Ramtin the same night.

“We have the answers we were looking for, but I’m having difficulty coming to terms with everything. Audrée and Aude’s mother, Lorraine, had hard lives. It wouldn’t have been like that if I hadn’t screwed up.”

“It was her choice, Guillaume,” Garnier told me.

The other two were still in the dark about the details of Marguerite’s death. Since I was baring my soul anyways, I filled them in.

“I’m so sorry, Guillaume. Why did you never tell us?” Vincent asked.

“Why are you sorry? She died because of me. If I hadn’t left myself so vulnerable to the Stone Monster, she’d have been alive.”

“That was her decision, and I’m sorry because no one should have to watch a loved one take their life.”

It was then that I noticed her, standing by the entrance to the living room. Her wet hair almost looked black. Vincent’s denims hugged her in all the right places, as did his sweatshirt. She held a towel in her hand and dried her hair while attentively listening to our conversation. Our eyes met and she smiled. It was a small, sad smile, but it made my insides crumble.

“Why don’t you take a seat?” Antoine asked her.

She hesitated at first and then sat on the couch next to me. I reached out with trembling hands and tucked a strand of wet hair behind her ear.

Garnier noticed the ring with the colorless gem on her finger. He leaned toward her, and took her hand in his so he could better see it. I kept her other hand in mine. “It was a detail of Marguerite’s death that I’d forgotten. She had thrown a ring at my feet before jumping. A ring that she took from her neck. I never knew she wore it there,” I said.

Garnier cleared his throat. “It was the ring I gave her. I can’t believe she still wore it all this time later.” He turned to face Aude. “Where did you get it from?”

“My mom gave it to me. She said she got it from her mother who got it from her own mother.”

“From Alice … ” Vincent whispered.

It made sense, Alice had always been very thorough, a real champion to the cause, even though she was from the skipped generation. The one without the essence-producing gene.

Vincent leaned back into the armchair in front of Aude. “Welcome to the family, my dear.”

“So about this evening?” Antoine leaned forward, crossing his arms, resting his elbows on his knees.

“I almost died, but Guillaume saved my life,” Aude said.

“You saved your own life,” I answered, squeezing her hand.

I told the others about what had happened in the alley.

“How did you know what to do?” Garnier asked her.

“The drumming,” she said.

“We believe her ancestor spirits are watching over her and helping her out,” I explained.

We were silent for a moment, until Aude cleared her throat.

“I have some questions too,” she said.

“Of course,” Antoine answered. “Please, ask us what you like. Guillaume has not told us anything of what he has shared with you.” He gave me a sharp look.

She shifted uncomfortably.

“Well, Guillaume has shared a lot with me, and I’ve managed to put some of the other stuff together, but I’m still kind of lost. Why is it so important that I’m a de Rouen witch? What does it mean?”

“You are from a line of witches that originated from Rouen, France, though by the time we met them, they had been long settled in Paris. It is not a coincidence that Rouen is also where stories and legends of gargoyles originate from,” Antoine said. “The de Rouens were a very powerful family and as such, they had many enemies. They created us to protect them from these enemies. They were a merchant family and had traveled the Silk Road. Some said they had always been witches, while others say they received their control over essence in a bargain with a foreign devil. Whichever the case was, they learned much on their travels and understood more of their powers than most essentialists of the time.”

“We were the first gargoyles in France,” Garnier added. “Though I came to learn, several centuries later, that others of our kind had existed in other countries for much longer. Ramtin is one of those old gargoyles.”

“Were these witches evil?”

“No. But they weren’t necessarily good either. They could be greedy and jealous and even petty sometimes. But usually, they meant well and genuinely cared for the well-being of humans around them.”

“Okay, so when we’re talking witches, we’re obviously not talking, like, pointy hats, crooked noses, doing magic type of witches. Are we talking about Wicca-type witches?” she asked.

“Neither,” I answered. “
Witch
is the word many people used to refer to essentialists, back when people were more superstitious and actually noticed them around. Though some may have followed Wiccan ways, it is not integral to who they are.”

“Essentialists are quite simply the rare people who can manipulate and regenerate life essence,” Vincent added.

“And essence is life energy, right?” She rubbed her forehead.

“Right,” I said.

“So if I’m an essentialist, and essentialists can regenerate life energy, would this make me immortal?”

I wished I could answer her in the affirmative, but unfortunately I knew of only one way of using essentialist’s gifts to create immortality, and this didn’t create it for
them
, but for someone else. They never survived the process. I shook my head.

“I understand a little more about my ancestors,” she said. “But why is who I am so important for you?”