Sweet Unrest (22 page)

“Let her go,” Piers’s voice was more urgent now. “Chloe, baby, I know you’re in there. I know you don’t want this. You gotta fight her, baby. Fight her for me.”

“Chloe.
Baby
,” the two mimicked in a sickening sing-song voice. “How sweet. You think true love is gonna come on in here and save you. Save
her
. Ha!” Mina’s eyes grew bright with an otherworldly light and I could see the monster lurking behind them. A terrifying smirk crept across her face. “Love, true or not, never saved anyone or anything. You want true love, boy?” They laughed again, and I felt the gun move away from my head. “You make your choice, then.”

A look of horror passed across Piers’s face.

“Lucy!” Alex was near me now. “Lucy, you have to get away from her.”

“Can’t,” I whispered, barely able to get the breath to say even that much. Chloe had me in a strangling grip that was stronger than it should have been.

“You don’t think I can kill them both?” the Chloe-thing asked, focusing for the first time on Alex. “I can snap this one’s sweet neck as easy as a twig underfoot and put a bullet into the other one’s brain before you can even blink.”

Mina’s body went suddenly limp in Piers’s arms, and Chloe alone spoke. “Who you gonna save, baby?” she asked in a voice that was almost her own. Almost, but there was a metal edge to it, a buzzing hum that vibrated through its tone. “You can save me. Just let my momma go. Please, Piers. Just let her go.”

Piers’s hand was steady on the gun, but his eyes flashed with indecision. “Chloe? Is that you, baby?”

“
No
,” I rasped.

“Piers, no,” Alex said. “It’s a trick.”

Piers blinked, like he was finally realizing what Alex and I could both see.

“Make your choice, boy,” the Chloe-thing repeated, this time sounding less like Chloe than ever. “You let me go or I’m gonna move this little finger here, just a little bit, mind you. But it would be more than enough for you to lose them both.”

Piers jerked the gun into Mina’s temple again. “You think I won’t kill you, old woman?”

“Piers, wait,” Alex told him suddenly. “You can’t.”

I saw the wave of relief wash across Piers’s face.

“You kill her now and she could have control over Chloe for good,” Alex told him.

Piers’s jaw clenched and he looked at Alex, a silent question passing between them.

“There’s always time,” Alex told him in answer. “You’ll get another chance. Save Chloe.”

Piers nodded with a quick jerk of his head and lowered the gun from Mina’s temple. “Get out of her body, old woman. Now. Or I swear to the heavens and all the spirits that I’ll kill you both.” He raised the gun and aimed it directly at Chloe.

“You wouldn’t!” the Chloe-thing spit. “You love her!”

Piers nodded. “Enough to free her from you if I have to, Thisbe.” He dropped Mina’s limp body to the ground and stepped forward slowly, keeping the gun trained on Chloe. “Get out of my girl and get back into your own self, before I change my mind.”

Silence stretched out between us as we waited to see who would make the first move. Chloe breathed in heavy, hissing breaths by my cheek, her arm still tight around my neck. Piers’s gaze darted between Chloe and Mina’s limp body, waiting for the devil himself to jump out of one of them. It was harder and harder to breath, and my vision started going black around the edges.

Piers cocked the gun, determined.

Suddenly, the arm around my neck went limp and Chloe collapsed to the ground. Air rushed into my lungs as I fell onto the pavement next to her, gasping for breath on my hands and knees. Warmth tingled across my skin and I knew Alex was there.

The moment Chloe collapsed, Piers ran to her, forgetting completely about Mina’s body—Thisbe’s body—on the ground in front of the tomb. He cradled her in his arms and rocked her. “Chloe, baby, come on. You gotta wake up, girl. Please, baby.” Over and over, he crooned to her.

“Piers,” Alex called. “She’s getting away.”

Piers looked up to see Mina slinking off, and then back to Chloe. The choice, I knew, was an impossible one for him—leave Chloe, or let Mina get away.

“She can’t get far,” I croaked. “We have Alex.” I looked up at him, knowing I was right. Thisbe needed Alex’s body, and she’d just left it—and her chance at immortality—behind.

Piers hesitated, but then turned back to Chloe. She was looking better every second that passed, but she still hadn’t opened her eyes. “I’ve never seen anything like that,” Piers said. “For a single soul to inhabit two bodies—” He shook his head. “It should be impossible. Unless there was something to link them.” He lifted a piece of Chloe’s thick hair.

I saw immediately what he was showing us—a thin red string woven into the twist of hair and held tight by the silver bead at the end. “She planned this,” I said. “That thread is charmed with sacrificial blood. She used it on the picture of T.J. and when she bound Alex years ago. She used it on her own daughter—if Chloe even was her daughter.” But I thought how similar Chloe and Mina looked, and I knew at least that much was true. Chloe really was Mina’s daughter—Thisbe’s daughter—and I wondered how much more powerful it had made the link between them. “Thisbe was probably planning on using her for years. Maybe even since before she was born.”

“They’ll have to be cut off,” Piers said miserably. “Your beautiful hair, baby,” he crooned to her. “We’re gonna make you better, though, I promise.” He looked up at the two of us.

“Look, she’s stirring even now,” said Alex.

He was right. With every passing second, Chloe’s color returned. As her breathing evened out, the tightness strung throughout Piers’s body finally began to ease.

“We need to finish what we came here for,” he said after he was sure that Chloe was stable. “Do you need my help?”

“I’ll need someone to cut the thread bound around my body,” Alex said. “There must be some sort of charm woven into it that keeps me away from myself, and I will need you to keep Lucy safe for me.” He gazed steadily at Piers.

Piers looked down at Chloe, and I knew he didn’t want to leave her.

“I can do it for him.” I took the knife Piers handed me and turned toward the tomb. “You’re really in there?” I asked Alex.

His face was tight, but he nodded. “Are you ready?”

Thirty
-
Seven

The tomb wasn’t an overly large structure compared to the monuments around it, but it was flanked by thick columns, which made it seem more opulent than its neighbors with their flat marble. As in my dream, it was peaked by an obelisk. The doorway was a dark mouth leading into the coolness of its depths.

I was surprised by the size of the interior—it seemed bigger than it should have been. The walls were covered in more of the strange markings, but these weren’t darkened like the ones on the outside. Instead, they glowed with an eerie light, bathing the space in a soft amber glow. On a shelf built into the back wall, a long form lay wrapped in what looked like a cocoon of red string. I was instantly drawn to it.

“When she originally tied you up, I could still see your skin in places,” I told him. “She’s added more thread over the years.” I ran my hand over it—over Alex—tentatively. His body had become a shell from the years and years of blood soaking in and hardening it. But it was warm, and I could make out the rhythmic movement of shallow breaths. The body beneath the covering was still alive. “Oh, Alex.”

“It will be okay, love.” He brushed his lips across my forehead to calm me. “It is almost finished, but I need you to cut away the thread.”

I nodded, tightening my grip on the knife Piers had given me. Slowly, I worked it under the edge of the shell near his feet and then slid it up, slicing away more than a century of binding as I went. When I was done, if fell open like a chrysalis and I saw Alex.

I would never have guessed that he’d been there for a hundred and fifty years. He looked so peaceful, his chest rising and falling in slow, rhythmic measures. The only sign anything was wrong were the thin lines of hundreds of scars covering his body.

“Are you ready?” I asked, turning to him.

His eyes were tight and his throat bobbed as he swallowed hard, but he didn’t answer me.

“What’s wrong? You just need to get back in and it’ll be over,” I told him, trying to infuse my voice with confidence.

“Lucy—” His voice broke. “You know what you’ve meant to me—what you
mean
to me—don’t you?”

I nodded. “Of course, Alex. This time I do know. There’s no doubt for me.”

He smiled softly. “Good. That is more than I ever hoped I would have.”

“You’ll have a lot more if you’d get back into that body of yours,” I said with a wobbly smile. Soon, so soon, he’d be back in his body and I’d have his arms around me, and we’d go forward—start over—together.

He took a deep breath. “The ring on my finger there? Would you take it off for me?”

My smile faltered then. “Can’t you just do it yourself in a few minutes?”

He shook his head. “Lucy—”

I knew what he meant before he said the words. “No,” I told him. “I was fine. When I went back to myself, I was fine. When T.J. came back into his body, he was fine. See?” I said, pinching my arm desperately, trying to convince him of what I’d convinced myself in those days after I was injured. “I’m fine. You’ll be fine, too. You have to be fine.” I could hear the hysteria rising in my voice but I had no idea how to stop it.

“Lucy,” he said again, his voice sounding as miserable as I felt. “You were alive. Your wounds were minor and easily healed. Mine were not.”

“But—”

“When I go back to myself, the unbinding will be complete. My body will return to the state it should be in.” He paused, sensing my confusion. My denial. “Lucy, even if none of this had happened to me, I should have died more than a century ago. I am not supposed to be here.” He brushed a whisper of energy over my cheek. “You are.”

“I can’t lose you again, Alex,” I told him, my voice barely audible. “I’ve lived through that once before.” Many times before, I thought, remembering the dream. “I can’t do it again.”

“
Mon coeur
. Please. Look at me.”

I looked up into his face, and the reality of the situation ran through me sharp as a knife. In his eyes I could see the same pain I felt.

“You can face anything, love,” he said. “Have you not already?”

“Not this. Please, just stay.” The idea was a bright spark of hope. “You can stay with me like this.”

“You know what it is like where I am.”

I did. I shuddered at the memory of the relentless pressure, the colorless existence he’d been leading, and I knew he was right. I knew I couldn’t ask him to endure even a minute more of that for my sake.

“Please, Lucy. I would like you to do something for me. One last request.” His voice was strained, and from the way he looked longingly at the prone body on the altar, I knew he was resisting the pull of it. I remembered that pull and the effort it had taken me to stay with him once I’d felt it.

“Anything,” I whispered. And I meant it. At that moment I would have done anything—killed anyone, traded
anything
—to keep myself from living through the pain that I knew I was about to experience. But I would have done more to give him peace.

“Take my ring. Honor me by wearing it. Please.”

I hesitated. I still wanted to refuse the reality of the situation, even as I moved toward his body. When I lifted his hand to remove the ring, I noticed his body had grown colder, and I knew he was already dying.

The ring slid off his smallest finger easily. It was heavy in my hand, a dull gold signet ring marked with an elaborate crest. I slipped it onto my index finger and closed my fist to keep it secure.

“You have no idea what it means to me to see you wearing it. It was my father’s. The crest on it is the Jourdain family seal. It means you shall always be one of us. That you will always have a part of me.” He smiled at me and peace settled across his face.

“Please don’t go,” I whispered.

“I must.” He raised a hand and cupped my face with a gentle brush of warmth. “You found me again, and I shall find you. No matter how many lifetimes it takes, I will find you, and we will be together. I promise you that,” he said, his voice firm. “But now, I need your trust. I need you to be strong.” His mouth curved into a pained smile, which made him look like a very young boy trying to be brave. “You have saved me in so many ways, love. It is unfair of me to ask you this, but save me this last time by letting me go.”

I took a deep, shuddering breath and nodded. Rubbing the ring that now sat securely on my finger, I went over to his body once again. I brushed his hair back from his forehead and ran my fingers over the planes of his face, trying desperately to capture the memory of them in my fingertips. And then I leaned down and kissed him gently on the mouth, collapsing against him with a sob when our lips met.

“I can’t hold myself away much longer. You should go now.” His voice was soft, but I could hear pain threaded through it. “I want you to remember me like this, not—” His voice caught and he closed his eyes.

“There won’t ever be anyone else for me, Alex,” I told him. My jaw clenched with the determination. “Two halves of a whole. That’s what you told me. I’ll wait.”

“You will live your life, Lucy. You must,” he told me sadly. “Go, love. Don’t turn back.”

It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but I granted his final wish and left him behind without looking back. As I came out of the darkness of the tomb, Piers met my eyes, and I collapsed in a heap of tears on the cool, uneven ground.

Thirty
-
eight

I don’t know how I made it through the next few weeks. I don’t know what Piers told my parents about why I was out that night when he brought me back early in the morning. I refused to talk about it, and eventually they stopped asking me. They seemed to know that whatever had happened was far beyond words. In those weeks after everything happened, they tread carefully around me. At one point they started talking about the plans for me to go back to live with Aunt Dani, but I refused. I couldn’t leave anymore. I was afraid that if I went back to Chicago, I’d lose what little of Alex I had left.

Days passed. I hardly slept at night, and when I did, it was a dreamless, uneven sleep. Once, I’d depended on my dreams to bring me to Alex, but even those failed me now. Mostly I just felt numb.

Piers became a regular visitor. He brought Chloe once, but she was too self-conscious about what had happened between us to stay very long that first time. Her braids were gone now, but it didn’t affect her beauty. She had the kind of face that could pull off a closely cropped look as easily as she’d worn her dreads.

She apologized for her role in everything, but I told her there was really nothing to forgive. She’d lost a mother, lost even the memories of who she thought her mother had been. I’m not sure anyone could really understand a loss like that.

Strangely enough, Chloe gave me a reason to go on. We were connected now in a way very few people understood, and I couldn’t let her be another of Thisbe’s casualties. A few weeks after the night in the cemetery, Piers and I finally convinced her to come with us to Mama Legba’s. She stood in the doorway looking like the shell of the girl she once was, afraid to leave and afraid to step through. Mama Legba took her gently by the hand and led her to the small table where I had once sat.

“Come on, Chloe-girl,” she said softly. “You come on over
here and let me read your cards. You more than ready now.”

It wasn’t a cure, but it was a beginning. After that visit, she slowly started returning to being the Chloe I’d first met, but she kept a wall of protection up, firmly in place. I had a feeling it always would be there.

August brought with it storms that felt as desperate as I did. During the day, I struggled to keep myself steady, and at night I slept restless, dreamless sleeps. Until the night I had tangled, confused dreams about a dark-haired boy with startling green eyes who smiled at me like he knew me. In one, the dark-haired boy with eyes the color of forests took me by the hand and led me through overgrown land, empty except for a forgotten pond and an ancient, gnarled tree. When he pressed my hand to the rough bark, something shifted deep inside me. He smiled down at me, and I felt my own lips curve up in return.

When I woke, confused and feeling more than a little guilty about how happy I’d felt with that other, green-eyed boy, Alex was there, watching me with the same intensity that had once taken my breath away. For a moment I feared I was only dreaming—that I was once again Armantine. But his signet ring was on my finger, heavy and warm, and he called me by my name.

“I thought you were gone,” I said, trying to keep my voice from breaking.

“I am, love,” he said softly.

“But you’re here. I can see you.” I reached for him, and was surprised when he was solid. Real. “How—?” I touched his face, his hands.

“I don’t have much time, Lucy.”

“I don’t understand.” I shook my head. “Am I dead?”

He smiled then, softly. “No. But this is taking a great deal of effort for me. I only have a few moments.”

I launched myself at him then. “Please, stay.”

“I can’t. But I had to see you again once more. I had to make sure you were all right.” His voice sounded strained. “To say a proper goodbye.”

“No.” My eyes pricked with tears. “Please, not again. It’s been so hard.”

“I know. It is hard for me as well, but it is what must be.” He pulled me away from him. “These are the cards we have been dealt.”

“Please … ”

“You do know that we shall find each other again, don’t you?” he asked, tipping my chin up and forcing me to meet his eyes, and all at once I thought of the dark-haired boy of my dreams. The one with Alex’s eyes.

“You do know this life is only one stopping place—and one day, this time will seem to have been no longer than a blink?” he asked.

“I wish it were a blink,” I told him.

He took me in his arms again. “No, you cannot think that. You have to go on and you have to live this life—fully. If you give up, it will affect the next life and the next. If you give up on all the possibilities of this life, you will not be the person you were, the person you are meant to be. You will not be mine any longer.”

I knew he was right. Each life, Mama Legba said, influenced the next. If I curled up and gave in now, I wouldn’t be the person Alex loved—not in this life or in the last. I thought again about the dark-haired boy of my dreams and wondered if that wasn’t some promise of what might be. Someday. In some other life.

“Will you come see me again? To get me through?”

He pulled back. “No, Lucy. I cannot come back again. I’m not sure I should be here now, but I had to see you once more. Hold you like this, once more.”

“Then this is really it?” I asked, knowing the truth before he answered.

“For now.”

He leaned down and kissed me gently on the lips. “I love you, Lucy Aimes. I loved you as Armantine Lyon, and I will love you again, whoever you may one day be. And I
will
find you. Have faith in that.”

He kissed me again, then, as my heart was breaking.

“I love you too, Alexandre Jourdain,” I said. But he was already gone.

I woke the next morning, my eyes rough from sleep, and realized that none of it had been real—it had only been a dream.

But I had something in my hand. A card.

I instantly recognized the iridescent ink, the interlocking doors from Mama Legba’s deck. And on the face of the card, an image of a man and woman tangled together in an embrace, guarded by an angel with arms outstretched as if in benediction and wings of fire.
The Lovers
, the card read. I traced my finger over the picture, and the angle’s flaming wings seemed to dance in the morning light.

And then I set the card on my bedside stand and forced myself to get up, to get dressed. To go on.

The End