“Yeah, I did, but my magick wasn’t worth crap the next day. The alcohol.”
“There is that,” I admitted, deciding to buy the halter. Someday, I’d have to find a way around that annoying truth. I pushed my black hair over my shoulders, then saw how it looked against my skin in back. Excellent. Thanks, Mom. Nan had one picture of my mom, and I looked like her: black hair, green eyes, and the weirdest thing of all, we both had a strawberry birthmark in the exact same place. I was still trying to decide if I wanted to get it lasered off—it was on my left cheekbone and looked like, well, frankly, what it looked like depended on how much you’d had to drink. Sometimes a small thistle flower, sometimes an animal footprint (Racey said a very tiny three-toed sloth), sometimes a fleur-de-lis. And my mom, who had died when I was born, had had the same thing. Quelle bizarre, n’est-ce pas?
I was heading back into the cubicle when I felt, literally felt, someone’s gaze on me. I looked through the few clothing racks out to the main part of the store. And saw him.
My breath stopped in my throat and I froze where I stood. Déesse. This was the definition of poleaxed, this stunned feeling, where time stood still and all that crap.
“What?” said Racey, almost bumping into me. She followed my line of vision. “Whoa.”
The Hottest Guy in the World was staring right at me. I’ve known my share of hot guys, but this one was in a whole different league. His sable-colored hair was too long, as if he couldn’t be bothered to get it cut properly. Dark eyebrows angled sharply over dark eyes. He was young but with strong features, like a man, not a boy. In that instant, I knew we would be together. And I also knew that he wouldn’t be easy to wrap around my little finger, like other guys. His open, interested look was a challenge. One that I was going to accept.
I raised my eyebrows slightly, then went slowly into the cubicle, giving him a good look at my back, all bare skin because of the halter. Racey followed me in a second later, and I made an awed, oh-my-God face at her. She shrugged noncommittally.
“You don’t think he’s too old?” she whispered.
I shook my head and laughed, surprised and a little freaked to notice that my fingers were trembling. Racey helped me undo the back ties, and I scrambled back into my bra. I felt like I’d just run a thousand-meter race, hot and cold and trembly all over.
I was dressed for comfort in an over-dyed man’s tank top and a ratty pair of jean shorts that were cut off right below my underwear. While it would have been nice to be wearing something more sophisticated, I knew that most guys would think I looked damn fine.
“That guy is fantastic,” I said.
Racey shrugged again. “We don’t know him,” she pointed out. “He could be anyone.”
I looked at her. Racey had never been like this—usually she was as go-get-’em as I was. Did she want him for herself? I didn’t think so. She didn’t look jealous. Just . . . concerned.
I had to get up my nerve to saunter out of the changing cubicle, the halter in my hand. Which was very unlike me. A guy—any guy—hadn’t made me nervous since I was about four years old.
He was still there, not even pretending to be cool or casual. His gaze locked on me like a dark laser, and I felt an actual bona fide shiver go down my spine. Oh my God, this was going to be fun. And scary. Anything that was truly fun always had an element of scary to it.
He didn’t smile, or wave, or try to look approachable. Instead, keeping his eyes on me, he nudged a chair out a bit with his foot. Très suave.
I was dimly aware of Racey fading into the background like a good best friend. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her settle into a seat at the bar. Then I was at his table, and he pushed the chair out the rest of the way for me. I sat down, dropped the halter on the table, and reached over for his drink. Our eyes stayed locked as I took a sip—he was drinking iced espresso, which seemed impossibly cool. He was perfection. The ultimate. And I was going to show him that we were a matched set.
“I haven’t seen you here before,” I said, thrilled to hear my voice sound a tiny bit husky, a tiny bit lower than usual. This close, I could see that his eyes were actually an incredibly dark blue, like the sky at midnight. It made him look that much more intense.
“I’m new in town,” he said, and he had a French accent. God help me.
“How are you liking the local scenery?” I asked, and drank more of his coffee.
He looked at me, and I felt like he was picturing me lying down somewhere with him and he was thinking about what we would do when we got there. My heartbeat sped up.
“I’m liking it,” he said, understanding my meaning. He took back his glass and drank from it. “I’m Andre.”
I smiled. “Clio.”
“Clio,” he repeated, and my name with a French accent sounded incredible. I spoke some French, like my grandmother did. Our religion was all based in French from hundreds of years ago. But I didn’t have an accent, I mean, except an American one. “Tell me, Clio,” he said, leaning toward me over the small table. “Are you what you seem? Would you be dangerous for me to . . . know?”
“Yes. And no,” I said steadily, lying through my teeth. I had no idea what I seemed to be, and no way would I tell him that I was dangerous only because I didn’t intend to ever let him get away. “What about you?” I asked, feeling like I was walking some fine edge. “Are you dangerous for me to know?”
He smiled then, and I felt my heart shudder to a stop inside my chest. At that moment, I would have given him my hand and let him take me across the world, giving up my home, my grandmother, my friends. “Yes, Clio,” he said softly, still smiling.“I’m dangerous for you to know.”
I looked back at him, feeling utterly, utterly lost. “Good,” I managed, my throat dry.
An instant of surprise crossed his beautiful, sculpted face, and then he actually laughed. He took my hand in both of his. Little sparks of electricity made me tingle all over, and then he turned my hand palm up. He looked at it and slowly traced a finger down the lines in my palm, as if reading my fortune. Then he took out a pen and wrote a phone number on my skin.
“Unfortunately, I’m already late,” he said in a voice that was so intimate, so personal, it was as if we were the only two people in Botanika. He stood up—he was tall—and put some money on the table for a tip. “But that’s my number, and I’m telling you: if you don’t call me, I’ll come find you.”
“We’ll see, won’t we?” I said coolly, though inside I was doing an ecstatic victory dance. Something in his eyes flared, making me take a shallow breath, and then it was gone, leaving me to wonder if I had imagined it.
“Yes,” he said, sounding deceptively mild. “We will.” Turning, he walked with long, easy strides to the door and pushed it open. I watched him pass the plate glass window and had to struggle with myself not to jump up, run after him, and tackle him right there.
Racey slid into the seat opposite mine. “Well?” she said. “What was he like? Did he seem okay?”
I let out a deep breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. “More than okay.” I uncurled my fingers, showing Racey his number written on my palm.
Racey looked at me, unusually solemn.
“What?” I asked her. “I’ve never seen you like this.”
“Yeah,” she said, and looked away. “I don’t know what it is. Usually, you know, we see a guy, and bam, we know what the deal is, how to handle him—no surprises, you know? They’re all kind of the same. But this one—I don’t know,” she said again. “I mean, I just got a funny feeling from him.”
“You and me both,” I said sincerely, looking at his phone number in my palm.
“It was like I instantly knew he was . . . really different,” Racey persisted.
I looked at her, interested. She was one of the strongest witches our age in the coven, and besides that, she was my best friend. I totally trusted her.
“Different bad?” I asked. “I didn’t see that. He totally knocked me off my feet, but i
t all felt good.” Besides the scary stuff, I meant.
Racey shrugged, as if shaking off bad feelings. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” she said. “Don’t listen to me. He is really hot. And I didn’t even talk to him.” Then she looked at me again. “Just . . . be careful.”
“Yeah, of course,” I said, having no idea what that meant. We got up, and I paid for my new halter, which I planned to wear the next time I saw Andre.
Thais
Okay, one good thing—beignets—weighed against the katrillion bad things. Mostly, one incredibly bad thing—not having Dad, who had been there every day of my life, let me win at Monopoly, taught me to drive. He’d held me when I cried, and my eyes filled up now just thinking about it. He’d been quietly funny, gentle, maybe a little bit distant, but I’d always known he’d loved me. And I hoped he’d known how much I loved him.
I swallowed hard and moved on to all the other horrible things: Axelle, the rest of New Orleans, my entire life, Axelle’s creepy friends, being an orphan, my life, the heat, the bugs, the ridiculous humidity that felt like a damp fist punching your head when you stepped outside, my life, missing my dad, missing Welsford, missing Mrs. Thompkins, Axelle, not having a car, being seventeen and starting a new school for senior year, oh yeah, my life, the noise, the crowds, the clogging throngs of tourists everywhere, drunk and sun-baked by two in the afternoon because New Orleans is the devil’s play-ground, Axelle, oh, and did I mention going crazy missing my dad?
But the beignets and coffee were unbelievable. Nothing like light, airy, puffs of dough deep-fried in lard and coated with powdered sugar to pick a girl up. And the coffee—oh God. I’d always hated coffee—didn’t even like the smell when Dad made it. But the coffee here was boiled with milk and it was fabulous. I came to Café du Monde every day for my caffeine-’n’-cholesterol fix. Another couple of weeks and I would be permanently hyped up and weigh two hundred pounds. The sad thing was, that wouldn’t even make my life any worse. I was already at rock bottom. And now I was crying again, dripping tears onto the powdered sugar, as I did almost every time I came here. I pulled more napkins out of the dispenser and wiped my eyes.
I had no idea how this had happened to me. A month ago I was totally normal in every way, living a totally normal life with my totally normal dad. Now, barely four weeks later, I was living with a strange woman (I mean literally strange, as in bizarre, not just unknown) who had zero idea of what guardianship was all about. She’d told me that she and my dad had had a deep and meaningful friendship but had sometimes lost touch with each other through the years. I was way, way thankful that apparently they’d never actually dated.
Still, Dad must have been out of his gourd to think for even one second that my living with Axelle would be anything close to a good idea. I’d lost track of how many times a day I prayed for this to be a nightmare so I could wake up.
I got up and walked across the street, through Jackson Square. Axelle lived in the French Quarter, the oldest part of New Orleans. I had to admit, it was pretty. The buildings looked European, not southern or colonial, and there was an old-fashioned grace and timelessness to the place that even I in my misery could appreciate. On the other hand, it was incredibly dirty almost everywhere, and some streets were touristy in a horrible, seedy kind of way. Like all the strip joints on Bourbon Street. Yep, just blocks of strip joints and bars, all being peered into by anyone passing by, even if the person passing by was a child.
But there were other streets, not touristy, quiet and serene in a timeless way. Even Welsford was founded only in about 1860. New Orleans had had some sort of settlement here for about 150 years before that. Through hours and hours of walking aimlessly, I had realized that there was a whole separate Quarter that most people never see: the private gardens, hidden courtyards, pockets of lush green almost pulsing with life.
Yet even in the midst of ageless beauty, there was an undercurrent of . . . what? Danger? Not as strong as danger. Not as strong as dread. But like, when I walked under a balcony, I expected a safe to fall on my head. If the same person walked behind me for more than a block, I got nervous. There was a lot of crime here, but my nervousness wasn’t even that based in reality. It was more like . . . I expected the sun to never shine again in my life. Or like I had driven into a train tunnel, and there was no end in sight, and a train was coming at me. It was weird, but maybe it was natural to feel that way after everything I had been through.
I turned left and cut down a narrow, one-block-long little street. I waded through a busload of tourists on a walking tour and turned another corner. Two blocks down this street was where I was sentenced to live, at least for the next few months.
Axelle’s apartment had once been part of an incredible private home. There was a side gate made of wrought iron, which I unlocked. It led to a narrow, covered driveway, wide enough for carriages, not cars. My feet made faint echoing noises on the cool flagstones, worn from hundreds of years of use. The front door was in the back of the house. Four buildings bordered a private courtyard, which had a weensy swimming pool and lushly overgrown plant beds around the walls.
Sighing, feeling like an anvil was on my chest, I turned my key in the lock. With any luck Axelle wouldn’t be here—she’d already be out for the evening, and I wouldn’t have to go. Last night she’d brought me to three different bars, despite my reminding her that not only was I not twenty-one, but I wasn’t even eighteen yet. At all three places, the bouncer or doorman had looked at me, opened his mouth as if to card me, which I was hoping for, because then I could go home and go to bed—but then they’d just shut their mouths and let me pass. I guessed Axelle knew them, and they’d let her do whatever.
I pushed open the door, to be met by a blessed whoosh of air-conditioning, and found I was out of luck. Axelle lounged on her black leather sofa, her clothes making slight sibilant noises when she shifted. She was smoking and talking on the phone and barely looked up at me when I came in.
To add to my fun, her creepy friends Jules and Daedalus were there too. I’d met them practically the moment we got off the plane in New Orleans. Neither of them was her boyfriend, but they were around a lot. Jules was good-looking in a Denzel Washington kind of way, poised and put together, and seemed about Axelle’s age, early thirties. Daedalus was old enough to be her father, like in his mid-fifties. He reminded me of a used car salesman, always smiling but the smile never reaching his eyes.
“Ah! Thais,” said Daedalus, looking up from a thick book. Jules also looked up and smiled, then continued examining a map on the small round dining table at one end of the huge main room. At the other end were a fireplace and sitting area. The tiny kitchen was open to the big room, separated by a black granite counter. Axelle’s bedroom and huge, pathologically crowded and messy closet were down a short hallway. My tiny bedroom, which was essentially a former lean-to tacked onto the main house as an outdoor kitchen, opened off the back of the kitchen.
“Hi,” I said, heading for privacy.
“Wait, Thais,” Jules said. He had a beautiful deep voice. “I’d like you to meet our friend Richard Landry.” He gestured toward the main room, and someone I hadn’t noticed stepped through the haze of Axelle’s cigarette smoke.
“Hey,” he said.
I blinked. At first glance he appeared to be my age, but in the next second I realized he was actually younger—maybe fourteen? He was a bit taller than me and had warm brown hair, streaked from the sun, and brown eyes. I couldn’t help standing still for a moment to take him in: he was the only fourteen-year-old I’d ever seen with a silver stud through his eyebrow, a silver ring through one nostril, and tattoos. He was wearing a black T-shirt with the sleeves torn off and long black jeans despite the heat.
I realized I was staring and tried to recover. “Hi, Richard,” I said, pronouncing it the way Jules had: Ree-shard. He just nodded, looking at me in a weirdly adult way, like: appraising. Yes, he won the weirdest-kid-I’d-ever-met award. And why on earth was he hanging
out with these people? Maybe his parents were friends of theirs?
Axelle hung up the phone and got to her feet. Today, in deference to the ninety-eight-degree weather, she was wearing a black, satiny cat suit. “Oh, good, you met Richard,” she said. “Well, you all ready?”
Jules, Daedalus, and Richard nodded, and Richard put down his glass.
“We won’t be long,” said Axelle, unlocking a door that I hadn’t even seen the first four days I was here. It was built into the deep molding of the main room, a hidden door. I’d almost jumped out of my skin one day when I’d thought I was alone and then suddenly Daedalus had appeared out of the wall. Now that I knew it was there, I could easily see its outlines and the round brass lock. It led to stairs, I knew that much, but I wasn’t allowed in—it was always locked when Axelle wasn’t home.
I watched silently as the three guys followed Axelle.
I was convinced they did drugs up there. And now they were dragging a kid into their web. True, a strange, hard-core kid, but still. The door clicked shut with a heavy finality, and I prowled restlessly around the main room, wondering if I should do something. Okay, for the three weird adults, that was one thing. They might be complete dope fiends, but they’d never hit me or come on to me or anything. But now they were corrupting a kid—if there was anything left in Richard to corrupt. That was definitely wrong.
Unsure what to do with my concern, I wandered around, picking up used glasses and loading them into the dishwasher. Axelle was the world’s biggest slob, and I’d started tidying up out of self-defense, just so I’d have clean plates to eat off of, etc.
“Mreow?” Minou, Axelle’s cat, jumped up on the kitchen counter. I scratched him absently behind the ears and then refilled his food bowl. Like the hidden door, Minou had shown up several days after I got here, but Axelle knew him and actually had cat food, so I figured he was hers. Guess what color he was.