“Then what do you think he’s doing?” Marcel asked.
“He wants to re-create the rite. Why, I don’t know. I think we need to find out.” She looked at Jules meaningfully, but he stared straight ahead and drank his coffee. “Maybe he just wants more power. Maybe he’s trying to pull Melita back. Maybe it’ll reverse our immortality but extend his. I don’t know. I just know I’m getting more pissed by the day, being here. I tried to go over to the coast yesterday to visit some friends, and I got as far as Ocean Springs before his spell kicked in and I had to turn around.” She sounded very bitter.
“I just want this to end,” Marcel said quietly.
“Your life should be celebrated.” Jules looked serious, despite the tiny bit of powdered sugar dotting his lip. “All life should be celebrated. You’ve been given a gift—the chance to rejoice every day, to do whatever you want to give your life meaning.”
“Here it comes,” Claire muttered.
“Both of you—so caught up in yourselves,” Jules went on. “Instead of sitting around being unhappy, why don’t you do something to give your life purpose?”
“Orphans in Africa” Claire said under breath.
“There are people all over the world who need help,” Jules said earnestly.
“I know,” Marcel said, feeling defensive. “I’ve been taking care of the poor in Ireland for the last hundred and forty years.”
“And that didn’t give your life meaning?” Jules asked. “Didn’t it give you some measure of joy, to know you were making a difference in those desolate lives?”
“It was all right.”
Jules let out a deep breath. “You have been granted the opportunity to live extraordinary lives. Quit wasting them.” He stood abruptly and dropped some money on the table for a tip. With a last, unreadable look at Claire, he made his way through the crowded tables and disappeared toward the levee.
“That’s Jules for you,” Claire said, sounding not at all bothered by his lecture. “Sincere as shit. Still—” Her eyes followed his broad back. “He’s a good person.” Her voice sounded uncharacteristically soft, affectionate, and Marcel looked at her curiously.
“What is it with you and Jules?” he surprised himself by asking.
Claire looked surprised too, that Marcel would address it so openly.
“Oh, you know.” She waved her hand vaguely, watching the crowd where Jules could no longer be seen. “I love him. He won’t have me. And so on.
“But the question is,” she said, looking at Marcel shrewdly, “what are we going to do about Daedalus?”
“What canwe do?”
“You know who we should talk to?” Claire asked. “Axelle. Our Axelle has become quite the power-house.”
“You’re gonna love this place,” Kevin said, patting my knee before shifting gears.
“Good—I’m hungry.” I looked over at him and smiled, trying to seem normal. This had been such a bizarre week. Kevin had been wanting to get together every day. I’d missed him, but he seemed so removed from the rest of my life—there was so much I couldn’t share with him. Or with Clio, or Petra. Meeting Carmela, starting on that path, was weighing heavily on me, like a heavy, dark cloak that I couldn’t take off. What would Clio and Petra say if they knew?
I looked out the Miata’s window, seeing the shadows slanting steeply from the tall oak trees. It was as hot as summer, but the sunlight looked autumny: its quality, its angle. Every day I stepped outside, expecting a crispness in the air—and every day I was disappointed. Back home I’d be wearing sweaters by now and a jacket at night.
“And no school next week!” Kevin smacked his hands against the steering wheel. “How cool is that? Let’s get Sylvie and Claude and go do something tomorrow, maybe get a little sailboat, have a picnic out on the lake.”
“That sounds great,” I said, loving the idea of doing something so ordinary. With Kevin, I got a glimpse of my old life, when I’d been a regular teenager in a regular town. More and more I felt like I was leaving him behind—and last night, at Mama Loup’s …
“You cold?” Kevin’s face was concerned, and he adjusted the AC. “You’re shivering.”
“No, I’m fine,” I said. “Thanks.”
“Hey—are you all right?” He steered with one hand, lacing the other through mine on my lap. Every so often he released it to shift; then he’d take it back. “You seem kind of … distracted.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s been a crazy week. I haven’t been getting much sleep, and my grandmother seems to be getting sick or something. I’m having a hard time focusing.”
“That’s okay—I know how those crazy weeks go.”
I bet you don’t, I thought.
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
He was literally the sweetest guy I’d ever met. I gave him a bigger smile.
“No, this is good, right here. Getting po’boys with you and then a movie. It’s just what I need. A perfect Friday night.” Nope, no witches here.
“Okay. But anything you want, you tell me.”
“Thanks—you’re a sweetie.”
Kevin smiled at my endearment, then turned off Magazine Street toward the river. The houses here were small but mostly nicely kept. Kids were playing, and dogs were running around barking.
I got lost in my thoughts for a moment, these small houses such a contrast to the ones I had seen just yesterday. Yesterday. That whole experience had shaken me to the core. I’d made the decision to start down a dark path, a decision that would mark my soul forever, according to Carmela. And when witches said “dark,” they meant really dark, good-ver-sus-evil kind of stuff. Stuff that could, well, mark your soul forever.
Was I ready to do it? This morning I’d bought some of the supplies from Carmela’s list at Botanika. The clerk had looked at the assembled pile and then examined my face, as if to judge whether I should be buying this stuff. Some things I’d been able to get from Nan’s cabinet in the workroom, very quietly, when I was supposed to be in there studying.
I’d felt weird and kind of off all day. Now I seized a chance to feel normal and innocent.
“Where are we going?” I asked, seeing nothing but houses, no businesses anywhere.
“Around the corner,” Kevin said. “It’s a little hole in the wall, but they make the best roast beef po’boys anywhere.”
“Sounds great,” I began, but at that moment, a little girl chased a puppy into the street, right in front of us. I gasped, and time seemed to slow down, each second taking thirty seconds to get through.
“Whoa!” Kevin said, and jerked the steering wheel to one side, but not far enough. The little girl, maybe four years old, froze with fear, staring at us. Someone yelled from the sidewalk, and I think someone leaped up toward the street. Words came into my mind, and I repeated them unquestioningly. Not knowing why, I put my hands together like an arrow, then split them apart fast, as if sending a burst of air between our car and the little girl.
The next moment, she was blown backward, right out of the street and against the curb, where she landed with a small skid. The puppy was flung to the opposite side with a startled, high-pitched yelp. An adult dropped next to the child, gathering her up into strong arms. She started wailing.
“Oh my God,” I exclaimed, watching all this happen. “That was close!” Then I realized that our car was still moving, listing to one side of the street. “Kevin?”
Next to me, Kevin’s head hung limply toward one shoulder. His hands had fallen off the steering wheel, and his eyes were closed. The car jumped the curb with a jolt, and I grabbed the wheel just in time for us to hit a fire hydrant on the corner.
Wham! I was jerked forward. My seat belt caught hard and slammed me back into my seat. I felt shaken like a rag doll. When I looked at Kevin, he looked dead.
“Kevin! Kevin!” I grabbed one shoulder and shook it, and he blinked groggily.
Then, just like in the movies, I heard a loud rushing sound, and a geyser of wat
er shot out of the broken fire hydrant, shooting twenty feet in the air, then dropping heavily onto the hood and roof of our car.
“Wha?” Kevin mumbled. He blinked again, looking around in a daze, and slowly took in my anxious face, the car lurched up onto the sidewalk at an angle, the crashing water.
“What happened?” His voice sounded thick, and his face looked gray.
“What’s wrong?” Starting to freak out, I saw that his lips looked faintly blue. I grabbed one of his hands. It was ice cold.
People had gathered around our car, and now the doors opened on both sides.
“Miss, you okay?” A gentle brown hand extended to help me out. On Kevin’s side, people were helping him out too, but he sagged against a man, who quickly set him down on the grass by the curb.
“Kevin! My boyfriend!” I said, hurrying over to him, then remembered I had a cell phone. I dialed 911 as fast as I could and started babbling at the calm person on the other end.
“Sit down, honey,” said a woman, tugging on my arm, and I sank down moments before my knees gave way.
Someone took the phone out of my hand. While I stroked Kevin’s clammy forehead and patted his hand, I heard a heavy southern accent say, “I don’t know what happened. This girl and her boyfriend just knocked over a hydrant. Uh-huh.” I heard him give an address.
“Get an ambulance!” I said urgently, because Kevin wasn’t snapping out of it.
“This girl wants an ambulance,” the man repeated. “And her boyfriend don’t look so hot, I gotta tell ya.”
After that, different choppy scenes intruded into my consciousness. The little girl we’d almost hit was okay, though scraped on one elbow. The puppy was okay. Most of the front end of Kevin’s car was crumpled. I got my purse out of the car, then sat down next to Kevin again, holding his hand. I put my other hand on his heart and felt it racing uncontrollably.
Jeez, slow down, I thought fearfully. Slow down; calme-toi. Within seconds his heart did seem to slow down, but I didn’t know if I had done it.
“What happened to you?” I asked him.
“Don’t know.” He shook his head, still looking sick and gray.
An ambulance came. Police came. The fire department came and pushed Kevin’s car out of the way and sealed the broken hydrant. The police questioned everybody, and I was pretty incoherent. They gave both me and Kevin alcohol tests, which were negative, of course.
One paramedic said, “It’s like he got hit by light-ning or something. He’s seriously out of whack.”
The sky was cloudy but there was no thunder, no lightning. They picked Kevin up and strapped him onto a gurney.
I remembered to call Kevin’s house and explained it all to his stepmother, who promised to meet him immediately at the hospital. She urged me to go home and lie down if I felt I didn’t need to be seen by a doctor.
“We barely hit the hydrant,” I said. “But Kevin was out before we hit it.”
Finally they took Kevin to the hospital. I held his hand and kissed his cheek, but he seemed oblivious. A policewoman helped me into a cruiser and drove me home.
And that’s when I had the thought—what if this had happened to us, to me, because of what I had set in motion last night?
“Thank you.” I was so glad to be home.
“Let me walk you to your door,” said the police-woman as I climbed out of the cruiser.
“No, that’s okay, thanks.” I was embarrassed that she was seeing me all upset and weak-kneed and just wanted her to go.
As soon as I opened the front door, Petra called, “Thais?”
“Yes.” I headed toward the kitchen, practicing sending out my Spidey senses to see if Clio was home. I didn’t feel her, but maybe she was upstairs and I couldn’t get that far yet.
I stopped in the workroom and concentrated, but my nerves were so jangled, and all I wanted to do was sit down.
In the kitchen, Petra looked the same as when I’d left less than two hours ago: a bit pale, tired. She glanced out the window, seeing what time it was.
“That was quick,” she said. “I thought you were going to a movie.”
“I was.” I headed to the fridge and poured myself a glass of the ever-present iced tea.
“What’s wrong, honey? You feel upset.”
Startled, I thought, Like, you’re informing me?Then I realized I felt upset to her: my aura felt upset; she could pick up on it. I sighed.
“Well,” I began reluctantly, sinking into a kitchen chair. “Something happened to Kevin, and he wrecked his car. And we almost hit a little kid.” I collapsed onto the table, my head on my arms.
“What? Goddess, Thais, what happened? Are you okay? Where’s Kevin?” Petra immediately got up and came to me, stroking my hair, her long, sensitive fingers tracing my forehead as though to get the information out of me by osmosis.
“I’m okay. Kevin’s at the hospital. His stepmom said I should come home.”
“But what happened?”
I tried to put it all together in my mind. “We were just driving, not too fast, down a little street. And suddenly a little girl ran in front of our car.”
I sat up, trying to remember what had happened in what order. “There was a puppy. She ran after the puppy. She saw us but was too scared to move. I gasped, and Kevin said something and jerked the steering wheel, but there was no way we wouldn’t hit her.”
“Oh my God,” Petra said, rubbing my shoulders.
“Then—I don’t know what happened, but I remember thinking I had to stop it somehow. Word just popped into my head, and I said them. And I did this with my hands.” I showed Petra the splitting-arrow thing. “And then, boom, the little girl flew over by the sidewalk, and the puppy went in the opposite direction. So we didn’t hit them.”
I looked up to see a bizarre expression on Petra’s face. She focused on me solemnly, as if I’d just given her some terrible news.
“What?” I asked.
“Have you been studying displacement spells?”
“No. What’s a—oh, when you move something out of the way? No, you know I haven’t. I’m still learning the bazillion words for herbs.” I tried not to sound bitter, but the amount of sheer memorization required for the craft was overwhelming.
“You haven’t studied anything like that? Has Clio shown you something similar? Or anyone else?”
I thought. “No. I don’t know how I knew it. It was just there. What?” I was starting to feel alarmed at Petra’s expression.
“Okay,” she said, sitting down across from me. “Then what happened?”
“Well, I did the thing, and the little girl was out of the way. But we headed toward the left curb, and I saw that Kevin was unconscious, passed out.”
“Unconscious?” Petra looked awful.
“Yeah—I don’t know what happened. It’s like he’s—diabetic or something and just passes out. The paramedics said it was like he’d been hit by lightning. This happened once before,” I said, the word lightningtriggering a memory. “That night we didget hit by lightning. Remember? Kevin almost passed out, and that guy had to help us. I mean, I wonder what’s wrong with him. Maybe I should talk to his dad or stepmom about it.”
Petra gazed at me with her clear, blue-gray eyes. “He’s not diabetic,” she said.
“How do you know?” Could she really tell without even examining him?
“It’s you. It’s what happens when you make magick around him.”
I stared at her. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know why you’re able to perform such powerful spells without studying,” Petra said slowly. “But with Kevin—what you’re doing is, essentially, sucking his energy out of him. His life force.”
Horrified, I gaped at her. “What?”
“Magick doesn’t come out of thin air,” Petra explained. “Though it might look like it does. Magick is everywhere, and when you make magick, it’s mostly gatheringmagick. Though you can increase what you have to work with.”
; I wasn’t following her.
“Trained witches create boundaries around their spells so they don’t affect any living thing around them, except of course whatever they want to affect. But you’re not trained, and when you do powerful magick, it grabs force from wherever it can. In this case, from Kevin.”
I could hardly take it in. “Idid that to him? But he was—he was gray. His heart was beating way too fast. He’s at the hospital.“
Petra nodded. “It happened before, at the fountain. At the time, I thought maybe the lightning itself had affected him. But now it seems like it was probably you.”
“Oh my God.” I was appalled and felt my throat close and tears spring to my eyes. Ihad done that to Kevin. My making magick had sent him to the hospital. And now all sorts of memories came to me—of Kevin suddenly seeming dizzy a couple of times. Even his stepmother swaying against a door frame. Every time I had called up the tiniest little spell, it had affected him badly. Today the spell had been pretty strong, and it had practically killed him.
“Oh my God,” I repeated. “What am I going to do?”
“You have to learn how to put up boundaries as fast as you can,” said Petra. “But that can take a long time. Or you have to stop making magick of any kind, for any reason, around Kevin—or any other non-witch, for that matter. Witches have a built-in defense mechanism—you’d have to try really hard to take our power.”
I swallowed, not looking at her, steering my mind away from what I wanted to do to Daedalus.
“The third option is, you have to stop seeing Kevin.”
Today, last night, this whole week had been too much. I couldn’t stand it. “I’m going to take a shower,” I said, my voice breaking. Standing up, I didn’t even make it through the doorway before I started crying.
“Thais,” Petra called.
I turned back and saw her looking very serious.
“You need to make some hard choices,” she said, her voice gentle. “But you must make them. Let me know if you need help.”
I nodded and headed upstairs. In the bathroom I pulled the shower curtain around the big old-fashioned tub and turned on the water. I lay in the tub, eyes closed, with the water raining down on me as if it could wash away all my darkness.