A Feather of Stone #3 (17 page)

“I’d only spit it in your face.” There was something off here, but Petra couldn’t put her finger on it.

Richard took a swallow of the liquor, not even wincing when it went down. “I didn’t have anything to do with happened to Clio’s car. But I did the other things.”

Deep down, Petra had hoped that somehow the girls were wrong, that Richard hadn’t been behind the attacks. He’d always been in her heart, from the time he was a boy. She’d felt his pain over Cerise and knew what a bad deal he’d gotten out of the rite. For him to have done this—it broke her heart.

“You did the other things.” Her knees felt weak and she sat abruptly on an aluminum kitchen chair.

Richard pulled out another chair and sat down across from her. “I did those things before I knew the twins. I wanted them dead.”

“In the name of the goddess,
why
?”

He stared into the bottom of his glass. “When Daedalus called me here, I didn’t know what was going on. Then he told me about the twins. I knew you’d had Clio—I saw her when she was just a little kid. But twins—as soon as I knew there were two, I wanted to get rid of them.”

“You didn’t want a full Treize.”

“Hell no, I didn’t want a full Treize! Why would I? So some other horror could take place? What would it be this time?”

“You think the rite would be worse than your killing innocent children?” Petra didn’t drink—maybe a sip or two of wine every once in a great while. But she would have welcomed a sherry right then. She let out a heavy sigh, feeling tired and discouraged. “Why didn’t you come talk to me?”

Richard scoffed. “Yeah. ‘Hey, Petra, is it okay if I off those kids?’ ”

“I could have helped you come up with another way. I thought you wanted to do the rite.”

He made an impatient gesture. “I don’t need more power—I don’t use what I have. Maybe if the rite would make me age naturally or die, then I might go for it. But it’s just going to be Daedalus’s power grab.”

Petra sat and thought for several minutes. Something else was going on, something he wasn’t telling her. “Or is it because the twins look so much like Cerise?”

His dark eyes flicked up to meet hers. “Oh, do they?” he said woodenly.

“Is seeing them painful for you? Are you still angry at Cerise for not choosing you?”

“Cerise did choose me,” Richard said, and drained his glass. “Yes, Thais and Clio look like Cerise, eerily like. But once I got to know them . . . they don’t actually remind me of her very much at all. They’re . . . really different.”

“Yes, they are.” Petra twined her hands together. “What do you mean, Cerise chose you? You said the same thing the other day, that she hadn’t rejected you. What are you talking about? Everyone knew Marcel was with her, and she got pregnant, for God’s sake! You couldn’t have courted her, not really. You were too—young.”

Pain flashed across his face but was gone in an instant. When he looked up again, he had that oddly knowing, adult expression that he’d had even at fifteen, more than two hundred years ago.

“I wasn’t too young,” he said. “I was too young to marry her, couldn’t support her. But I wasn’t too young to have her, and I wasn’t too young to get her pregnant. Cerise’s baby was mine.”

“No.” Petra frowned, thinking back.

“Yes. It’s true that she was with Marcel,” he went on, his face twisting with bitterness. “But she’d been lying with me for six months before. She was already pregnant when she was first with him.” He got up quickly and poured himself more scotch. Petra wanted to take it from him and give him something else but knew better than to try.

“It was your child?” Petra was awash with emotions, memories, old pain, healed wounds. “You’re—quite sure?”

He laughed bitterly. “Oh, yeah.”

“Then what was she doing with Marcel? He hoped to marry her!”

Shrugging, Richard sat down again, pulling his shirt closed around him as if cold. “I don’t know. I thought I’d die when I found out. She just scolded me for being jealous. Maybe she felt sorry for him. Maybe she wanted to thank him for everything he was doing for you all, your family. After Armand left. Maybe she really cared about him. I don’t know.”

“Both of you.” Petra shook her head. How much she hadn’t known about her daughters. Had she been blind? Stupid? Or just too wrapped up in her own unhappiness and disappointment to see what was happening in front of her nose?

“Yeah. Both of us. Never at the same time, though.”

Petra winced.

“Sorry.” He shook his head. “She was your daughter, and she was a good daughter. But goddess, it was hard, loving her. Knowing it was my child she carried and her still dallying with that stiff, stuck-up fool—and then she died. And I couldn’t even claim the baby.”

“Why didn’t Marcel?”

“He knew I would kill him if he tried.” Richard gave a little smile and drank.

“So he thought the child was yours?”

“I think he hoped it wasn’t. He knew I was in the picture, though. Cerise never kept either of us secret from the other.”

Standing up, Petra went to get a glass and filled it with tap water. She leaned against the sink and looked at him, feeling overwhelmed by everything she had just learned. So Richard was actually related to Clio and Thais. Very, very distantly—a connection that would barely be acknowledged by a regular person alive today who learned of an ancestor who’d lived and died several centuries ago. But still, there was a thin sliver of connection there. She’d have to take some time to sit with that, consider when it was appropriate to tell the girls. Right now, she knew it was more than they could handle.

“And how does this tie in to the twins?” she asked him.

Richard sighed and rested his head in his hands. It was several minutes before he spoke. “After the rite, we all split apart immediately. Melita disappeared that night and Marcel within days. All of us split away from the
ville
, and my daughter went to live with the Dedouards. I planned to get back to the village when she was old enough to take with me.
But then I didn’t age.
I didn’t become a grown-up, on the outside, at least. So I only kept tabs on her from a distance. I kept in touch with some people, and they let me know how Hélène was. I watched her grow up from a distance. Grow up and get married and get pregnant and die.”

Petra nodded sadly.

“They always die,” Richard said.

Petra could tell he was trying to sound cold and distant.

“Daughter after daughter of that line—they always die. I just . . . want it to stop.”

She could barely hear his voice.

“If the twins died now, they wouldn’t give birth, and that line would end,” Petra said. “Is that what you mean? We’d never have to feel the pain of another daughter dying.”

His nod was barely imperceptible, and he drained his second glass. An ordinary man would have had no liver left by now.

“And you were willing to commit murder for that.”

“I didn’t know them. I freaked about Daedalus wanting to do the rite. I don’t know—it was like I went crazy for a while. But . . . also, I couldn’t follow through. I mean, I’m not Daedalus, but I know my way around a spell. If I’d really, truly wanted them dead at my core, they’d be dead. My spells always had an out.”

Petra glared at him. “And that makes it okay?”

“Petra.” He gave a bitter laugh and shook his head. “Of course not. It will never be okay. Nothing will ever be okay for any of us ever again. But bottom line, I didn’t kill the twins. And I quit trying after the wasps.”

“What about my house catching on fire?”

“Wasn’t me.”

“Clio’s car didn’t just explode on its own.”

“I didn’t do it. Petra, I know them now. They’re . . . nice kids. I truly regret trying to harm them, and I stopped as soon as it got through to me that they were . . . real. I’m sorry.”

“I can’t ever trust you again.”

Richard looked sad. “I was never that trustworthy to begin with.”

“No—you were unreliable, but I did trust you. I trusted you not to hurt me or the people I love.”

He was silent for a minute. “If you feel they’re still under attack, then you need to figure out who’s behind it, and fast. Amazingly, there are people who are even more ruthless than I am.”

She looked at him. “If I find out you’re lying now, if I find out that you’re still trying to hurt those girls . . .”

“You’ll cut out my liver with your
athème
, skin me alive and sew me back into it, and what . . . oh, spit scotch in my face. Got it.”

“I will make you pay for the rest of your life,” she said, getting up. “And, as you’re all too aware, that will be a very, very long time.”

She left without looking back. Her heart felt heavy with emotion. As relieved as she was to know that Richard was no longer trying to hurt Thais and Clio, that meant that there was still an unknown threat to their lives.

Thais

“
A
re you sure you don’t want a ride?” Kevin asked me on Monday afternoon. He pointed to his car and looked hopeful.

“I would love one,” I said. “But I can’t. Maybe tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” Kevin said. He came closer and put his hand on my shoulder, and I felt a comfortable excitement at his touch. “Can I call you later?”

“Of course,” I said, and we kissed for just a moment, breaking away before the inevitable catcalls and teasing started. Kevin got in his car and I headed for the streetcar stop.

Petra had put yet more layers of protective spells over me and Clio this morning before school. Last night she’d told us that Richard had confessed to everything up until the wasps but that he swore he wasn’t responsible for the house fire or Clio’s car. Petra had believed him. Which meant we still had an unknown enemy.

Clio had been hoping that Petra wouldn’t even let us go to school today, but she had—Clio told me Petra had always worried that if Clio missed too much school, social services would try to take her away. So Petra had given us a ride here this morning. I’d half expected her to be waiting for us after school, but I hadn’t seen her car.

Which was just as well, because I had no intention of going home right away. Apparently neither did Clio, because she’d left with Racey and said she’d see me later.

The streetcar heading downtown came within a few minutes, and a crowd of students got on. I sat on a wooden seat, remembering the light-pole incident. Richard. It was unbelievable—sure, he seemed mysterious and kind of hard, but trying to kill us? I remembered the first few times I’d met him, how cold and weird he’d been. But the more I’d seen him, the more okay he’d seemed, and I’d been starting to like him as a friend. Petra had said that he had been determined for the rite not to happen and that he’d lost his head. He’d tried to hurt us before he’d gotten to know us, and now that he did, there was no way he could do anything to us.

It just went to show, you never really knew anyone. Everyone lied, or left stuff out, or distorted things—especially everyone in the Treize. Even in my own family. Petra had lied to Clio about our dad, and me, and about the fact that she wasn’t even Clio’s grandmother but just some super-distant relative. Axelle had lied to get me to come live with her. Even Clio had probably lied to me at some point about something.

But it was time to get some straight answers.

Now I knew that it was Richard who’d been trying to kill us. I knew the whole Treize was here in New Orleans. I knew that Clio and I would play a vital part in the rite—if we agreed to it. Now I needed to know how I had gotten here in the first place.

I got off the streetcar at Canal Street, crossed it, and headed into the French Quarter. It felt like I’d lived in New Orleans a long time. Like every day had a year’s worth of emotions packed into it, so it was a lifetime ago that I’d lived in Connecticut and years since I’d lived with Axelle.

I’d never given Axelle her key back, and now I let myself in through the side gate. At the apartment door I put my hand out, flat against the door, and closed my eyes.

I got nothing.

Wait—I concentrated hard and felt myself sink surprisingly quickly into a focused state of awareness where I almost melded with the door, with things around me. Inside the apartment I felt Axelle. But no one else. Good.

Unlocking the door, I opened it into the familiar dim, smoke-filled entryway that led directly into the main room. A moment later, Axelle walked out of her bedroom.

“Who’s—Thais? How did you get in?”

I dangled the key from my hand. “I want some answers. And you’re going to give them to me.”

Axelle paused, looking confused. “Clio?”

I stared at her. “No. You can’t tell us apart? I used to live with you!”

“Sorry.” Axelle curled up in the black leather armchair, crossing her legs over one overstuffed arm. “I knew it was you. But you seemed different. Just for a second. What’s up?” She picked up her old-fashioned silver cigarette case and took a cigarette out, lighting it.

I came into the main room and dropped my backpack on the newspaper-littered floor. Axelle was probably missing her personal maid and cleaning service.

“I told you—I want some answers. Let’s start with: did you kill my father?”

Axelle looked startled. “This is out of the blue, isn’t it? What’s going on?”

“I’m just starting at the beginning. Believe me, we’re going to get to more recent stuff.” I felt very sure of myself, in control. It was unusual, but it also felt natural, like it had been inside me all the time and now was finally coming out. “Now, about my dad?”

Axelle shook her head briskly, swinging her silky black pageboy like a bell. “No, I didn’t kill him. Absolutely not.”

“So Daedalus did, then?” I asked with surface calm.

“He told me he didn’t.”

“Do you think he did?”

Axelle seemed to choose her next words carefully. “I’m not sure. I didn’t think so at the time—I believed it was all coincidence. But now I’m not sure. It’s possible.”