Sweet Unrest (11 page)

I could feel my face growing warm. “Lately they’ve been …
different.”

“That right?” Chloe asked after a moment, and I knew from her tone that she understood there was more I wasn’t saying.

But I only nodded and kept my eyes on what remained of my food. I didn’t want to think about the intensity of the dreams I was having about Armantine and Alex. I definitely didn’t want to talk about my wild thoughts about who or
what
Alex was, or to admit—even to myself—that no matter what he might be, my stupid heart raced every single time I thought about him.

But before she could press me further, a shadow passed over us, and we looked up to find Mama Legba herself standing above us. I didn’t know how much she’d heard or seen, but her face was solemn, almost stony in the firelight.

“Chloe-girl, you give the spirits your offering yet?” she asked. She didn’t stop looking at me even as she talked to Chloe. The intensity of her gaze unnerved me, so I glanced over to Chloe for an explanation.

Chloe didn’t notice my unease, though. She was looking between me and Mama Legba, like she was trying to figure out how she’d been so easily unseated in the old woman’s favor. “Not yet Mama,” she answered with determined cheerfulness. “But I’m going to soon.”

“What you waiting for? An invitation? Go on,” Mama Legba said, finally glancing at Chloe. “Lucy and me, we gonna talk for a bit.”

As Chloe stood and started toward the makeshift altar on the bridge, Mama Legba gave a quick jerk of her head, indicating I should follow, before walking off toward the darkened park. I scrambled to my feet, impressed by how quickly she moved.

I started to thank her for inviting me to the festival, but she silenced me with a look. “Walk on a little bit with me, Lucy-girl.”

St. John’s Bayou was a mostly residential area lined with apartments and houses, but the side we were on was a long, park-like stretch of land not lit by streetlamps or by bonfires.

“This bayou is an important place for believers.” Mama Legba’s voice came out of the darkness beside me. “Marie Laveau started comin’ here with her followers ’round about the time this place became a state. Back then, it was just a bunch of wildness with some people trying to tame it.” When we were a good distance away from the other revelers, she stopped and turned to me. “Course, Marie had a gift. Some people said it was the sight. Other people, they think she just knew what to look for. You know what I mean.”

I didn’t, but also didn’t want to interrupt.

“Now, some say Marie weren’t nothing more than a good
showman. Legend goes ’round these parts a
real
conjure woman lived upriver a ways. Lots of legends about those places, though. You put that much pain and suffering in the land, and a place can’t hardly get clean of it.

“Now, Chloe-girl, she tell me you been having some dreams.” Mama Legba’s voice was steady and not a muscle on her face gave away what she was thinking, or what her intent was in asking the question. “Like I told you, dreams are tricky things,” she continued before I could respond. “But I ’spect you know that well enough, don’t you?”

“Yeah.” I looked out at the dark bayou beyond. She hadn’t asked me what my dreams were about, and now that we were alone, I couldn’t find the words to tell her. “If I just knew why I keep having them. Or … ”

I thought about Alex, about the tree and the girl in the picture. About the idea that maybe my dreams were true. But now that the moment had come, I didn’t know how to explain any of it without sounding completely insane.

“If I just knew what they meant,” I said instead.

“Well see, Lucy-girl, that’s the thing. I told you it’s near
impossible to know when it comes to dreaming, didn’t
I? Sometimes we dream the past. Sometimes we dream our futures. Sometimes we dream our deepest desires.” She grasped my upper arms and leaned down a bit so her face was close to mine. “But sometimes dreams are dangerous.”

“I’m starting to understand that,” I whispered, thinking of Alex and the temptation in his smile, and of the suffocating pull of cold, dark water. I wondered which I should worry about more.

“The problem with dreams, child, is they let us free from our earthly bindings. That can be tremendously powerful, but power is always a slippery thing—the second you try to hold onto it, you find it holdin’ onto you. You get too caught up in dreams, you might never be finding your way back.”

“But how do I know what’s real and what’s just a dream?” I whispered.

“You get to the point that you start asking that question, Lucy-girl, and you already going down a dangerous path.” She paused, giving my arms a comforting squeeze. “You be careful, hear me? I know you staying out there at the old Dutilette place, and Chloe say you be digging into Thisbe’s place too. You just be careful and remember that not all the spirits in this world are good ones. You stir up the wrong ones and you be in a world of hurt.” She dropped her arms and, without another word, turned and started walking back.

“But what do I do?” I hurried to catch up with her long strides. “I just want the dreams to stop.”

She halted long enough to say, “You can’t make the dreaming stop any more than you can make living stop. You end one part of life and another begins. Two sides of the same coin. Bigger question is what you gonna do with them. You enjoy the rest of the evening, now, Lucy-girl. We talk some more later, when you come to see me again.”

I was thrown off by the abrupt change in topics. “But, I—”

“Tonight is for celebration. Tomorrow there be time enough for the rest. You come see me next time.
Then
we talk.” She left me there, alone on the dark bank of the bayou.

As I watched her walk back to the people still gathered by the bridge, I realized I hadn’t asked her half of what I wanted to, but I hesitated to follow her. I wasn’t ready to leave the almost-comfortable silence of the park or put on a happy face for Chloe and pretend everything was okay. I waited until Mama Legba’s silhouette had disappeared into the brightness of the crowd, and then I waited a bit longer before heading back myself.

I hadn’t taken but a few steps when a scream shattered the darkness, and I ran.

Thirteen

By the time I got to the bridge, the crowd had become almost frantic. I about jumped out of my skin when a hand grabbed me by the arm.

“Lucy!”

I breathed in relief when I saw it was Chloe. “What happened?” I asked as I craned my neck, trying to see what everyone was looking at over the side of the bridge. When I turned back to Chloe, I saw that she was completely frantic. A moment later, sirens sounded in the distance.

“Have you seen Emaline?” she gasped.

“No,” I told her. “I was with Mama Legba. What’s going on?” Everyone around us seemed to be in a state of panic.

“There’s a body in the bayou, Luce.”

“A body?” I could practically feel my lungs seize from the cold, black water of the Dream.

Chloe nodded. “They don’t know who it is yet. I heard someone say it’s a girl.”

“Is she okay?” I asked, but from the grip Chloe had on my arm, I already knew the answer. “Did she fall in?”

Chloe shook her head. “I don’t think it was an accident.”

“How do you know?” I almost didn’t want to know.

Chloe looked sick. “They’re saying her throat was cut. I heard someone say she was all cut up.”

Gone were the cold fingers of the water pulling me down, and in their place, Lila’s body flashed through my mind, as vivid and real as the light thrown by the fires surrounding us.

“We need to find Emaline,” Chloe said.

But I wasn’t really hearing her. I was feeling the heat from the bonfires and remembering the warmth of the day and the buzzing of the flies and the sticky, blackish blood at Lila’s throat.

Rumors spread like fire through the crowd—it was a ritual killing. It was a crime of passion. The girl had her eyes cut out. Or her tongue. She was young. She was old. By the time the police had interviewed everyone and then made us leave the area, we’d heard so many stories that we didn’t know what to believe. But every time one of the rumors came close to my dreams, my skin prickled with awareness and Lila’s face flashed through my mind.

The whole time, Em never answered her phone. All we could do was hope she’d gone off with one of the half-drunk lacrosse players, blissfully unaware of what had happened. When the police finally made us leave the area, we left without answers, and we left without her.

I waited all night to hear something, but a call never came. And then Piers showed up at my house early the next morning and I knew before he told me. He wanted me to come with him, to help comfort Chloe.

Mina met us at the door and nodded toward the back of the house. “She’s in her room and won’t come out.”

“How’s she doing?” I asked.

Mina looked tired, her heavy jewelry clinking in rhythm with her movements. “She’ll be better now that you’re both here.

We found Chloe curled in her bed, covered almost completely by a thick, faded quilt.

“Chloe? Baby … ” Piers’s voice was gentle as he sat next to her and pulled back the quilt to expose her face.

She looked up at him and burst into another round of tears as she wrapped herself in his arms. He rocked her for a few minutes, until her sobbing died down to a breathless whimper.

“Is there anything you need, Chloe?” I asked from the edge of the bed.

“Lucy?” She looked up from Piers’s now-damp chest. “I’m so sorry, Lucy.” She barely got out the words before the tears started again.

“Chloe, you don’t have anything to be sorry about.” I sat down on the bed with them and rubbed her back gently.

“Oh, God, Luce. It’s my fault she was there. It’s my fault
we
were there,” she moaned miserably.

“Maybe you’ll remember that, next time you think of going off again to that woman.” Mina’s voice came from the doorway.

Chloe moaned again. “I’m so sorry, Momma.” Her tears came more forcefully.

“You should be. What did I tell you about messing around with her?” Mina’s voice had grown firm, almost cold. “Maybe now you’ll understand that and stay away.”

“Ms. Sabourin.” Piers’s voice was calm as he continued to rock Chloe. “Maybe now’s not the best time for this? Chloe’s still upset.”

“She should be,” Mina snapped. “I didn’t even
know
where you were last night. I’d’ve locked you in your room if I thought you were gonna be such a fool as to go out to that woman on a night when spirits walk free.”

“Mina, please.” His voice was firmer now. “Not now.”

“Oh God, she’s right.” Chloe was still sobbing into Piers’s chest. “If I’d just stayed away from Mama Legba, I would never have thought to go last night. Em wouldn’t have been there. She’d still be alive.”

“Chloe, you can’t think that way.” I rubbed her back in slow circles. “It’s not your fault any of this happened.”

“But you heard about how they killed her?” Her eyes were wide and bloodshot as she met mine. “What they did to her?”

I didn’t know. I didn’t really want to know. The fact of her death was enough for me.

“Whoever did this to Emaline isn’t sane, baby. It didn’t have anything to do with Mama Legba or bad spirits.” Piers’s voice was steady. “Come on, lie down here and close your eyes. Nothing bad’s going to happen now.”

But I wasn’t so sure he was right. I’d been thinking all night, and I didn’t like where my thoughts were going. I’d dreamt of Alex, and of Armantine taking her own picture, and then of the letters on the tree. One by one, each of these things had shown up in my real life. And then there was the girl with her throat cut on the night of St. John’s Eve long ago. I had the uneasy feeling that Emaline’s murder was connected to that … and that it was
all
tied together. But I didn’t understand how—or why—it was tied to me.

Fourteen

The mood around Le Ciel in the weeks following Emaline’s murder was markedly different than when I’d first arrived. The authorities didn’t have any leads about her death, and they weren’t releasing any additional information about it—not that it stopped the rumors. And the rumors certainly didn’t help the fear. Everyone in the area was on edge. We seemed to be holding our collective breath, waiting for something else to happen.

Chloe didn’t come back to work right away, and when she did, she avoided me. Every time I tried to talk to her, she brushed me off. She brushed everyone off.

But Chloe wasn’t the only presence missing from my life. My parents were constantly busy, and T.J. seemed to have found a place with the kids who lived in the area. Even Alex was avoiding me.

I seemed to be the only one adrift. I was still working under Byron, but nothing about being his lackey was even remotely satisfying, and when I wasn’t fetching him coffee, I was mostly alone. I felt constantly off kilter, like the world was a reflection in a funhouse mirror. Even photography didn’t help. My favorite camera was still broken, and when I tried to use one of my other cameras, nothing seemed to gel.

I sleepwalked through most days, going through the motions without really being present. But nights—those were something else. For the first time in my life, I looked forward to going to bed. Every night, I went to sleep hoping to see Alex. Hoping that my dreams would reveal the missing pieces of the puzzle I’d found myself in. And each night, the story of Alex’s relationship with Armantine slowly knitted itself together.

I learned that her name was Armantine Aurelia Lyon, an orphan who had been adopted by Jules Lyon. He was a French-born freeman of color, an artist and entrepreneur who wasn’t interested in limiting himself to the community of freemen in the Quarter. He’d needed an assistant, someone who could help him slip past the defenses of the white Creole society. One look at little Armantine’s delicate features and effortless grace and he’d found his answer. She was no longer a girl by the time he opened his studio in the Quarter, but had grown into her beauty and her role in his life.

Her life was a happy one with him, but in a society where blood was destiny, she occupied a precarious position. For the most part, her life was ordinary, calm. Or at least it was until the day Alexandre Jourdain knocked on the studio door and turned her world on its head. This, she came to understand, was why women fell. Men like him, with his golden complexion and piercing cat’s eyes, with his soft words and lofty promises, were why women left the safety of home for the risk of what lay beyond.

Finding Lila’s broken body had made her pause and reevaluate, though. Seeing Alexandre lurking over her friend’s lifeless form drove home her position of inferiority more effectively than anything else had. There he was—strong and male, a knife gleaming in his hand with the blood of the newly dead upon its blade. It didn’t matter that he’d dropped it immediately and come to her, held her close until the scream she hadn’t realized was hers died in her throat. All Armantine could see after that morning was the contrast of Alex’s power with Lila’s weakness—and with her own.

But those facts didn’t stop part of her from wanting him, and her reluctance didn’t stop him from courting her. He appeared one morning to retrieve the daguerreotype they’d made the day they met. Pleased with the image, he tucked it into his coat. He would have her always close to his heart, he said.

She called him a fool and told him she wouldn’t fall for his practiced words and pretty phrases, but she blushed furiously and was secretly pleased by his actions. He asked her to accompany him to lunch the next day and she refused, until Jules appeared and accepted for her. After Alexandre left, Jules was furious.

“Are you an imbecile?” he shouted as soon as they were alone.

Armantine didn’t answer.

“Answer me, girl,” he roared. “After all I’ve done for you, after all I’ve given you—you would turn him away?”

“You said I’d never have to take a protector,” she lashed back in an uncharacteristic burst of temper. “You
promised
.”

Jules kicked over a small side table, sending the small canvas she’d been working to the floor. “Do you know how long I have been trying to get a patron as rich as Roman Dutilette?” He let out a ragged breath and stepped back. “When that boy there came walking into my shop, I knew he could be the answer. All it would take is the right word whispered in his ear, the right person to push him in my direction,” he said, making a fist as though he was grabbing victory.

“I know you’ve worked so hard, Uncle—”

“Yes,” he said, cutting her off. “And you almost cost me my victory. You will go to lunch with the young man. You will smile and charm him. You will make sure you do all you can to entice him to come back. You will do all that you can to get him to see that his sister needs an artist to help her decorate that big old house of hers. If you do your job, he will be the key to my success. To
our
success.” He turned to retreat into his office, but before he entered it, he turned back to her. “You owe me that much, Armantine. I picked you up from nothing at all. I made you what you are. You have a duty to me.”

“Yes, Uncle,” she said, her head bowed, her eyes fixed on the canvas he’d knocked to the floor. Lila’s eyes stared up at her, daring her to be ungrateful.

But Armantine was less convinced that a whispered word could turn Roman Dutilette’s head. Lila had told her stories about life in the big house that painted Roman to be as vicious and cruel as he was rich, and his wife Josephine as haughty and spiteful as the day was long. But Armantine owed her entire existence to Jules, so the next day she found herself sitting in a rather extravagant café on St. Louis Street that she’d never before been to. Seated at a small table tucked into the corner of the lavish dining room, Armantine perched on a plush, velvet chair across from the green-eyed Frenchman and tried, without luck, to keep her heart locked firmly in her chest.

She found it was far too easy to talk with him. His voice was low and smooth, and his eyes lit with delight at the smallest provocation.

“You must tell me how you learned to paint,” he said softly after they had eaten.

“Jules taught me,” she told him.

“And you have always lived with him?”

She shook her head.

“Your parents, they’re … ”

“I don’t remember my parents,” she said quickly, focusing her eyes on the fine linen covering her lap.

It was almost the truth. Sometimes she could imagine a woman singing sweetly to her, but other times she thought it was only a dream. She didn’t remember anything from before the orphanage, with its crowded beds and filthy floors and the sisters with veils that reminded her of shrouds. “Jules is my family now.”

“I see. My family is from the south of France—by the sea.” Alex smiled softly and looked away. “They sent me here to check on Josephine.” He ran one of his long, elegant fingers along the rim of the crystal goblet in front of him. “But I think it was their way of directing me toward the life they intend for me to have.”

Armantine didn’t want to ask. She didn’t want to be so curious. “And what have they intended that is so terrible?”

He glanced up at her, those impossibly green eyes of his pinning her like a butterfly on velvet. “My father is a farmer. He works the same land that his father worked, and his father before him, so … ” He shrugged. “They are quite impressed with what my sister’s husband has built here, with what his family was able to build in the West Indies before. I think they hoped it might inspire me.”

But something about his tone was off.

“And has it—inspired you?” she asked.

His brows drew together and he stared down at his glass, his expression unreadable. “No,” he said simply. “I think it has done quite the opposite.”

Silence settled over their table. Armantine didn’t know what to say. Didn’t understand how to respond.

“I was surprised to see you the other morning out at Le Ciel,” Alex said. It was not quite a question.

“I was visiting friends,” she said, now finding the cut of the crystal quite interesting as well. She could not meet his eyes.

“The girl,” he said softly, carefully.

Armantine didn’t answer at first. The mere mention of Lila made the grief fresh, new. “Yes,” she said finally.

“I am very sorry. She meant something to you?”

Armantine gave a stiff, difficult nod. Her throat was tight with all of the things she could not say. Of course Lila was something to her. Of course. And there had been nothing she could do to save her friend.

“Please accept my condolences,
ma chère.
”

Armantine glanced up at the use of the endearment. Alex’s eyes were on her, his mouth tight with the seriousness she’d heard in his voice.

“Thank you,
monsieur
,” she said. “It means a great deal that you would be so kind.”

“Will you visit other friends there?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Probably not.”

“I must say, I am disappointed, but perhaps it is for the best.”

Her heart sank unaccountably.

“No, you misunderstand.” He reached across the table and took her hand. His skin felt incredibly warm, even through the fine material of her glove, and his hand incredibly broad and strong compared to hers. The thickness in her throat changed then, from grief to something else entirely. She could not look away from their joined hands. “It is not that I do not wish to see you. But your friend, she is not the only one who has … died recently.”

Armantine’s gaze shot up to meet Alex’s. “Someone else?” She thought of Lila, the darkness of the drying blood, the blankness in her friend’s unseeing eyes.

Alex nodded. “This morning. We found another … Well, let us not speak of the details. But if you do visit your friends, please do not come alone.”

He came to the studio the next day, and the day after that, for one reason or another, and she found it more and more difficult to come up with reasonable excuses to avoid him. They would walk along the river or find the shade of a tree near the
Place d’ Armes
to sit and eat tart cherries that tasted as dangerous as each moment with him felt. She found herself telling him things she’d never told another soul. She found herself wanting to trust him.

One day she brought her folio and charcoal pencil with her, and Alex dozed in the shade they had found while she sketched scenes to paint later.

“Someday, I must bring you out to Le Ciel to draw.” He lifted the hat he’d tilted across his eyes and watched her as she worked. “There’s some truly lovely scenery there.”

“I don’t think I’d be welcome.” With the stories she’d heard about Roman, she’d always been careful to skirt the edges of the property whenever she went to visit Lila. Now that Lila was gone, she didn’t have any reason to go there.

“But you would be my guest.” He frowned.

“I doubt very much your brother-in-law would see it that way.”

He took her hand and she felt the familiar thrill race through her blood at the warmth of his touch. Although she’d become accustomed to being with him, she was always surprised at the jolt she felt on those rare moments when he touched her. She watched as he brought it to his lips. “Please,
mon coeur
.” He rubbed his lips gently across the top of her hand with no more pressure than the brush of a butterfly’s wing before he turned it over and placed a kiss in the center of her palm.

She jerked her hand away and went back to sketching in a feeble attempt to put some distance between them. “You shouldn’t do such things.”

“Why is that, love?” He took her hand again. “Do you doubt your beauty? My desire for you?”

She doubted neither. Without her beauty, Jules might never have chosen her. But her beauty was also a constant danger. Plain women were usually overlooked, ignored. Her looks had never been ignored, however much she wanted them to be.

“It’s not proper,” she whispered.

“I never said it was.” He grinned wickedly, and she felt her heart lurch a little at the sight.

“Come out to Le Ciel,” he said again. “For me. What are you afraid o
f
?”

“It isn’t a matter of fear,” she told him, her pencil slowing. “It’s a matter of propriety, of understanding my place.” And of fear.

“Your place, love, should be with me.”

She huffed an exasperated sigh. “You know very well it is one thing for you to come to the city and for us to see each other here. It is a very different thing for me to visit your home. It’s not done, Alex.” She hoped the use of her pet name for him would mollify him.

“I don’t care about what is or isn’t done. I want you there with me. There’s a pond, just beyond the trees. It’s perhaps the most peaceful spot I’ve ever found in all of my travels. I go there often and think of you. I’ve imagined what you would look like there with me.”

“Alexandre.” Her voice was sad. She started to turn away, but he caught her chin.

“No,” he said. “Do not shut me out because you are scared. Think about it. Please.”

She met his eyes, but didn’t respond.

“Come to Le Ciel. Tomorrow.” He smiled crookedly. “If it will make it easier, I shall hire your services. I find that I would very much like a painting of the pond to take with me when I return to France. A memento of my time here.” He kissed her hand again. “You have a passable skill with paints.”

She shot him a cold look. “Passable, is it?”

He chuckled. “Much more than passable, and you know it.” He kissed her hand again and then covered it with his own. “Will you come? Will you do that for me?”

She wanted to say no, but she couldn’t find her voice. She should say no, but this was exactly what Jules was hoping for—another chance to be in the good graces of the Dutilettes. Another chance to establish himself with a great family.