A ghost. Not so strange, considering how old this house must be.
“Hello,” she said, glad that she was used to talking to those who’d long since departed this mortal coil. “I’m Cat — that’s short for Catalina. What’s your name?”
“I thought you looked Spanish,” the girl said in slightly disapproving tones. “Your clothes are dreadful.”
Cat cast a quick glance downward at her faded jeans and tank top. It had been a warm day in Santa Fe, and she’d figured that she would change into something nicer before she headed out on her date with Loc. Then again, she had a feeling even her best wouldn’t have passed muster with this haughty little Southern belle.
“They are, aren’t they?” she agreed cheerfully. “I’ll do something about that just as soon as I get out of here. You wouldn’t have any idea how I might go about that, would you?”
The condescending expression on the girl’s face disappeared abruptly, replaced by something that looked almost like fear. “Not with him around,” she replied, her voice lowering to almost a whisper. “He told me once if I ever interfered with him, he’d banish me straight to hell. And I’ve never done anything to deserve being sent to hell,” she added almost tearfully, big blue eyes suspiciously bright.
Interesting. Apparently, Toulouse could speak to spirits, just as Cat herself did. “Does he talk to you a lot?”
“Oh, no.” A shake of her head that sent her glossy curls bouncing. “It wasn’t so much that he told me directly, you know. It was just when he moved into this house, he informed all the spirits here that we would be banished if we tried to get in his way. Dreadfully rude man.”
“Are there many other spirits here?” Cat asked. She couldn’t help but be a bit relieved by this latest piece of information. It appeared that Toulouse wasn’t a ghost-talker after all. While it was certainly not the sort of gift that would help with a full frontal assault, she was still glad to know she had a weapon in her arsenal the dark warlock lacked.
“Not here in the house,” the girl said. “Leastways, my mama and my brother died of typhoid fever the same time I did, but they moved on. I’ve been here alone since.”
Cat wanted to ask the girl why she’d remained when the rest of her family had “gone into the light,” so to speak, but she knew that would be rude. Ghosts were often happy to volunteer information, but they tended to evaporate as soon as you started asking too many personal questions.
“But there are other ghosts around, even if they’re not here in the house?”
The girl nodded, and extended a pale hand toward the wall with all the windows that looked down on the cemetery. “Oh, yes. Across the street are as many as you could possibly want.” A pause, and she gave Cat an inquiring look, head tilted to one side. Cat had a feeling that that particular posture had worked its magic on quite a few young men back in the day. “It’s very curious that you’re not afraid of me. Why, the family that lived here twenty-five years ago had a little boy who screamed and screamed as soon as he caught sight of me.”
“Why would he do that?” Cat asked. “You’re a very pretty girl.”
Ghosts couldn’t exactly blush, but the girl gave Cat a pleased simper. “Well, it might have been because he startled me, and so I showed him my other face…you know, the one from the day I died.”
At once her blooming prettiness shifted into a terrible gauntness, cheekbones standing out, eyes circled in dark shadows, lips as pale as the skin surrounding them. Even though Cat had witnessed this phenomenon once or twice in the past, she couldn’t help startling a bit. Finding her voice, she said, “I can see why that might have upset him.”
“I know,” the girl said sadly, shifting back to the face she’d first shown Cat, all big blue eyes and rosy lips. “I tried to tell him it was an accident, but he wouldn’t listen to me. Had so many nightmares that they moved out only a few months later. The house was empty for a while, but then he moved in.”
No need to ask who he was. “He’s been here for twenty-five years?” That was also a surprise, since she didn’t see how the Dubois clan could have possibly put up with having such an interloper camped on their front step, so to speak, for so many years.
“No, not that long.” Another wave of her hand. Cat could almost imagine a gossamer-thin handkerchief being brandished in that hand, although right now the ghost girl held nothing. “I said the house was empty. It could have been years. I don’t always keep track of such things. Time passes strangely when there’s no one around to keep you occupied.”
Cat hadn’t thought of it that way, but she could see what the girl meant. Maybe she’d gone into a kind of ghostly hibernation, waiting for someone to buy the house and move in and once again give her something to pay attention to. If it had stood empty for a long time…years or even decades…that would explain the faded wallpaper, the stains on the ceiling.
“But then Nicholas Toulouse moved in,” she prompted.
“Yes, he did.” The girl’s lips pressed together in distaste. “Always doing terrible things in the kitchen, and worse things in the bedroom that was once my mama and papa’s, he and that little witch slut he brought here a while back.”
Now was certainly not the time to discuss why slut-shaming was wrong, so Cat held her tongue. Besides, she’d be the first to admit that the blonde woman had terrible taste in men, if she truly was shacked up here with Nicholas Toulouse. But the blonde was a witch? Cat hadn’t sensed that about her, but again, she knew it was possible to block other witches and warlocks from detecting one’s true nature, since Simon Escobar had taught Miranda to do that very thing.
“He is a very bad man,” Cat said. “He kidnapped me because he wants to use me to force my family to do something terrible, to give him something that will make him even more powerful. I can’t let that happen. That’s why you really need to help me get out of here.”
The girl’s eyes went wide and frightened. “I told you, I can’t do that,” she said in a terrified whisper. “He’ll banish me, he said he would.”
Cat didn’t know whether that was even possible, despite Toulouse’s threats, but she had a feeling her reassurances wouldn’t go very far with the ghost girl. “But if you help me, I know people who are also very powerful, who would drive him from your house. Wouldn’t you like to have him gone?”
For a moment, a terrible hope glimmered in the girl’s eyes. Then she shook her head. “I can’t take that risk. I am sorry.”
And, in the annoying way that most ghosts had, she disappeared, leaving Cat staring at the empty space where she’d just been floating.
Well, crap. Cat knew she shouldn’t be surprised by such a defection, but she still wasn’t happy. Now she had nothing to do except wait.
Even so, she went over to a different window and began fiddling with the latch. Deep down, she knew this wasn’t going to do any good, either, but right then it felt better to attempt and fail than sit and wait for the inevitable.
Come on Loc, she thought. Get me the hell out of here.
17
Wrapped in an invisibility that not only obscured his body, but his very nature, Loc returned to New Orleans. He took up a position on the roof of one of the sarcophagi in the cemetery across the street from Nicholas Toulouse’s house, then crouched there, eyes narrowed as he reached out with his senses.
It was as though he hit a wall of brick as solid as that which encircled the property opposite him. He let out a low growl of annoyance, then once more sent his otherworldly senses questing toward the dark warlock’s house. This second attempt was just as fruitless as the first, however, and he frowned, wondering what fresh deviltry this was.
A new spell, a very powerful one. It seemed obvious enough that Toulouse wanted to make sure no one would be able to detect who or what was inside the house, which told Loc that almost certainly Cat was there. There would be no reason to expend so much energy if the warlock was not hiding a valuable prisoner somewhere within those walls.
Rubbin
g his chin with invisible fingers, Loc contemplated the problem at hand. If the dark warlock had cast a spell that strong, it probably meant he did not have much energy left over for other uses. Loc supposed there was a chance that he could make an all-out assault, with no finesse but a great deal of force, and surprise Nicholas Toulouse before he could do anything to harm Cat.
Unfortunately, there was a great deal that could go wrong in such a scenario, the most obvious being that Toulouse would strike out at his captive the second he realized such an attack was under way. Loc knew he didn’t dare take such a chance. No, he would have to come up with something else, something that took advantage of the warlock’s weaknesses…whatever those might be.
But he thought he might know exactly who would be in possession of that knowledge.
Mouth grim, he blinked himself away from Lafayette Cemetery, and over to a certain jewelry shop in the French Quarter. This time, the witch working there didn’t even seem surprised to have him materialize in front of where she stood, dusting one of the shelves covered with expensive trinkets — gilt jewelry boxes, carved stone spheres on stands, porcelain eggs that looked like jewels themselves, with their golden scallops and embedded crystals. She only set down her duster, put her hands on her hips, and gave him an arch look.
“I should have known you’d come pokin’ around here again,” she said, but there was no malice in her voice. “What is it now?”
“Nicholas Toulouse has kidnapped a Castillo witch,” Loc replied. Although he hated to speak of her in such casual terms, he did not feel it necessary to go into detail about how important that one particular Castillo witch happened to be to him. “I fear he has brought the war to your city.”
The witch didn’t seem particularly impressed by this revelation. She gazed at him for a moment, then lifted her shoulders almost imperceptibly. “I’m sorry to hear that, but have you forgotten that he also has our prima’s daughter under his roof? We can’t risk her life just to help you and your Castillo witch.” She paused, then added, voice softening a bit, “What’d he kidnap her for?”
“Leverage,” Loc replied, doing his best to keep the mounting anger out of his tone. “He is trying to force the Castillo prima to do something that would be very dangerous for everyone involved. Something that could have ramifications for the Dubois clan as well.” Since this revelation didn’t seem to overly impress the shopkeeper witch, he went on, “Perhaps I should speak to your prima.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. She’s not been feeling so well of late. Something like this might upset her.”
His teeth ground together. “I care little whether I upset her. Tell me where her house is. Or not — I can find that out for myself, although it would be easier for all of us if you would just give me the information I need.”
A moment passed, then another. The witch didn’t much like his ultimatum, that he could tell, but he could also see that she was quickly realizing there was no true way out of this situation. At last she let out an exaggerated sigh before saying, “It’s 1520 Marais Street. I doubt she’ll be happy to see you.”
“I care nothing for that.” Almost as soon as those words left his lips, he took himself away, going to the address the witch had provided. It was a large mansion in the classical revival style, with stately columns and colored walkways that wound around the almost impossibly green lawns.
Most humans would have found such a residence to be overly imposing, but, as Loc had just told the shopkeeper witch, he cared little as to whether the building was impressive or not. The only thing he cared about was the prima who dwelled inside.
Because he knew he might have to rely on the goodwill of Estelle Dubois to get some of the assistance he needed, he didn’t materialize somewhere inside her mansion, but rather on the lofty covered porch, which provided some relief from the sun but did nothing to hold back the moist heat of the afternoon. He found himself longing for the dry air of Santa Fe, which felt much closer to what he was used to. If the universe were just at all, he would be back at Cat’s house in Pojoaque, with her next to him on the patio as they sipped wine and spoke of the outing at Ghost Ranch they should have taken.
Instead, he was here in New Orleans, doing whatever he could to free the woman he loved from the grip of a very dark warlock.
Jaw clenched, he touched the button to one side of the door and listened to the resulting chimes echo somewhere deep within the oversized house. Only a few seconds passed, and then a woman who appeared to be around Cat’s age opened the door and looked out, her gaze both surprised and somewhat appreciative. Her coloring was so similar to Celeste Dubois’ that he guessed they were probably sisters, although this woman’s blue eyes were clear enough, not fogged by a terrible spell to cloud her mind and make her susceptible to Nicholas Toulouse’s every whim. The aura of magic around her was quite strong.
“I need to speak to Estelle Dubois,” Loc said. “It is very urgent.”
Now the woman’s face went shuttered, as if the mention of her mother had upset her in some way. Voice crisp in spite of her soft Southern accent, she said, “I’m afraid she’s indisposed at the moment. Maybe you could tell me why you’re here, and I’ll decide if it’s worth waking her from her nap.”
“Are you the prima-in-waiting?” he demanded, and she started.
“How could you know that?”
“Because I’ve come from the Castillo clan with urgent business, and I don’t need to be left waiting on Estelle Dubois’ doorstep.”
“But you’re not — ” The woman paused, her light brown brows pulling together. “I mean, you don’t feel like a warlock.”
“Because I’m not,” he said crisply, and at once the woman’s puzzled expression shifted to one of sudden comprehension.
“Oh, you’re him,” she said. “Come inside. Roxanne told me about you.”
“Roxanne?”
“The woman who works at the jewelry store on Dauphine Street.”
Of course. Loc realized she’d never given him her name. Then again, he’d never asked for it. Somehow, it hadn’t seemed all that important.
He stepped inside the foyer, which was decorated with dark, fussy antiques. From somewhere in the house came a sweet, almost cloying scent, as if someone had been burning incense.
“I’m Martine,” the Dubois prima-in-waiting told him. “My mother is in here.”
She led him from the foyer and down a short corridor, then into a sitting room furnished with the same overwrought Victorian antiques Loc had seen in the entry hall. On a chaise longue upholstered in striped satin lay a woman wearing a silk dressing gown, her head back against the pillows, eyes shut. Her graceful features were similar to those of her daughters, but she looked drained and tired, even in repose like this.
Her bluish eyelids barely lifted as Martine approached with Loc at her side. “Maman, this is the man Roxanne told us about.”
Now her eyes opened a bit wider. They were deep blue, the same as her daughters, but they had an almost yellowish tinge to them, as if she suffered from some sort of disease that had affected her internal organs. “The demon lord.” Her voice was cracked and tired, but there was still a trace of authority to it, as if she was the sort of woman used to getting her own way.
Which naturally she would, as prima of this clan, small as it might be. “Some have called me that,” he said, then added formally, “I am sorry to see you are not well.”
She waved a languid hand. “A temporary indisposition. What did you wish to see me about?”
Loc hesitated. He was not sure how much help this tired, obviously ill woman could be.
Obviously noting the way he’d paused, Martine leaned close to his ear and murmured, “She’s been like this for several weeks. Neither our healer nor the civilian doctors we took her to could find anything wrong, but….”
Although Loc could not claim to know all that much about human physiology, he’d learned a few things during his travels, one being that this world’s healer
s and doctors were skilled at treating an astonishingly wide range of ailments, and so it was odd that they hadn’t been able to detect what ailed the Dubois prima. Eyes narrowing, he gazed down at her, then reached out with his senses, trying to see if he would have any more luck.
Almost at once, he detected the web of dark magic that had wrapped itself around her heart and lungs, weakening her, making every movement, every breath, an ordeal. And as soon as he’d found it, he knew exactly who had cast that spell.
It would not be a difficult thing to undo, but for a moment Loc hesitated, wondering if he should tell the Dubois prima what was wrong with her, and then inform her that he would only lift the spell if she promised to put her clan’s resources behind freeing Cat from the dark warlock’s clutches. But no — he suddenly realized that Cat would not wish him to resort to that sort of petty blackmail, not even for her own sake. He would help Estelle Dubois because it was the correct thing to do, not because of what he might get out of it.
He reached out with his own magic, the power that lived within him because it was as much a part of his essence as the blood that flowed within his veins. Using that magic, he took hold of Nicholas Toulouse’s dark spell and unwound it carefully, making sure it was entirely free of the prima’s slender body before he banished it forever, breaking the pattern that had given it strength.
Almost at once, she sat up, pushing herself so she was almost upright. Blood flowed into her pale cheeks, and her blue eyes took on a sparkle he guessed was far more usual for her. “What…?”
“It was no ordinary illness that struck you,” Loc said, “but rather a spell sent by Nicholas Toulouse to keep you from offering any sort of threat to him. I have no doubt that it would eventually have killed you.”
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