The Final Days of Magic

by J. D. Horn

  Another slash. She fumbled with the razor, the blade slick with her own blood. She registered a metallic glint as it dropped to the floor. The old man pulled a fresh blade from behind the band on his hat, then leaned forward to offer it to her. Lisette reached out to accept the new razor, a sensation like static electricity shooting through her as their fingers brushed. In that instant, any semblance of his being a man fell away. She caught a glimpse behind the facade, and she understood Papa as the entity he was. She sensed the evil, the crawling chaos he alone held back.

  Annihilation.

  The word flickered in her mind, then the curtain fell and once again before her sat an old man. He lay his pipe on the table, its corncob bowl resting in a finger of her blood. He doffed his hat and laughed, seeming pleased by her flash of insight.

  He nodded at the blade poised in her fingers, and Lisette fixed her eyes on his, taking strength from the surety she sensed there. She pressed the point of the blade into her skin, the deepest cut of all, and tugged it through her flesh with a savagery fed by her own rage. She lay the blade down beside her wounded arm, then dipped her forefinger into the pool of blood. She traced a heart pierced by a dagger, a simplified rendition of Erzulie Dantor’s vèvè, then grasped the rum bottle and emptied its remaining contents over her wounds to feed the gad. She gasped, wincing at the fresh fire. The clear rum washed across the workbench’s top, diluting her spilled blood as it dripped from the table to the floor, transforming the trickle into a stream.

  Lisette reached over to the stool she’d stationed beside her, catching hold of one of the clean microfiber towels she’d retrieved from Isadore’s stash in the cleaning supply closet. That went on top of her forearm—the first step in a makeshift bandage. She layered three more towels over it, then snatched up the roll of silver duct tape from which she’d already unrolled a six-inch lead. She attached the tip of the tape to the exposed skin of her wrist, unwinding the spool as she wrapped the tape around the towels.

  “What have you done to yourself?” Michael asked, appearing, it seemed, from nowhere. He crossed to her and took hold of her left hand. “My God.” She had to give the devil his due. He sounded sincere. Like he really gave a damn. Lisette glanced around his shoulder at the old man. Papa held a finger to his lips. Only then did she realize Michael was unaware of the old man’s presence.

  “You followed me,” Lisette said, watching Michael’s eyes dart around the gore.

  “No,” he said, focusing first on her face, then on her taped arm. His complexion went gray; he was in true shock. “Yes,” he said, his forehead wrinkling, lips parting. “But only after we realized you’d gone missing.” His features smoothed as he regained his equilibrium. “Isadore sent me to find you, since certain staff at the hospital don’t quite consider ‘fiancé’ to be family.” Lisette suspected the boy was lying on both counts, but it didn’t matter. She was happy to have him away from Manon.

  Michael took the spool of tape from her and began wrapping it around her arm, tighter and tighter. Finally, he bent over and bit into the tape, breaking the strand. “Tourniquet,” he said, rushing around the shop floor till he found a mower belt. He retrieved the blade she’d dropped from the floor and cut through the loop, then slipped the belt high around her arm, tugging the ends tight and tying it. He repeated the movement twice, leaving the remaining belt to dangle.

  The old man rose from his perch and circled around the table to stand at the unaware Michael’s side. He nodded, a signal the time had come to speak. “What type of spell did you use?” she said. She spoke the words slowly and in a loud voice, the way her speech therapist had taught her. Still, the words slurred into one another.

  Michael’s head jerked back, and he examined her with a counterfeit concern. “Spell?” Butter wouldn’t melt in this bastard’s mouth. Lisette could see an aura like heat rising off blacktop develop around him. Michael was trying to nudge her perception of him away from suspicion and toward gratitude.

  Gratitude. Lisette nearly snorted. “What type of spell did you use to find me?” He stood before her dumbfounded. This surprise, she intuited, was real. He took a step back, the better to study her. Or maybe to strike.

  “My eyes are open,” she said. “I see you as you are, witch. And your attacks on my family end right here.” Her words might not have been clear, but by God, she knew he understood her intent.

  Michael froze for a moment, then howled with laughter. “Well, get a load of you, Mother Perrault.” An inquisitive look rose to his face. “It’s okay for me to call you ‘mother,’ right? I mean, your daughter and I would already be married if she didn’t keep putting me off because you’re in such poor shape.”

  Lisette suddenly realized the delay of the nuptials had nothing to do with her health. Deep down, Manon sensed something was off. A tiny part of her daughter was fighting back against this witch’s mind control. Lisette felt sure of it. Manon might’ve gotten free of him if he’d been less determined, but Michael had kept the crosshairs of his power fixed on her.

  Tiny wrinkles formed at the corners of Michael’s eyes as his face lit up with glee. “Of course, we both know you’re never going to recover. Not completely. But you aren’t going to die . . . again. At least not until I’m tired of playing with you.”

  Michael fell silent, then began cracking up again. His amusement infuriated her. “I’m sorry,” he said, though there was no regret in his voice, “but ‘spell’?” He paused, looking at her as if she were a total fool. “You stupid bitch. I used my phone to locate yours. I turned on your share-location setting when I helped you set it up.” The aura that had formed around him had grown denser, darker, raw. “Isn’t technology great?”

  Lisette recognized this strange fire enveloping him. It was the same cold energy that had lit the twilight realm where the witches had caught her soul and sent it back to her hobbled body. Lisette felt her resolve crumble, fear gripping her heart.

  “Now, I tell you what,” he said, speaking in a sugary, patient tone like he was addressing a child. “The two of us are going to put this unpleasantness behind us.” He held out his hand. “Come on. Take it.” He shook his hand at her. “Come on,” he repeated, this time with greater firmness. “I don’t know how you saw through my magic, but I can make you forget. Put us back on a good footing.”

  “Never.” Lisette shook her head. “Never.”

  The old man circled around her, but she ignored the movement, not wanting to alert Michael to his presence.

  “Come on. We don’t want to miss the show now, do we?”

  Her tongue felt as if it were carved of wood. She shook her head again. This time not in protest, but to signal a lack of comprehension.

  He smirked at her. The arrogant son of a bitch actually smirked. “The big miscarriage. It’s all been leading to this. Gonna be heartrending.”

  “But,” Lisette said in utter amazement, “it’s your child.”

  He shrugged. “That little clot has served its purpose. If it were up to me, I would’ve flushed it down the pipes weeks ago, but I had to wait for the go-ahead from the higher-ups.” He smirked. “Or lower-downs. It’s all a matter of perspective.” He reached out to her once more. “Last chance. Take my hand, and I’ll let Manon survive this horrible, horrible ordeal. Try my patience further, and I’ll put an end to her, too. I don’t want to, but you’re making me.” He looked at her with mock sympathy. “After all, it would be a terrible waste of a fine piece of ass.”

  He lunged forward and caught hold of her injured arm with both hands, squeezing until the pain drove her to her knees. “There, Mother.” He nodded down at her. “It’s gonna be all right now.” The black fire surrounding him concentrated on his arms, then crept down, coalescing around his hands.

  Lisette had never—in this world—felt such cold. Agonizing. Sharpening, rather than calming, the searing of her cuts.

  She sensed the old man coming closer. In her peripheral vision, she saw him place his hands on either sid
e of her head, close but not touching. The cold darkness that had begun to creep up her arm stopped its ascent. Michael regarded her with confusion, then startled, jerking his head up.

  His expression turned to rage as he released her.

  Gunfire.

  One instant Lisette was gazing up at the fury twisting Michael’s face. The next he was falling back, the splattered remains of the right side of his head trimming the tinsel Christmas tree. Lisette followed the angel’s eyes and looked back over her shoulder. The old man was gone, replaced by another.

  Her father’s silver hair lit up like a halo beneath the dying fluorescent bulb’s final flash.

  TWO

  Nathalie Boudreau hated the sound of jingle bells. She gripped the wheel of her SUV tighter and smiled, casting a quick glance back at the pair of middle-aged women she’d picked up outside the light show in City Park.

  The women had taken to the “don we now” bit with gusto. They wore sparkly snowflake sweaters—one in blue, one in white—and matching red-and-green felt elf hats ornamented with jingle bells around the bands. As a finishing touch, each hat was tipped with another, larger bell in place of a tassel or pom-pom. They were visitors from Little Rock, one divorced, one widowed. First time for both in New Orleans, or “N’awlins” as they insisted the city was known to the natives. They were having such fun saying it to each other, Nathalie didn’t have the heart to set them straight. They were nice enough ladies, really, good people, both of them. Nathalie could tell. And she sure bore them no ill will.

  All the same, she really hated the sound of jingle bells.

  Still, the bells weren’t the whole of it. She hated the holidays, everything about them. In fact, she hated the whole dang month of December. But Nathalie would also hate to bring these nice women down, so she ignored the arrhythmic tinkling and sang along with her passengers to the carol playing on the radio.

  Nathalie felt a hand on her upper arm and glanced up into her rearview mirror. One elf was focused on her phone’s screen, but the other was leaning forward, craning her head around the side of Nathalie’s headrest.

  “Doesn’t this music just put you in the holiday spirit?”

  Spirits. Nathalie repressed a shudder. Spirits were the very reason she hated the holidays. Every year Nathalie pasted a jolly smile on her face and responded in kind whenever someone wished her a merry Christmas or happy holidays, but the twinkling lights and tinkling bells seemed to summon the most unsavory of ghosts.

  She’d grown up witnessing apparitions, but she’d learned right quick most people didn’t see everyone she did, and those who didn’t did not like to be alerted to what they were missing. She could still feel the sharp sting of her mama’s slap almost thirty years on.

  “Why, how could it not?” Nathalie responded, doing her best to match the woman’s sugarplum enthusiasm. Not quite a lie, but still a good distance from the truth. Her ride-along elf, pleased by the dissimulation, gave her arm a gentle squeeze, then leaned back.

  Over the years, Nathalie had gotten used to seeing spirits, the fresher ones often stumbling around disoriented, sometimes hostile due to their confusion. She could spot one as easily on Independence Day as on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, but the ghosts of December, they were something different. The spirits she spotted in December were the ugly ones—menacing, raging, desperate—and the closer it got to the winter solstice, the more violent they became. Maybe it was the sharpened emotions, heightened expectations, and inevitable disappointments of the season that fed their anger in much the same way as the holidays affected many of the living. These were the spirits who held on to this world, the ones who sensed they were better off here than with whatever might be waiting for them on the other side. From the warped thoughts and fractured, furious energy Nathalie picked up from them, she thought the ghosts of December might be right.

  It struck her that she hadn’t spotted a single demented specter this season. Maybe she hadn’t noticed them because she was in a better frame of mind. She was happier this winter than she’d ever been. She had Alice now, or at least had the chance of having Alice, and starting New Year’s Eve, she’d be working for Evangeline Caissy at her club. Not just working the door like she’d been doing on and off since Thanksgiving, but as the club’s assistant manager. Both gifts had come unexpectedly on the last day of November, starting with Alice’s apologetic, almost embarrassed request for help transporting a table and chairs from a consignment store in the Faubourg Lafayette to her new apartment in the Quarter.

  If Nathalie wasn’t too busy. If she didn’t mind.

  Nathalie would’ve moved a mountain for Alice. Nathalie’s assistance had earned her a mushroom po’boy at the diner on Dauphine, from which Nathalie had claimed as a souvenir a coaster in the shape of a defiant boy with akimbo arms, his hands pushed deep into the pockets of his suitcoat. Perhaps it had granted her luck, because she’d had a cup of coffee with Alice at the same place two days later, and nearly every day after that, too.

  Ms. Caissy had rung her up the same night. Another happy chat had come of that, this time over vodka and tonic, the vodka for Ms. Caissy and the tonic for Nathalie—she was driving, after all.

  Things were good, or at least they were getting good. Only she had a relentless gnawing cold in her gut warning her the spirits’ absence had nothing to do with her. This year the spirits were lying low, or maybe even moving on, to avoid something way scarier than them.

  Nathalie turned off Canal Street and made two quick rights to arrive at the hotel’s entrance. “Here you are,” she said, with no small sense of relief to be ridding herself of the jinglejangling.

  “You should pop in for a moment,” Elf One said, “and have a look at how they decorated the lobby. They did a marvelous job.”

  “It’s true. It is enchanting,” her friend said, drawling out the last word for emphasis.

  Even though Nathalie had lived pretty near her entire life a stone’s throw in one direction or another from this hotel, she’d never actually visited its annual holiday display. “Yeah, I know,” she said, letting her bright tone imply she had. “They’re famous for that.”

  A gentleman in a black top hat approached the SUV and opened its rear door. The women piled out in a tinkling chorus of thank-yous—a handful aimed at Nathalie, the rest at the hotel’s doorman—and happy holidays, intended, Nathalie felt sure, for her benefit. She waited, watching the women until they’d passed through the hotel’s polished brass doors, a sudden odd concern for their safety rising in her like sap.

  The sound of gunfire made her jolt, and she slipped down low in her seat, scanning her surroundings for its source. No one else reacted. The doorman stood before the hotel, grinning and greeting passersby, then rushed to open the door for a guest carrying a multitude of shopping bags. A growing sense of dread bubbled up in her.

  She took a few deep breaths to slow her heartbeat, ready to call it a night and head home despite the one silver lining in the dark cloud of December: the bounty of fares. She reached over to sign out of the driving app even as her phone began to ring. A local number. She didn’t recognize it. She didn’t need to. She sensed who was on the other end.

  Her finger hovered over the red button, inviting her to decline the call, but Nathalie resisted the impulse and tapped the green button instead. “Mrs. Perrault?”

  There was a moment of silence, then Lisette Perrault’s panicked voice exploded through the speaker. “I’m sorry,” she said, almost shouting. There was a pause, and just as Nathalie was about to respond, Lisette continued. “I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t involve you. I do. But I don’t know who else to call.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. Involve me in what? Are you okay?”

  “No,” came the sharp, angry response. “I am not okay.”

  Nathalie could hear Lisette’s labored breathing. “Where are you?” Nathalie asked, certain she’d regret getting caught up in whatever was going on, but even more sure she’d never forgive
herself if she didn’t try to help. “Are you at your shop?” Nathalie sure hoped not. Ever since she was young, she’d done her best to avoid Vèvè. The faces that peered out of its paned windows onto Chartres Street still sent chills down her spine.

  “No. We’re at my husband’s business,” Lisette said without elucidating on the cryptic “we.” “Over in Elmwood.” Her tone, though softening, still rang with agitation.

  “I can find it,” Nathalie said. “Is someone hurt? Do you want me to call an ambulance?”

  The distant rumble of Lisette’s dark laughter startled her. “No, ma chère, it is way too late for that.”

  Too late. A vision flashed through her mind. An enigmatic older man in a straw fedora. Lisette’s father, the Quarter’s famous trumpet player. She recognized him from the memorial for Alice’s uncle Vincent, which she’d attended before she even met Alice. She saw the steely glint of hatred in his eyes, the pistol in his hand.

  Nathalie startled at the peal of gunshot even though she now recognized it as an echo of an earlier and distant event.

  “Can I trust you?” Lisette’s words broke through Nathalie’s muddled vision. She repeated herself when Nathalie failed to respond, fear and fury twining together in her voice.

  “I’ll come,” Nathalie said. “I’ll see what I can do.” She was getting a bit too good at answering direct questions with near truths. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  Another silence, and the call ended.

  Nathalie didn’t need to pull up the address of Perrault Landscaping, not now that she’d picked up on Lisette’s anguish. A direct channel, as unyielding and as dangerous as a train track’s electrified conductor rail, would deliver her right to Lisette’s side. Nathalie signaled and checked for oncoming cars before pulling out into traffic, then let the dark gravity of Lisette’s emotions take over as navigator.