by Sara Reinke
His human neurologist, Andrea Coleman, had told him it would be possible to reclaim his lost memories if his brain learned new associations, new triggers to reach them. To that point, nothing except for the St. Christopher’s medal had proven such a trigger—but all at once, the combination of Naima’s tears, her soft, fluttering breath, and that imitation pearl button struck him so powerfully, so abruptly, it was as if he blacked out.
My sister’s dress, he thought dazedly, because he remembered ducking into the room that Larissa, Lenore, and Lorelle shared on the first floor of his father’s great house on the night of his mother’s birthday—the same night she’d given him her St. Christopher’s medal to hold in his pocket because the clasp on the filigree chain was broken. His sisters had all been upstairs in the ballroom celebrating; he remembered hearing the pounding rhythm of dancing footsteps overhead, the faint refrains of fiddle music.
He yanked open the large wardrobe his sisters had shared, and had shoved flouncy, ruffled skirts and gowns aside before finding a simple day dress, something wrought of olive-colored calico cotton. Throwing it over his arm, he’d turned and darted back into the corridor.
I remember, he thought, eyes widening. Naima was there in the hallway, waiting for me. She was crying.
In his mind, he could see her: inexplicably naked, shivering in the corridor, her arms wrapped fiercely around herself. When he’d caught her by the hand, pulling her in tow, she came with him willingly. She stood back, her chest hitching, her breath hiccupping as she watched him squat, then pull open a hinged trap door behind the main staircase. Beneath it was a set of steps fashioned from creek stones that descended into the cold darkness of the cellar.
And at the bottom of those stairs is a heavy iron gate, he thought. The key’s hanging on a hook nearby. It’s the old Indian tunnels—the Beneath.
He remembered turning to Naima, who still openly wept, then dipping his hand into the fob pocket of his breeches.
“Take this,” he breathed, pressing something into her trembling hands—his mother’s necklace. She blinked at him in frightened bewilderment. “You’ll need it. It’s silver. You can trade it for money, for passage, or food.”
She was terrified. She couldn’t stop trembling, and when she tried to pull the dress on over her head, she kept stumbling. He helped tug the heavy folds of skirt down past her hips, then drew the front of the bodice closed over her breasts. She stood still, arms dangling at her sides, as lax and unresisting as a ragdoll while he buttoned the dress.
The buttons.
These had been small and round, imitation pearls made from ivory, not plastic. But they had looked the same, and he’d carried with him a small lamp to light their way, one he’d set on the floor to help dress her. The way the light had infused in the buttons as he’d worked clumsily to close them…
That’s what made me remember. The buttons.
Naima draped her hand lightly against his, startling him from his reverie. “Aaron?” she whispered.
I remember, he thought.
“Are you alright?” she asked.
He blinked at her. “I think I just remembered.”
***
“I must admit, I was surprised by your offer to drive me today,” Augustus remarked.
“Trust me,” Naima growled, keeping her eyes pinned out the windshield in front of her. “It wasn’t my first choice of arrangements, either.”
They sat side by side in the front seats of Mason’s black Cadillac Escalade, an overpriced monstrosity that featured heated leather seats, GPS navigation, power sunroof and a chrome-framed vanity plate that read TOP DOC. She’d taken it because it was bigger than her own vehicle, which meant Aaron could hide more comfortably in the back, but had borrowed it without asking Mason first. This was only because when she’d crept into the clinic office again, having knocked repeatedly with no response at the door, she’d found him passed out, face-down and sprawled on a leather couch inside. The now-empty bottle of cognac had been lying on the floor within his limp, lifeless reach. She’d slipped the keys from his pocket, kissed him gently on the brow and left.
Aaron lay in the rear compartment, tucked inconspicuously beneath a tumble of emergency blankets. He’d told her he was regaining his strength, and not to worry; he’d be able to protect himself from Augustus’ telepathic notice.
She knew he was in the truck, but no matter how hard she tried, she was unable to sense him with her mind—not his thoughts, his presence, or even the very essence of his Brethren nature, which normally should have stimulated a tingling response in her central nervous system. It was as if he had the ability to cloak himself completely from psionic detection. Which, she had to admit, was pretty damn impressive, particularly when dealing with someone as powerful and skilled as Augustus Noble.
“No one knows the roads around here better than me, Tristan or…” Her voice faltered; she caught herself before saying Michel. She stiffened in her seat, tightening her grip against the molded steering wheel, then, with a deep breath, she continued. “…or Mason. And since neither of them is in any shape at the moment to drive anyone anywhere, that kind of leaves it my responsibility.”
As she pulled up to the electronic gate blocking the entrance to the Morin property, she saw a pair of armed men standing guard—Phillip and one of his cousins, Adrien. Phillip met her gaze through the windshield glass, then cut his eyes toward Augustus in an obvious glare as she reached for the remote control that was clipped to her overhead sun visor to open the gate.
“Phillip’s not happy about you leaving,” she said, pushing a button and watching as the heavy gate began to roll on its tracks. “Something about he thinks you owe it to Michel to stay, considering all of the help and treatment he’s given Eleanor over the years.”
“Phillip is in no position to judge anyone on their degree of loyalty or obligation to the Morin clan,” Augustus assured her drily, meeting Phillip’s stare through the glass, his expression icy. “As he’s failed to demonstrate either for more than one hundred years.”
The gate drew all of the way open, but at first, Naima didn’t think either Phillip or Adrien would get out of the way. She lifted her foot off the brake, tapping the gas pedal enough to send the enormous SUV rumbling slowly forward—a hint. When they still didn’t move, she felt a momentary panic. Can they sense Aaron somehow? Do they suspect what I’m up to?
She huffed out a sharp breath and frowned as she smacked the center of the steering column, blatting the horn—another hint, this time not so subtle. Phillip scowled at her, but he and Adrien stepped aside, moving to stand among the underbrush and fallen pine needles at the shoulder of the rutted gravel road.
“Thank you,” she muttered, not bothering to be mindful when stomping down on the gas, and kicking up a spray of loose gravel and grit at them as the Escalade drove off.
“You’ll pardon the observation,” Augustus said, curling his fingers a bit more tightly against the door handle bar on the passenger side as the big truck skidded for purchase. “But there doesn’t seem to be much by way of love lost between you and your uncle.”
“Phillip?” She glanced first at Augustus, then out her side-view mirror, where she could see Phillip, a shrinking figure, behind them. “No. There’s not.”
One night, when well into his bourbon, Michel had told her he’d long suspected it had been Phillip who had alerted the Brethren Council to her presence, that it had been Phillip who had directed one of their human farm-hands to report “discovering” her in the midst of tearing open a live chicken to feed—which had been an outright lie—and thus leading to her horrific imprisonment.
Augustus didn’t press further, which led her to suspect that he knew about this belief of Michel’s as well.
“Phillip was never one much to enjoy sharing in his father’s attention,” he remarked idly, his gaze traveling out the passenger side window as pine trees blurred past. “Be that competition in the form of siblings, or grandchildren…” He said
this last with a pointed glance in Naima’s direction before returning his attention out his window. “Even his wives. Or at least his first one, Lisette. Michel was very fond of her, you know.”
“Yes.” Naima nodded. “He often spoke of her.”
Phillip had pretty much washed her hands of Lisette following an unfortunate stillbirth of what would have been their first child together. When she had become pregnant with Tristan—Arnaud’s child—Michel had welcomed Lisette to the South Lake Tahoe compound instead of casting her out of the clan. In furious retaliation for this, Phillip had disassociated himself completely from his father and the rest of the family.
“Do you think he realized?” Augustus asked, and when she looked his way, puzzled, he added, “Aaron Davenant. Do you think he realized when he attacked Tristan that he was, in fact, trying to murder his own nephew? Lisette was his sister, you know.”
Naima’s foot nearly slipped off the gas pedal in surprise. “What?”
She’d known Lisette was a Davenant, but no more than this. Lisette had never spoken of her birth family, or her life before joining the Morin clan, and Naima had never asked her. Given the enormous size of the Brethren clans—especially in the early part of the nineteenth century—she’d always assumed Lisette had been a cousin of Aaron’s, once or twice removed along the way.
The corner of Augustus’ mouth hooked in a wry little smile. “She was Lamar’s eldest daughter, betrothed to Phillip by decree of the Tomes shortly after I shot and killed his son Victor in a duel. I think the Elders hoped it would mend the wounds that duel had cleaved among the clans, but instead it only worsened them.”
The smile faltered, then faded. “Michel was my second, and refused to provide Victor medical care personally upon the dueling field so that he could instead tend to me. Lamar promised he’d get revenge against Michel for that unintended insult. ‘A brother for a brother, a son for a son,’ that’s what he swore—a son from Michel, because he walked away…”
“And a brother from Mason, because Mason couldn’t save Victor’s life,” she murmured, not bothering to mention that she’d been present when Lamar had first issued this deranged vow.
“Yes.” Augustus nodded once. He was quiet for a long moment, content to fiddle with the control buttons beside his seat, adjusting the angle of the reclining back more comfortably. “You know Michel was Tristan’s father.”
Now her foot did slide off the gas; Naima tromped on the brakes, and the Escalade skidded to a halt. “What?” she exclaimed, with a bark of hoarse laughter. “Bullshit! He was not.”
“Why else would Jean-Luc Davenant have targeted Tristan in Las Vegas?” Augustus countered pointedly.
A brother for a brother, a son for a son. Lamar’s venom-filled voice echoed in Naima’s mind. That’s what I mean to claim from you, Morin. There will be your recompense for the wrongs you’ve committed, you and your boy. A brother for a brother, a son for a son. I’ll see one of each claimed, and by Christ, I will not rest until I do.
“Oh, my God,” she breathed, stunned.
“Michel loved Lisette very much,” Augustus said, his voice low and sorrowful. Again he turned his head, letting his eyes travel sadly beyond the tinted glass of his window. “Burying her was the hardest thing I think he ever had to do. I take some comfort now in knowing he’s again in her company—where he so dearly yearned to be.”
***
Lisette.
Dr. Coleman had told Aaron that triggers for his lost memories would come unexpectedly, and it sure didn’t come any more so than lying on his back in the rear hatch of the SUV, listening to Augustus and Naima.
He’d known his sister, of course, at least by name. Even though he’d lived separately from the Davenant clan for most of his life after his accident—and continued to do so even now—he’d been acquainted with the names of all his siblings. He had no memories of Lisette that he could recount, because she’d been married and out of their father’s house by the time he’d fallen and struck his head. But Julian had mentioned her from time to time, usually if he’d been knocking back the tequila too hard, and always with a wistful sort of fondness in his voice and on his face.
“She was beautiful, Az,” he’d told Aaron once. “An angel in spirit and form. She loved you—God, Az, you think I dote on you? You should have seen Lisette. She had you spoiled practically rotten, a fat little duckling who followed her everywhere. You were her darling, and you stuck to her like a shadow.”
Aaron had held no memories of her that were his own, however. He’d never known what she looked like, this sister he’d once apparently followed so adoringly. But all at once, as he lay beneath the heavy shroud of blankets swathed over his head, it hit him like an electrical shock; he jerked reflexively, uttering a soft gasp as within his mind he saw her clearly.
A warm summer’s day, and she had me into the wooded fields beyond the perimeter of our family yard, where the great house was no longer visible to us for the distance and the trees, and where the grass was so high, she could part it with her hands as she blazed a trail through it—and I could drop to my knees and be fully enveloped, invisible within it.
They had been near the spring house, a place where the rolling fields and forested meadows dropped abruptly off at a steep, cragged angle. At the bottom, a stone hut had been build—the family’s spring house—and from beneath its foundation flowed a babbling, meandering brook.
He and Lisette had been playing hide-and-seek. He remembered her beautiful golden blonde hair alight in the bright afternoon sunshine; it had worked loose from her carefully bundled plaits in long tendrils that flapped around her face in the light, insistent breeze.
He remembered her skin, porcelain pale with sun-kissed cheeks, and her eyes, enormous and blue like his own. When she laughed, her grin would stretch wide, her mouth open, and the sound was like music.
“Where are you, little rabbit?” she called out as she bent over and cut back and forth through the thick grass, sweeping it with her outstretched hands. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”
Hunkered down and out of sight in the grass, he’d giggled, but remembered now—the sudden clamor of hoof-beats, the snorting and snuffling of a winded horse, and the jangling of tack as a rider had approached.
Father. Aaron risked a peek out over the swaying tips of blanched grass and saw Lamar approaching them, his large dappled gelding sweat-glossed and whipped to a fierce cantor.
“Hoah, there,” he heard Lamar call out to the steed as he drew it to a skittering halt. For a long moment, there was silence, and Aaron lay pressed against the dirt.
“Who are you, girl?” Lamar asked Lisette. With a grunt, he swung his leg around and dismounted, his muddied riding boots settling heavily against the ground beneath him. It was before his accident, then, Aaron realized in retrospect, the one which had crippled his stride and ruined his spine.
Lamar pulled off one of his gloves and patted the gelding’s gleaming hide with his bare palm as he regarded Lisette, brows narrowed against the sun’s glare. “Answer me, girl.”
Lisette had dropped a curtsey, pinning her eyes to her toes. “I…I’m Lisette, sir. Your daughter.”
By that point, several of Lamar’s brothers still lived with them, along with all of their offspring, so it was not so unusual or insulting for Lamar not to recognize one of his own offspring on sight—especially a daughter, with whom he seldom had little, if any, interaction.
“One of mine?” he asked, and when she nodded, he asked somewhat dubiously, “Who is your mother?”
“Annette, sir,” she replied, her voice little more than a shy mumble as he strode toward her.
Lamar carried a riding crop in hand, and she flinched visibly when he caught her beneath the chin with it, forcing her to lift her eyes to meet his own. “Well,” he said with a harrumph. “So you are. Who’s out here with you?”
He swept his gaze across the grass and among the trees. Aaron flattened himself against the ground, his
heart pounding, his breath hitching with bright terror.
“No one, sir,” Lisette said quickly. “I…I was going to look for juniper down by the spring house.”
“Does your mother know you’re out here?”
“No, sir,” Lisette said, shaking her head.
“Does anyone?” Lamar demanded sharply, and her shoulders hunched.
“No, sir.”
His brows narrowed and his mouth turned down in a stern scowl. “Stupid girl,” he admonished. “Anything could happen to you and none of us would be aware. This farm is crawling with Negroes—damn dirty slaves. Any one of them would give his right eye for the chance to plow between your thighs. And there are still rumors of savages about.” Reaching out, he pinched a wayward strand of her yellow hair between his forefinger and thumb, giving it a slight, speculative twist. “They favor the fair-headed for their scalp collections, you know.”
Obviously, Lisette hadn’t known this. She trembled where she stood and tears swam in her eyes. “I…I’m sorry, sir.”
“Pretty little flower, are you not?” Lamar remarked softly, letting his gaze travel slowly from her face toward the burgeoning swell of her bosom, then down, following the line of her skirt. “How old are you, girl?”
“Fourteen, sir.”
“Not a flower at all, then, but a blossom,” he murmured, seeming momentarily distracted. Then his expression hardened again and he frowned all the more. “Stupid girl,” he snapped again. “Niggers and savages alike…any of them and all…they’d love to lay their hands—and other parts besides—on you.”
She didn’t reply, but Aaron could see humiliated flush blooming brightly in her cheeks.
“Here, now,” Lamar said, his tone softening as he stepped closer to her. “Look at me now. Up, up, up with those eyes—there’s a girl.” With a kindly smile, he leaned over and kissed her forehead. “You’re a beautiful lamb, Lisette. I only speak sharply because I mean to protect what’s mine.”
