Rory pivoted through them both, using the bed as leverage, and deftly landed on his feet in front of the record player. “You know you dig it.” He placed the record on the player and settled the needle on the track. He closed his eyes and let his head feel the music as the first notes of “Hello, I Love You” flowed through the room.
“Ugh,” Carolina simpered, but she giggled as Rory offered both hands and pulled her to the floor. He gyrated into The Twist and she matched him move for move, squealing in joy despite her declared loathing of The Doors.
Rory hooted and spun Carolina in circles around the shag carpet, over and over until she wobbled from the dizziness, but his eyes stayed on Colleen alone. He curled the corner of his mouth in a smile that took them both out of the moment.
Colleen smiled back, then dropped her eyes back to her studies. She sometimes felt the pull to be as cool and carefree as beautiful Carolina with her thick gold headbands and sizzler skirts, dancing around a bedroom on the eve of the rest of her life. To drop all her worries into her bedside drawer and abandon herself to the moment, even provisionally. Surely there was no harm in fleeting episodes of fun. No harm in letting it all go from time to time.
But Colleen felt the substance of who she was had always tightly coiled itself within her, and unraveling this, even a little, would risk a loss of control she wasn’t prepared to handle.
When the song ended, Carolina sighed and flopped back on the bed, flushed. She fanned herself like she’d just run a marathon. “Now, can we listen to something else?”
Rory crossed his arms. “I have a better idea.”
“You have my rapt attention,” Carolina coquetted.
Rory looked at Colleen. “What would it take to convince you going to the skating rink with us is a better idea than studying for a test you have zero chance of not acing?”
Colleen frowned. “Rory Sullivan, it’s easy for you to say when you’ve had a spot awaiting you at Sullivan & Associates since before your birth.”
“As if a Deschanel couldn’t be anything in the world,” Carolina teased with a dramatic eye roll. She tugged at her headband, which had come loose in their dance party.
Rory clutched his chest feigning offense. “You cut me, Leena, cut me deep. I take my studies seriously.”
Colleen let her expression travel between her two friends speaking for her.
“I do!” he protested. “I’ll still have to pass the bar exam one day, you know.”
“I’m relatively certain several Sullivans required multiple retakes. This doesn’t inspire confidence.”
“They eventually passed.”
Colleen pressed her spiral notebook into the textbook, resting her hand there as well to hold her spot. “You two go. Have fun. I’ll catch up later when I finish,” she lied.
Carolina leaned over Colleen’s vanity table, coiffing her hair back into place. She bounced up. “You better come!” she exclaimed. She squeezed Rory’s arm and leaned in. “I need to use the little girls’ room. Meet you in the car, sport?”
He nodded and blew her an emphatic kiss, which she nearly tripped catching as she fell into the hall.
Rory returned his focus to Colleen. “I know you’re not really going to show up later.”
“Yeah.” Colleen tried to look ashamed. She felt ashamed, but not enough to cause her to change what drove her fundamentally toward the future she desired for herself. Would Rory be there with her in one year? Five? It hurt a little to think of his absence, but she doubted it. No one really took high school with them when they left, unless they failed to move on. “But you have fun with Carolina. She digs you.”
Rory shoved his hands in the pockets of his burnt orange trousers, which were utterly ridiculous, and even unfashionable. Colleen knew that. “It isn’t like that.”
Colleen chuckled. “It could be, with very little effort on your part.”
He shook his head. “No. You don’t understand.”
Colleen’s heartbeat escalated as his words hung between them. Some things are better left never addressed.
Rory reached a hand forward and pushed her unruly bangs aside. His smile, always present, but always different to fit the occasion, was more serious than usual, and Colleen was suddenly afraid.
A blaring horn caused them both to jump back. “I guess I better split. Can’t keep the princess waiting. Keep it real, Leena.” He stopped in the doorway. “And if you really wanna blow my mind, show up later in spite of yourself. You’ll have fun. I’ll make sure of it.”
Colleen pressed her hands to her cheeks, which were burning hot, so hot she was certain he could see it and was relieved when he finally disappeared. She smiled into her notebook.
“He digs you so hard it makes me wanna gag,” Evangeline declared from the hallway. She sauntered into the room, uninvited, her wild hair taking up all the available real estate around her head. Colleen set her expression and pressed her hands to the crazy mane.
“He does not,” Colleen said, less because she believed it and more because she had no desire to entertain the idea at all.
“He’s going to ask you to prom,” Evangeline went on, with the confidence of someone who knows more than they should. “Will you say yes?”
“He is not. And what would you know about it?”
“Oh, he is. He told Chelsea, who told Roger, who told me.”
“I doubt he’d tell his sister anything of the sort. And he would have asked already if he was going to. There’s hardly time to get a dress.” Colleen shook her head. “In any case, you’re wrong. He’s not going to ask, and I’m not planning to go, anyway.”
“You spend all your time with him.” The words sounded less an observation than an accusation.
“I spend all my time studying.”
Evangeline wasn’t buying it. “He’s always in your room.”
“So is Carolina, and she isn’t asking me to prom.”
“You’re wrong. He’s in love with you, and he’s going to ask.”
Colleen set her books aside. There was only one reason she could come up with that Evangeline would press this hard. “I know we haven’t spent much time together lately, Evie. College is so close, and I don’t want to mess anything up.”
Evangeline rolled her head and waved her hand. “As if I don’t have better things to do, anyway. Like dissecting the neighborhood cats and blowing up barns with homemade explosives. You know, genius things.”
Colleen pulled her close. Evangeline stiffened and then curled into her sister.
“It’s only going to get worse when you go to college,” Evangeline said. Her voice was strained at the hint of vulnerability she was always so loath to display.
“I promise it won’t.”
“I hope you know that continuously promising things you can’t deliver is the sign of a personality disorder.”
Colleen pushed her forward and settled Evangeline between her legs so she was behind her. “I’m glad psychology class isn’t wasted on you. Now sit still. I’ll get this hair into braids if it’s the last thing I do.”
“Maybe Paul will ask you to prom, now that he’s not a Beatle anymore,” Evangeline mused. “Or maybe you’ll just go with Rory.”
“Don’t be silly. You know I prefer Ringo.”
“Colleen, no one prefers Ringo.”
* * *
Colleen did not blow Rory’s mind that night. She had other plans, ones she could not explain adequately to anyone who wasn’t part of their unusual family. Rory and Carolina knew she had family obligations some evenings, but the extent of them was a secret Colleen kept close to her heart.
She navigated the endless hallways of The Gardens. When the mansion had been built, in the mid-nineteenth century, the Deschanels intended it as a home capable of housing the entire family. Today, the megalith Greek Revival spanned nearly an entire city block all on its own, and no matter how many times Colleen had been there, it always left her with the dizzying sensation she was navigating a maze with th
e propensity to change directions on a whim. One of her cousins told her they were quite certain the location of the bathrooms had altered more than once.
She paused outside the heavy oaken doors, taking in the familiar scent of very old wood and ancient secrets. Beyond, her fellow Deschanel Magi Collective Council peers awaited. The august body of family senators that used to rule the Council had died off, and today’s Council was much younger and more modern. Colleen, at eighteen, wasn’t even the youngest. Her cousin Kitty Guidry was two years her junior.
The Council of seven ruled over the Collective, making decisions for the family that could not be spoken of in public or the exposure of daylight. They often met at the chime of the witching hour, in a cavernous room absent of natural light, brightened only by sconces lining the paneled walls. It smelled permanently of the ancients.
Colleen opened the door. Her peers were already there, and she took her usual seat. They all gathered at the near end of the table that stretched far enough into the dim room that the end could not be seen without taking a candle into the darkness.
Eugenia and Cassius gathered around the magistrate, helping her settle into her seat. At ninety-two, Ophelia Deschanel’s gnarled, hunched form struggled to find bearing, but her mind was sharper than the rest of them combined.
“Yes, yes, that will be enough, thank you.” Ophelia’s scratched voice dismissed them, and they dutifully fell into their own seats.
Ophelia folded her heavily wrinkled hands. A slight but permanent tremor rocked her, but she seemed unbothered by this, or by any of her limitations. Yellow teeth appeared behind her crooked smile. “Shall we begin with our vows, then.” It was not a question.
She didn’t attempt to stand again. Instead, she linked her hands with Eugenia to her right and Kitty to her left, and the rest of the Council followed suit. “In power, obligation.”
“In power, obligation,” repeated the other six.
“In obligation, commitment.” She paused for the echo. “In commitment, solidarity.” Another pause for the group to reprise. “In solidarity, enlightenment.”
“And lastly,” finished Ophelia, “the Council also lives under governance, through enlightenment.”
“Through governance, enlightenment,” Colleen recited back, with her cousins, in a room filled with centuries of secrets and yet another side of her life that would always be shut away from the one she shared with her friends in the world beyond.
“First order of business,” Ophelia began. “The solar eclipse is next week. We have reports from Sweden that we should be monitoring for unusual supernatural activity. Our archives have stories from the 1851 eclipse that confirm we may be in for a very interesting celestial event, my dearests.”
Pansy clapped her hands together in delight. “Groovy.”
“What sorts of stories?” asked Cassius. Beside him, Pierce nodded, confirming he shared the question.
“The usual madness we see when seasons change,” Ophelia replied. Her small body shook as a cough took over. Kitty’s hand hovered in mid-air as she decided whether to intervene. She dropped it when Ophelia wiped her hand across her mouth and continued. “Animals running off or acting out of character. Aggression, fear, or even the opposite, at times. Ordinarily docile husbands raising hands against wives, or even the reverse, women taking the lives of their men and later claiming no memory of the act. Libidos running wild, people abandoning their senses. Nothing too unexpected.”
Pierce blinked a few times. “Orgies and murder… why, I never…”
“You don’t really believe these reports?” Eugenia added.
Ophelia’s smile was lazy, knowing.
Colleen remembered that her older brother, Charles, had been invited to an eclipse party at the Weatherly estate. “Should we be concerned, Aunt Ophelia?”
“The scientists say no,” Ophelia said carefully. She stretched her bony fingers. A face that had seen many, many things over the course of a very long lifetime looked directly at Colleen. “But science and magic play together in ways science doesn’t understand and never will. We know any time the moon, sun, or stars act outside of the usual, it changes things within a man, or a woman if you will, that science can’t explain and magic doesn’t need to. Much like a full moon or a change in the tides, I expect yes, the darkening of the sun will bring out the unusual in many, and scientists will spend years explaining it away. But we will know.”
Ophelia slowly looked around the room. “That’s why we are here. Because we know.”
Two
Fortunate Son
Charles Deschanel confidently strolled through the tropical garden of Dan Weatherly’s property like no one had more right to be there. The young men and women gathered for the party paused in mid-conversation when he passed by them. Would he stop? Say hello? Share a bump of coke? Charles threw out peace signs and grins with calculated intention, well aware every choice he made would be examined later. Every gesture would be interpreted and re-interpreted, and hearts would soar or break based on their conclusions. Breaths were held until he moved on, but everyone resumed their conversations and fun, feeling a little cooler now that the playboy of New Orleans was on the scene.
His best friend, Colin Sullivan, winced as a cascade of water shot from the pool when they walked by. “Sorry! I forgot to call cannonball!” a girl in a green string bikini yelled from the center. She rolled her head back to receive the arcing water from a set of double fountains shaped like fish heads. Colin waved back, but the look of discomfort he’d worn since they stepped out of Charles’ Trans Am intensified.
“I don’t know how I let you talk me into coming.”
“If you stopped being a square, the sun would stop circling the moon,” Charles accused with a tousle of his friend’s neatly combed hair. “But it doesn’t mean I’ll stop trying.”
“But the sun doesn—”
“Come on, let’s hydrate,” Charles declared and sauntered away from the pool, in the direction of the back porch. A butler held aloft a silver tray of champagne, and Charles snapped up the last two before another nearby nobody could take them. “Here, drink. It will help you chill.”
Colin accepted the fluted glass with a wince of distaste. He sipped through pursed lips, but Charles didn’t see the liquid level go down at all. “Do you think they have water?”
“You’re drinking Dom Perignon and you’re asking about water?”
“It’s hardly ten in the morning, Charles.”
“They’re drinking in Paris, so why shouldn’t we?”
From the vantage point of the porch, Charles surveyed the whole backyard, from the lush garden of lantana and irises, to the kidney-shaped pool, to the guesthouse tucked into the rear corners, flanked by thorny bougainvillea and all colors of roses. Butterflies fluttered through the hazy afternoon, landing on all manner of surfaces. Cicadas buzzed, keeping tune to the persistent background hum of their world. But Charles paid no mind to the inherent liveliness of their subtropical world. He had eyes only for the human inhabitants.
He’d been performing this subconscious act since his eyes fell on the first girl at the party, assessing. Was she the one? No. It was rarely ever the first one he saw. He almost never got that lucky. He’d already bagged many of them, though never more than once or twice, and never in succession. He couldn’t be seen as tied down, or unavailable, though there were some women, certain types, who flocked to that, too, so sometimes it worked in his favor.
Then there were the ones he wouldn’t touch if the world was ending. He was enough of a gentleman not to say this to their faces, but he found other ways for the information to reach them. He found it better to avoid uncomfortable moments by heading them off with well-spread gossip.
Between these two types of women enjoying the Weatherly party—at most parties in New Orleans now—this didn’t leave Charles with many options. Dan had promised fresh meat at his eclipse bash, for which invitations were coveted. Only the wealthy elite, the old money crowd,
were welcome, though these rules applied mainly to the men, and not at all to the host, who was only second generation self-made department store wealth, but rich enough that this only mattered in very certain circumstances.
As for the ladies, a beautiful woman was a beautiful woman, and allowing the finest to enter only enhanced the worthiness of the event.
No one even cared about the eclipse, but an excuse to party wasn’t taken for granted.
Charles scanned. Let his eyes fall over each person, long enough only to make his usual assessment. The wilting heat melted the ice in his drink and added a blanket of haze to the day, affecting his vision. Bikinis ran together into a mess of color, a rainbow of sexual pleasure. They were all the same, all of them. Blonde. Brunette. Redhead. Rinse. Repeat. He couldn’t even be sure if he’d had some of them. The women in their circle had begun to take on the same expensive smile, shrill laugh, perfectly sculpted body. They enjoyed the same range of drugs, jived to the same music, and went home with the same men. Droll. Droll. Droll.
“I don’t like this, Charles.”
“You mentioned that already.” Charles pulled a large cross necklace from out of his collared shirt. The pendant separated in two, revealing a small silver spoon. He rotated to the side and took a quick bump. Sniffed. Winced. “Want one?”
“Do I need to answer that?”
Charles looped his arm around Colin’s shoulders. A cigarette bobbed from his mouth as he gestured around with his free hand. “Look around you. Everyone is stoned, drunk, or flying higher than the sky. Do you see any of them complaining?”
“Everyone else is doing it, is a low argument, even for you.”
Charles closed his eyes and moved his head to the music. The cocaine hit him fast and hard, but he was ready for another bump. He released a long stream of smoke out of his nose, enjoying the burn. “You’re missing my point, buddy. There’s not an unhappy person here, because they’re feeling the flow. Who’s the odd man out?”
The Seven Boxed Set Page 3
