The Catalain Book of Secrets

by Jessica Lourey

  And it was the last person she wanted to ask.

  They drove to the Queen Anne, the nasty, shrill sibilance beating at Jasmine’s bruised brain. A heavy rain had begun. The air smelled like crushed worms.

  When they arrived, she ordered Tara to wait in the car. She slammed her door and ran up the porch. Whipping open the heavy oak door, she continued to the kitchen, where she discovered Velda, Helena, Xenia, Katrine, and Ursula gathered around the breakfast nook table in some sort of uneasy silence.

  She looked around the table at their shocked faces. Helena and Xenia had jumped to their feet, but they seemed unsure of whether to approach her. The secret burned against her throat. If she didn’t release it now, she would explode into a million quivering pieces. “I was raped when I was ten. I think he was one of your clients, Ursula. Not one of you bothered to notice I was different afterward. You didn’t even know.”

  At these words, a brick fell out of the structure guarding her heart. A cooling air rushed in, but it didn’t stand a chance against the blazing fire of Jasmine’s pain. “I wanted to protect Katrine, and save all of you from feeling like you had failed me, but I guess…” Her voice broke. When she spoke again, the words quivered. “I thought you would know. I thought if you loved me enough, you would figure out my secret.” Her voice cracked.

  She pulled her heavy, sharp eyes to Ursula. “And I know you seduced Dean in your workshop.” She swayed where she was standing. She thought she had fight in her, but it was only desperation. “Please don’t take my husband from me.”

  “Oh baby,” Helena said, rising, her arms out. Xenia and Katrine followed right behind her. Ursula, an expression of pure horror on her face, stayed put. Velda stood next to her.

  There was a scratching at the entrance to the kitchen. Jasmine glanced behind her, embraced by her sister and aunts. The hissing in her head hadn’t stopped. If anything, it had grown louder, each sibilant beat accompanying her slow swivel until she was looking into the terrified eyes of her daughter. “Tara!”

  The girl’s face was an exclamation point of shock.

  “How long have you been standing there?” Jasmine asked. There was no need. It was written on Tara’s face. She had heard everything. She turned and ran, leaving melting, boot-tread-shaped puddles of water.

  “Tara!” Jasmine ran after her, her aunts, mother, and grandmother close behind. But they were too slow. Tara had disappeared.

  Chapter 37

  Ursula

  She felt Xenia watching her. “I’m fine.”

  Xenia shined her flashlight on Ursula’s face. “You look pale.”

  It was after 8:00, dark, the air smelling murky, like thaw and fish. They were walking the slippery banks of the Rum River, hollering Tara’s name. Artemis and Helena were on the far side, and Ursula and Xenia searched the side closest to the house. Velda and Katrine were driving up and down side streets, and Jasmine was at the house, phoning any person Tara might have run to. The ground had grown so noisy that Ursula wondered if these were earthquakes. But of course she knew they weren’t. She knew the snakes were on their way.

  “It’s the reflection of the moon,” Ursula said.

  “It’s more than that,” Xenia said. “You look nervous, like a conservative in a think tank.”

  Her attempt at humor didn’t go unrewarded. A small smile tipped at Ursula’s lips. “Worried, more like it. How far could that girl have gone?”

  “How far would you run if you recognized that your mother was losing her mind, and heard that she’d been molested as a child, and realized there was nothing you could do to save her? Oh, and by the way, you thought your grandma was screwing your dad?”

  Ursula sighed. “So far that I don’t know if I’d ever come back.”

  “Do you think she knew what we were talking about before she and Jasmine came? Her eyes sure looked like it.”

  Ursula shuddered. They all sensed that Jasmine had gone over an edge, but didn’t know what had driven her. Ursula had deduced that Jasmine had become afraid of herself. Power unclaimed turns on its owner. Jasmine had not used her magic for over a decade, and it was making her crazy. When Ursula had consulted the Book of Secrets, it had opened to this page:

  The Catalain Book of Secrets: Revoking Power:

  Every person enters the world with a gift at exactly the strength they need it, though some families can pass on extra magic like they pass on eye color or allergies. Some are born knowing their gift, others need to discover it or grow into it. Not infrequently, a gift can be used for destruction, or left feral and turn against its owner. In these cases, it may be necessary to revoke the person’s power. This dangerous operation is irreversible. It should only be done when no other option remains.

  To strip a person of their gift requires all the living female relatives to be present in a single room along with the person whose power will be expunged. The female relatives need to cross four of their fingers and two of their toes and mutter a single word in unison, three times: sever.

  It is done.

  And so, Ursula had called a meeting of the Catalain women to talk about Jasmine. They’d been horrified, and then despondent. Having your power stripped was a horrible fate, but Ursula didn’t see any other route if she was to save Jasmine from herself. Ursula was crushed to find out it was even more than that, that her daughter had been molested and thought that her own mother would steal her husband. It was too much to comprehend at the moment, with Tara missing.

  “Tara has a gift, probably more than one,” Ursula told Xenia as they walked the bank, bathing the cold, sloping earth with their flashlights. It wasn’t unheard of for a Catalain to be blessed with multiple powers. Jasmine had made them promise not to speak to Tara about it, but one needn’t be a witch to recognize the girl was gifted. “I hope those skills protect her tonight.”

  And to herself: so many damned secrets in this family. So many. They rip us apart.

  Chapter 38

  Tara

  Tara had been planning to run away ever since she’d talked to Katrine about her mom. In fact, she’d hidden a packed bag in the trunk of her mom’s car under the emergency kit: $22 she’d saved from odd jobs she’d done for her grandma over the months, an empty blue glass jar, a change of clothes including a silk jacket Katrine had given her that was too beautiful to wear, and her diary. She knew she would need to escape, she just didn’t know when.

  The shift in her mom’s sickness had initiated her planning. Jasmine never told her daughter what was devilling her, but Tara saw it rise up when Katrine returned, ease slightly, and then multiply inside her mother since the fight between her and her dad. Her mother was flinging herself against her pain, fighting with all her strength and losing like an insect against a flytrap. What Jasmine didn’t recognize, what would have killed her if she had known, was that her daughter was so bound to her that she lived this battle as if it were her own. Tara realized that if she didn’t run far enough away, she’d be sucked in along with her mom and be lost forever.

  She hadn’t known that her mom had been molested, but she’d observed the resulting trauma from the inside while she was incubating in the warm red of Jasmine’s womb. Jasmine’s particular trauma was an absence where there should have been something, like a face without a nose, but what had been stolen from her was more essential, at her core. When Jasmine started taking medication, the absence just grew lonelier and larger, until last week when it became a pulsing vacuum that occupied more space inside Jasmine than her own spirit did.

  Tara was terrified by this, and by the many ways her world was crashing around her. She knew about her mom’s pain just as she knew that Ursula had a hand in helping Velda kill Tara’s great-grandfather. Tara couldn’t ever remember not knowing that because unlike most people, Ursula didn’t hide her sickness. It was there, in plain sight, shaped like what it was: the potion that killed her own father. She lived inside the blue bottle at her center, separated from all the joy she could possess.

 
; Tara noticed tonight that the bottle had an impressive crack in it, but it was too soon to tell if it was a breaking or a healing. Katrine had stopped tugging at the fishhook through her heart—with the exception of Christmas Eve when she’d pulled the correct end while looking at Ren sing—but she hadn’t yet realized she could remove it all together. Even the earth was beginning to rumble like an animal with a belly ache. It was all wrong. Everything good around Tara was slipping away.

  And then, the man with the cowboy hat had shown up. He’d come caroling at Christmas, and she had recognized her great-grandfather curled inside of him like a filthy baby. She’d wanted to say something, to Katrine, to her mom, to anyone, but she’d been born and raised on the understanding that you hold secrets close, and you certainly do not reveal the confidences of your family. But since, the man with the cowboy hat had started following her, showing up in the corner of her vision. She understood he was coming for her. That knowledge left her mouth dry.

  It was her friend Brittany, her mom’s friend Michelle’s daughter, who’d shown Tara the secret entrance to Tivadar Samaras’ underground tunnels connecting the houses, including her own. The entrance on the edge of town once had a whole house resting on top of it, but then the owners had moved, and the market had been slow, and it became cheaper to raze the house than fix it up. Someone bought the lot and never rebuilt, and the forest began to reclaim its own.

  Brittany had heard from a friend who heard it from a friend that you could still access the tunnels from the door in the weedy, mucky basement at the center of the lot, and Tara had discovered it was true while searching before she’d gone to see Katrine.

  Always a planner, in addition to stocking her backpack, she’d stored cans of ravioli and bottles of water down there along with an old purple sleeping bag her mom thought she’d thrown out. Now, flashlight in hand, she dropped into Samaras’ subterranean world, prepared to stay until the world returned to normal.

  Chapter 39

  Ursula

  Tara’d been missing for over forty-eight hours when the boy who’d claimed to love her granddaughter showed up at her front door.

  “Hi. I work at Seven Daughters?”

  Ursula was quiet.

  “It’s closed, and I’m wondering what’s up. Are Helena or Xenia here?”

  “They’re out looking for Tara.”

  He clenched his fists. “She’s gone?”

  Ursula regarded him with glittering eyes. “Ran away.”

  “I’m a friend of hers now.”

  Ursula could see he was lying, knew he hadn’t taken the love potion she’d made for him. It didn’t take magic to intuit either. First, the boy was a terrible liar, all twitches and pinballing eye contact. Second, if he’d taken the potion, he would have known Tara had run away because the two of them would be joined at the hip. Ursula found herself liking the boy even more. Still, a lie could not be tolerated. She watched him until he couldn’t hold it in any longer.

  It didn’t take him long to break. His words rushed out. “That’s not true. We’re not friends. I haven’t even talked to her yet. But I’d like to help. When’d she run away?”

  Ursula felt a smile tug at her corners. A good man, at least a young one, is as predictable as a puppy. “Two nights ago.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  Ursula sighed, any temporary lightness erased. “Yes. There’s not much they can do that we haven’t.”

  “Leo!” Xenia slipped past her sister. “What are you doing here?”

  “I went to work. It’s closed.”

  “Of course. It was closed yesterday, too, but you didn’t work so you wouldn’t have known that. We have much more important concerns now. We need to find Tara.”

  “I want to help.”

  Xenia stepped aside to guide him through a massive foyer to the massive kitchen. Copper-bottom pans hung from a rack in the center of the giant room, perched over an island scattered with sandwich fixings: a mustard pot, tomatoes, ham and cheese. Glass-front cupboards lined three of the walls. Spices, dishware, and exotic cooking tools peeked out at him. The gigantic cook stove had the curving porcelain look of an antique, but he saw the modern gas line leading to it. The smell of the space shifted depending where a person stood—blueberry muffins here, roast pork there. A breakfast nook curved into the far wall.

  The rest of the family had been eating a quick meal standing around the island before they left to search again. Ursula could see he felt comforted by their strength until his glance landed on Jasmine. She was cradled in Dean’s arms, and she was bony, crazed-looking, an eyeless creature unearthed. The sight of her condition stopped Ursula’s heart every time she saw it.

  He glanced over at Katrine and she stared back. Ursula was impressed to see him stand tall despite quavering in his fingers. Katrine’s full stare could strip a man to his core.

  “Where have you all looked?” he asked.

  Helena heard his voice and glanced up. “Leo!” She rushed over to put her arms around him. “We’ve looked everywhere. Along the river. At all her friends’. Up and down every street. The library, Target, the bus station. We’ve looked everywhere.”

  “Everywhere an adult would,” Leo said, out the door before Helena’s words had cooled.

  Chapter 40

  Katrine

  She’d been searching for Tara for two days, resting in fits and cuts. Jasmine was slipping away. Katrine could feel it, had known before Ursula explained the plan to revoke Jasmine’s gift.

  Tara must have known what was going to happen to her mom, too. Katrine recognized her niece’s power of observation. She was certain Tara had run to save Jasmine, and something that felt like steel girded Katrine’s heart. Her niece had courage, but in the end, Katrine knew Ursula was right. If Jasmine was going crazy because she refused to use her magic, drastic means were required to save her.

  She found herself wishing Ren was by her side. It was such an unexpected thought, but so natural. He was someone she could trust. Someone she could lean on. The awareness gave her strength and was dominating her brain when her cellphone rang.

  She listened to Meredith, Heather Lewis’ mother, gibber in an excited rush. Tara had been spotted! Katrine’s heart soared. When Meredith’s call came, she’d been driving up and down the streets of the haunted Avignon neighborhood searching for her beloved niece. She was so tired that her eyelids were quivering, but the good news gave her a burst of energy.

  Car screeching, she carved an illegal U-turn and raced the three miles to Immanuel Lutheran. The evening was unseasonably warm, nearly 60 degrees. Her car bumped a little as she drove, as if she were hitting tiny potholes.

  It wasn’t until she screeched into a parking spot in front of the church that she saw she’d been driving over tiny snakes. What the hell? But she didn’t have time. Her feet barely touched the ground as she flew up the church’s steps, and she didn’t register Heather’s car out front. It was not until she was inside the hushed apse that she realized that Meredith had never meant for her to find Tara. She’d sent her to get her heart broken.

  And there they were, in the middle of the aisle.

  Heather, in the comforting arms of Ren.

  She couldn’t have known that Meredith had orchestrated this scene by telling Ren and Heather the same lie she’d told Katrine to bring her to the church, an ugly little plan designed to hurt a Catalain as much as Ursula had hurt her. She couldn’t have known that after unexpectedly finding one another in the church, Ren and Heather had offered each other the comfort of neighbors searching for a lost child and nothing more, that after the embrace, they would both go their separate ways in search of Tara. Katrine only saw what was in front of her eyes and so backed out silently, her stomach a brick of charcoal.

  She stumbled down the stone steps. The air was charged and scented with moldering leaves and splinters of bright green. The snakes were running thick, slithering and tripping her. Twice she almost fell before she made it to her car.


  Once inside, she locked the door, her chest filled with hardening cement, her blood slugging through her veins. The crescent moon shone on her like a Cheshire grin, and underneath that wicked light, reptiles flowed, hissing, rubbing leather against each other, squirming, making her see what she didn’t want to see. In that moment, the weight of her family struggles and the loss of her silly schoolgirl hope that Ren would sweep her off her feet crushed her. She put her head in hands.

  A knock at her driver’s side window startled her.

  She glanced up.

  John stood there, his black eyes glowing like answers, a guitar strapped over his back. She fell into his wicked smile.

  The Catalain Book of Secrets: Ending a Curse

  A curse can be borne, reversed, or removed. To bear it, do nothing, but know that the power of a curse lies in how much of your life it takes, even when it doesn’t have to. Think of the woman cursed with the nose of a pig who rejected her suitor, certain that he was making fun of her by professing his love. What is worse—the curse, or what we let it do to us?

  Beware if you choose to reverse a curse. Sending it back to its owner keeps the energy between the two of you, like a child’s game of catch. If reversal seems the best path, it’s a simple process:

  Fashion a poppet out of white cotton. Stuff it with flax seeds and angelica root.

  Carve your name in a purple candle. Anoint the candle with uncrossing oil.

  Light the candle. While it burns, sprinkle the poppet with garlic powder and say this three times: curse, your parent calls you home.