The Book of the Unwinding

by J. D. Horn

  “It’s all right,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm. “I got this.” Nathalie knew how to shoot. Hell, after learning from her grandmother, she’d turned around and taught the neighborhood boys. She used the handkerchief to take the gun from his hand, then aimed the muzzle at the floor and rested the butt of the gun on her knee. She could do this blindfolded. In the pitch dark. Still, her hands started shaking, and the layer of cloth between her fingers and the pistol almost allowed the gun to slip from her grasp. She bit her lip and concentrated, tightening her grip, then lifted a bullet. Not with her hand, but by looking at it and wanting it to move. The bullet jumped up and landed right in the cylinder.

  In spite of everything, she’d managed to amaze Frank. She could see it in his widened eyes. In the way his hand, which had continued slapping the floor like a metronome, hurrying her movements along, fell silent. She closed the cylinder and placed the revolver in Frank’s hand. His fingers grasped it like they were thirsty for it and his index found the trigger. His eyes met hers. Without a word, he asked one final favor. He raised the gun, and Nathalie took his hand between hers, helping him steady it as he aimed at his temple.

  His finger squeezed the trigger.

  TWO

  Alice Marin’s skin tingled. The air around her felt charged, electric. The sharp scent of City Park’s freshly cut lawns permeated Popp Bandstand, where she sat, her back resting against one of the dome’s pillars. Beneath the green note an air of ozone lingered.

  She set the book she’d been reading, a novel she’d read a dozen times before, down beside her. Her eyes, following her instincts, drifted upward to the dome’s ceiling—a pale aqua wheel within a wheel, split by spokes that divided the outer wheel into twelve equal segments, like the twelve houses of a blank astrological birth chart. Or like a clock, cataloging the endless march of time in this place.

  She saw a spark, overhead at first, then drifting to eye level. It seemed like nothing more than a pinprick of light, but it began to grow or, more precisely, the space around it seemed to fold back. A window to the world she’d left was opening in the world she now knew. Soon that window would become a door—temporary and, for her, impassable.

  “I knew I would find you here,” Sabine’s French-accented voice called to her. Alice glanced back to see her coming down the path, the sight of Sabine’s smile driving away any thought of the spark and the world from which it came.

  “Come on, you. Get a move on,” Sabine said. “We’re already late.”

  Alice paused, trying to remember what plans they had made, and how they could possibly be late. She came up empty. Where, really, was there for them to go? Still, she liked the thought that she’d gone off to read and lost track of the time. That she and Sabine had made plans together.

  “Alice,” Sabine called again, still smiling, but with a growing impatience in her voice. Alice pushed herself up and reached for her dog-eared paperback copy of Frankenstein.

  A hand grabbed her shoulder. She turned, startled at first, but then remembered the scintillation that had caught but failed to hold her attention.

  “Daniel,” she said, taking in his broad smile and wholesome face. His red hair had grown a bit since she’d last seen him and was now a mass of unruly curls.

  “How’s my girl?” he said, pulling her into a tight bear hug. He smelled of petrichor and vanilla, of verbena and old books. The first scent came to him naturally. The vanilla, likely from some baking project. The verbena from the soap he favored. The old books, no doubt, from the time he’d been spending poring over arcane tomes, trying to find a way to release her from this world.

  “How’s my girl?” Alice heard the words echoed in Sabine’s voice. She broke free of Daniel’s embrace to look for Sabine, but she was gone.

  Daniel didn’t seem to have noticed her.

  “The pewter terror sends her love,” he said, speaking of her childhood pet. The first time Daniel had come to her, it had been Sugar who’d led him here. Daniel could pass between worlds because, as a servitor spirit who had been created primarily to care for Alice and her older brothers, he was made of magic itself, and that magic was bound to her. Sugar could cross the barrier because, well, she was a cat. It was no accident that witches and cats had come to associate with each other. “She wanted to come, but I wouldn’t let her,” he said. “The poor thing is slowing down, and it’s too hard on her.”

  “Poor thing?” Alice said. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were growing fond of her.”

  “Suffice it to say a good nemesis is hard to come by. I’m doing my best to keep the wretched beast alive and happy for as long as I can. Besides, I can’t help but feel a bit of sympathy for her.” He cocked an eyebrow and leaned in like he was about to share a delicious tidbit of gossip. “Evangeline seems to have come undone. She gave the cat up. After all these years. Turned the creature, litter box and all, over to Hugo. Sugar’s back in the house with me, right where she . . .”

  A group of children rushed by the bandstand, running, laughing, only to vanish into thin air.

  “Oh, my,” Daniel said, reaching out to take her hand. He seemed determined, desperate even, to maintain physical contact with her.

  This is all illusion, she remembered as the truth reasserted itself. There was no true physical contact for her anymore. Not here on the Dreaming Road, where her biological father, Celestin Marin, had deposited her.

  Celestin’s ambition was to unlock the power of The Book of the Unwinding and become the witch who would capture the last breath of magic, the one who would recreate it in his image. That role would only be bestowed on a witch who lacked progeny, but Celestin was willing to sacrifice his entire line to ensure that he be the one. He’d already murdered her older brother Luc and her uncle Vincent—Alice still thought of Vincent that way despite having discovered Celestin, not Nicholas, was her biological father. At least Celestin had done the others the kindness of a clean kill, but she was his favorite child. He didn’t have the heart—or was it the courage?—to murder her outright. Instead, he’d turned her own power in on her, creating an artificial world—a prison—on the astral plane for her psyche to inhabit. One day that prison would do what he couldn’t. It would kill her, exhausting first her magic and then her life force.

  And though it went unsaid, Alice knew Celestin still walked free in the common world, unpunished and unrepentant. The old spider was spinning a tightening web, fangs dripping the poison that sprang from his heart. Daniel wouldn’t have held back news of Celestin’s capture.

  Alice’s corporeal body, Daniel had told her on a previous visit, was back in New Orleans. Before absconding for parts unknown, Nicholas had signed his power of attorney over to Alice’s aunt—no, she corrected herself, her sister—Fleur. Fleur had thought she might be better off in the care of professionals, but Daniel had put his foot down, insisting no clinic could provide more diligent care for her than he could, having been created to do so. After what Alice felt sure had been much cajoling, Fleur consented to return Alice to her old room in Nicholas’s house, but only on the condition that Daniel agree to daily visits from a nurse. Alice loved Daniel all the more for wanting to care for her empty shell, but it really didn’t matter where her physical form slept. She’d lost faith in ever returning to it.

  The world in which she found herself wasn’t completely cut off. Celestin had left an opening, something he could use to siphon power from her should he need to supplement his own, though she doubted he’d need to after feeding from the dozens of witches he slaughtered the night of his memorial ball.

  Alice believed she wasn’t the first Celestin had caught in such a trap. She suspected he might have drawn from dozens, maybe even hundreds, of witches over the years. Rumor had it that witches around New Orleans were taking to the Dreaming Road in greater numbers, preferring a life spent in dreams to reality. The decaying state of magic was widely held to be the reason, but Alice no longer believed the theory. Celestin, Alice suspected, h
ad been behind many, if not most, of those disappearances. He wasn’t the type to handle his own housekeeping, though. He probably had a partner helping him dispose of the vacated bodies.

  “How many?” Daniel said, giving her hand a light squeeze. “How many are here with you?”

  “I don’t know,” Alice said, her claim both true and false at the same moment. She hoped he’d interpret her words to mean she hadn’t played a conscious role in their creation. The truth was, she’d simply lost count.

  His mouth pulled into a frown, and his head tilted back. He looked down his nose at her. Daniel had been created to see through her and her older brothers’ dissimulations. Even here, even now, he could still sniff out a lie. “How long has this been going on?” His disappointed tone transported her back to her early childhood, to a time when Daniel towered over her, asking her why she’d thought it would be a good idea to glue Hugo’s shoes to an antique Mohtashem Kashan rug.

  “Not long,” she said, rushing to add, “only since your last visit.” Another hybrid of truth and lie.

  “I see,” he said, casting a glance at the bandstand’s concrete steps. He crossed to them and sat down, then leaned over and wrapped his arms around his knees.

  She reached down to retrieve her book before following him. As she drew near, he looked up at her. He straightened up and patted the open part of the step beside him. She joined him there.

  He took the book from her hand and examined it. “I can identify with the monster,” he said. “Abhorred and deserted by his maker. Driven to desperation by the primal loneliness of being separated from one’s source.” Daniel wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her toward him. “Some people really stink at parenting, huh?” He gave her a quick hug, then released her.

  “It’s weird,” she said, giving voice to a thought that might be better kept to herself, “but I believe in his own warped way, Celestin does love me.” She looked for a reaction from Daniel, but his expression remained neutral. “He could’ve,” she pressed on, “put me in a hell where my terror would’ve burned through my magic and drained my life force in one hot minute on the natural world’s timescale.” Daniel bit his lip. His gaze was fixed on his shoes. “Here on the Dreaming Road,” she continued, intent, for reasons she herself couldn’t grasp, on defending Celestin’s actions, “he could’ve made sixty seconds seem like an eternity. Instead, he designed this realm for me—or at least for the child I was when he first attempted to draw me here—as a place where I’d be happy. So happy, in fact, that I’d never want to leave.” She felt something click in her mind, and then she realized there it was, the reason she’d been looking for.

  She knew this world, hanging somewhere in the astral plane, was a trap. It was slowly draining the life from her, just as Celestin intended it to, but there was no denying the appeal of a world that molded itself to her heart’s desires. It was, without question, a better place to live than anywhere she’d spent her earthly days. Alice opened her mouth to speak, to tell Daniel that to some degree Celestin had succeeded in reaching his goal, but he spoke before she did.

  “It’ll be a moot point soon anyway. This,” he said, clapping his hands, “isn’t a mere social visit. I came bringing news.” He paused and smiled at her, waiting, it seemed, for her to react as the child she’d been and beg him to share. After a few moments his face fell, reflecting his disappointment, it seemed, that she hadn’t. Still, that gleam persisted in his eyes. “I believe we’ve made some progress.”

  “What kind of progress?”

  “I’ve discovered gravity,” he said, and winked.

  “Gravity?”

  “Yes, the gravity of rightful destiny.” He held up his finger, a signal for her to have patience. “Like a river flowing between its banks, every person has a path they’re born to follow. Celestin’s repeated interference has pulled you from yours, but the whole universe is tugging on you, trying to pull you back in line.”

  “I don’t believe in destiny.”

  “Okay, then,” he said, brushing off her protest. “Don’t think of it as destiny. Think of it as a natural trajectory.” He glanced away. “Although,” he muttered under his breath with every intent that she should hear him, “it’s still destiny whether you want to believe in it or not.” He shifted on the step, angling his body toward her. “I’ve uncovered your rightful trajectory,” he said, crossing his arms and leaning back a bit. “Would you care to hear about it?”

  “How?” she said, rising and turning on him, impatient with this fairy tale he was spinning. She suspected it was no more than another story, like the comforting ones he once used to lull her back to sleep after a nightmare. “How exactly did you do that?”

  “I know a system,” he said, sounding defensive.

  “And what is this system?”

  “It’s one I created myself.” He rose and rested his fists on his hips, a defiant posture. “It’s a bit of a hybrid. It involves casting spells and rolling dice. A bit I Ching, a bit gut instinct . . .”

  “With a pinch of Dungeons & Dragons.” Alice regretted the sarcasm in her tone.

  His shoulders slumped, and he reached toward her. “Maybe so, but it worked. I’m sure of it.” He stepped forward and grasped her shoulder, gazing down at her with such intensity, such infectious hope, that she could almost feel herself giving in to it. He seemed to sense her wariness slipping away, so he struck. “We’ve found her, my love,” he said. “We’ve found your rightful destiny. She’s been circling those closest to you, spiraling in toward you from the moment your plane touched down in New Orleans.”

  “Okay, then. What comes next?” she said, this time taking care to speak her mind without worrying about his feelings. “Princess Charming will wake me with true love’s kiss?”

  “Well, no,” he said, releasing her and taking a step back. “I’m sure it won’t be easy as all that.” His face scrunched up, and he tilted his head as he considered her question with far greater sincerity than it had been asked.

  “Who is this ‘we’ you’re talking about anyway?” she asked, breaking into his thoughts. She couldn’t believe he’d caught Fleur or Hugo up in his well-intentioned farce.

  “Well,” he said, his chin lowering toward his chest, a glint of guilt in his eyes. “The feline and I.”

  “You and Sugar.” She stood and descended the steps, planting her feet on the ground in a wide stance and resting her hands on her hips to signal her rekindled incredulity.

  “Yes. She’s quite devoted to you. Even after all these years.” A sad smile rose to his lips. “As am I.”

  She couldn’t say if it was the twitch of his eyelid or the quiver in his voice, but something told her that this conjured man and an aged cat counted as the only two on the other side who hadn’t given up on her. Who hadn’t decided her situation was hopeless.

  Alice opened her mouth with the intention of going along, of pretending she believed the scheme he’d dreamed up was anything more than wishful thinking. Instead, she surprised herself. “I love you, Daniel,” she said, drawing closer and placing her hand on his cheek. “I’ve always loved you.” Her hand dropped, resting on the point on his chest beneath which any real man’s heart would lie beating. “But you have to leave now.” Sabine appeared before them, thirty yards or so away, standing in the shade of an ancient oak. “And you can’t come back. It’s too painful.”

  “Ah, now there, my girl,” he said, his Irish brogue resurrecting itself. “You have to show some patience. I know it’s been difficult waiting for a solution, but we’ve only been at it three months . . .”

  “It’s been,” she said, stepping back from him, “going on seven years here. And almost five months have passed since I last saw you.”

  He opened his mouth, ready to protest, but she held up her hand to stop him. “Please. If you love me, you’ll go.” She lowered her hand and started walking away. She stopped and looked back at him, and her heart broke. He looked stricken, his green eyes wide and his m
outh hanging open. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but this is my home now. We both have to get used to that fact.” This time she made it two steps before she stopped once more. “I love you,” she said, not daring to look at him again. “Goodbye.” She strode away from him, keeping her focus on Sabine, who held out a hand to her, love in her eyes, her face lit up with a warm smile.

  The group of children coalesced from nothing and ran past her. A blond, curly-haired boy looked back at her as he followed the rest, his face the picture of delight. A pair of bikers whizzed past, aimed in the direction of the peristyle. Alice looked down to see a young mother lying on a blanket with a book in her hand, her baby shaded in a portable bassinet.

  “Oh. No. You. Don’t.” Daniel caught up to her. He grabbed her by the arm. “You don’t walk away from me.” It shocked Alice to hear hot anger in his voice. She hadn’t thought him capable of it. “The more of them,” he said, his eyes narrowing as he pointed at Sabine, “you let into this world, the quicker your own end will come.”

  “I know. They’re my creations, but without them . . .” Her voice caught. “The loneliness, Daniel. It’s unbearable.”

  “Ah, my love. I know. I know, but it’s a lie that they’re your creations. I know you believe it, but you’ve been deceived.” He glared at the simulation of Sabine. “Look at her. Really look at her. See her for what she is, and not what you need her to be.”