The Book of the Unwinding

by J. D. Horn

  SEVEN

  “There are seven gates,” Daniel said, then slapped Fleur’s hand away from the thin red volume on the table before her. “No, no, that is not for you.” His gloved hand snatched back the book he called The Lesser Key. “Sorry, but you are a Marin, and I shouldn’t have to point out that it doesn’t seem to take much to turn you people.”

  Fleur couldn’t see the life Daniel claimed existed within the book—the cilia-like sensors reaching out, testing, perhaps even tasting the reader to determine if their spirit could be seduced, corrupted. She flushed, a bit angry at being treated like a child—and at his lack of trust—but Daniel didn’t seem to notice. His attention was focused on the book as he flipped through its pages.

  “Seven,” he said, glancing up, his eyes glowing with goodwill and enthusiasm.

  She swallowed her anger and her pride. After all, Daniel had been created to nurture and protect children. Maybe what Daniel had implied about Marin blood was true. Maybe it would be best if she didn’t touch The Lesser Key.

  “Just another clichéd mystical number,” he continued, rolling his eyes in a none-too-subtle imitation of Lucy. “Seven seals. Seven days to create the earth,” he began reciting, assuming the teenager’s patented blend of affected irritation and apathy. Fleur couldn’t help but smile—partially in appreciation of his humor, partially from a sense of relief. Daniel hadn’t noticed that there was anything wrong with Lucy, or he wouldn’t be mimicking her. “Seven Mithraic mysteries. Seven rungs of the ladder of virtue. Seven chakras.” He reached up with his free hand to tap the top of his head, moving down progressively to touch his forehead, his throat, his chest, and stomach. His hand hesitated, then he blushed like a schoolboy and shrugged. “Well, you get the point.”

  Fleur nodded and focused again on the book he held. When he’d told her to look at it through a witch’s eyes, she could have laughed. She counted as less and less of a witch each day. She reserved every ounce of her magic for one purpose—keeping her spoiled, impossible, loving, generous girl alive. It had felt good to confess this to Evangeline, to share the truth with another human being, even if the fiery witch had told her to go to hell. It was okay. Evangeline would come around. She would. She had to. A tear brimmed in Fleur’s eye, and she brushed it away.

  “Allergies,” she said in response to Daniel’s inquisitive look.

  “Oh,” he said, wrapping the book up in the special blessed terrycloth towel he reserved for that purpose. “I’ve got some raw local honey in the pantry . . .”

  She held up her hand. “No. No. I’m fine.” It was too late—she’d triggered his caregiver mode. She could sense him scanning her. His forehead creased as his brows lowered, an impressive simulacrum of true human concern. She did have to hand it to Nicholas and Astrid. When it came to servitor spirits, they did excellent work. They might not have been caring parents, but they’d made one.

  “I do care.” Daniel slipped the swaddled book into a clear plastic bag, pinching the zipper closed. “Maybe my feelings aren’t ‘real’ enough for you, but I do have them, and they seem plenty real to me.”

  Fleur jolted, her mouth gaping open in surprise. He’d read her thoughts. Daniel, she remembered, had been gifted with rudimentary telepathic abilities, although his talent couldn’t begin to match Evangeline’s power to discern emotions. Surprise boiled over into anger. “I need you out of here.” She tapped her temple with her finger. “Understand?”

  “Certainly.” Daniel’s calm, one-word agreement caused the temperature in the room to drop twenty degrees. At least it felt that way.

  Great. Fleur had managed to alienate one of the two beings, human or otherwise, who hadn’t slammed the door in her face. Like quiltwork, she was trying to sew together a coven from tattered scraps. She hadn’t approached the Twins yet. She knew that they would be offended if she didn’t take it for granted that she could count on them. But Hugo, the Twins, and she did not a coven make.

  The only other witch who’d taken her seriously, Eli Landry, had sought her out. She wouldn’t have had either the heart or the nerve to approach him, but he’d caught wind of her efforts from the other witches. Eli had been her first love, and she his. They’d reconnected the morning of Celestin’s memorial ball, bumping into each other by chance outside a coffee shop on Prytania. He’d asked to be her escort at the ball, and she’d agreed, if only for old times’ sake.

  That he would issue such an invitation after all this time, despite the callous way she’d broken things off with him, spoke to his kindness and loyalty. To think, he’d only escaped Celestin’s murder spree because he’d left the ball early to check on her after her intentionally dramatic exit. But then, Eli was a singular man.

  Still, she couldn’t much blame the others for shooing her away. Most of the surviving witches in New Orleans were solitary, and as far as Fleur could see, there was a good reason for that. Independent, strong-willed, odd, and surly, these were the kids who’d gotten report cards marked “does not play well with others” and considered it a badge of honor. They seemed content to keep things that way, especially since the best pitch she’d come up with sounded something like, Hello. My dead father recently slaughtered a half dozen or so different covens. Would you care to join the new one I’m convening? He’ll likely come after us.

  She sighed, almost giving in to a sense of defeat. No. She caught hold of herself. Self-pity was a luxury she couldn’t afford.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. Daniel’s cool, passive expression melted into a moue—a sign, Fleur decided, that she should be a touch more effusive in her apology. Ah, what the hell. She was sorry. “I shouldn’t have . . . discounted your feelings. It was insensitive of me, and I’ve exposed my own ignorance in doing so.”

  He raised his chin. “Well, perhaps I am a touch sensitive.”

  Fleur couldn’t help but smile. This fellow, she decided, was good at conveying layered messages. He’d managed to take partial responsibility for the unpleasantness, all while impressing on her that his emotions were both real and calibrated with precision.

  Daniel hadn’t always known he was a servitor spirit. Nicholas and Astrid had led him to believe he was the ghost of an Irish worker who’d died during the construction of the New Basin Canal. Fleur had thought it a cruel ruse, but—count it as yet another moral failing on her part—never spoke up about it. After Katrina, he had disappeared. Years came and went, and she never gave the dissolved servitor a thought. Then, every bit as unexpectedly, he returned in full and solid form. Fleur didn’t know how Daniel came to learn that he’d never lived as a man, that he’d been created to watch over Nicholas’s children. She supposed it had been left to Hugo to expose his parents’ lie after Daniel returned. Her nephew had been the only one left to tell him. They had—they all had, including her—abandoned Alice in an institution, and Luc had long since been reduced to ash and bone.

  “I know you were acting out of concern . . . genuine concern. It’s only . . . ,” she began, trailing into silence. She felt the same trepidation she always felt when in the confessional, pretending to confide in the attending priest. She required neither the good father’s benediction nor heaven’s absolution, but her husband had always maintained attendance was important for the sake of appearances. Warren knew more about appearances than any other person Fleur had ever met, so she’d made a habit of going once, sometimes twice a week. Every time the father’s smooth, pale hand pulled back the curtain, Fleur rattled off a list of half-truths and imagined venial sins invented as misdirection to draw the priest’s attention away from heavier, veiled truths. Well, today she didn’t have it in her.

  Today she didn’t want to have it in her.

  Daniel might be sweet. He might be helpful. His concern might be the most genuine Fleur had ever encountered. Still, she owed him no accounting. He wasn’t entitled to an explanation of situations that counted as none of his business. She closed her eyes and drew a breath. “Could we . . .” She opened her eyes and plas
tered her most diplomatic smile on her face. “Seven?”

  “Seven?” he looked at her with wide, confused eyes. “Oh,” he said, nodding as her meaning hit him. “Yes, indeed. Seven.” He pulled out a stool from the counter and perched himself on it. His mien reminded Fleur of her old freshman English lit professor, well versed and eager to impart knowledge to fertile minds. “The Lesser Key,” he began the lecture, “alludes to the seven gates of the underworld, a single line, which doesn’t provide much insight if taken out of context, but when you consider the concept in light of the illustrations on the book’s center pages, its heart, if you will . . .” He reached behind him for the plastic-enveloped book.

  “That’s okay,” Fleur said, prompting him to face her. “I know. The King of Bones and Ashes and the Queen of Heaven.” Every detail of the primitive portraits of the two personages had been burned into her memory. She didn’t need to see the images again.

  “Yes, both aspects of Inanna and her consort Damuzi. If you remember, the night of the ball honoring your father, I understand that Julia and Gabriel—that is, your father impersonating Gabriel—arrived dressed . . . or, in Ms. Prosper’s case, undressed except for a rather impressive emerald necklace . . . as these gods.”

  Fleur flashed back to the sight of Julia Prosper walking into the hall, her head held high, her regard proud, withering even, a necklace of diamonds and teardrop-cut emeralds fit for royalty cascading onto her breasts. In that moment, Fleur felt certain, Julia had seen herself as royalty. In the next, she was dead, her exquisite necklace dripping blood. Fleur felt her own blood drain from her face as she considered how close she had come to sharing Julia’s fate.

  Yes. She remembered. “I was there. I don’t think I’ll ever forget.”

  “Well, no. I can see how you wouldn’t,” Daniel said. Then, seeming to realize his faux pas, he rushed on. “I believe there’s a reason why The Lesser Key presents Inanna as nude, except for that final bit of jewelry.”

  Fleur leaned forward and raised her eyebrows, a silent cue for Daniel to continue.

  “Inanna attempted to annex her sister’s kingdom, the underworld, but to reach the underworld she had to pass through”—he held up a finger—“seven gates.”

  “Okay,” Fleur said. “So?”

  His eyes caught fire with enthusiasm. “Each gate had a guard, and each guard commanded her to remove one item of her attire. But it was a trap, a trick played on her by her sister. With each item she removed, she grew weaker. The last adornment she relinquished was the necklace. Inanna found herself powerless before her sister after passing through the final gate.”

  “I take it her sister didn’t welcome her with open arms.”

  “Oh, my goodness, no.” He shook his head. “Theirs was a magic without mercy. She turned Inanna over to—as you might guess—seven judges, who tried and then executed her.”

  “A happy ending then?”

  “Well, no. Not quite happy for the Queen of Heaven, but not the ending of her story either. She was brought back to life via some kind of pixie dust or the like, and negotiated her way out of the underworld by promising to send another to take her place.” Daniel leaned back, his lips pursing as he stared at some point between them.

  “What is it?” she said, jarring him from his reverie. “Whom did she send?”

  “Her husband Damuzi . . .” His head tilted to the side and his jaw jutted out. She could sense he was weighing a decision of some sort. “There’s a detail of the story I’ve overlooked . . . until now. It strikes me that it may be important.”

  “What might that be?”

  “Inanna also sent Damuzi’s sister.”

  “I see,” Fleur said. “You suspect Astrid might have roles for Nicholas and me to play in her scheme.”

  “I found the book among her belongings. On the bright side, at least from your perspective, Damuzi’s sister volunteered to take his place six months of the year. Unless you’re inclined to take Nicholas’s place . . .”

  “I assure you, I am not.”

  Daniel shrugged. “Then you should be free and clear.”

  “Why then? Why everything but the necklace?”

  “I think it’s a sign that our Inanna hasn’t taken the final step. She hasn’t yet sacrificed the last of her power. Everything in there,” he pointed his thumb back over his shoulder to the counter where The Lesser Key lay, “appears to be about self-sacrifice, not your good old Buddha-like denial of the illusion of self, but about erasing one’s presence from this world.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “Dunno. To become worthy of The Book of the Unwinding? To conquer the underworld?” He chuckled at what he seemed to think a joke, but something about the notion struck a chord.

  “Or maybe,” Fleur said, “to bring something back from the underworld.” She had trouble swallowing the idea of shades wandering through a down-below for all eternity. She wondered if this “underworld” might be an actual place, a hidden dimension, or a state of mind.

  Daniel ran his fingers through his curly mop of ginger hair. “Murder was the first act of magic,” he said, his tone confirming that he felt she might be on to something. He fell silent, seeming to play with the idea in his mind. He did, it dawned on her, have a mind. Being manufactured did not mean he was unreal. She’d be more careful, more considerate toward him going forward.

  He tapped his finger on his temple. “There’s one aspect of all this that has been nettling me.”

  “Yes?”

  “I believe we know the ‘why’ of what we’ve been seeing. Magic is fading away, and most witches aren’t willing to let it go without a fight. Celestin,” he said, using his given name—an intentional choice, she was sure, to absolve her of her relationship to him—“was willing to give up his own life, take the lives of his family members.” He held his hands out before him, palms up. “Become a mass murderer even. But,” he said, flipping his hands over and slapping his knees, “magic isn’t only disappearing from New Orleans. It’s disappearing from the entire planet.”

  Fleur nodded in agreement.

  “Then why does New Orleans seem to be the epicenter of the madness? On the surface, it seems like a confluence of chance, but if you think about it, it’s almost like it was planned all along. That this city was chosen to be where magic would make its last stand. The Book of the Unwinding, the manual for surviving the final days of magic, was brought here back when the Vieux Carré was still kind of new.”

  Fleur shrugged. This wasn’t news. “Evangeline has told us her mother and her mother’s sister witches were charged with carrying it here, to what was then a godforsaken outpost at the end of the world.”

  “Yes, I know, purportedly to move it beyond the reach of those who might be seduced by it. I’m thinking that could have been a cover story. That this city was built here, and the Book brought here, for a very specific reason.” He tilted his forehead forward and gave her a knowing look.

  “All right. I’ll bite,” she said. “What is that reason?”

  He smiled, his face taking on the smug, satisfied look of a paperback mystery detective standing in a drawing room, preparing to reveal the identity of the murderer to his captivated—and captive—audience. “Seven,” he said and winked at her.

  “Seven?”

  “Yes. The seven gates. To the underworld. As your new best friend Lisette Perrault could tell you, tradition holds they’re all located right here in New Orleans. The seven Gates of Guinee.”

  Lisette Perrault. The daughter of the woman her own mother had murdered. The mother of the young man Lucy loved. Fleur felt the ground tremble, then realized that the earth hadn’t moved. It was she who was shaking. The pieces had begun to fall together, and she hated to see Lucy’s face on even the far edge of the picture they formed. “I, I,” she stammered, “I need to go.”

  Daniel jumped to his feet. “I know I should hasten the parting guest out the door,” he said, holding up a hand signaling her to wait. “But b
efore you go, there’s one more item we need to discuss.” She stood there silently, feeling the pulse pound in her neck. “Alice,” he said, when she failed to respond. “We need to talk about Alice. I know you’ve given up on her, but I think I’ve found a way to bring her back.”

  Fleur grasped the edge of the table, both anxious to hear his idea and dreading it.

  EIGHT

  Fleur’s aura had been the black-purple of a physical bruise, with pinpricks of red sparking out. Anguish with a desperation shooter.

  No wonder the witch was desperate. Evangeline sensed Fleur’s magic tank was nearing empty. She was running on fumes. Soon she was going to watch her daughter die, and she’d not even made it halfway to realizing there wasn’t a damned thing she could do.

  There wasn’t a damned thing Evangeline could do either.

  If she could help, she would, but how the hell was she supposed to help anyone when she couldn’t even help herself? Evangeline hadn’t found the strength to speak to Fleur of the torture Celestin and the sister witches had been inflicting on her. She’d tried to convince herself that she’d kept quiet so as not to add to Fleur’s burden, but deep down, she knew Fleur had it right: Evangeline was ashamed. Ashamed of her own powerlessness.

  No. She was in no shape to help Fleur with her troubles.

  Nicholas might be able to buy his niece some time. If he would. Given his track record with his own children—and Evangeline still saw Alice as his, regardless—he sure as hell couldn’t be counted on. There was the possibility that he might swoop in at the last minute. Play the great hero. Nicholas was good at that. Grand gestures that made him look like a bigger man than he’d ever be.

  Much more likely that Hugo would step up. That boy—that crazy, self-centered, irresponsible, good-time boy—he’d give it all up, every last drop of his power, to give Lucy even one more day. And he’d do it without a thought. Because, in spite of his many exasperating faults, half of which she suspected him of affecting to serve as armor, that’s who he was, what he did. He took care of the people he loved. Even when they didn’t want him to. The son of a bitch.