But this much was certain: I didn’t want him if he didn’t want me. I deserved to be wanted, didn’t I? I wasn’t going to convince someone to be in love with me. Much as it hurt, I had too much pride for that. And I couldn’t afford to feel so weak in my relationship at a time when I needed to be so physically strong in order to live. To guard my soul, I had to first guard my heart and my mind.
And so right now, I would have to be strong. I would have to tuck Lance and all of this away somewhere deep inside. I needed to be fully awake and alive to absorb whatever it was that was about to unfold before us on this cruel night.
21. The First of Many Soul Captures
At midnight on the dot, we heard the first sounds of stirring below: footsteps, so faint, falling like a soft rain. We had been leaning against that pedestal and now we sat straight up, attuned to every noise and movement, even though so much remained shrouded in darkness.
Within minutes, they started trickling in, coming from every direction. Some dropped over the walls of the cemetery, alighting to the ground gracefully. But many others crept out of the crypts. I heard the slow scrape of rock against rock and felt the slightest vibration from beneath where we sat. I looked to Lance, who wore the same confused expression. A few seconds later, I spotted one of them directly below us: he had emerged from this very tomb. A shiver swept over me.
There were at least two dozen of them in all, floating over to the lawn area silently, as though everyone knew his or her role and performed it effortlessly, the cogs in a perfect machine. They abandoned their shoes in neat rows, like parked cars. They peeled off layers of street clothes so that the women were left in either white dresses—from long flowy ones to short wispy ones—or tank tops and camisoles with skirts. The men wore white T-shirts and white linen pants. Everyone’s attire shared a looseness, beachlike and free. As a whole, the group had an incandescence, their clothes picking up what light there was and reflecting it at a higher wattage. Two men laid out a woven tapestry in a swirling array of colors that glittered even in the dim haze. It stretched nearly the entire length of the lawn, roughly the size of a tennis court. A pair of barefoot girls in billowing skirts and tank tops knotted up above their navels set candles out along all four sides, the dancing flames fencing it in.
From the darkness came a drumbeat, and then a long, low hum, so soft at first I thought I had imagined it, until it grew louder, stronger, more guttural as the beats echoed with greater force. Below, everyone stood perfectly still surrounding that tapestry, then slowly began swaying, raising their hands, as the hum evolved into a chant, though the words weren’t in any language I had ever heard. Another drum sounded in the distance, playing a game of call and response. Slowly all the bodies turned to face the direction of this drum. Lance and I craned our necks trying to find the mysterious source of this sound.
The man with a drum stood beside a tall, boxy crypt at the far end of the cemetery, with a straight path to the gathering. It was one of the crypts that I had recently painted. Slowly the passageway in front slid open and a cloaked figure emerged. Only delicate ivory hands and feet were exposed beneath the gauzy black floor-length covering, sheer enough to reveal her knee-length black slipdress underneath. A hood concealed her head and face. She glided, accompanied by the drum, to that spot where they all stood waiting for her, chanting to welcome her. The closer she got, the faster the tempo of the chanting became. As she approached the group, those lined up closest to her split their chain in half and moved with such precise coordination it looked like two sides of a gate opening. All the while, they swayed and clapped and waved their hands in the air, keeping their music going.
With ethereal poise, she passed through them onto the candlelit tapestry. The human gate closed, reuniting the chain of revelers, as the hooded woman took her place at its dead center. As she settled into that space, the abstract patterns of the silky lawn covering glowed red and transformed into a mammoth pentagram around where she stood. It looked as though embers had risen up from the ground, singeing this symbol into the material.
Her drummer joined the chanting masses, and the woman slowly raised her arms up into the sky as though conducting all these unified voices. She stood frozen there for a few seconds, then, she spun around slowly, then fast, faster, spinning and spinning until she leapt out of her spin and launched into a dance. The layers of her draping cloak trailed behind her movements, like a shadow, as she pranced and whirled across the entire space, filling it up with her motions. Arms waving in grand and graceful sweeps, legs kicking and swooping into the air, she leaned and swayed, carried away by the music. I couldn’t look away. I was aware of nothing but her until stinging waves washed over my scars. Every few moments they would dissipate only to flare again. I tapped at that spot above my heart and then felt for my charm necklace as though grasping those pieces of metal could soothe anything.
The chanting picked up into a frenzy of clapping and foot stomping. The hooded woman began spinning once more, this time ending as abruptly as the music did, back in the center of that tapestry. The silence came so suddenly, it made my heart lurch. I felt as if I had been the one dancing and needed to catch my own breath. I imagined this was how everyone on that lawn felt, as if she had tapped into each of them and was living this out on their behalf, taking them with her through her movements.
Through it all, somehow, her cloak had managed to stay put, that hood never exposing her face. But now she carefully unfastened the ties in front and held out her arms straight on either side of her. As she stood there, without a word, two women stepped forward out of the line. Flanking her, they delicately pulled down the hood and slid off the sheer drape, taking it away.
It was Clio, barefoot in her slim dress, gazing at her loyal subjects. The light shimmered off her skin. She said something I couldn’t understand, arms outstretched toward those in front of her. I noticed now that the fleur-de-lis tattoo on her wrist burned bright, glowing to a crimson shade, as though it had been newly branded by a hot iron, matching the pentagram on the ground. The entire group answered her with another mysterious word. Then, as if that had been the cue, several of the onlookers stepped forward, placing ceramic bowls and urns of all shapes and sizes around her in a circle and then sitting at her feet. I didn’t know where they had gotten these, but it must’ve happened while I had been transfixed by her dancing. It worried me that I had managed to get so swept up that I had stopped paying such close attention to the full picture. There was something hypnotic about these proceedings. I looked at Lance out of the corner of my eye and wondered if he was thinking the same thing.
At last, Clio spoke and in words we could understand.
“Welcome, mes chéries,” she cooed, in a slow, sweet voice. “We have been harvesting for weeks, far and wide, around our fair city and its surroundings, as you know. We have been cultivating much-needed ingredients from the strongest of sources: the recently departed.” That phrase gnawed at my mind—did that mean what it sounded like? But she went on and I had to listen. “It is from these glorious building blocks that we are synthesizing some particularly potent toxins, as we speak.”
She held her arms out toward the urns at her feet and one by one, beginning with the woman seated directly in front of her, each pulled out whatever lay inside the vessels. First came a bone—it didn’t look like one of Mariette’s, but more substantial . . . human. Another produced scraps of clothing. A few had small jars of a dark liquid that I knew, even from where I sat, had to be blood. Some had jewelry—one bearing a ring that still had a finger attached, which was so gruesome I had to look away. Another had an ear. And the last held a blood-splattered baseball cap. At that, Lance averted his eyes and found mine. He leaned toward me. “Jeff. That was Jeff’s,” he whispered in a shaky voice. “It was in your photo.” He shook his head. When all of these items had been presented and displayed, those manning the urns slipped back into their spots in line.
Clio went on: “We will be able to take many souls
in the coming weeks, if we all do our part. We should have plenty to boast about when we make the pilgrimage to see our brothers and sisters of Père-Lachaise.” Père-Lachaise. I turned it over in my mind. Yes, I knew it. From AP French. Paris. It was a cemetery there. Full of artists and writers and even a rock star or two, if I recalled. I tucked it away for now and kept listening. “. . . and so tonight we celebrate the first of what will be many soul captures.” She dragged out the phrase, letting its importance linger in the air.
She then gestured to those along the tapestry edge to her right, holding out that elegant arm to summon with the slightest flick of the wrist. “Come, my lovely,” she said. The line parted and a guy stepped forward, serene and dreamlike, floating toward her. He wasn’t dressed in white garb, though. Instead he wore his street clothes. Which I recognized. Even from this distance I knew him: Jimmy. He looked just as he had when he had burst into my room. The wild hair, the torn shirt and worn jeans. He seemed completely entranced. His gaze never left Clio’s face. He stopped beside her.
“Today we are privileged to be welcoming someone new to our fold. We expect great things,” she said. Jimmy didn’t quite look like anything was registering. A man came forward from the back row and on bended knee presented Clio with a black satin bag. It was Wylie. She took it from him with both hands, as though it was something sacred.
Beginning with the bone directly in front of her, she used nothing more than her index finger to slice off the slimmest sliver and place it in the bag. She made her way around, taking bits of each ingredient, pouring in a few trickles from the jars of blood, until she had each item represented in her bag. She gave it a shake, then put both hands around it until the bag glowed red. Reaching inside, she pulled out an incandescent scarlet orb the size of a baseball. The bag fell to the ground and she held one hand out, fingers fanned, focusing her eyes on part of the burning pentagram symbol closest to her. It grew brighter and brighter, then the flame kicked up, rising to meet her hand. She held the orb in both hands again and the blaze licked at her, turning her hands and the ball itself a fiery orange. Finally, she pulled away and held a handful of molten ash. With a master craftsman’s careful fingers, she molded the fireball into a sharp point, like an ice pick.
She nodded to Jimmy and he obediently took off his shirt and turned around, his back to us now. Even from so far away, I saw those scars, stubbornly embedded, the ones all of us angels in training had across our shoulder blades. Those marred patches of flesh awaited something so lofty and divine and beautiful, if we could only get to that point in time: wings. Clio lifted the sharp stake into the air, its point twinkling like a diamond. Then her arm swooped down. In two sharp swipes, Clio slashed at each of those scars. Whoosh. Whoosh. It sounded like the feedback from a microphone. Jimmy’s back arched at the pain, but you could see, even from here, the muscles tensing, trying to fight it off, and he quickly straightened out. Two slash marks, black and thick, oozed from his shoulder blades now. Beneath them, those scars bubbled and sizzled and then, in seconds, evaporated. It happened so fast I thought I had missed something. His back became an entirely smooth canvas, his rippled muscles the only texture. But when he turned around, he wasn’t Jimmy anymore. He was that other figure, that blond man I had seen flashes of as I had fought him in my room. Lance leaned forward, crouching now, anything to get a better look. I touched his arm.
“You saw that too, then?” I whispered.
He nodded, his lips pursed.
Clio gave the slightest bow. I worried things were wrapping up before I’d had a chance to really mentally record it all. I scanned those figures surrounding her. Who were all these people? Where had they come from? As my eyes passed over them, I caught a few familiar faces clustered near Wylie, the handful of his Krewe cohorts I’d seen in my photos.
Clio kissed Jimmy on the forehead and handed him the weapon that had done her dirty work, transforming him. “Now we thank the great Prince for the powers he has bestowed upon us for our service.” He held it up into the sky as she clapped her hands three times and the women who had presented the ingredients returned to retrieve them. The group stood in a circle surrounding Clio and Jimmy. Clio clapped twice more and now everyone flowed onto the tapestry with her. The drums sounded again, beating another spirited rhythm. The women with the urns held them above their heads, waving them in the air, moving to the beat as the whole group began dancing. They hopped and skipped and threw themselves around, so free. Some danced together, while others were in their own worlds. Some of the men pulled off their shirts, tossing them to the side. The women with the long dresses lifted them up to their knees and thighs as they moved. Clio remained at the center of the tapestry with her new recruit, dancing with him, the others leaving a ring of space around them, reverentially.
It should have looked like chaos, but there was something intoxicating about the freeness of it all. A primal, tribal wave swept that space and traveled as a current in the air. I felt my tensed muscles loosen, my posture ease, my mind let up from its racing and its fears as I watched. The dancers’ skin glistened with sweat and their clothing clung to them now, but none of them seemed to mind. All that seemed to matter to them was this need to move to those resounding beats. I could feel them thumping in my heart. I looked at Lance leaning against the pedestal, watching intently.
It’s hard to say how long it went on. The night felt endless, and yet, when the drummers drifted slowly off that mat and others began to follow, it seemed too soon. The drums played on as everyone collected any items they had left along the periphery. A handful of them helped fold up the tapestry, moving with such coordination the process almost looked like a choreographed dance itself.
Once that task had been completed, the drummers began their recessional, leading the group through the cemetery. Along the way, several peeled off to slither inside a tomb, then seal it back up. The group snaked around near our perch and Lance and I crouched behind the pedestal, so still that neither of us was breathing. That man who had crept out from here earlier left the group and pried open one of the casket vaults to return. I didn’t dare move or breathe until I heard the heavy marble slide back into place as the winding tail of the group traveled on farther. The members of that core group we knew as the Krewe’s leaders hung back, Jimmy among them, with Clio at the very end of the line. They reached the part of the wall nearest to us and a few scaled it.
Wylie scooped up the woman beside him in one arm and scurried up the wall, clutching her tightly. When he reached the top, Clio stopped in her tracks, looking up.
“Wylie,” she called, her voice so soothing. He paused and took a seat atop the wall with the girl on his lap, her long arms wound around his neck. She wore a slinky white dress and certainly hadn’t been standing along the edge of that tapestry—I would have noticed. Maybe she had been in the shadows somewhere observing it all quietly. Even from here, I could tell from her lethargy and how she hung on him that she was in some kind of trance.
“Yes, love?” Wylie called down to Clio, flirtatiously.
“I believe there’s someone who would love to meet her,” Clio said purring.
“So soon?”
“Trust me.”
“Lucky us,” he said sincerely. He looked into the girl’s eyes, brushing the long golden brown hair from her face. She barely moved; she just beamed at him dreamily. “We’re taking a field trip, my sweet,” he said, planting a kiss on her lips. She nodded and smiled, clinging even more tightly to him. He swooped back down the wall, landing lightly on his feet. He set her down, but kept one arm around her, pulling her close as they walked now. “Just so you know, we should probably make it quick,” he said to Clio. “I think the toxins will soon be wearing off.” The girl’s head lolled forward, as if she were drunk.
“We’ll be fast,” Clio promised. “But it will absolutely make his night. And besides, you know you’re going to love taking credit,” she teased him, squeezing his arm. She flitted down into that crypt from which sh
e had emerged earlier.
“You know just what to say, don’t you?” he said, helping the girl inside, then climbing in himself. In seconds, the passage sealed up behind them all as though it had never been disturbed in the first place.
It gave me a chill. I knew where they were taking her.
Lance and I neither spoke nor moved for several minutes. It seemed like we both wanted to be sure they had all been sufficiently swallowed up into their respective portals to the underworld before we dared to do anything that would put us at risk for being detected. But when it finally felt safe to speak, I didn’t know where to begin. There was so much to sift through, so much jumbled in my mind. So much I couldn’t make sense of.
“I guess Wylie’s got someone new. I wonder if Sabine knows,” I said.
“Why would she care?” he snapped, his voice attacking me like a blunt object. “She’s done with him. She knows what he is.” It stung to see Lance so upset about her.
“I don’t know. I told her to stay away from him. Connor told her too. She wasn’t thrilled with us; that’s all I’m saying.” He wasn’t looking at me. He sat with his elbows perched on his knees, playing with a leaf, peeling it into tiny pieces. I went on: “Do you really not remember how hard it is to get someone out from under the spell of these . . . these creatures?”
“Of course, I remember,” he said bitterly, shooting daggers at me. “Tell me again about that note from Lucian.”
I was seething now. It built up in me and I knew I had to try to stifle it or I would explode and make this so much worse. I was ready for this night to be over. “I was talking about Dante, but whatever.”
By the time he finally spoke again he had cooled down just enough. “Well, we’re going to have to do something. This is only gonna get worse. I don’t know what they did to Jimmy, but it seems like they intend to do more of it.”
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