The King of Bones and Ashes

by J. D. Horn

  She strode up to her father, whose lips tipped into a smile as he threw his arms wide to welcome her.

  “There’s my baby girl,” he said. “I was just coming by to see you.”

  She stopped just beyond his reach, and his stupid, drunk glee faded—but only a touch. For the first time in her life, she felt ashamed of him. “Why are you all lit up?” she said, her hands on her hips, unintentionally mimicking her mother. “And what are you doing with that horn? That isn’t yours.”

  “Oh, it’s mine all right. I bought it special this morning.” He raised it to his lips and ran up a quick scale, ending with a flourish.

  She held her stance and narrowed her eyes. “Special for what?”

  His head jerked and his eyes widened in genuine surprise. “You haven’t heard?” He turned to a passing stranger. “She hasn’t heard!”

  She stepped forward and grabbed his forearm. “No, she has not heard,” Lisette said, her words breathless, angry, “but she is standing right here in front of you, so maybe you should get busy with the telling.”

  He looked at her, his lips drawing into a thin line. Then his face loosened, and he began to laugh. “Celestin Marin,” he said, his eyes twinkling, “is finally dead. Funeral’s day after tomorrow.” He winked at her. “Gonna be a band and all. This tin horn and I are gonna join in right before they cut the bastard’s body loose,” he said and laughed. “May end up a devil of a second line.”

  “Celestin wasn’t a musician. Why would anyone throw him a jazz funeral?”

  Her father didn’t respond with words, but a wide smile crept across his lips.

  “You did not . . .”

  “I sure did. I arranged the whole thing. How the hell else do you think it could happen?” He wagged the offending horn at her. “Just rang up a few friends. Charles Delinois made up a little white lie for me about how Marin was a secret donor for years to a charity to keep music in schools, and how it’s the least we can . . .”

  “You lied to Vincent,” Lisette cut him off, regretting it before she could draw her next breath. It was ridiculous. Even after twenty-five years, the mere thought of Vincent darn near took her breath away . . . like someone had kicked her hard in the gut. She loved her husband. She loved the family they’d made together. Still, it hurt to speak Vincent’s name. It hurt like hell.

  “Yeah. I reckon I did a bit,” her father said, sobering, Lisette could only surmise, from having witnessed the expression on her face. “The boy ate the story right up. Seemed kind of hungry for any kind words about his defan papa.”

  “Vincent’s a good man. You’ve got no reason . . .”

  “Vincent’s a Marin.” Her father’s jaw stiffened, the mirth in his eyes turning to hatred. “Reason enough.”

  “You were friends once, all of you. Mama and you and the Marins.” She hoped her words would summon a happy memory for him, but he remained stock-still and silent. “All right,” Lisette said. “So how about you tell me why. What do you get out of this parade?”

  The smile returned to his face, but it had come back cold and cruel, making him look less like the father she knew and loved. He held the horn to his lips and blew a few bars of the “Cross Road Blues” before lowering the horn. “I’m gonna play that son of a bitch’s soul right into hell.”

  Lisette felt her jaw drop. It took her a moment to find words. “What kind of fool nonsense are you talking?”

  “It isn’t nonsense,” he said, clutching the trumpet to his chest. “You aren’t the only one who learned a thing or two from your mother. Gonna use this horn to blow his soul straight to the lowest pit of hell, then I’m gonna toss it in the river. Make sure it never gets played again. Would be too dangerous to let it fall into innocent hands afterward.”

  Lisette raised her hands to her temples. She shook her head. This could not be happening. Her father really couldn’t think himself capable of speeding another man’s descent into the fiery pit. She’d come so close, so many times, to telling her father that she no longer believed. That she knew none of this, not the vèvès, not the candles, not the gris-gris bags—especially not the table of premade ones at the shop now marked down to $19.99 each—was real. She’d only held her tongue out of respect for him and her mother’s memory.

  Dropping her hands, Lisette glanced back over her shoulder at the shop. She almost gasped, sure she caught the image of her mother moving behind the vèvès painted on the windows. No, that could not be. It was just a creation of her mind—more fodder for her next therapy appointment. Blinking the apparition away, she turned back to her father. “Listen, Daddy, even if you could . . .” She stopped herself, choosing her words more carefully. “Even if you do know how to do what you’re planning, what good would it do? What happened with Mama and Mrs. Marin was so long ago.”

  “Maybe to you, but not to me. To me, it still seems like yesterday.”

  “But, Daddy, Celestin didn’t have anything more to do with it than you or I . . .”

  “Oh, he had something to do with it all right. I know it.” Tears brimmed in his eyes, and he pounded on his chest with his free hand. “I know it in here.”

  What harm can it do? Lisette thought. Might even do him some good. Do all of us some good. Bury this damned animosity between the families once and for all. Lisette looked up at him. Patted his chest. “All right, Daddy. You do what you need to do.” She leaned in and kissed his cheek. As she pulled back, she noticed his eyes were reddening. His bottom lip began to quiver. For a moment, she wondered if the storm had passed, but then he raised his chin, his expression hardening, defiance growing in his eyes. “You could help, you know.”

  She traced her hand down his arm. “No, Daddy,” she said, turning, heading back toward the shop. “I really couldn’t.”

  THREE

  Alice gazed out the window, its thick damask curtains framing the waves as they broke on the rocky beach below. She wanted to go down to the water’s edge. Take advantage of as many hours of the summer sun as she could. But she’d been asked—in a manner that couldn’t be refused—to remain in the great hall. Her doctors were reviewing her case. Again. There would be questions. Questions to be answered when she felt like it, questions to be evaded when she didn’t. She wondered if her responses even mattered.

  She no longer spoke of Babau Jean. She no longer insisted that the bogey had been controlling Luc, holding his hand, forcing him to pull the trigger. She pretended to no longer believe that what she’d witnessed was real. For years now, she had pretended to no longer believe in him at all.

  But he was always waiting for her in her dreams, just beyond the edge of consciousness.

  Her grandfather’s stories about Babau Jean, the wondrous monster, had entranced her, but it had terrified her to see the creature in the common world. Until the day the levees fell, until she felt Babau Jean’s cold grip around her wrist, she’d never understood that the children in her grandfather’s stories would never return from their adventures.

  After the bogey’s attack, she’d pretended to believe her uncle Vincent’s promise that the only thing threatening to run away with her was her imagination. And she had very nearly begun to believe it. The nine months she and Hugo had spent living with their Aunt Fleur had been an oasis of stilted normality. But she’d no sooner arrived home than she’d witnessed that beast murdering her brother.

  Babau Jean had remained with her ever since.

  She sat, hoping to appear composed, patient, her navy peacoat slung across her knees. A heavy coat in summer. She’d never truly accepted the need to bundle up in June, but it was never warm here. Not really. Wind whistled around the island day and night. Still, there was a difference between the kiss of the cool, damp summer air and the deathly bite of the winter gales. In winter, the beach was off-limits for residents. Here, it seemed winter could last forever.

  As far removed as it could be from the mainland while still remaining an official part of the States, Sinclair Isle had a habit of being overlooked
by mapmakers, and even satellites seemed to blink while surveying the earth below. On sunny days, lobster and crab boats would bob in plain sight of the island’s inhabitants. For years, she had waved at the fishermen, an act of childish friendliness, a childish dream of rescue. But the men on the boats had never taken notice of the spindly girl shrieking “hello” from the shore of the fairly substantial landmass not even half a nautical mile away. One of the security guards had laughed at her antics, and it was he who had told her the truth—the island was cloaked, hidden from those who didn’t need to know of its existence. If any uninvited guests came too close, they would be overcome by a sense of disorientation and foreboding that would not lift until they changed course.

  The island had been cut off from the rest of the world to minimize disturbing outside influences. That’s what her doctor had told her when she’d asked him. But it was a lie, and she knew it. Sinclair Isle was home to a psychiatric care facility, one that housed witches with emotional issues. Witches who were considered too dangerous to live without supervision.

  There had been a dozen or so institutions like Sinclair scattered around the globe. But with magic failing, most of them, Sinclair included, were being phased out. Without magic, the inmates might still be disturbed, but they were no longer witches. The residents who were deemed safe enough to return to society would be shipped home, and the rest would be consolidated into one of the three hospitals that would remain open. Alice had watched, sometimes through this same window, as the other residents boarded the ferry and rode off over the rough sea.

  There were no roads to speak of on the island. A simple single-lane path ran from the docks up to the great house, then snaked around the cottages, the private homes of the institution’s medical and administrative staff. It ended at a copse of pines behind the dormitory that housed the maintenance workers and security officers. The area where the cottages sat had been off-limits to residents for most of the time Alice had been here, but as the staff and residents continued to dwindle—the institute moving toward closure—many rules had been relaxed.

  She and Sabine, a girl near her own age who had become her only true friend, had dared to explore this forbidden kingdom together, the afternoon before Sabine was released. That had been at the end of March. A year ago.

  Alice had been left alone to face another island winter.

  She’d come to hate winter. She’d come to hate snow.

  Snow—the first time she’d seen it—had fallen in New Orleans the Christmas Day before Katrina. She’d begged to be excused from the table, and in a rare turn of good nature, her father had agreed. They’d all gone out—her father, Luc, and Hugo. She had danced with Luc, spinning in wide, intoxicating circles. She’d laughed to see snowflakes dust his lashes. Her father and Hugo had pelted each other with heavy, wet balls. Even Daniel had ventured outside, as far as the magic would let him, to gaze up at the falling flakes. On the day, it had seemed miraculous, but she’d since learned nothing good had ever come from snow.

  Alice had put a lot of thought into what she’d do if she ever got to leave. First on that list was burning her coat. She’d go to a place where the snow never came. She’d cut her hair. Short. She’d get a job in a café. One that sold books. She’d get a place of her own. She’d fix a flower box in the window, and a lock on the door, one to which she held the only key. She’d . . .

  She’d heard nothing from Sabine, but that didn’t mean Sabine hadn’t tried to reach out to her. The institution did all it could to discourage former residents from reconnecting. Recidivism had, at some point, been shown to be higher among those who’d remained close with other former residents. Much better, the staff would say, to build a future-focused life.

  Alice realized her foot was jiggling. She set her foot on the floor, pressing the sole of her shoe into the rug, trying not to seem impatient. If they sensed her impatience, they might put off talking to her, just to see how she would take the delay. The doctors, the nurses, they were always testing the residents. And now that there were fewer residents than ever, more of their attention fell on Alice.

  She turned her own attention to the light the sun cast on the sea, the way it pierced the depths, creating a patch of translucent blue in the field of gray green. She traced the path of a wave with her eyes, willing the swell to rise higher, to crash harder against the shore, but to no effect. The same spell that hid the island turned it into a magical dead zone. The burst of energy would be picked up and registered, she knew. Her chart would show that she had once again attempted an act of magic, and that, once again, the ward over the island had diffused her effort.

  “Alice,” a man’s voice said. She turned to see an unfamiliar face. That face wore the same placid smile she’d grown used to seeing from all of the staff at Sinclair. He was surprisingly young for a doctor. He wore a white coat. Not the usual attire for Sinclair staff. The orderlies wore scrubs, often beneath a heavy jacket or sweater, and the guards wore midnight-blue uniforms that reminded her of the New Orleans police, but the doctors and nurses tended to wear street clothes, not much different from the residents. Many of the familiar medical staff had moved on or been transferred. She’d gone through six primary doctors in the past five months. “Hello,” the man said, then tapped the screen of one of the pads the medical staff carried around everywhere.

  “You’re new,” she said. He looked back up at her. Really looked at her. She held his gaze and offered him a well-honed counterfeit of a Duchenne smile—one she knew to be convincing, and in some circumstances, disconcerting. No one expected to encounter true happiness in an inmate’s eyes. “It’s always so nice to see a new face around here.” If the doctors here made a career of studying her, she had made a vocation of studying them. For them, it was a matter of professional curiosity. For Alice, it was a matter of survival. Perhaps not in the literal flesh and bone sense, but to save the spark of herself, the one she had brought with her to this place.

  She allowed herself a glance at his wrist. The staff who did have magic wore a metal band engraved with a combination of sigils, occult symbols, that allowed them to access their magic even here on the island. They always seemed to be touching those bands, adjusting them as if they chafed. Maybe the new doctor wasn’t a witch, or maybe his access to power had become so weakened—quiet observation and eavesdropping led her to believe the rate and degree of magic’s failure had been exponential over the last several months—he felt it wasn’t worth the irritation.

  “Yes, I am new here,” he said. “My name is Dr. Parker.” His head tilted to the side, a quick involuntary movement. His lips parted, then fell back into a smile. A genuine smile. For a moment, Alice felt a twinge of guilt. He seemed like a nice guy. But then she reminded herself that she couldn’t trust anyone in this place, this new doctor included. “I’ve been brought in to assist Dr. Woodard.” His face flushed, and he dropped his eyes.

  “Dr. Woodard?” Alice said. She hadn’t even laid eyes on him yet, but she’d heard his name from Sabine and others who had met with him before their release. He was the keeper of the key. And this interview, which she’d envisioned as another routine check-in with the everyday staff, was likely, at last, to be the formal review.

  “Yes,” the young doctor said. “He’d like to speak with you, if now’s a good time.”

  “Of course,” Alice said.

  “Then, if you wouldn’t mind . . . ,” he said and motioned to a door at the far end of the great room. Alice rose from the bench where she’d sat. The doctor glanced back at her, gripping his pad between both hands—a nervous gesture—and pressing the screen to his chest. When their eyes met, he flushed once again. “You probably know better than I where the consultation rooms are,” he said, though he still led the way.

  “Yes,” Alice said and nodded. Two wings flanked the central hall where she sat to watch the waves. Long before Alice had arrived on the island, an unsympathetic builder had carved a row of identical, sterile, windowless offices—the consu
ltation rooms—from a single room in the ancient stone house’s eastern wing. Private consultations were always held here. The only interesting feature in any of the drab, otherwise featureless rooms was the detailed pattern of sigils overhead. She didn’t understand all of them, even after years of the residents’ shared speculation as to their purpose, but she was well familiar with the room closest to the guard station. This room was known as “the bubble”—the one place on the island where a witch’s access to magic wasn’t dampened. She’d visited this room often in her early years. Had even spent several nights there so the doctors could perform a sleep study on her. They’d searched for Babau Jean, but he’d been too clever for them. She’d slept beneath his watchful gaze, but neither their machines nor their empaths could pick up on his presence. They’d taken the experiment to prove that he didn’t exist except as a shadow in her mind.

  Babau Jean had laughed in silence as he continued to move freely through the liminal spaces.

  Dr. Parker led her past “the bubble,” then surprised her by carrying on past the row of offices to a door at the far end of the hall, a door she had seen before but never noticed. It was painted gray and appeared to be made of reinforced metal. As she focused on it, she realized it was covered in another set of symbols, painted in the same shade but a different luster. You had to stand at a certain distance, and look at the door from a certain angle, to notice them. “An obscuration,” she said aloud without realizing it.

  Dr. Parker froze, his hand balled up and poised, ready to rap on the door. “Yes,” he said, his smooth forehead bunching up, a line forming down its center. “You can see them? The sigils?”

  Alice nodded. It was too late to fib. “For a second. I was just guessing. I mean, I’ve spent a lot of time in the consulting rooms, but I never noticed . . .”—she paused, looking for precision—“never cared to notice this door. Or wondered where it went.”