by M. J. Rose
“It’s too dangerous,” Alexandra argued.
Dujols put his hand on hers. “Let her go,” he said.
I had stopped listening to them. I was walking the path. Was making all the right turns. I could feel energy pulling me forward.
Soon their voices were far in the distance and no more intrusive than a bee’s buzzing. Reaching the center, I discovered a spiral staircase descending below.
I climbed down. The cavern was even darker. It smelled of earth. Of fungus and moss. Of fecund leaves rotting. The scent of violets followed me in.
A wooden slab with a brass handle was set into the floor. Lifting it, I looked down into a coffin-shaped hole in the ground, just big enough for a body. Dirt floor. Dirt sides.
The wooden slab had a handle on the inside, too.
“Sandrine?”
Startled, I turned.
The beautiful white-haired woman had followed me.
“You need to come back up with me.”
“What is this place?”
“Our initiation chamber.”
“What happens in the initiation?”
“You’re not ready. Before you even attempt it, we need to teach you how to manipulate your breathing so, like the ancients, you can slow your body down, gain power over your heart, your lungs, and the flow of your blood. It’s the first step to learning many forms of restraint.”
“So that I can control La Lune’s coming and going?”
“Yes.”
“What would happen down here once I’d learned to slow my body?”
“You would pass a certain amount of time in this chamber of illumination. Once you proved you could withstand that, we would know you were ready to learn the rest.”
I knew what I had to do. If I didn’t stop La Lune, I was going to lose everything that mattered to me. I had to banish her. Then Julien would return. There was no other choice.
I crawled into the earthen box and, before the woman could object, pulled the lid closed. Heavier than I thought, it slammed with a loud bang I hadn’t expected.
“No!”
Alexandra’s scream was followed by the sound of rain. But it couldn’t be raining, not down here. For what seemed like several minutes I listened to pings, chinks, and dings falling against the wooden lid.
When silence fell again, I took hold of the handle and pushed up. The lid did not budge. I put both hands against the plank and pushed.
Nothing.
“Can you hear me?” Alexandra’s voice was muffled.
“Yes.”
“I’m going to tell you how to slow your breath. And then I am going to get help.”
Her voice was too far away.
“What happened?”
“The wall partially caved in, and the door is covered with stones and dirt. Listen to me and don’t talk. You need to conserve your energy. Get control of your breath. Feel it. Breathe in to the count of four with me . . . one . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . Now hold it just as long . . . one . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . Now out . . . one . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . Now hold . . . counting two . . . three . . . four . . . Keep that rhythm. Breathe slowly. Slowly. Now give your breath a color. A light color that floats. Pale blue or rose . . . pastel green. Imagine that you can see each breath as you expel it and hold it and take more in. Now slow down even more. Count to ten as you take it in . . . five . . . six . . . seven . . . eight . . . nine . . . ten . . . and then count to ten as you let it out. Watch the breath. Watch it as you exhale it and as you hold it.
My panic abated as I followed her instructions and saw and counted the pastel green breaths.
“Now count to fifteen for each inhalation, each hold, and each exhalation. And then twenty. Allow the color to become lighter and lighter as you breathe more and more slowly.”
I focused. I saw Julien’s face in the green miasma. I didn’t want to leave him. I counted to twenty. Was I breathing slow enough? Something was going wrong. The air grew thinner. Too thin. I could feel La Lune in the coffin with me. Nervous, not for herself but for me. For her best chance in generations. I almost felt sorry for her. Lost, wandering, waiting. We wanted the same things, she and I, but they could not be taken by manipulation as she had done through all these years. She was going to lose. I would not go mad like Marguerite, Eugenie, Clothilde or Simone. My portrait would be added to the wall, but the story they would tell about me would not be of a woman who succumbed.
Until that moment, I’d thought I needed La Lune in order to be the woman whom Julien had fallen in love with. To be a painter. To be a sensualist. To be brave. But it wasn’t that way at all, was it? I didn’t need her. She needed me. Without me she was just vapor. Just wind. If La Lune wanted to feel love, she needed me.
I was going to die, here in a dirt coffin in hell. And she would continue her wait . . . searching for someone to infiltrate. Poor La Lune, forever restless, forever hungering for just one thing, to love again, to be loved and be set free.
But I didn’t want to die!
My breath was labored. As slow as it was, it wasn’t slow enough. I couldn’t see the pastel breaths anymore. Only a viscous oily blackness that seeped in through the cracks in the wood, dripping onto me. Skinny snakes of disgusting filthy air that I could not take in. Poisonous vapors. Overtaking me. And there then was a blinding long last burst, and I knew I could stop trying. That it was the end. That I had lost.
Chapter 36
Hands pulled me out. Lifted me up. Carried me up the stairs. Coughing, I gasped the fresher air. Gulped it down.
They took me to a room in the back of the club. Laid me on a cot.
“No one has ever been in the box that long,” Alexandra said as she wiped my face with a cool cloth.
“Drink this,” Dujols said, and held a glass of water up to my lips.
I took several sips. Then several more.
“How long was I there?” My voice sounded hoarse.
“Over two hours,” Dujols answered. “When you closed the lid, it slammed, and the vibrations set off an avalanche of small rocks. A part of the wall caved in. We had to dig you out. We were worried the whole time that you wouldn’t make it.”
“And only two of us at a time fit in that small space. Without any real tools. We had to use our hands and cups,” Alexandra said. “Did you sleep?”
“I don’t think so. But then again it didn’t seem like I was there more than a few minutes. I just did what you said and slowed my breath.”
I sat up. I knew I could no longer pretend—or hope—that La Lune was a manifestation of my guilt. A figment of my imagination. She was not a response to my father’s suicide. My grandmother was right. La Lune was a malevolent force, and she needed to be evicted from my soul.
“I’m under a spell, aren’t I?” I asked Dujols.
“Yes, yes, that’s why you can’t take off the necklace. Why you can’t send her away,” he said. “She doesn’t want you here. Doesn’t want you to see us. She may not let you come to us again.”
I nodded. I could feel a fight coming from La Lune. I didn’t know how she was going to manage it, but I was sure she was getting ready.
“I think you’re right. Around you all, it seems as if she has less strength. Everything seems a little more clear to me. Can you tell me how I can end this? How I can break her spell?”
“The ritual would be written in La Lune’s grimoire,” Dujols said.
“Why would she write it down? Wouldn’t that be risking someone doing just what I plan to do?”
“Spells are complicated and dangerous. They must be followed exactly, and so they are almost always committed to paper. There are too many steps to remember with exactitude. I would guess that the magick she’s used all these years to stay contained, to merge, to get what she wants, is recorded on the pages of her book.”
“What do I need to do?”
I knew what he was going to say before he said it from the way his eyes were shining.
“Bring me the book. I will help you figure it out.”
“And what do you want from me?” I asked.
“What I’ve told you all along. To study the book. To find the secret. To learn the formula.”
“The formula?”
“ ‘Make of the blood, a stone’ . . .”
Chapter 37
Dujols and Alexandra escorted me home. It was four o’clock in the morning, but my grandmother’s maid had been worried and was up and waiting. Alice was shocked to see me so dirty and disheveled and fussed over me, making me a draught of tea, honey, and brandy. After I’d drunk it down, she helped me bathe and put me to bed.
I slept all through that day and night and woke up the second morning feeling restored. And resolved.
A note had come from Dr. Blanche the afternoon before, and Alice brought it to me in bed along with my café au lait and croissants.
My grandmother was asking for me, the note said. She’d had nightmares that I was in danger, and nothing they said settled her down. The doctor felt that if I visited, even if my visit upset her, that angst would be preferable to the panic that she was experiencing now.
I dressed for painting at the Louvre later that day, then went to see my grandmother. When I arrived, the doctor wasn’t at the clinic, but the head nurse met me and told me that my grandmother had a guest. And then she gave me a coy smile. Some of the men who were salon regulars had taken to visiting her, and I wasn’t surprised one was here.
“The doctor left word that when you arrived, it was fine for you to go in right away. She’s anxious to see you.”
The door was partially open. I put out my hand to open it wider, but what I heard my grandmother say made me stop.
“I don’t understand, Benjamin. Are you saying that you aren’t responsible for my son’s death?”
I felt a wave of dizziness. Benjamin? With my grandmother? How had he found his way here? What would happen if he saw me? Would the nurses and doctors at the clinic help me or deliver me to him?
I wanted to run, but I needed to hear what he was going to say, what lies he was going to tell. I had to know how to fight him.
Taking a step back into the shadows behind the door, I held my breath and listened.
“Of course I’m not. That’s Sandrine’s delusion.” His voice was kind and concerned. “Philippe was a second father to me. I owe him everything.”
“What happened then?” my grandmother asked. Did she believe him? Was she goading him into revealing his motives? Before she’d become ill, she’d certainly been capable of matching wits with him, but was she still?
“Philippe was racked with guilt that so many clients’ savings had been lost due to his poor investments. He couldn’t face his own actions. Not mine. I hate that he took the coward’s way out—but that is what he did. And now Sandrine is suffering because of his actions. I came here to help her. You want that, too, don’t you? To help her?”
“Yes, of course. We have to help Sandrine. The best way to do that is to get her away from Paris. Away from Paris and back home,” Grand-mère said.
What? Did she really believe La Lune was that much a threat to me that I would be safer with the man responsible for her son’s death?
“That’s what I want, too. Just tell me where to find her,” Benjamin said.
“The doctor told me he tried to reach her yesterday but without luck. Perhaps Julien would know.”
“Julien?”
“Julien Duplessi, the architect I hired to— That doesn’t matter now. Julien is mostly likely at his office. I’ll write down the address for you.”
“Why would he know where she is if you don’t?”
There was a silence. My grandmother never should have mentioned Julien to Benjamin. I stepped farther behind the door, deeper into the shadows.
She was silent.
“I see,” Benjamin said. “I do hope you recover your health, Madame. Thank you for your help. You needn’t worry about Sandrine anymore. I’ll take good care of her.”
Benjamin walked out of the room and down the hall, never for a moment sensing I was there, behind the door to my grandmother’s room, holding my breath.
I waited until I could no longer see him and the echo of his footsteps was long gone. I pushed open the door to my grandmother’s room.
“Sandrine, I have been so worried.” She clasped her hands together. She looked so much better. Almost like herself.
“Oh, why did you tell him about Julien?” I asked her.
“You need to go home. You have to leave Paris. And Julien.”
“But Benjamin was lying to you! He’s the one who stole the money, gambled it away. Put Papa in debt and shamed the firm. Why would you throw me into his arms? He only wants me back for the shares of the bank that Papa put in my name years ago.”
“Divorce him once you return to New York. Just get away from Paris now. Away from La Lune. She feeds off of love. If you give it up, you can protect yourself and protect Julien. If you love him, you’ll do that. Don’t you see? You’ll save him and you’ll be safe.”
Tears filled my eyes. I went to my grandmother and put my arms around her. She felt so solid and strong. She believed I was haunted by the ghost of a sixteenth-century witch, and now so did I.
I straightened up.
“Sandrine?” My grandmother’s voice sounded surprised, lighter.
“Yes.”
“Where is she?” Grand-mère asked. “I don’t see her shadow. What’s happened?”
“I don’t know.”
“Has something changed? How are things between you and Julien?”
“Terrible. I haven’t seen him for more than two weeks. He’s broken it off with me.”
“Thank God.”
“But I love him.”
“You can’t, Sandrine. That’s why I don’t see her shadow. She’s losing some of her power.”
I sighed. What did I believe? One of us was crazy. Or we both were. Did it even matter anymore?
“The doctor said that once I could be with you without getting upset I would be able to go home. It will only be a few days now, mon ange. I’ll go home, and you can go back to America with your husband. You’ll be safe, and I can rest easy.”
“No. I belong here. Painting. Being an artist. Being with Julien. I won’t go back.”
And with that my grandmother let out a shriek and pointed to my right. I didn’t have to look. I knew there would be nothing I could see.
My determination had strengthened her hold. My grandmother was seeing La Lune again.
The nurse came running. As she attended to my grandmother, who had collapsed onto the bed, I walked out of her room, down the hall and outside, into the carriage I’d had wait for me.
I would go to the Louvre. Moreau would be expecting me, and I could paint with him and try to settle my mind. No, there was something bothering me—something my grandmother had said. Grand-mère had told Benjamin about Julien.
I gave the driver Julien’s office address and asked him to take me there instead. I needed to warn him that Benjamin was here in Paris and that my grandmother had told him about our affair.
The young woman who sat in the foyer of the architectural concern knew me by now and smiled when she saw me.
“Is Monsieur Duplessi in?” I asked.
“He is, yes, but—”
So intent was I on seeing Julien, I didn’t let her finish, didn’t in fact realize she was still talking. I knew that nothing would have changed for Julien; he had made it clear that until I gave up the reality or the idea of La Lune, he could not be with me, but I had to at least warn him.
The door to his office was closed. I kno
cked as I opened it, afraid if I said who I was that he would tell me to go away.
I stepped into the room. Julien’s eyes took me in and then shifted to my left. I twisted around and saw Benjamin.
My husband had turned to see who had come in. His face registered surprise but no recognition. For a moment I was confused and then looked down. I was still dressed in my student’s garb: man’s pants, day coat, hat pulled low on my forehead, casting my features in shadow.
“Who is this?” Benjamin asked Julien.
Julien ordered me out of the room without answering. “Please leave us. This is none of your affair.”
“It’s exactly my affair,” I said.
Benjamin frowned. Had recognized my voice. He walked closer to me. Reached out and yanked the hat off my head. Stared at my hair, then my clothes.
I grabbed my hat back.
“You have no right to be here, Benjamin. And no reason. I know what you did and the lie you are using to cover it up. I’m not going back to America with you, and you aren’t going to get your hands on my share of the bank’s stock or my father’s estate.”
Benjamin laughed and turned from me.
“As I was saying, Monsieur Duplessi, I am told these events take place in the Bois de Boulogne. Tomorrow in the morning? Is dawn still the fashionable hour for a duel?”
“No,” I cried out to Julien. “Benjamin won’t fight fairly. He’s not to be trusted.”
But Julien ignored me. “Yes,” he said to my husband, “at dawn.”
Chapter 38
The afternoon had been fraught with emotion. Seeing Benjamin, confronting him, then trying to talk Julien out of dueling with my husband had exhausted me.
Of course Julien had refused me. It was a matter of honor, he said, and it wasn’t up to me or really about me.
He’d pointed to my neck. “You’re still wearing that?” His voice was sad, his expression grim.
“Julien, I went to Dr. Blanche . . . I tried. I do want to take it off.” I saw a glimmer of hope lighten his evergreen eyes. “I’ve decided to take the grimoire to Dujols and have him help me find a way to rid myself of her.”
