by M. J. Rose
“What about your painting?”
“I believe I will still be able to paint. I have to believe that. And if I can’t . . .” I shrugged.
He took my hand, bent low over it, and kissed it. “Stay away from the Bois in the morning, all right? I’m a very good shot—there’s no reason to worry. I’ll come to the house after it’s done. And then we’ll work everything out. You’ll be free, and I’ll be free, and we can be together.”
Exactly what La Lune wanted, I thought, but didn’t say.
At home I wrote a note to Monsieur Dujols, asking him if he would stay at the store later that evening. I was going to bring the grimoire, and I needed his help. I got a response an hour later that he would wait.
As I wrapped the book, I cut off a sheath of paper and nicked my finger. The blood wouldn’t be stanched, and I bled over the book and onto the paper. Grabbing a towel, I wrapped it tightly around my finger and held it. It still had not stopped after ten minutes. Not after twenty. Finally, after almost forty minutes, the blood abated but my finger throbbed.
And it had looked like such a small and insignificant cut.
I finished packaging the grimoire and strained to pick it up, surprised at how very heavy it was. So much more burdensome than it had been when I’d taken it from the cabinet a half hour ago. Leaving the bell tower, I struggled down the narrow steps. Halfway I tripped and went tumbling. Hitting my shoulder on a sharp riser, I felt a pain shoot through me, tears filling my eyes.
On its own, the book continued falling. Down, down the steps. As if it had a destination and was on its way there.
Standing, I discovered I’d also sprained my ankle, badly. I couldn’t put any weight on it and sat back down. I stared below me at the book. Alone in the bell tower with my foot swelling and my shoulder throbbing, I began to panic. How would I get help? Was I stuck there until I was able to get up?
This was La Lune’s doing. She’d engineered this series of calamities. She knew what I planned to do with the book, and she didn’t want me to do it.
“I have to understand who you are and what your powers are and how to protect myself from you,” I said into the empty stairwell. The gray stone wall absorbed my words and threw them back at me in a mocking echo. From you . . . from you.
“I can’t get Julien back if you’re still attached to me. Don’t you see that?”
I listened to the silence. I was so sure that she was going to answer me, but she didn’t. She’d caused the cut, the fall, the ankle sprain, but now she had disappeared.
I hobbled down the steps, managing by putting almost all my weight on my left foot. At the bottom of the stairs, I picked up the weighty book and somehow got back to the main part of the house, where I engaged Alice to come with me to the bookstore and help with the book.
Even though it was close by, we took a carriage because of my injury. Only a block from our house, something spooked the horse, and he reared up. When he came back down, one of the wheels broke, and the carriage almost tipped over. Thanks to the driver’s fast thinking and a very responsive horse, we avoided a much more damaging accident.
There were no other cabs on the street, and we were forced to walk, which was anything but easy on my badly hurt foot. And then it began to rain. Heavy winds accompanied a cold downpour, and fearing for the book, I found us refuge in a café. When the rain stopped, we found another carriage. Finally arriving at the bookshop, we found the door locked.
I peered inside. It was dark. No, I was not going to give up. I wouldn’t go back without getting the information I needed.
Using my fists, I beat upon the door until they were sore. Finally Monsieur Dujols appeared. Slightly out of breath and red in the face, he ushered me inside.
“I thought you were not coming. I was just going to leave.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Your note very clearly stated that you wouldn’t be coming.”
“I sent no such note.”
He turned away from me, went to the very cluttered desk, picked up a sheet of expensive cream-colored paper, and handed it to me.
It was my grandmother’s stationery, imprinted with the insignia of the house, the hand of fate, and under it the address in fine black copperplate. I read the handwriting.
Monsieur Dujols,
Please excuse my canceling at such late notice, but I will not be able to keep our appointment this evening,
Thank you,
Sandrine Verlaine
Everything was correct. It even appeared to be in my hand. But I had no recollection of writing it. What had happened? Had La Lune taken me over somehow and used me to write this? Just how powerful was she?
“Did you bring it? Is that it?” Dujols, always so serious and dour, was almost dancing as he circled the book. Reaching out, he touched it gingerly.
“May I unwrap it?”
I nodded, knowing that he would be even more careful than I. He was the expert in dealing with antique manuscripts.
As he discarded the paper, he noticed the streak of red and looked up at me.
I held up my hand. “I cut myself while I was wrapping it.”
“Very dangerous,” he said.
“I know, the knife slipped.”
“No, I mean getting blood on a grimoire. Blood is often called for in instructions on casting spells and preparing talismans and amulets to summon angels and demons and other supernatural creatures. The book itself—” He touched the leather cover. “The book itself is magical and has properties that can be activated with blood.”
I stared at the ancient volume and knew it had been wrong for me to take it out of its hiding place. For almost three hundred years it had been stored away, protected, and I had been the one to bring it out into the light. If anything happened to it, it would be my fault and my problem.
Monsieur Dujols opened the book, and I heard him give a little gasp. He had recognized the rip on the frontispiece. He knew his page would be the missing puzzle piece.
I watched as he turned and looked at the first two pages, foxed and yellowed, overpainted with the complicated and bizarre drawing of the drowning witch. He peered at the faint handwriting in the margins.
Carefully he turned to the next two pages. And then the next two. He barely seemed to breathe.
“This is amazing,” he said. “I’ve only seen one or two volumes in my life that come close to being this important.”
“The handwritten notes are her spells, aren’t they?” I asked.
“Yes. Legend has it that these are the spells that La Lune learned in Prague. She probably wrote them down, here in this book, to protect them. Where better to hide spells and magical incantations than in a book that told inquisitors how to rid their states of witches and their influences?”
“Can you find the spell that I need to control her?”
“I’m sure in time I will be able to.”
“There’s no time.”
“I’m afraid there has to be time,” Dujols said.
“What do you mean?”
“Now that I have this, I need to study it. I am going to have to keep it here for a time.”
“No. That wasn’t our agreement. You said you wanted to see it. Not keep it. I agreed to show it to you in exchange for you helping me.”
“And I will. In time.”
Chapter 39
One of the shuttered windows flew open. Wind, rain, and leaves blew in. There was no dramatic magick that followed. Dujols, as much as he wished, was no conjurer. He was just a man devoted to and interested in the occult. To shut the window he had no choice but to leave the book on the table. Taking that as my one chance, I picked up La Lune’s grimoire. Wrapped it up in my cloak and, without saying a word, walked out of his library.
I could hear him shouting as I headed down the street.
; “Mademoiselle Verlaine, I want to help you. You need me to help you. You’re in terrible danger . . .”
I spent the rest of the day working my way through my ancestor’s grimoire. Reading the ancient French, trying to figure out the words I didn’t understand from their Latin roots, looking for the spells I was searching for. I needed one to protect Julien in the duel. Another to banish La Lune.
I managed to isolate two potential enchantments by the time midnight fell. I lit the gas lamps and kept reading. La Lune’s handwriting was so faded there were times I took more than an hour to work out just one paragraph.
By two hours past midnight I had found another three spells that might be what I was looking for, but I still had a hundred pages unread, and dawn was approaching fast. I needed to be at the Bois before Benjamin and Julien and prepared for their confrontation. Even if I was right about which of the hexes might work, and had translated the ingredients correctly, where was I going to get these odd things during the night?
I settled on one that suggested it would work as a magick charm against harm.
The recipe for Abramelin Oil is as follows:
Take of Myrrh in tears, one part; of fine Cinnamon, two parts; of Calamus, half a part; and the half of the total weight of these drugs of the best Olive Oil. To which aromatics you shall mix together according unto the art of the apothecary, and shall make thereof a balsam.
I fell asleep at my grandmother’s kitchen table, the ancient grimoire a hard and unforgiving pillow.
When I woke, I had no time to bathe or dress if I was to get to the Bois before Benjamin and Julien arrived. The duel had been set for dawn, and so I had hired a carriage to arrive at five thirty, and the driver was waiting for me when I emerged from the house.
We set off for the large park on the outskirts of the city. My ankle hurt, and I was nervous and scared. Certain only of what I had to do and how dangerous it was going to be. It had been years since my father and I had practiced, and while I’d proved adequate, I never became the skilled marksman he was.
The driver could only take me so far, and I had to go the rest of the way on foot.
Being in the ancient oak forest in the semidarkness made me apprehensive. The shadows were heavy, and too many noises were unidentifiable. How easy it was to imagine nefarious criminals lurking in the gloom. Rapists skulking behind giant boulders in wait for unsuspecting maidens. But in my pants and coat and hat, with the aura of masculinity around me, I had at least some protection, and I tried to take solace in that.
What was a fashionable meeting place during the day, filled with carriages, horseback riders, and men and women on bicycles, was empty and desolate at dawn. There were no families picnicking on any of the lawns. The lakes had no boaters idyllically rowing past.
I continued through the last allées of pines, the scent rich and sharp, and came to the clearing where the men were to meet. Looking around, I found a perfect hiding place and secreted myself there to wait.
Less than a half hour later, Julien arrived along with his second, an architect I recognized from his office, and within five minutes Benjamin arrived with his friend William. The group spoke a few words to one another, gestured to the surrounding area, appearing to set up the rules.
Overhead, a crow cawed loudly, a ribald noise that shattered the silence. Julien looked up. Benjamin didn’t. He was examining his pistol.
My nervousness was making me shake. That wouldn’t do. I had to steady my nerves. Prepare myself. I would have only seconds to shoot my father’s gun and prevent Benjamin from killing Julien. Was I capable? Did I have any choice?
The two men turned from each other and walked their forty paces. My hiding place put me equidistant between them. When Benjamin raised his weapon, I had to be ready that instant.
I rested my hand on a boulder.
The next seconds passed at once achingly slowly and terribly quickly.
Benjamin lifted his arm before Julien did. My finger was on the trigger. All I had to do was pull, but I couldn’t stop trembling. As much I hated my husband, as much as I despised him for what he had done to my father and was about to do to Julien, I couldn’t pull the trigger.
But I had to save Julien!
Then I felt a hand cover mine. La Lune trying to help. As much as I wanted to save him, so did she. And in that moment, just as she must have known what I was thinking, I knew what she was thinking. We each were in love with Julien, and together we had to protect him.
Except even with her help, I couldn’t pull the trigger. There was only one choice left to me, to us. And so as Benjamin’s finger curled around the trigger, early, too early, cheating, I ran out into the clearing.
I heard that first shot, then a second. And then a third shot. A cry from Benjamin and a shout from Julien. A third shot? Who had broken the rules of the duel? Had one of the seconds come with a weapon? Had Benjamin brought another pistol so he could fire off two shots in succession?
I think I blacked out for a moment because the next thing I knew I was on the ground, my head pounding, my vision blurry. With a great effort I turned to my left and saw Benjamin lying in the dirt, clutching his chest. I turned the other way and saw Julien sitting up, his man attending to him.
“The American has been hit,” a man shouted. “The woman, too. That’s blood on her hand. Get help.”
My hand, the man had said. My right hand? That I painted with? Had I deflected Benjamin’s first shot with my hand? But it didn’t hurt. All the pain was wrapped around my head, squeezing my skull. A few moments passed. I must have closed my eyes again.
“Sandrine?” It was Julien. Beside me. Sitting at an awkward angle, his arms crossed over his chest. “You little fool, why did you take such a risk? He could have killed you.”
“I knew he was going to cheat. He brought a second pistol, didn’t he?”
“You saved my life.”
“It was my fault you were even here. I couldn’t let him—” I broke off, suddenly noticing what Julien had been trying to hide from me. A crimson stain was spreading across his white shirt. “You’re bleeding? You’re bleeding. Are you all right?”
Julien’s shirt was soaked through with blood. It leached out and soaked into the ground. It saturated my clothes, its warmth reaching my flesh, its sweet smell permeating the air.
“The bullet just grazed my side. I’ll be fine,” he tried to reassure me through labored breaths. “But Benjamin isn’t going to make it, Sandrine. He’s not ever going to bother you again,” he said, and then he collapsed.
Chapter 40
They brought Julien back to Maison de la Lune with me in my carriage and summoned the doctor. As it turned out, he wasn’t fine. As it turned out, the butt of my father’s gun had deflected Benjamin’s first shot, but he used his second pistol to shoot Julien in the stomach before Julien shot him. No major organs appeared to have been damaged, but Julien was losing too much blood too quickly, and the doctor told me that he was afraid if he couldn’t stop the bleeding soon, Julien was not going to make it.
I was bruised, but none of my injuries were serious. I’d fallen on a rocky patch of earth. I’d cut my hand on a sharp stone. Hit my head on another. And a third had shattered one of the rosettes on the ruby necklace.
As I sat in the sickroom by Julien’s side, watching him losing all that blood, I knew it was time. He’d asked me to do this weeks ago. I hadn’t been strong enough then, I still wasn’t now, but I needed to show him how much I cared even if it was too late.
“Look, Julien, look.” I reached up and around the back for the clasp and found the Ouroboros waiting. The dragon allowed me to take his tail out of his mouth this time.
I took off the antique I’d been wearing for more than three months. Now it sat on my lap. I stared at the odd piece of jewelry that had encircled the neck of so many of my ancestors, tethering them to La Lune. Connecti
ng them to the witch who had done everything to love again.
The dragon’s ruby eyes flashed at me in the light. As if he were winking. I examined the rubies, all intact except for the one floret that had been damaged. How odd. I could see that the floret wasn’t a ruby at all but two halves of a crystal casket filled with some red substance. I examined the other flowers and found a slight indentation on the rim of each. All of them opened. Every crystal was filled with the same red-caked substance.
Suddenly I heard the words that Dujols had said to me, but heard them spoken in a whisper, by a woman in a dream, words mixed with tears.
Make of the blood, a stone. Make of a stone, a powder. Make of a powder, life everlasting. Save him, Sandrine, save him.
I tilted the necklace toward the light. The red-caked interior had no glitter and no gloss. I ran my finger over it. It was dry. Dry? Almost powdery. Almost like . . .
No, it wasn’t possible. But it did feel like solid pigment. Like a brick of watercolor that you drew your wet brush across to access.
I licked my finger and touched the cake, and it came away red. The same color of the unfinished lips of the women in the painting. Pigment this color was in the studio. Bottles and bottles of it. I’d seen it.
What kind of necklace was this? What kind of special precious paint did it contain?
La Lune didn’t speak to me with words, but her thoughts were inside my head. She knew the spells. She could save Julien.
“I have to do this,” I whispered to him. “I have to allow her in. Please forgive me.”
He shook his head. “No. Let me go. Let me go. Please, Sandrine. She’s evil. She’ll taint you.”
He was still talking, his voice weak and faint, when I left the room.
As I climbed the steps to the bell tower, I knew that I would never again attempt to pretend that La Lune was a figment of my imagination born out my depressed state over my father’s death . . . my reading that Oscar Wilde book at the wrong time . . . or my grandmother’s fear of a family curse.
