Moonlight Binding Magic

by Charlotte Munich

  “We’ll see.”

  He led me into a hallway big enough to house five Parisian families. More portraits graced the walls, some of them quite impressive. All the furniture was carved from exotic wood, either topped with marble, adorned with mother-of-pearl, gold-plated, or upholstered in brocade. The air smelled of wood, bees’ wax, old stone, and just a trace of something else that I couldn’t quite pin down. History, sunshine, a woman’s perfume, a fleeting impression of something delicate.

  “Come on upstairs. I’ve been dying to show you the music cabinet.”

  “Oh, you have a music cabinet!” I squeed.

  Of course he would. That’s where our new instruments had come from. And he was a musician, too.

  “Did you make progress on that medieval song you were working on the other day? The one you were, unh, bringing into the twenty-first century?”

  He shook his head. “No. I haven’t had time to work on that for a while.”

  The music cabinet was some sort of heaven. It was a big room with high, gold-plated coffer ceilings and a giant overhead fresco depicting the nine muses, each in their preferred activities. And four giant paintings showed the Rentier family musicians of yore at the peak of their art, playing the harpsichord in big-ass white wigs (as you do) or entertaining other epic musical endeavors. But the rest of the atmosphere was a lot more modern, as was the lighting, all taken care of by halogen lamps and LED spots. There was a grand piano, various string instruments, a forest of lecterns in different sizes and designs, and even a whole area dedicated to electric and electronic instruments—a massive collections of guitars and basses, keyboards, a theremin, various computers, and oddly shaped experiments that looked like someone wasn’t entirely finished with them. Also, exotic horns, chimes, bells, oddly shaped tubas.

  “Wow,” I breathed, transfixed.

  “All mine,” Tristan boasted.

  Downstairs, in the grand entrance or the giant scary staircase with several generations of Rentiers watching us, he hadn’t looked half as proud of himself.

  “Don’t tell me you have a recording studio, too.”

  “Well, not here. It’s in the new hunting pavilion.”

  “Wow. Can I play with the instruments later?”

  He grinned. “Of course. That’s what they’re here for.”

  I was experiencing trouble closing my mouth now. But much as I wanted it, I hadn’t come here to play music. So I followed him into another room that looked like a comfortable office, with a huge black wooden desk, a set of red velvet armchairs, and a fire happily dancing in a big stone fireplace carried by twin sculpted bears. The curtains had been drawn on the high windows, which seemed to indicate that the sun wasn’t expected to go up any time soon. It was a little disorienting, that time difference. Or did the sun never shine in this place?

  “I’ve prepared everything we need already,” Tristan said, indicating an impressive series of metallic bowls and glass jars on the desk.

  When had he slept?

  “Is this where you usually work?” I asked.

  I realized I had no idea how he spent his days, and I was curious.

  “Yes, I do some of the business pertaining to the estate here,” he said.

  What century did he live in, exactly, with his shiny black car and his sequined suits and his businesses in my world and his hunting parties and his…magic?

  All kinds of questions we didn’t have the time to examine in depth, at least, not right now.

  “Would you like something to drink?” Tristan offered.

  He gestured towards a set of bottles and carafes on a small table. There was also a frilly cake with multiple layers in pastel colors, a teapot, and a silver coffeepot. I wondered who had put them there and when. This whole place was a big charade.

  “No, thanks. I’m good.”

  “The idea here,” he said, sitting behind his desk, and gesturing for me to take a seat in the armchair on the other side, “is that if we manage to learn more about the nature of the bond between us, the one that made you call me in the first place, then we might know more about this mess and what on Earth Hughes wants with you.”

  “And know what’s in the boxes,” I completed, nodding.

  “Yes. I’m hoping we can make some educated guesses. It’d certainly help in tonight’s negotiation.”

  I nodded again. It made sense.

  “So,” he went on, “there’s this spell I know. It’s used to find out if people are from the same family.”

  “Really?”

  I thought how useful this would be in some human investigations.

  “Yes.”

  “And do we have to sacrifice someone in order to cast it?” I asked, fearing a catch.

  “No. It’s a basic charm. It’s harmless.”

  “But if it’s a charm, will it work on me?”

  “I don’t know. There’s only one way to find out.”

  He selected a small vial from his desk, one that held a clear pale lavender fluid, and uncorked it. He then proceeded to pour it into a tiny silver bowl, counting the drops.

  “Ten, eleven…thirteen. That should do it.”

  “Oh,” I joked, “how ominous, thirteen drops of the mysterious potion.”

  He looked at me as if I were daft. “It’s a basic concentration equation. We needed two-thirds of a milliliter. That’s thirteen drops. This thing doesn’t come cheap.”

  “Oh.”

  He screwed the cork back on the tiny vial and took a slim surgical lancet that had been lying on his desktop.

  “Now, one drop of blood from you and one from me. No more.”

  “That’s the price to cast the spell?”

  Another one of those sobering looks. “No. That’s the reactive.”

  I decided to keep my mouth shut now. Plus, I had to concentrate, as it wasn’t all that easy to produce a drop of blood—just one drop. Tristan showed me how to do it.

  “Don’t cut too deep. You don’t want to really injure yourself.”

  It was fun and solemn and a little bit childish, like a blood oath.

  Magic.

  Yeah.

  As soon as my drop of blood fell into the silver bowl, after Tristan’s, the contents started to fizz.

  “Is there an incantation?” I asked, forgetting my vow to remain silent in order to stop asking stupid questions. I was just too curious; watching things without asking questions was unbearable.

  Tristan was watching the contents of the bowl intently, his weird eyes wide and deep.

  “An incantation?” he murmured, frowning, but without taking his eyes off the bowl, as if enthralled by it. “No. Of course not. Incantations are for summonings and darker stuff. This is just regular family magic.”

  Family magic. Fancy that. I wondered how I would react if I was related to Tristan in some way, if I was his lost little cousin, like he’d imagined the other day. Was I going to feel weird? Elated that I was someone special? …Disappointed?

  “So, how do you interpret the results?”

  “Blue means close family, red is for no relation whatsoever, and all the shades of purples in between are a little less easy to read, but at least we’ll know in what direction to look.”

  I nodded. It was making sense.

  “So: deep blue, I’m your lost twin sister and it’s pretty logical that I should call you for help, at some instinctive level. Crimson: never have our ancestors ever consorted with one another. Purple: we may be distant relatives, you, me, and Hughes.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And how long until we know?”

  “It should be done about now.”

  We both stared at the fizzing liquid.

  “Huh. What’s that color?”

  Tristan grimaced. “I’d say emerald green.”

  “Any chance you’ve made a mistake? Confused that potion with another?”

  He threw me a deeply wounded look, and I dropped it immediately.

  “Maybe it’ll take longer with y
ou,” he huffed. “You definitely have weird affinities with the magic of my kind.”

  I guessed green meant the test was inconclusive.

  “Okay,” I said when it was clear that the experiment had tanked completely. “What now? Any other idea?”

  He nodded.

  “I was thinking hypnosis…”

  “Hahaha!” I burst out laughing and then stopped abruptly mid-bout as he threw me that look again. “Oh. Oh. You’re serious. Sorry.”

  “But since you were able to connect with Hughes while driving your car, I’m a little reluctant to try that just yet. I don’t want you to accidentally reconnect with him, as we don’t want to draw his attention to us right now. And there’s something else I would like to do, to see if you’re currently under a spell. So, if you would please go sit in the chair over there…”

  He indicated an armchair in the corner, some distance from the wall and the fireplace. I noted the silvery circle around the seat. One could go sit comfortably in it while being inside the circle.

  A magical circle: now, that looked like what I’d read in the occasional fantasy book.

  “The circle will try and block out all things magical. And then I’ll force them to appear. So, if there’s a spell of any kind tying you to the outside, we’ll be able to see it and, maybe, smell it.”

  He got up and went around his desk to join me. On his way past it, he grabbed a glass jar that had been standing on it.

  “Sit still.”

  I sat down. He grabbed a handful of grayish-white powder from the jar and blew it at me. A thick cloud formed, one that felt and looked very similar to the fog surrounding his property.

  “Oh! Is that what you use to hide your road from everybody around?”

  My voice came out muffled, and if he answered, I didn’t hear him. I looked around with attention, because if there was magic to be seen, I wanted to see it.

  After a moment, a hot wind blew in my face, dissipating the fog. It took at least two minutes before I could see Tristan again. He was holding a blow dryer working at full speed, pointed in my direction. But he didn’t look very happy.

  “So, did you find anything?” I asked when he turned off the appliance.

  “I’m not sure,” he admitted.

  “Well, tell me.”

  He sighed.

  “Okay. But please, Victoire, don’t take this the wrong way.”

  “What?”

  “You have the mark of death upon you.”

  I think it must have been the exhaustion: I burst out laughing. It was very funny, in an outdated and exotic Madame Soleil kind of way. I even repeated it in a grandiloquently trembling voice while I rolled my eyes.

  “Ooooh, the mark of deeeath is upon me.”

  It was all very comical. But Tristan wasn’t laughing, and after a while, I sobered up.

  “Oh,” I said. “Really?”

  He nodded gravely.

  “But what does it mean?”

  I was, once again, in the dark about seriously important things.

  “Someone wants you dead and has already taken all their precautions to organize your demise.”

  I felt a chill creep down my spine.

  “What does that mean? That my death is already programmed? There’s nothing I can do?”

  He sighed again. “Not exactly. But…someone has called dibs on you, so to say. They’ve declared they want to kill you, and you’re theirs to finish.”

  “Who? Hughes?”

  “Probably.”

  Someone really wanted me dead. I let that sink in slowly. It was beyond weird, really.

  “Sometimes, if you set the mark right,” Tristan explained, “chance will help and kill the target for you. Throw them under the bus, so to speak, upon the first opportunity. When lightning strikes, they’re more exposed, that kind of thing.”

  “You think it might have had something to do with the fire at our house?”

  “Maybe. Probably. But we still don’t have a motive. I thought the family test would help with that.”

  That worried me. “You mean, if I’m from your direct family, it would have justified Hughes wanting to kill me?”

  “Yes. Exactly.”

  “Wow. Your family is toxic.”

  “You have no idea.”

  “So Hughes thought maybe I’m your heir or something, and he decided to get rid of me?”

  Tristan nodded. “It would have been a valid hypothesis. Except you’re not my heir.”

  “No. I’m not blue-blooded. I’m the green stuff.”

  I rested my elbows on my knees and my chin on my fists.

  “So, if someone wants to kill me, let’s say it’s still Hughes, what’s in the boxes is probably my death? Is that how things work?”

  “Could be.”

  Tristan had sat back on his desk, deep in his thoughts, eyes lost in the distance.

  “You think he believes we’re from the same family, and this is why he’s attacking me?”

  He nodded.

  “So if we make it very clear that we have nothing to do with each other, he might lay off me?”

  I stood up.

  “Tristan, I want to try that hypnosis thing you talked about. Worse comes to worst, I’ll be able to size Hughes up. Can he do something to me, you know, telepathically?”

  Tristan shook his head. “No. But he’ll be more afraid of you than he already seems to be.”

  I chuckled mirthlessly. “So what? He’ll want to double kill me?”

  “There are worse fates than death.”

  Again, it was too abstract to really worry me.

  “I think I’ll risk it. Come on. Will you help me?”

  He sighed and stood silent for a while.

  “All right,” he said at last. “Let’s try hypnosis.”

  22

  Tristan told me to stay in the armchair and brought me a low stool to rest my feet on. I thought he was joking at first, but no.

  “Just relax.”

  He went behind his desk, opened a drawer, and spent a minute searching through it before he found what he was looking for.

  A golden pendulum, at the end of a golden chain. It was shaped like a heart, not the “I heart you” heart, but like a real beating heart. The artist who had made it had even taken the trouble of adding the stumps of an aorta and other veins I had no names for. It was very gothic.

  “Do you trust me?” Tristan asked. “Enough to hypnotize you?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Well, then, look at the pendulum, and let yourself go.”

  I did what I was told, for once. I took deep breaths and forced my body to unclench while I followed the little golden pendulum in the shape of an animal heart. I thought it was a human organ at first, but then, Tristan explained otherwise.

  “This heart was taken from the biggest, most beautiful stag in the woods. The beast offered it willingly, so that it could be used for magic, because he knew that this way, he would live on forever. Can you see the heart beating yet?”

  At first I couldn’t. I still followed the moving pendant, trying to focus. And then…

  “I can see it!”

  “Keep looking at it. Never let your eyes wander away from it. You’re doing great.”

  I was starting to feel drowsy now. I had to concentrate hard just to follow the shiny, beating heart as it went this way and back in front of my face.

  “Wait,” I muttered. “Should I be thinking about something in particular?”

  “Just look for the stag. He’ll take you where you need to go.”

  The movement of the pendulum was getting too fast for me to follow. I was straining, fighting, my eyelids drooping.

  “You can close your eyes now and see the beating heart with your mind,” Tristan said in a silky voice.

  And he was right. When I closed my eyes, I could see it even better, velvety red and golden, slowly pulsing and bleeding before my eyes. I wondered what the stag had felt when he’d been sacrificed for t
his magic, but Tristan steered me away from that train of thought.

  “Stop asking questions, Victoire. Just follow the lead for once.”

  So I did. I stopped thinking. The bleeding heart was in my palms now, heavy and warm. I had to cup it with both hands just to hold it as it kept beating steadily, not pumping blood, but immaterial energy. I watched it for some time in fascination before I could drag my attention away from it. When I looked up at last, I found that I was now standing in a dark forest.

  It looked just like the ancient wood you could admire from the road to Tristan’s place: old trees growing freely on a thick carpet of rusty dried leaves. It smelled of earth, decay, and moss. Moonlight shining through the tree branches, some naked, some still carrying foliage, was the only source of light.

  With my mind still full of stories about hunters and spirits of the forest, I looked around, listening, but everything was quiet, except for the occasional bird of prey calling and the faint drumming noise the heart was making as it kept on beating regularly in my hands.

  “Where to?” I asked it.

  A second later, the stag appeared among the trees. It was a huge, beautiful animal, taller than me, with heavy antlers. His coat was a warm rusty brown, a shade darker than the dried leaves beneath our feet. The animal was scanning me with dark eyes, and I knew, without a doubt, that this was the same buck I’d seen from the car the other day. Also the one whose heart I was now holding.

  “Are you a spirit of the forest?” I asked.

  Of course, I didn’t get any clear answer to that question. The animal just turned and started walking between the trees. I followed him.

  I walked for some time behind the stag before we reached a clearing. As in every fairy tale, there was a wood cabin in the middle of it, dark but not really forbidding. Smoke was rising from its chimney and warm light was shining through heart-, moon-, and star-shaped cuts in the wooden shutters. The animal who’d guided me there, though, didn’t seem to want to go further. He looked at me, as if egging me on, and stayed under the cover of trees.

  You’re on your own, his eyes told me, before he turned back.

  The heart in my hands was gone, but in the meantime, my own heart had started beating in sync with it. I was taking the beat with me now.