by Sable Hunter
Chapter Ten
Aimee held Evangeline all the way back from the Quarter. Tyler worked it out so she didn’t have to go down to the station to answer questions. “I’m so sorry I gave up on you, Mama.” Evangeline lay with her head in her mother’s lap.
“You had no way of knowing, Evangeline. Duvalier covered his tracks carefully and Black Eddie not only harnessed my powers, he stole the ones he didn’t want me to have. I mourn the time I was away from all of you, but I thank God I found Zak. He literally saved my life, in more ways than one. And he had nobody, Evangeline.”
“Now, he has us. We’ll be his family.” Evangeline assured her.
“Tell me about that handsome man who can’t keep his eyes off of you?” Eric had encouraged Evangeline to ride in the car with her mother, but she had no doubt he would be waiting for them when they arrived back at the Morning Glory house.
Evangeline got a dreamy look on her face. “He’s a dream come true, literally. I broke all the rules and consulted the scrying mirror for my one true love. Then I couldn’t wait and I called him to me, in every way that your sister and I could think of.”
“He certainly doesn’t seem unhappy about it.”
“We are incredibly happy, Mother. He means everything to me.”
“I’m glad, baby. I hope nothing ever happens to take that away from you.”
The reunion continued. Nanette was ecstatic to have her whole family back together—with the exception of her darling husband, of course. But the gift of the daughter that everyone had presumed dead was more than she had ever anticipated. “I can’t believe that none of us ever sensed you at all, baby.”
“That was black magic, mother. You weren’t supposed to.”
“Did they hurt you, Aimee?”
“No, we were too valuable. We were contained and controlled, but not deprived of the necessities of life.”
“But what about Black Eddie?” Arabella asked. She hated to bring up the fact that their greatest threat was still out there.
“We’ll have to deal with him sooner or later. I vote later,” Elizabeth chimed in.
Tyler put his arm around his wife. “We won’t give up looking for him. I’m sure he’ll resurface, but if what Zak says was true, Black Eddie was working for Duvalier. And with Duvalier out of the picture, the whole organization will have to regroup. They won’t be as strong or as focused as they were.
“He won’t forget or forgive,” Nanette sighed.
“Well, I suggest we start working on a solution to that problem,” Angelique interjected as she joined the group. “We are powerful, we can take on one creepy little sorcerer.”
“What was he doing with all of those snakes?” Jade was still worried about the snakes. He visibly shivered as he thought about them. The snakes had been collected by the New Orleans Animal Control a few hours after the human snakes had been gathered up.
“They had their fingers stuck in a whole host of pies; one of them was the illegal wildlife trade. There’s a very profitable black market for poisonous snakes,” Tyler explained.
“Let’s think about something happier,” Evangeline urged. “I’m ready to be happy.” Eric hugged her. He was ready to be happier, too.
“Your sister’s pregnant again.” Nanette couldn’t stand it. Looking at Aimee, she let the cat out of the bag.
“That’s great!” Aimee rejoiced. “And Arabella’s due any time. Both she and Elizabeth are married and Evangeline has Eric and Angelique has Philippe. A lot has happened while I was gone.”
“Yes, sweetheart. But we never stopped loving you or thinking about you, not even for a minute. If we had had any idea you were still alive, we would have moved Heaven and Earth to find you. But Katrina devastated us in more ways than one. For awhile New Orleans and the people of New Orleans wondered if we would survive, but we have. And we’ll only become stronger because of the storm.”
Evangeline spent precious hours with her mother, and Eric enjoyed watching her joy and animation. The last time she had been with her mother, she had been seventeen. There was so much for them to catch up on. But all he could think about was getting her alone, burying himself deep within her warmth, hearing her breath catch when he put his hand between her legs. Just thinking about the pleasure he would give her made him hard.
The whole family gravitated into the living room, all wanting to spend some time with Aimee, so Evangeline shared and gravitated back to where she truly belonged—with him.
She cuddled up to him, running her hands up and down his back. He held her tightly, and whispered in her ear, “Are you happy, love?”
“Perfectly. I have everything I could ever want. My mother is safe and I have you in my arms. Could life be any more perfect?”
A knock at the door got everyone’s attention. Angelique went to the door to find to her immense delight that it was Philippe, but the look on his face made it evident something was very wrong. He took the time to properly meet Aimee and then he asked to see Nanette and Angelique alone. They weren’t gone more than ten minutes when they returned and this time they all wore the same somber expression.
Evangeline looked at her grandmother and knew she was about to hear something that would completely change her life. She held on to Eric for dear life. “What’s wrong, Grandmother?”
“Knowing our history, I should have known this. What I’m about to tell you is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to say. And I am so sorry. Before I tell you what it is, let me say that I will do everything in my power to find an answer—to fix this—but you must all promise me you will follow my directions to the letter. It could literally mean the difference between life and death.”
“Life and death? For who?” Eric demanded. Evangeline’s life had been in danger so many times he didn’t know if he could deal with it another time. “I thought we had dealt with Duvalier. Is it Black Eddie? What else could it possibly be?”
“The ones in danger, Eric, the ones that we have got to take immediate and a decisive step to protect is you, Jade, and Tyler.”
“What are you talking about? What are you saying? How are they in danger?” The questions were simultaneous and came from every direction.
Philippe stood up and spread his hands. “I finished translating the diary. And what I found was not just history, but an explanation for a family peculiarity that the women in your family have chosen to ignore. It wasn’t intentional, but every generation was more aware of their own circumstances and their own sorrows. They didn’t take into account their history. Unfortunately, they didn’t see the big picture, or maybe this problem could have been dealt with before now.”
“Mother, you all are scaring me. What are you saying?” Elizabeth looked pale, and Nanette wished she didn’t have to tell her more. A woman who had just found out she was with child by her much loved husband did not need to hear what Nannette was about to say.
“I lost Alcee in Katrina, he wasn’t as young as you all are, but I certainly wasn’t ready to lose him. Aimee, you lost Rodney in the Gulf War and he was only twenty-nine. Elizabeth, Thomas was only thirty-two when he died in that oil-rig explosion. And when we look back at my mother and her sisters—at my grandmother and her sisters—at my great-grandmother and her sisters and on and on…all of them—without exception—lost their loves, their husbands, young, and always tragically.” Nanette looked around at her daughters and her granddaughters. Then, she looked at the men who loved them. All were waiting to hear what she had to say next. But she turned to the doctor and motioned for him to tell them what he found.
“Genevieve was treated cruelly by her husband. And he abused one of their daughters, which resulted in her death, if you remember. Her remaining daughter had an equally sad and disappointing union. In fact, during Genevieve’s lifetime she had no positive male relationships. She grew to be a bitter, hard, and very vindictive woman. And she was very powerful. That combination proved to be volatile. She felt so strongly about the trouble and despair the men in thei
r lives had put them through that she took some decisive steps to see that it never happened again.”
“What did she do?” Arabella asked slowly and softly.
“She put into motion two very powerful and long-lasting spells. In fact they have lasted almost three hundred years.”
“What are you saying, Philippe? Are you telling me we are cursed?” Elizabeth’s voice had become sharp and frantic.
Philippe hung his head and said the words they had all been dreading. “Yes. She sent two powerful incantations out into the cosmos that have never failed, as of yet. No male child has ever been born to a Romee witch and no man that ever marries or becomes involved with a Romee witch lives a full life. They all die young and tragically.”
Eric looked around at everyone else. The women looked like they had been hit with a bomb and the men looked confused. He glanced at his beloved and tears were running down her beautiful face. “What does this mean?”
Nanette sat down heavily in a chair. “Now, listen to me carefully. I want Aimee, Elizabeth, Arabella and Evangeline to return to Austin. Zak, I want you to go with them. Jade, Tyler, and Eric, you will stay here with us and we will try to come up with some kind of an answer. I don’t know if we can, but we have to try. We’ve got two babies on the way—we have to turn over every rock and try every avenue that is open to us.”
Arabella began to cry in harsh sobs and Elizabeth knocked everything off the coffee table, sending two glasses of wine flying across the room. Evangeline was so still that Eric feared she had turned to stone.
“We need a little time.” Tyler spoke up for the first time.
“Take it, but say your goodbyes.” Nanette spoke with finality.
Jade carried a crying Arabella from the room. Everyone was afraid this would push her over the edge and bring on her labor before its time. Tyler consoled Elizabeth, placing his hands over hers, which rested on her stomach and the tiny baby that lay beneath their touch. Eric took it all in, he was numb. He turned to Evangeline and she looked at him with a tortured expression. She rose to her feet and ran from the room. Eric followed.
He caught up with her in her small room. The room where just last night they had made love, where he had captured her cries with his kiss. She stood on the far side of the room, as far from him as she could get, that beautiful thick braid lying across one sweet breast. “What does this mean, baby? I don’t understand.” He refused to understand.
Her voice broke. “It means we can’t be together.”
“Bullshit!”
“I’m poison to you.”
“Again, I say bullshit!” He took one step toward her and she took one step back. “Don’t do this to me, Evangeline,” he begged.
“I will not be the reason for your death.”
“One day with you is worth more to me that a lifetime without you.” Eric fell to his knees in front of her.
“Eric, I can’t hurt you,” she whispered through her tears.
“You are hurting me.” Anguish washed over him. Eric didn’t know if he could catch the next breath. “Can’t this be fixed? You are witches, for God’s sake!”
Evangeline knelt in front of him, not touching, but near enough so she could look deep into his eyes. He reached for her, but she held out a hand to stop him.
“You are mine, Evangeline. Mine!”
“I will always be yours, Eric.” She covered her face with her hands, sobs erupting from her throat. “But I can’t be with you anymore. I can’t touch you. I can’t make love with you.”
“Fuck!” Eric felt like he was going out of his mind. He screamed, stood up, and paced the room like a mad man.
“I have to go, baby. I have to put some distance between us.” Evangeline rose to her feet, wanting to go to him so badly every cell in her body was screaming for relief. “Look back at how many times, just recently, your life has been endangered—undoubtedly, because of me. I can’t risk it, Eric. You are too precious. A world without you in it is not a world I am willing to live in. Never forget that I love you. I will always love you.” With that, she was gone.
Eric walked to the wall and leaned on it, then he drew back and with one powerful blow, he put his fist through the plaster. “Fuck!”
* * * *
The drive back to Austin was the longest Evangeline could ever remember. Elizabeth was the stoic one. Every few miles, she would repeat the same phrase. “Mother will find a way to make this right. I just know she will.”
Aimee was the calm one; of course, she had no man to lose. She had already lost hers a long time ago. “You’re right. Between she and Angelique, they can do anything.”
Evangeline sat stoically in the back seat, wishing with every fiber of her being that Eric was beside her. Zak kept glancing at her in the rear-view mirror, wishing he could console her in some way. Arabella slept fitfully.
“If she has to have this baby alone, there is just no justice in this world.” Elizabeth pushed her daughter’s hair out of her eyes.
Finally, Zak spoke up. “There is more power in this car than I ever thought I would be around. Let’s make it happen, ladies. Pour positive thoughts into the universe. Will an answer. After all, you are the Romee witches.”
When they got back to Austin, Evangeline called the Neumann Museum and had the statues of Eric brought home. They might be all of him she would ever have, and she couldn’t stand to think that they were sitting in some cold room away from her touch. When they arrived, she started spending her days and nights in the studio with them. She didn’t eat, she couldn’t. She felt nauseous all the time. She hadn’t known that heartbreak could make one physically ill.
* * * *
Eric refused to give up. He flatly refused to process it. He went engagement ring shopping, returning with a magnificent deep-purple Brazilian amethyst surrounded by white diamonds. And he fully intended to place it on Evangeline’s finger as soon as possible. He would stay away from her for a while, but if they thought that a little thing like the threat of death could keep him away from her, well then, they had another think coming.
He wasn’t the only one that was determined. Jade and Tyler were as focused as he was, and they had babies on the way. In fact, they talked about the children as much as they talked about their wives. It made Eric want a baby with Evangeline. Just thinking about her belly swelling with his child was enough to drive him quietly mad. He wanted everything with her—a child, a home, a future. And he would damn-well have it!
Philippe went back over and over the diary. Jade and Tyler studied his notes and Eric spent time with Nanette and Angelique. He had seen them perform miracles and he expected another one. There had to be another one.
“If a spell can be cast, it can be broken can’t it?” he pressed Angelique.
“Yes, but usually a spell must be broken by the person who cast it and in that case we’re about two hundred and fifty years too late.” It hurt for her to tell him this. She looked at this man who was visibly suffering.
“Evangeline said you can communicate with spirits.” Eric was desperate.
“That’s true.” Angelique looked at him strangely.
“Well, let’s ask Genevieve how to reverse the spell.”
Angelique smiled. “Well, look at you. You may have found the answer.”
The candles flickered, casting weird shadows all over the room. If the situation weren’t so dire, it might have been intriguing, but Eric, Tyler, and Jade were betting their futures on the outcome of this mystical exercise. They sat around the dining table, hands just touching. There was absolute silence in the room. Eric didn’t really know what to expect, but he was praying for a miracle.
In the center of the table, on a portable hot plate, a small cauldron boiled with rosemary, cypress, and yarrow root. Nanette took her athame and pricked her finger, adding her own blood to the mix. She began to chant.
Genevieve Romee - ancestor of old
I call thee sure, I call thee bold
Power of the God
dess rise
Fly unseen across the skies
Come to us, travel near
Come to us and listen clear
Blood to blood, I summon thee
Blood to blood, return to me
As she finished, there was deathly silence. Eric held his breath, his eyes searching the darkness. He stared just outside the circle in which he sat. God, please let this work. It had only been three days without Evangeline, yet it had seemed like three years. Never in his lifetime had he known such a complete dependence on another human being, but Evangeline was as necessary to him as the oxygen in the air. Suddenly, Tyler clutched his hand.
“Look,” he whispered. Across the room, an unearthly glow became evident. Gradually, it grew larger and moved closer. There were audible gasps and movements around the table, three brave men were seeing something that was at the same time both unnerving and welcome. From a column of undulating mist, a figure became clear—insubstantial, yet clear enough to see a disturbing resemblance to both Arabella and Evangeline. Eric’s heart lurched at the realization that if this didn’t work, he might never hold his beloved again.
Nanette spoke softly. “Most revered ancestor, witch of great power. You are welcome in our midst.”
“Why have you called me?” The English was heavily accented, and the voice was low and sultry.
“We are in need of your assistance, Grandmother.” Nanette continued. “We are in possession of your memoirs; we have read your heartache. We know about the curse you placed on the men in our lives. But now, we beg you to tell us how to reverse this spell. We have lost too many good men. I understand your frustration and your anger, but sitting here are three men who love daughters of your blood. We implore you; tell us how to save their lives. Reveal to us how to break the curse you placed on our family so long ago.”
At first, it appeared that Genevieve would not answer. Her eyes moved around the table and she, seemingly, took the measure of the men that bravely held the gaze of the long-dead witch. Finally, she spoke. “Do you still have the sampler that I stitched of my wedding vows?”
