Coco du Ciel

by Elise Noble

  “Do you remember any fairy tales?”

  “I’ve been listening to the Grimm podcast in between sleeps.”

  “Well, this place is an improvement on Cardon Street, that’s for sure.”

  Remi showed up for dinner, and this time, he sat opposite Coco rather than at the head of the table. Out of curiosity or etiquette? Rhys had no idea of the rules.

  “Do you feel better now?” Celine asked Coco.

  “I got an hour of sleep. The cottage is beautiful. And so peaceful after the house in Uxbridge.”

  “If you don’t like any of the furniture, we can change it.”

  How long was she planning for them to stay?

  “No, it’s perfect. Thank you for letting us borrow it.”

  “Pas de problème.” Celine waved a hand. “If I’m honest, it’s a relief to talk to someone who isn’t being paid to be here. And also someone like me. Remi’s wonderful, but at times, it’s…difficult.”

  “At least you know your past.”

  “Not quite. Wait—Rhys didn’t tell you?”

  Coco turned to him and narrowed her eyes. “Tell me what?”

  “Je suis désolé! Forget I mentioned anything.”

  “Tell me what?”

  Uh-oh. Now they had shrill, and that had never been a good sign with Stacey.

  While Rhys froze, Remi did the honours. “I’ve studied Celine extensively over the years. The trees rebuilt Cambria’s body perfectly, and her DNA is an exact blueprint of who she was before. But she’s not the same person.”

  “What? I don’t understand.”

  He laid it out—the details of the legend, the lunar cycle, the fact that when Coco was reborn, she might very well have been assigned somebody else’s soul. The different kinds of memories. The way she relived her death in her dreams. Thankfully, the staff had left the room, but the food went cold on the table. And Coco turned deathly pale again.

  “So you’re saying I could be two people now? A mess of insides and outsides?”

  “Not a mess. Just different to the person you were before.”

  “How do I find out? How the hell do I find out?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yes!”

  “Sometimes, it’s easier to just live in the moment,” Celine said. “Grab your new life with both hands and make the best of it.”

  Remi chipped in again. “Even if you have the same soul, you won’t be exactly the same person. Think nature versus nurture—your lived experiences shape you into the person you become, and all those have been lost.”

  Coco closed her eyes. Sighed. “But if what you say about my nightmares is right, then I was murdered, and I don’t even know if the guy was caught.”

  “They never caught the man who mugged me either, did they, Remi?”

  “Sadly not, chérie.”

  Remi’s words said one thing, but his eyes said another. His expression was a challenge in itself. Dare you to suggest otherwise. Did money also buy revenge?

  “What if the person who killed me kills someone else?” Coco asked. “How can I get on with my life if they’re still walking free?”

  Rhys tried to soothe her. “I’m sure the police are investigating.”

  “But what if they’re not? What if my body was never even found? It could be rotting in a swamp somewhere.”

  “It’s not.”

  Now she turned on him. “And how do you know that?”

  Ah, shit. “We may have found a clue as to where you came from.”

  “Where? Tell me.”

  “It’s in hand,” Remi told her. “I instructed a private investigator to look into the matter yesterday.”

  “That’s not a proper answer.”

  Remi looked as if he regretted sending the plane, and Rhys was having second thoughts too.

  “It’s a sensitive issue.”

  Celine folded her arms. “If you know something, you should tell her. It’s not fair to keep her in the dark.”

  Oh, brilliant. Now they were getting tag-teamed by both women. Remi raised his eyes heavenwards and sighed.

  “The decision is Rhys’s to make.”

  Gee, thanks. But Celine was right—Coco deserved to know the truth, no matter how unpalatable it might be.

  “The way the trees seem to work is that you have to feed in a DNA sample for them to use as a template. And the only thing fed to the trees in the weeks before you appeared was a certain brand of plant food, ergo…”

  Ergo? Now Rhys sounded like a pompous ass. This damn castle was rubbing off on him.

  “Plant food? You’re saying I got made into plant food?”

  “Uh, it seems to be the most likely possibility at the moment.”

  Coco fell silent, biting her lip. Fighting away tears? Celine shoved her chair back and ran to Coco’s side, something Rhys had to be thankful for because he didn’t know a whole lot about comforting emotional women. Or tact, it seemed.

  “Is there any wine?” Coco asked. “I think I need wine.”

  In a heartbeat, Remi shoved a full bottle of red and an empty glass in Coco’s direction, but she ignored the glass and drank from the bottle instead. Remi sucked in a breath but didn’t say anything. If Rhys had to hazard a guess, he’d say that the wine with its posh gold label probably cost more than he earned in a month.

  “Plant food,” Coco muttered. “My whole damn life is a nightmare.”

  “Remi can help with the nightmares,” Celine said, doing her best to sound upbeat. “Mine are almost gone now.”

  “How?”

  “He runs a pharmaceutical company.”

  “You mean pills? I tried sleeping pills already. They only made things worse.”

  “The same happened with Celine at first,” Remi said. “But I created a protocol that alters her brain activity overnight. The dreams still come occasionally, but when they do, they’re not as intense. I’d have to adjust the treatment for you—it took me six months to optimise Celine’s—but even a low dosage should help.”

  That alone made the trip to France worth it. Without sleep, it was difficult for Coco to think rationally, which was far from ideal in the present circumstances. Plus Rhys was exhausted from monitoring her all night.

  “I’ll try anything,” she said.

  “Then I’ll give you some medication to try after dinner. Please, eat. Don’t let the person who killed you ruin your new life as well as your old one.”

  CHAPTER 24

  COCO GRIPPED RHYS’S hand as they walked to the cottage. A full moon shone from the cloudless sky, and the dim light cast eerie shadows on the ground. Was that the sound of footsteps behind them? Rhys glanced back, but they were alone on the path. Being honest, he found the castle grounds a bit creepy at night—earlier, he could have sworn he heard a baby crying somewhere—but he also knew the guards worked around the clock to keep the place secure. And he hadn’t seen any of the ghosts Chanté had mentioned.

  The cottage opened with a keypad, six digits, and they stepped into the hallway. Thick stone walls kept the place cool even on a warm September evening. In actual fact, “cottage” was something of a misnomer—the guest house was bigger than the entire house on Cardon Street, bigger than anywhere Rhys had ever lived. Two spacious bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room, a full-sized kitchen, a separate dining room, even a small study… It would make a generous family home but was still cosy enough to be comfortable, not like the vast palace next door.

  Coco nodded towards the study as Rhys checked the front door was locked.

  “You can work in peace now. As long as there’s Wi-Fi. Is there Wi-Fi?”

  “Yes, and it’s fast. You can have your own bedroom if you want.”

  “What if I don’t want?”

  Thank goodness. “Sharing works too. Are you feeling sleepy yet?”

  “Not really. No more than usual.”

  Remi had given her three pills just before they left the castle, and she’d washed them down with more wine. Probably n
ot the best idea, but Rhys hadn’t been stupid enough to point that out.

  “Maybe it would be sensible to go to bed before whatever was in that concoction Remi gave you takes effect?”

  “I’ve got a better plan.”

  Uh-oh. “What plan?”

  Coco curled her fingers into Rhys’s shirt and pulled his mouth down onto hers. Okay, perhaps that wasn’t so awful. And what was stopping them from being together now? Even if Remi’s investigator found out who Coco had once been, she couldn’t go back to her old life. Rhys was no saint, either. Coco tasted of good wine and the chocolate tart they’d had for dessert—delicious and moreish. He wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed her breathless.

  “Celine said I should grab my new life with both hands,” she gasped when they came up for air. “So…”

  “No complaints from me.”

  Although in hindsight, their make-out session on the couch wasn’t the best idea. Coco passed out in his arms with a smile on her face, and although he was happy that she was happy, how the hell was he meant to get her upstairs? Hauling her by her armpits seemed decidedly unromantic, plus he’d probably do his back in. In the end, he compromised by fetching a quilt from the spare bedroom and tucking it around her where she lay. He could set up his laptop in the study and monitor her while he caught up on work. Apps didn’t write themselves.

  ***

  That was Rhys’s plan, anyway, but he quickly got distracted by the internet. Eastlake Horticultural was headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada, according to Google, and had a manufacturing plant on the outskirts of the city plus another near Fernley in the north-west of the state. Had Coco come from Sin City? That seemed odd—she’d drowned, and wasn’t the whole area basically desert?

  Hmm, there were actually a surprising number of rivers in northern Nevada. And streams, and lakes. So much for narrowing down the location of her death. Rhys searched for meat processing plants, and there were a good number of those too. Perhaps if he cross-referenced…

  But how would a dead body get processed like a side of beef? Wouldn’t an employee, you know, say something? Or call the police? Or was the whole process automated? Wonderful, googling the inner workings of a slaughterhouse was the perfect thing to be doing at one o’clock in the morning. At this rate, Rhys would be having nightmares too. Twenty minutes later, he fell into a rabbit warren of an animal rights website, and the videos…ugh. Tomorrow, he’d turn vegetarian.

  Would it be worth emailing the animal rights group with a few questions? They’d recently managed to get a slaughterhouse in Fallon closed down after one of their members worked undercover there. If management had been merrily overlooking health violations left, right, and centre, maybe one or two of the staff might have been willing to go a little further in terms of illegalities?

  The contact form on the website was broken, but the organisation did have an active Twitter account. Rhys clicked to send a message. Should he, shouldn’t he…?

  Then a different message caught his eye. One that had arrived weeks ago, soon after he and Coco first met. A warning to “delete your account and stop digging up the past.”

  The past.

  The writer never had replied to Rhys’s message asking for more information, and his finger trembled as he clicked onto the user’s profile. The guy was a youth football coach from Lark’s River, Nevada, his dogs were called Lucky and Chance, love was always the answer, and Go Cardinals! Rhys was still stuck on the “Lark’s River” part. Was that anywhere near Fernley? A quick search told him that it was, and what’s more, the town seemed to have grown up around the Larkspur Reservoir. Either that or the reservoir had been created for the town—did it really matter? Either way, there was a bloody great lake nearby.

  Rhys held his breath as he typed in the next phrase: “Lark’s River drowning.”

  And there she was.

  Holy fuck.

  CHAPTER 25

  WOULD IT BE rude to wake Remi in the middle of the night? He’d given Rhys his number “for emergencies,” but did this count? It wasn’t exactly life and death, more…a miscarriage of justice. Rhys paced the study, pausing to watch Coco breathing steadily on the sofa. Except her name wasn’t Coco, was it? It was Jocelyn. Every so often, her face screwed up as she fidgeted, but at least she hadn’t woken screaming yet. Remi’s pills were definitely an improvement on the remedies they’d tried so far.

  Perhaps a text message would be sensible? That way, if Remi was awake, he could answer, but Rhys wouldn’t risk disturbing him.

  Rhys: I found Coco’s old identity. Not sure what to do now.

  Her old identity. The face matched, but did the soul? He did some frantic calculations. Coco had been reborn on the twenty-sixth of June, and according to Remi, the incubation process for Celine had taken around two weeks. Jocelyn Bordeaux’s body had been found on the twenty-first of May this year, three days after she’d last been seen. So it all depended on whether souls were assigned at the start of the rebuilding process or the end, and that was one thing they didn’t know.

  Rhys’s phone buzzed.

  Remi: Is this a joke?

  Oh, please.

  Rhys: As if I’d joke about something like that.

  He attached the news article from the Daily Lark that he’d just read, the one that had sent chills through him.

  Yesterday morning, a local fisherman spotted the body of Jocelyn Bordeaux in Larkspur Lake, bringing the three-day search by police and volunteers to a devastating end. Jocelyn was first reported missing by her sister, Rochelle, after she failed to return from a walk to “think about things.”

  Rochelle is said to be distraught by the discovery, and the girls’ mother has asked that the family’s privacy be respected at this difficult time.

  Of course, it wasn’t only Jocelyn’s life that ended in this tragedy, but that of her unborn child as well. A friend who wishes to remain anonymous reports that Jocelyn was nervous about impending motherhood. “She wasn’t looking forward to the birth of her baby,” the source said. “She was worried about the future.” A neighbour also raised concerns over Jocelyn’s state of mind, saying that she’d grown more withdrawn in recent months.

  Coco had been pregnant. The news came out of nowhere and hit Rhys like a right hook, leaving him reeling. Of all the things he’d considered, that hadn’t even entered his mind. Who had the baby’s father been? There was no mention of him in the article. The accompanying picture of Coco with her sister had clearly been taken in happier times. They were sitting in a rowing boat, possibly even on the lake where she’d died, laughing at something off camera.

  Rhys’s phone vibrated.

  Remi: I’m coming over.

  He must have run because there was a soft knock at the door thirty seconds later. Thankfully, Coco didn’t stir.

  “None of the beds were good enough?” Remi whispered. He’d thrown a dressing gown over a pair of silk pyjamas, neither of which matched the Nike trainers on his feet.

  “She fell asleep there, and I didn’t fancy my chances carrying her up the stairs. We’ll have to talk in the study.”

  “How did you find her identity?”

  Voice low, Rhys gave Remi a brief précis of the initial search for Coco’s family and the message he’d at first written off as a crank.

  “I guess we don’t need your investigator after all.”

  “Are you sure? If Coco’s body was found by a fisherman and reported to the police, how did it end up in a slaughterhouse?”

  Ah. Shit. “I…don’t know?”

  “So perhaps we’ll let the investigators do their job?”

  “Uh, yeah. I mean, thanks. But how am I meant to explain this to Coco?” Rhys jabbed the screen with a finger. “She’s already freaked out enough by her own death. And now there’s a baby?”

  “Might I suggest wording things very carefully?”

  “Maybe I could just not tell her at all?”

  “You may be willing to risk Coco’s wrath by keeping
secrets, but I’d rather avoid Celine’s.”

  “So you think I should tell her?”

  “I think if she finds out later that you kept this from her, that’ll hurt her more than if you told her the truth in the first place.”

  “I suppose,” Rhys said, but deep down, he knew Remi was right. Coco would want to know. However bad the story might be, she’d be furious if he kept her in the dark.

  “Did they catch the person who killed Jocelyn?”

  “I haven’t got as far as looking yet.”

  No, Rhys had been too busy freaking out about the whole Lark’s River discovery. But now he searched again and found another article dated two months later.

  The inquiry into the tragic death of local woman Jocelyn Bordeaux was today concluded when the coroner determined her drowning in the unpredictable waters of Larkspur Lake to be an accident.

  Despite the ruling, some locals believe her death was more likely to have been caused by suicide. Wade Gibbons, who lives near the Bordeaux house, tells us that the waters are shallow in the area of the lake where her body was found. “If she wanted to live, then she coulda turned around and walked right out. Ain’t nothing that woulda stopped her,” Mr. Gibbons said. “That girl hadn’t been right in the head for months. She needed professional help.”

  The sheriff’s office has refused to comment, other than to say the case is now closed.

  Ms. Bordeaux was buried in a family ceremony at the end of May, and a memorial service will be held at Our Lady of Peace Chapel on Sunday at three o’clock. A request has been made for donations to the National Alliance for Mental Illness in lieu of flowers.

  Rhys was beginning to fear that he’d bitten off more than he could chew. Jocelyn Bordeaux hadn’t been suicidal, he knew that much, but if Coco’s mental state had been fragile before, finding out the truth about her death could be devastating. The only people who’d shown any inclination to help were a mercurial billionaire and his once-dead wife, and Rhys wasn’t sure quite how far that help would go. Would the Kleins kick them out if things got difficult?