The Mysterious Point of Deceit

by Beth Byers

  “Who is that?” Severine asked.

  Lisette’s only answer was the shake of a head. She glanced at Severine. “We’re here. Are you ready?”

  Severine nodded and then followed Lisette around the corner of the building and through a red door in the shadows of the alleyway. It took a long moment for her eyes to adjust to the darkness in the back room. Other than the door, there were no windows in the room. Once she could see, she saw Lisette and one other person in the room.

  “This her?” the man asked in a low voice.

  “Clearly,” Lisette replied dryly.

  “Severine DuNoir,” Severine said.

  “I don’t care,” he said. “Lisette said you’d pay for what you want to know.”

  “I will,” Severine answered easily, unbothered by the aggressiveness. “But you aren’t the fortune teller.”

  Lisette glanced at Severine, handed the fellow a bill, and then he led the way through the back of the building and out into the courtyard. The flowering lushness wasn’t what Severine expected. She also tried to hide her disbelief at the woman waiting for them. The woman had very dark skin, and with the rosiness of her cheeks and the shine of healthfulness, she shone with beauty.

  “I expected…”

  Severine trailed off and the woman laughed. “Skulls and chickens and a snake about my neck?”

  “Maybe,” Severine admitted. “Something otherworldly and disturbing.”

  “Do you have the gift?” Lisette asked the woman. “You go by Madame Cocotte. That’s not your real name.”

  “My real name is no concern of yours,” Cocotte said. “Madame Cocotte will suffice.”

  “You’ll sell a fortune,” Severine asked.

  “I’ve been known to deliver a requested message.”

  “And you pass information as well.” Lisette added. “For a price.”

  “A girl’s got to eat.”

  “I can understand that,” Severine said, taking a seat on a stone bench and giving Lisette a look until she did the same. Cocotte, however, remained standing, keeping a wrought iron table between them.

  “We’d like names,” Lisette said. “Of anyone who Severine’s father, Lukas DuNoir, paid you to give messages to. Whether theatrically or with a clever little note.”

  “I can’t tell you anything.” Cocotte smiled easily, a flash of white teeth and quick glance to the side. Severine followed the woman’s gaze and saw someone watching them from the building.

  Severine lowered her voice so it couldn’t be overheard. “I need a list of names and instances.”

  Cocotte lifted a brow and leaned back, glancing at Lisette as if asking if Severine were serious. Instead, Lisette named an amount.

  “I’ll take double that, cher. I’m no dumb dora. If people think I’ve turned on them, it isn’t just lettuce that will dry up.”

  “We already know it’s generous,” Lisette replied. “We’ve heard what you charge.”

  “But this would be for betraying my customers,” the woman said, ignoring the fact that Lukas DuNoir was dead.

  Severine rose, leaving a straight hundred-dollar bill on the table in such a way that someone watching wasn’t able to see it. “Let me know when you want real money. I’ll want real names, real situations, and anything you know that concerns me right now.”

  “One whale isn’t worth all of my smaller fish.”

  How quickly she went from the doubled price of what Severine offered to that being nothing. Severine wasn’t even bothered by the switch.

  “That’s a call you have to make,” Severine replied. “I want something verifiable to start. Maybe you could start with Theodosia Grantley.”

  She then turned and left the courtyard, shaking her head at her assumptions about what she thought before she came to the building. She didn’t want to haggle with an unknown audience, so she left. Was it the right move? She wasn’t sure. But, she had seen the avarice in Cocotte’s gaze, and Severine knew that money talked, persuaded, and changed things. It was far more than a bit of a power.

  She stepped into the alley and found the tall, thin man standing there. He eyed her, and she could see a threat in his gaze, but she had her revolver and Anubis, and the fellow wasn’t quite as powerful as he seemed to think.

  “Girl,” he said and smiled slowly in that sort of crazed, evil way that wanted her to be fearful.

  “Hello,” she replied, eyeing his hands. Sister Mary Chastity had told her to always watch their hands and their eyes. That’s where the signs were.

  “Come,” he told her.

  “Who are you?”

  Lisette just stepped into the alley behind Severine and gasped.

  “Someone wants to talk to you.”

  “My home is fairly well-known and easily found,” she said, glancing at Lisette, who looked more alarmed than Severine expected. “We answer our door when people knock, so it’s not as though I’m impossible to see.”

  “Come,” he ordered with menace.

  “She’s not going anywhere,” Lisette told the man. “Get on out of here.”

  He straightened and broadened and angled his body to loom over them, and Anubis growled low and deep.

  “Your dog doesn’t have to survive this, girl.”

  Severine lifted a brow and took hold of Anubis’s collar, handing Lisette her clutch and stepping just in front of Lisette, so the retrieval of the revolver would be hidden. “How do you think this is going to happen?”

  His reply was a repeat of that crazed grin. “Your father owes people money. They’ve decided you will pay.”

  Lisette stepped to the side, holding the revolver on the man. “Bring proof to Mr. Brand, and he’ll see it paid.”

  The weighty look on the man’s face said that whatever was owed, there was no proof. “That’s not how this works, little girl. Put that pea shooter away. We both know you aren’t going to use it. You told me once you had a horror of guns.”

  Severine held out her free hand and Lisette gave her the revolver while Anubis growled.

  “What you think? I’ll fear you instead?” His mean voice made Severine want to let Anubis loose. In a bound or two, her sweet boy would have his jaws around the man’s neck.

  “Back away,” Severine ordered with the background music of Anubis’s low, fierce growl. Her dog’s growl bothered her far more than the man’s threats. Anubis was a reliable judge of a person’s intent, and the fierceness of that rumble had Severine’s gaze narrowing.

  “Make me,” he said, ignoring the revolver to laugh at her.

  She lifted a brow and shot the ground at his feet.

  He cursed and leapt back, and she saw his eyes widen.

  “The next one doesn’t have to be in the ground.”

  There were shouts in the street, and she smirked at him. “What do you think? One man, cornering two women in an alley. Will they help you or me?”

  His answer was to turn and run. Severine handed Lisette the gun again and took better hold of Anubis, who hadn’t relaxed as the fellow disappeared.

  “Mr. Brand is never going to let me leave the house again,” Severine muttered low and Lisette laughed, but they were both shaky. Severine let out a near hysterical giggle while Lisette wiped a quick tear away.

  “Lady, you all right?” a man asked. “Was that you?”

  “We’re all right,” Severine told him with relief, looking at the man who faced the potential crime scene with a readiness to help. “Thank you for coming.”

  “Did you hear that shot?”

  “I heard it,” Severine hedged. “I saw someone running.”

  The fellow nodded and looked back down the street. “Be careful, miss.” His gaze landed on Anubis and then said, “Maybe you’re all right with that beast following you around.”

  “I am,” Severine replied as though she wasn’t feeling a little jittery and headed towards where they had left her car. She wasn’t even surprised to see that someone had cut all of the tires. They’d wanted her helpless an
d afraid. And she shivered as she faced it.

  “Miss?” someone called from the restaurant across the street. Severine looked up, and he said, “I can send one of my boys for a mechanic.”

  “Would you?” Severine asked and closed her eyes. “Might you also have a telephone I can use?”

  The man nodded and Severine and Lisette took an outside table after Lisette called Mr. Brand for help. Severine closed her eyes and realized that her hands were shaking. She’d been calm when the man was trying to scare her. She’d been calm when she’d made her way back to the car as though it were safer for her than being on foot, but now that they had help, her hands were shaking.

  The restaurant fellow brought them crab and corn chowder along with a basket of bread. They hadn’t ordered it, but Severine took a bite and focused on the scent, the temperature, the flavors in her mouth. She counted things she could hear until her hands stopped shaking and then, when she looked up again, her skin didn’t feel so foreign.

  “Did you see who did it?” Severine asked when the restaurant owner checked on them again.

  “One of the boys saw who did it, but the fellow was angled away, so we didn’t see his face. My boy chased after him, but he disappeared.”

  “Was he very tall and very thin?” Lisette asked. “Medium dark skin with a scar on his jawline?”

  Severine’s gaze narrowed. She hadn’t seen the scar, and she couldn’t help but remember the recognition when they’d seen the man before they’d visited Cocotte. A flash of distrust moved through Severine. Could she trust Lisette? Could she trust this man, for that matter? Maybe the soup was drugged like the wine at the mansion.

  From what she’d been experiencing, Severine felt that the people she’d been around since she’d come to New Orleans were a bit too quick to put something in someone’s drink. The doctored wine at those Spirit Society events that made one a bit more likely to be overcome by the ‘supernatural.’ The wine that had put her right to sleep at the big house when her brother had been trying to make her think she was mad.

  Maybe she was being hunted on all sides, and she couldn’t trust anyone. But did she want to live like that? She considered how many times that Lisette had comforted and protected her and then sat up straighter.

  “This is driving me mad.”

  “The car?” Lisette asked as the mechanic arrived and Severine rose.

  “No, the number of people who are convenient. Was our friend inside a bystander with a good heart? Or was he somehow purchased? What about that fellow? Why do you know he has a scar? I know I can trust you, but the paranoid feeling is rising, and I find myself just wanting to return to Austria where everyone was trustworthy.”

  “I knew him when I was younger,” Lisette told Severine. “I helped take care of him after he got that scar. Mama sewed him up. I nursed him through a fever. I trusted him once.”

  “But you don’t now?”

  Lisette’s laugh was dark and there was a wealth of pain behind it. “Not in the least.”

  “What shall I do?”

  “We need to be careful, Sev. This isn’t over yet.”

  Severine nodded and then crossed to the mechanic who eyed her car and said, “This is a damn shame, miss. A damn shame.”

  “Can you fix it?”

  “I’ll need some time. This fellow says there was something with your gas tank, miss. I think it would be good to drain it, just in case. If the fiend who did this wanted to ruin this beauty, he could have put sugar in your gas tank.”

  Severine nodded, deeply comforted by the fury on the man’s face. She agreed with him on the things to be done and then found Mr. Brand had arrived. He’d stayed in the background while she spoke to the mechanic and then just nodded at the fellow.

  “I’ll accompany the car to the shop, Severine,” Mr. Brand told her, “and then get a ride home. You’ll be all right with my car?”

  She nodded and then said with a sigh, “We need to speak when you return.”

  He knew her well enough to see the worry. “Do you want me to come with you now?”

  She shook her head, paid the restaurant man, tipped the fellow who’d tried to save her car, and headed back home with Lisette and Anubis, hoping to feel safe in the walls that had always protected her.

  Chapter 10

  “There’s a letter for you,” Chantae said as they entered.

  “Is it urgent?” Severine asked, feeling that haunting chill. She imagined hearing her father enter the house behind her, slamming the door and calling, I’m home, my loves. How had he entered the house when he’d visited his mistresses? Had he ever visited the son who was Severine’s age?

  Those thoughts were chased away by the energetic greeting of her two girls, Kali and Persephone. Severine knelt down to accept their love and let the huffs of excitement and adoration chase away the ghost of her father.

  She looked up her from her position and asked, “Who’s it from?”

  “That Grantley woman.”

  Severine considered for a moment and murmured, “I wonder if she realized she’s being followed or if it’s about her haunting.”

  Lisette shrugged. “She makes it seem like she’s harder and more experienced than I would have guessed for a spoiled wife. Maybe she did spot the tail.”

  “Either way,” Severine said suddenly, “I’m taking a long, long bath. Don’t answer the door for anyone.”

  “Anyone?” Lisette asked.

  “Well,” Severine paused to consider who she truly trusted and what she actually wanted. Finally she said, “Florette, Mr. Brand, Mr. Thorne, Mr. Oliver. Anyone else, don’t even open the door.”

  Chantae’s gaze widened while Lisette said, “I’ll explain, Mama.”

  “Your granny is here. Should we send her home?” Chantae asked, her gaze moving from Severine to Lisette. There was clear worry in Chantae’s face for her own mother.

  Severine shook her head and then said, “I think being alone is a bad idea for any of us. Call for a driver and a car if your mother needs to go home and have them take her all the way.”

  “Meline was going to come by,” Lisette said. “I should try to stop her.”

  “If you can,” Severine agreed. “If you can’t, make sure you send her home in a car. I’ll happily pay to get her all the way to her door safely.”

  Severine pressed her hand against her forehead and then sighed. She’d been ignoring the tightness in her neck, and the headache had moved from tight to pounding. Her eyes hurt in their sockets, and her spine was stiff from her skull to her hips.

  “Are you all right?” Chantae asked.

  Severine pushed her face into Persephone’s neck and shook her head against the dog’s ruff. She quietly said something incomprehensible and then added, “Don’t let the dogs out either. Keep one with you in the kitchen and if they become alarmed, you should be too.”

  Chantae’s gaze widened even further, and then narrowed. “We’ll be fine.”

  “Yes, we will,” Severine agreed. “They think we’re weak.”

  “They’re wrong,” Lisette replied.

  “We are going to peel back all of those layers, find the man, and stop him. Is the daily girl still here?”

  Chantae nodded.

  “Would you send her up with a cup of Sister Bernadette’s tea blend? And when the maid goes home, call the car for her.”

  Whatever the reply was, she didn’t hear. Severine pressed both hands against her temples and rubbed, hoping to release some of the tension. She rose and found her way to her bedroom with Anubis and Persephone at her heels.

  She had taken one of the guest rooms when she’d returned, unable to stomach her parents’ bedroom. The comment about redoing the house and making it her own echoed in her head, and rather than going straight to her bedroom, she dared to open her parents’ door instead.

  The scent of her mother’s perfume still lingered, or perhaps, Severine was just going mad. She took a deep breath and a step into the room. Anubis growled and s
he followed his gaze to her mother’s dressing table. The three mirrors and vanity were covered, but Severine would swear that she sensed her mother sitting there, brushing her hair.

  When Severine had lingered in the room as a child, Mother would snap at her. What do you want, Severine? Don’t sneak about like a goblin. It makes you quite undesirable.

  Severine shuddered and shut the door on her mother’s presence. She turned and crossed to her bedroom. She must have spent longer in her mother’s bedroom than she’d realized as there was a teapot and teacup on a platter with berries, cookies, cheese, and crackers. Severine poured herself a cup of tea and then took two aspirin. She sighed as she slumped onto the end of her bed and then sipped the tea. She could so easily envision the nuns with this tea in her hands, the scent in the air. Harsh, aching desire to see the nuns again filled Severine to the point where she hurt from her hair to her toes.

  The letter from Mrs. Grantley was staring at her from her dresser, but Severine ignored it, finished the tea, and then leaned back to let the aspirin begin to work. When she was able to drag herself back up, she filled the bath with salts and oils and then slid into the water.

  Severine found her way downstairs, unashamedly wearing black silk pajamas and a red and black kimono. Her hair was hidden under a black silk turban, and her skin was free of cosmetics. It wasn’t even dinnertime yet, but she was done for the day. She wanted to curl up with a novel and breathe easily.

  She discovered Chantae and the daily maid in the kitchen. Their maids changed often since Chantae was precise and demanding, and they were still looking for the right fit. Severine smiled and then laughed at the look on Chantae’s face.

  “I’m hungry,” Severine whined like a child and then laughed again as Chantae gazed at her up and down.

  “You back to your baby days? You want I should get you a nurse? I don’t hold with whining from grown women.”