VEEK

I found Sophie at Yoni’s club engagement.

The music was still playing when I arrived. Outside, on the sidewalk, even in the street around the club, fans stood packed as tightly as on a subway. One hoped in vain to shove through them into the building.

When I was close enough to hear, I realized why. The singer’s voice cast a spell, in the technically exact sense. The crowds swayed as she prayed for peace.

I opened my senses to the air. The music entered me and brought me peace.

We all stood listening. Around me, every man and woman opened his or her aura to persons near them, until we breathed as one.

One song led to the next. Time passed. I forgot why I was there.

At the break, silence fell, and we all stood like puppets, waiting. I remembered my mission.

Somewhere nearby, Sophie also stood enrapt.

I put my hand over my heart. Closing my eyes, I breathed in the bliss we shared in the music. I pictured her sparkling energy. I smelled her smooth, scented skin. I reeled myself toward her, like a fish swimming toward shore and certain death.

I recognized what Mme Vulcaine had spoken of to Sophie with startling clarity. The world was full of spirits. The air teemed with them. They tickled my feet through the soles of my shoes. Like the music lovers standing packed against me, sweating calmly, breathing together in time with the woman we couldn’t even see inside that building, we were connected. The potency of our combined life force made me feel that all my sex demon work had been a child’s play in a sandbox.

This has been a vacation, a romp in the park, Jake had said.

These thoughts had made me uneasy before. Now, Yoni’s music wrapped me in love.

The break ended, and Yoni’s voice returned. Sophie must be very near, now. I no longer worried that I would miss her in the crowd. Each song built on the other, bringing us closer together. When we reached the climax of the concert, I would find her.

The climax arrived. Yoni sang, “Come home, all is forgiven.”

I couldn’t help but think of the grotto in the maze at Montmorency, of Sophie’s baby-like scent, the sound of frogs and birds on the marsh, and the completely trusting way she had opened herself to me that night.

I heard Baz’s voice join the woman’s. Come home, all is forgiven.

My knees gave.

As the song ended I became aware of Sophie’s voice in my ear. “Here you are!”

We were kneeling on the pavement, face to face. Her scent filled my head. Her hand stroked my back as if I were an infant.

I tried to rise and couldn’t. Someone was standing on my shoelace. I looked up—it was a policeman. Alarmed, I let Sophie help me to my feet and turned to the officer. Now I saw that tears ran down his face. The policeman peered over the heads of the crowd toward the club. He ignored us.

I, too, had been weeping as if at a beautiful dream. The whole crowd was affected. Those who could pair off did so, embracing as if they would merge skin-into-skin right through their clothes. Some had shed their clothes.

There was an unstable feel to the air, as if night was about to become day.

Sophie clutched me with both hands.

“Now we go, mon petit choux,” I murmured in her ear. “Before this mob comes unstuck.” By kissing the top of her head at intervals, I was able to coax her out of the crowd and lead her down the street to stand under the wall of the baseball park.

Behind us, cheering began.

“Oh, Veek!” She gulped. “That was so beautiful.” Her animated little face tipped up. “Did you feel it?”

“Yes.” Holding her, looking in her eyes, I knew at least that she belonged in my life. If only I belonged in hers!

“Come away,” I said again. “We can’t talk here.”

“No! Yoni spoke with me before the concert! She might help us—if that mean roommate of yours will let her.”

“Baz?”

“Ashurbanipal.”

I had failed Baz by letting her get to Yoni. I sighed. “Was she angry when you intruded on her?”

Inside the building, I heard muffled shouting. Ashur! Ashur! Stamping, too. Ashur! Ashur! Stamp, stamp. Stamp, stamp.

“Of course not!” Sophie poked me hard with her forefinger. “Veek, you have to take your power! My father will steal everything that’s yours, if he can.”

I groaned. “He already has it.”

“But you’re a vodou spirit! Mme Vulcaine has said so! Baron Samedi said so when you ate his food, years ago!” Her voice dropped. “I have known your power, Veek.”

I looked at the ground, ashamed. “Those skills you know of were not used wisely, Sophie. It took a long time, much experimenting, many accidents and uncomfortable adventures for me to learn to do that much.” I looked away. “I have not used them for good.”

“What do you mean?”

“What I did with you, I have done many times with those women who visited Jake’s shop.”

“Yes, yes, I know!” She flapped her hand. “But didn’t you do more with those skills?”

This was my amoral little Sophie, who had slept with numberless lovers and wanted me to steal everything her father owned, because it had once been stolen from me.

I shrugged. “I did. I stole money so Jake and I could eat. I helped him cheat at cards. I got us out of bar fights and out of jail and, many times, out of town. Sophie,” I said painfully, “these are not the gifts that make for an aristocrat.”

She snorted. “They did feed you a lot of merde when you were growing up, didn’t they?”

I gaped.

Her curls shook. “All aristocrats do these things. My own father is a financial pirate.”

My eyebrows went up. “A very dressy pirate.”

She punched my arm. “Fool, don’t you know all pirates dress well? Come. We can defeat him. We must!”

I remembered that she didn’t know what I had learned from Mme Vulcaine.

I was about to become this thing, this jam bois. Samedi had taken everything and everyone I had, or so I thought when Jake died. Now I would also lose Sophie.

She was another Jake, vivid and ungovernable and joyous. I had met her young, but she would grow old and die—and leave me the way Jake did—after I used her up, the way I’d used Jake up.

Sophie stared impatiently into my face.

Why do I feel like you own me? she had asked me that first night. I hadn’t known then that she was mine.

Now I knew—and I knew I had to give her up.

Down the street, at the club, blue and red lights flashed. Paddy wagons were pulling up to carry people away. We backed deeper into the shadow of Wrigley Field.

“Are you listening? Here is where things stand,” she said briskly, as the bulk of the ballpark came between us and the police. “My father learned that that navel string you so feared is only beef liver. Bon. But not so good, he has your birth caul. It’s quite horrible. He clutches it and he tells me what to do and I do it.” She shuddered.

“He gave a tiny piece of it to the laboratory. I gave them the condom you used at the Four Seasons. He squeezed the caul and he commanded that poor man to work until he has finished the DNA analysis. So it is only a matter of hours before you are proven the vicomte. Again, bon.”

“As simple as that.” I gave a shaky laugh. “It won’t be that easy, child.”

She stamped her foot. “Stop calling me that!”

I captured her hands. “Will you listen? There are difficulties I can overcome with simple things—papers I’ve carried all my life, my DNA. Other matters won’t resolve so easily. These obstacles have been built into me, stone by stone, since I was born.” Looking at her fresh, sweet, stormy face, I was crushed by the impossible: her youthful perfection could never mate with my sordid past. I couldn’t do to her what I’d done to Jake. “Ma chère, I’m old. I must be your great—your great-great-uncle.”

“No, you are my first cousin four times removed. I worked it out.”

“Will you be quiet?” I roared. Her mouth fell open. “Please. Sophie, you are—you are blood of my blood, but—but I can’t. I’m too old,” I said helplessly, unable to express my fears.

“Bah. Your roommate acts younger than you do.”

“He’s older.”

“He has more fun than you do. You act like an old man. You want to be an old man,” she said, striking my arm with her fist. “Is this old?” she demanded, grabbing my parties through my trousers and startling me. “When did you give up on life? Jake was not so old as you, and he was a hundred when he died!”

She had me there.

“You tell these stories to Mme Vulcaine as if you were a fool, hopelessly following at Jake’s heels, always thrown into adventure reluctantly. Yet in the stories he tells, it is clearly seen that you are un homme brave, a hero, a fighter, a champion even.”

“Jake was a champion storyteller,” I said sourly. “I was reared to be inconspicuous, not to be a hero. Sophie, I don’t learn quickly. I like my quiet life. I like my habits, my nice clothes.” I drew a deep breath. “When we met, you said I was a good boy. And so I am.”

“Ah, bah!” she exclaimed. “I have seen the beast in you, M’sieur Homebody. You who try so hard to live elegantly. Listen. That woman, the priestess? She came here expecting you to kill her.”

“I—what?” I blinked.

“That’s why the funeral must happen here, why we must do these ceremonies in Chicago and not back in New Orleans. Why Jake didn’t take you back to New Orleans, or to ceremonies wherever you traveled. Who knew what creature you might become? That vodou house was alerted to your importance, and Jake was sacrificed to Samedi’s service and to the dangerous work of making you fit to become a lwa. Now this woman, too. Do you know she is the leader of her house back home? Everything depends on her. This is a huge investment for their whole community. What if you are not worthy to be a lwa? What if you are a selfish monster? If Jake has failed, it is she who must stop you.”

My mouth opened and closed. “Can she?”

“Perhaps.” Sophie shrugged. “But fear not. I will stop her first.”

That made me laugh. “Sophie.” I swallowed. “I gave myself completely to one person for eighty years, and then I lost him. You didn’t think much of Jake, perhaps.”

“Jake was magnificent!” she declared.

“Yes.” I blinked. “He was.”

“So you won’t take less next time? Is that it?” She glared at me.

“That’s not it. He—he knew me.”

She leaned into me, her face open to mine. “I could come to know you.” She was so very young.

“He died, Sophie. He’s gone. Anyone else . . . will also die. To you he may have been an old man, but to me, to the end, he was still twenty, mad-brained, fearless, charming, alive. Right up until I lost him.” Words ripped harshly from my throat. “I can’t bear another loss like that.”

She pulled away from me slowly. “This makes me feel so weird. I don’t feel unequal to you.”

“You don’t feel unequal to anyone.”

“Not really,” she admitted. “But you feel unequal to me—you feel separated from me by all those years. I suppose experience makes you feel superior.”

“It has ruined me for adventure, Sophie. I’m desperate to settle down. You’re still young enough to enjoy feeling immortal. You’ve been rich your whole life. You don’t see how anything can be difficult.”

She flashed out, “Oh, now I’m unworthy because I’m spoiled and rich?” She spat on the sidewalk. “This wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been dumped for such a reason!”

I said ruthlessly, “Will you want to become nursemaid to an old man’s habits? Or will your thirst for adventure take you off on pilgrimage the way Jake’s took him and me?”

Her face fell. “I see. I’m not enough.” She looked surprised and forlorn. “My papa hates that I’m impulsive. Do you hate it that I’m impulsive?”

“No,” I said softly. “I think you’re perfect. It’s I who am insufficient.”

I couldn’t bear the pain in her face. I turned away.

“Veek, you won’t give up on the court case!” she cried.

I looked at her, and took a step backward. “You must stay out of that. You’ll get hurt. I’ll try not to harm you or your father.”

“How will you do that?” she asked in her reasonable French way. “No, I have decided what you must do. Yoni won’t help, and that woman from your mother’s family, that priestess, she’s only here to test you. So you must consult the most powerful ally you have.”

I frowned. “Baz can’t win my court case for me.”

“Baron Samedi must help you,” she said, making my blood run cold. “We will call on him. If you don’t know the veves and the prayers, I do. I’ll call him. That way, if he takes offense, I can take the blame.”

“What?” I shouted. In a flash, that night came back to me, the candlelight, the drumming and dancing, and Samedi striding spiderlike across the peristyle toward me. No, no, no, no!

“Come, Veek, it’s time for you to admit that you need him.”

“I do not—” I had to choke off a shriek from that frightened boy inside me.

“While Jake was alive, you could pretend you were consulting Jake.” Sophie dimpled. “You told the mambo that you ran away. You told Jake you didn’t want your destiny. But what have you been doing for eighty years but flirting with destiny?”

“I—don’t—flirt—with—the—lwas,” I said like a grown man.

“Nonsense. You knew that Jake was hand-in-glove with Samedi. You knew all about that. You said yourself Jake was a natural serviteur. The Baron moved in and out of his head all the time! For someone who was so afraid of the lwa, you didn’t run away so well, did you?”

Little panicky breaths came in and out of me, like steam engine puffs. “No.”

“Oh, Veek, don’t play the victim! You put the bomb under your own derrière! Be proud of that! Above all, don’t be afraid of what Samedi might tell you.”

The schoolboy escaped my control. My sang froid fled.

I shook my head, backing away from her. “Stay away, Sophie. Don’t get between me and your father. Really don’t get between me and Samedi.” I turned and ran.

“Veek, dammit!” she shrieked after me. “You idiot!”