VEEK

Now it was time to drive home my plan. As usual, Sophie spoke before I could. “Papa, it’s over.”

I said, “No. It isn’t enough for him to acknowledge me. The courts will want more.”

Her papa looked sly. “Damned right,” he muttered. But he put his camera in his coat pocket and turned to listen.

This would be tricky.

“You must yield, Papa.” Sophie turned to me and took my hands. “You’ve won, my Veek. Surely you see this.”

I shook my head. “Ma chère, I don’t look old enough to be the true vicomte. Even if I win the claim, everyone will expect me to die, and . . . I suspect I won’t die for a very long time.” I didn’t say, or ever.

Would she want me that long? Would she survive even a century? Over the bruise on my heart left by Jake’s death, I felt her love, and the love of Montmorency like the promise of new grass in spring. Maybe Baz was right, and I had infected her with my magical oddity.

I looked at her and I saw forever in her eye. My heart bloomed like a hot coal. “Also, it would only put off challenges from other heirs—your father’s cousins, for example.”

“Those playboys?” Henri snorted. “They haven’t the initiative.”

I ignored that. “In five years I’ll be over a hundred. I could go to court for a while, disguised as an old man, but I don’t want to appear in public forever only as un vieux. No, the challenge is to slip past France’s hatred of all things new. To get them to accept me . . . a black, immortal vicomte.”

Sophie’s face fell ludicrously. She wailed. “But you can live at Montmorency. Isn’t that enough?”

“No. I can’t be sure I won’t fall out with future vicomtes. Montmorency, the place, that is forever. So, I fear, am I, as the spirit of the place. How can I do my job when a future vicomte might decide to drain the marais for some commercial purpose? Or he might try to exorcise me. I refuse to be an unwelcome ghost on my own land.”

As I said this, I became much, much stronger. Standing in my own consecrated circle agreed with me. I remembered all those dreams of guarding the fence. I had made this circle by running it. I controlled its power.

And more. Samedi had extended my power immeasurably by forcing me to keep moving all those years. Now I was not just a little pocket jam bois, but a force whose bois crossed the ocean, to hundreds of small places in the western hemisphere.

I thought of those places I had claimed, all those years. The insides of rusting boxcars, the flop houses, the kitchens and storerooms of greasy spoons, lean-to huts made of old boards behind ruined buildings, and hollows in the earth under ragged, low-hanging trees. Places where someone might hide from hunters or find shelter.

I looked at Henri and Sophie and saw them with double vision: my kinsman and my lover, persons I would defend fiercely.

At the same time, they stank of wealth and confidence. What if they could have seen me and Jake cowering under a bush in the rain, making a cold supper out of tin cans in the shade of an empty barn with our fellow bums? What if they had passed by while we were being herded into a police van for vagrancy, or washing dishes in the kitchen of a restaurant to pay for a cheap meal? My kinsman and my lover wouldn’t even have noticed us.

Jake and Samedi had indebted me to those other people, the invisible ones. I inhabited their places now…those refuges of the poor and transient. It would feel good to stand there again. My power was rooted there, too.

I’d given Henri enough time to savor his half-victory over me. I spoke to Sophie, but I had him in the corner of my eye.

“My love, you are aware what magical changes have been occurring in the old world—and here, although less so. The Americans haven’t had to deal much yet with the consequences. They’re not like the French. They still try to deny magic, or quarantine it without examination or cure. But over there, the courts have started to acknowledge cases where magic intrudes on law.”

At that last word, Henri stiffened.

“These are times of rapid change. Yet case law builds slowly. I have only followed French and English law so far. For all I know, elsewhere in the European Union, there are precedents that grant property rights to an immortal man. I have studied long on this. As magic creeps across the continent, more cases crop up.”

Henri said suddenly, “Neuschwander v. von Krakaroff.”

“And Cromwell v. Lincolnshire Mine and Coal.” I nodded, affecting to be indifferent to the interruption, although I was observing him narrowly. “In another five or maybe twenty years, enough precedent might be established to give me a chance. The man who could win such a case would be remembered in European case law forever. Alas, especially now that this case is in motion—” I finally looked at Henri. “It would be impossible for me to win it within the next two weeks. Even a lawyer couldn’t achieve it, and I’m no lawyer. I doubt if anyone could.”

“Impossible?” Sophie said mournfully.

Henri snorted.

I suppressed a smile.

Something soft fell on my bare head—a feather?

I said, “Even if Blint Paradlak v. Kramarchykowicz were to be decided in the next two weeks—”

“But it is decided,” Henri said. “Forty-eight hours ago. I’ve been monitoring the chat rooms for those who attended the trial.”

“Really?” I exhibited a flare of hope—but then I feigned dejection. “No. It’s not enough. It’s impossible. It can’t be done.”

“But it’s enough to get an adjournment,” Henri said. He rose stiffly and began to pace. “First, of critical importance, an adjournment. Second, you must present the DNA evidence. I will accept the evidence, and pouf! no case. Third, you will establish your own claim. I will write the pleadings. The Justice de Bureau will be startled to see me walk in and sit on the other side of the room! Ha! Ha! Cromwell—” He waved away Cromwell with the hand holding his video camera. “After that, we invoke Blint and then Neuschwander.” He held up a warning finger. “But in that order! The first establishes that your identity can be validated. We have DNA evidence, no trouble there. The second asserts your rights over your property. One cannot put the cart before the horse!”

“But Papa—” Sophie began. I pinched her. She fell silent again.

The air seemed alive with little falling things. Ashes?

“After all,” Henri said, as if to himself, “As Vicomte Montmorency I would excite no remark. I would be merely another wealthy pencil pusher, managing money and going to charity balls and public dinners into my dotage.”

He rubbed his hands together. “But! As the attorney who wins de Turbin v. de Turbin? Who makes a vodou god the head of a noble French family? The law will speak of me from that day forward, centuries after I am dead.” His eyes were alight. He flourished the video camera. “That’s immortality!” He cackled in his old manner.

I said hesitantly, as if speaking to—yes, to my lawyer, “I have accumulated considerable documentation that may apply. It’s in my briefcase over there.” I pointed.

Henri nodded. “Ah. No doubt I know all of it already, but you may as well show me.”

I fetched my briefcase and handed it to him. “It’s very dim here. Perhaps we should go into the theater building.”

“Yes, yes,” Henri said impatiently. “We have no time to lose.”

“But won’t my cousins be angry?” Sophie objected. “Can they stop you from helping us? It was you who brought the suit.”

Henri shrugged. “It’s a matter of conscience. An attorney who discovers in himself a motivation to stand on the other side of his own client’s case must resign from representing that client. If the judge won’t let me be your attorney, I will represent myself as a citizen and align my interests with yours.”

Slowly, while Henri planned how he would win my case against himself, we gathered all Henri’s bags of equipment and brought them through the dim trees and a thickening shower of falling leaves—or ashes?—to the back of the theater. As we drew near, we heard the music, and then the sound of cheering.

“Ah, the music!” Sophie exclaimed, “It’s Yoni! She feels better! I’m so glad!”

Henri opened the door. A whirlwind of refrigerated, fragrant air rushed out at us, spattering us with thousands of tiny objects. My face stung as if in a snowstorm. Sophie squealed. Henri struggled, but he couldn’t force the door shut.

Something struck my eye and I picked it off me. The air was full of them. I turned my back to shield my eyes and held one up in the light over the theater’s back door.

It was a rose petal.