Who are your friends, Dupree?” Alicia LaPorte stood over us, tapping her pen against the chipped laminate tabletop. “Have you been hiding these fine boys away from me all summer?”
I grinned up at her. Alicia had been my co-captain on swim team, a tall, lanky blonde with the foulest mouth I’ve ever heard. While we hadn’t ever been close, she’d been one of the only girls to stay friendly with me after I’d quit. “Hey Alicia,” I said. “This is Ransom, my mom’s intern. And Charlie, my boyfriend.”
“What a shame.” She winked at him. “He’s too cute to keep to yourself.”
Heat crept up my neck, and beside me, Charlie squirmed in his seat.
Leah snaked her hand across the table, catching Ransom’s fingers in her own. Claiming him. Ransom looked down at their hands, joined together, something like amusement flashing over his face. “Alas, gorgeous,” he said to Alicia, “it appears we’re both spoken for.”
“I guess I’ll just have to wait until college,” Alicia said with a sigh. “All right. I know you aren’t in here just to flaunt your beautiful boys in my face. What can I get you?”
She scribbled down our orders and left, her hips swaying with every step. The minute she was out of earshot, Leah leaned forward and rested her elbows on the table. “So tell us more about this spell,” she said, looking at Charlie. “Do you really think it’ll open Amelia’s ring?”
Charlie, strangely enough, slid his gaze to Ransom. “Go ahead,” he said to the other boy. “You’re the one who found it.”
Ransom straightened in his seat. “I found a sheet of paper tucked into one of the grimoires,” he said. “It looked like it was torn out of an older manuscript. Late thirteenth, maybe early fourteenth century, by the handwriting, if I had to guess.”
“And it worked?” I asked Charlie.
“It’s not really an opening spell, per se,” Ransom said before Charlie could answer me. “It’s a severing spell. I think he can use it to break apart whatever’s holding the clasp together.”
“I have to work on my precision,” Charlie said. He slipped his glasses off and pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s an intense spell.”
“I told you to stop being modest. The spell isn’t intense—you are,” Ransom said. “Charlie has some insanely powerful juju going on.”
Charlie’s smile was brief. “Yeah, well. We’ll see how long that lasts.” He sat back as Alicia set a steaming cup of black coffee in front of him. “Thanks,” he said.
“No problem, hot stuff,” she said. “You guys good here?”
I picked up my fork and dug into my pie. “We’re great, Alicia. Thanks.”
She saluted me and turned on her heel. “Holler if you need anything.”
“What do you mean, Charlie?” Leah asked. “Will you run out of… of…” she dropped her voice, “… magic before we can open the ring?”
“He’ll be fine,” Ransom said. “He’ll get plenty of rest once we open the ring.”
I frowned at him across the table. “Maybe we can wait a few days,” I said. “After a few hundred years, how much will a few days matter?”
“We have to do it now.” Ransom gritted the words through his teeth. “I don’t have much time left. Just a few weeks before I go back to school.”
The bell over the door danced. I glanced over and locked eyes with Ben as he stepped into the diner. He faltered, the smile falling off his face at the sight of me. Ransom lifted his hand in a wave, smirking.
Ben scowled and took a seat at the counter with his back to us.
I tore my gaze away from him and turned back to Charlie, resting my hand on his knee. “We do this when you’re ready. Not before.”
He raised his gaze to mine. His eyes, normally brilliant blue, were muddy and tired in his face. “Maybe Ransom’s right,” he said. “Maybe it’s better just to get it over with.”
I shook my head. “If you’re sure,” I said.
I thought he meant for his smile to be reassuring, but instead it just made the shadows under his eyes look deeper. I didn’t know how much more of himself he had left to give.
I hoped that whatever Ransom was asking wouldn’t be too much.
***
I am twenty-one years old, and I hate the place I have been exiled to.
Saint Domingue is hot and humid and sticky, especially now, at the end of August, and my new husband, the Viscount de Laval, is old and fat and boring. Twice now, I have had to stop myself from stopping his heart in his sleep. His children from his first marriage, all older than me by a decade or more, do not trust me, and killing him would only see me turned out onto the street. Since I have given him a son and a daughter less than a year apart, he has taken to traveling the island for weeks at a time to survey his various smaller plantations and make business deals in Port au Prince, leaving me in the big house on his largest sugar plantation with the children. There have been rumblings of discontent among the slaves in the cities, but here, on the northern end of the island, we are removed from the troubles.
We are safe.
For that, at least, I am thankful.
I run my fingers over my daughter’s curls, black as a raven’s wing. She rolls over, thumb tucked in her mouth. I pull it out gently and turn to my son. He sleeps like a starfish, limbs spread wide. It is hard to look at him and not think of the babe I abandoned.
The babe Robert tricked me into giving away.
The babe he stole from me.
As always, the anger comes hot and fast. A blue glow envelopes my hands, and I stop myself before I set the bed aflame. These children—my children—are innocents. They shall not suffer for my sins.
“Madame?” Nori, the slave who nurses the children, stands in the doorway, a lit candle in her hand. Her eyes are wide in the dim light, and at first, I think she has caught me at my magic. The slaves have whispered once or twice about me, rumors that I have had to find and snuff out at the source.
I rise, taking care to hide my still-effervescent hands behind my back. “Did you need something, Nori?”
She licks her lips. “Madame, you have a visitor. It is the Comte d’Edys’ man. He says it is very important.”
The Comte d’Edys owns the plantation closest to ours, a hard three-mile ride in the daylight. That he is here in the dark hour before dawn is troubling. I follow the girl down the stairs to find a travel-stained and dark-skinned young man—little more than a boy—clutching his hat in the parlor. He tries to bow the moment he sees me, but staggers forward instead. The front of his shirt is slick with blood.
“Madame,” he breathes. “Treachery. The Comte is lost. Come. To warn you.”
And then the madness descends upon us.
The window to my left shatters, sending a glittering cascade of glass into the room. Nori screams and runs for the stairs, but I am frozen, my feet stuck fast to the ground.
“Madame!” The Comte’s man grabs me and pulls me from the room as the other window explodes. Someone tosses a torch inside, and the linen curtain catches fire immediately.
This time, I do not push the anger away. I shrug out of the boy’s hands and open myself up to the power swirling within me. It responds eagerly, tugging at my edges, threatening to drown me in its depths. This time, I do not try to hide the glow that envelopes me.
This time, I embrace it.
“Get the children to safety,” I tell the boy. He scrambles backwards, up the stairs. If I can only buy time for him, and for Nori and the children…
I turn to face the door. One flick of my wrist and it flies free, crashing against the wall.
Outside, there is chaos.
I step out onto to the veranda, barefooted and wearing my dressing robe. Smoke rises from the sugar fields, and already, I can hear screams. Somewhere in the distance, a gun is fired. But my attention does not linger in the distance. I focus on what is in front of me.
I focus on the mob, already bloodied, hungry for more.
I focus on the men, armed with machetes and pitchforks and battered old swords and a hunting rifle here and a pistol there.
I focus on these men who have come to burn my house with my children sleeping inside, who have come to kill my family.
I focus on the men I will destroy.
The power surges from me as the sun begins to rise, bright blue streaks against a deep purple sky. At first, they do not pay attention to me—they are too busy looting and raping and burning and murdering. Smoke pours from the house as the first of the men stumbles to the ground, a gaping hole in his chest. His heart, torn free, falls to the dirt beside him.
It is still beating.