Twenty

The afternoon had grown thick and sultry by the time a silent ambulance made its way out of the gate. The news vans weren’t giving up, though. Not with the yellow police tape still up, blocking the entrance to the property, and Officer Eyebrows still standing guard. Eventually, I slid into the backseat, where the sun wasn’t hitting. The old, cracked vinyl was stiff and sticky against my skin, but I was too nervous, wiped out, and just plain scared to care.

I closed my eyes and tried to think of something besides the heat beating down on me or the fear that was twisting my insides into knots, but the only thing I could seem to think about was the coolness of that pine grove from my dreams. The empty darkness of the night, the silence of the stars, and the girl with cheekbones that could cut and a mouth that reminded me of my mother’s.

And then, the heat of the day was gone. The constant chatter of the reporters in their vans dwindled until it was nothing but a far-off murmur, and then silence. All at once, I was no longer just imagining the grove of trees—I was there.

So was the girl.

She was a little older than the last time I’d seen her, closer now to my own age. She sat alone, her back against the base of a thick tree, her arms wrapped around her knees, like she was protecting herself from the night. Her mouth was moving, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. Maybe she was talking to herself, but from the way she rocked, maybe she was singing.

After a while, the girl looked up, found the moon high in the sky, and frowned. Her eyes tracked the darkness, searching. She looked right through me, like she didn’t see me. She must not have seen what she’d been looking for either, because a moment later, she stood, brushing the pine needles from her skirts as she gathered her things, and started walking. She never looked back.

I didn’t hesitate to follow her.

On and on we walked, the girl a little ways ahead of me, picking her way between the trees confidently, even though the night was dark and thick, like she knew exactly where she was going. She didn’t stumble once, which is more than I could say for myself.

This time wasn’t like before, when I had run and run and never got past the same bit of wooded land. This time, the trees eventually grew farther apart, and with each step we took, the pines gave way and moonlight began to find its way to us, lighting up the land so I didn’t have to stumble through the darkness as much.

Eventually, we found the end of the grove of pines and stepped out into a clearing lit up by a heavy moon and a canopy of stars so thick I’d never seen the like. There, I could make out the features of the land—the broad expanse of a field thick with cane. The shadow of some low building off in the distance with lights flickering in its open windows. I looked back once, but the grove of pines I’d just escaped looked so much like a dark, empty mouth that I didn’t look back again.

The girl walked on, rubbing her arms like she was trying to warm them with her hands now and then, but mostly she walked with the determined gait of someone who had somewhere to be. In the distance ahead, strange shadowy shapes rose from the land, but we were too far away to make out what they were. As we got closer to them, I understood at once what I was seeing—two straight lines of sturdy-looking trees formed an alley of sorts, leading out into darkness. On the other side, I knew, would be the river. On this side, where we were walking, should have been Le Ciel.

But there was no house.

My steps slowed so much as we neared the property that I almost lost track of the girl. She continued walking, on and on, but I came to a stop. Those giant live oaks that dripped with Spanish moss and made tourists trek from the Quarter just for a picture in their shade looked exactly the same. There was no mistaking where we were—there’s nowhere else in all of the delta region with trees planted in just that way—purposefully, like someone wanted them to lead up to the river. But the mansion wasn’t there yet. So when were we?

The girl was far ahead now, and if I hesitated any longer I was going to lose her. I wanted to know where she was going, so I left the comforting—and unsettling—familiarity of the oaks behind and ran to catch up.

On she walked, past the place where the big house would someday stand. Past a row of small shacks dotting the dark horizon—probably slave quarters for the plantation that would someday become Le Ciel Doux. The original slave quarters hadn’t made it through the years when it was unfashionable to have any reminders of the less-than-pristine parts of the area’s history sitting around. But they were here now, in whatever time this was.

The girl didn’t turn toward them, though, and she didn’t stop walking. She went past the area that would one day hold a small, picturesque pond, through another line of trees, and to the clearing that held Thisbe’s cabin.

Her steps slowed as she approached it, and when I looked beyond her to the shaded porch of the ghostly white structure, I realized it was because someone was waiting for her—a shadowy figure who held a narrow cigar between his teeth. Its tip flickered a deeper orange as he took a long drag on it.

I couldn’t feel anything—not the cool of the air or the breeze rustling the trees—but I could feel the frustration and anger radiating off the girl when she saw the man on her porch. She squared her shoulders and took the last few steps toward the cabin, toward her cabin. The man sitting on the porch didn’t so much as stand to acknowledge her arrival, but as we got closer, I realized he was younger than I’d expected. But there was something familiar about him.

It took me a second to place him, but when his mouth turned down at something the girl said, it clicked into place. Roman.

Once I recognized him, there was no way not to see the Roman Dutilette I was familiar with in the man’s features. But he was younger here than he was in that daguerreotype Dr. Aimes had showed us. Younger than in any of the portraits that hung on the walls in the big house. His hooded eyes seemed to look right through the girl, like he didn’t believe she was worth seeing, and his smile was more a sneer than anything else.

The girl was clearly agitated. I couldn’t hear a thing she was saying, but from the way she held her body, she was strung tight. Angry.

Roman listened with disinterest to whatever it was the girl told him, blowing streams of smoke from his thin mouth. When she was finished, her hand pointing toward the land we’d walked through as though to direct him on his way, he threw his head back and laughed. Then he got up from the porch and stepped up to her, his eyes cold, his skin dusky in the moonlight. He was still sneering, his light eyes glinting with expectation as he reached for her, brushed her cheek with his hand.

She jerked her head away, a look of disgust and hate filling her eyes, but he took her by the arm with one hand and, flicking his still-lit cigar aside, roughly grabbed her chin with the other, forcing her to look at him. She struggled but couldn’t free herself.

I moved closer, wanting to help her get away from him.

But my hand passed clean through them both, like I was nothing more than a ghost. There was nothing I could do. Not as he pulled her against him. Not as he forced his cruel mouth against hers.

He kissed her long and hard and without any affection at all, his hands groping her roughly as she struggled against him, and when we was done, he sneered at her again.

Then he looked up at me, a mocking smile wiped across his mouth, and said my name.