Thirty-Three

The grounds of the plantation were bathed in shadow as I pulled through the heavy gates and steered the car down
the fork in the drive that would take us to the big house. The Nova’s headlights cut through the darkness and lit up the white columns of the mansion, causing them to throw dark shadows against the house.

I cut the engine and the lights, but the mansion still seemed to glow in the darkness, rising up in front of us like an enormous tomb.

Not like a tomb, I corrected. The whole place was a tomb because of what Roman Dutilette had done to build it.

How many times had I stood in those rooms and told gawking tourists about how the whole plantation system along the River Road was built on the blood and sweat of people who were forced to labor in captivity? I’d never known how much more devastating that truth was in the case of Le Ciel Doux.

Odane sidled up closer to me. “We don’t know for sure they’re in there,” he said in an attempt to build up my courage and his own. “We might be wrong.”

“They’re in there,” I told him, pulling the tarot card from the visor and tucking it into my pocket. Then I got out of the car before I could change my mind.

If my mother—if Thisbe—had any idea that her lover had been captured by Roman Dutilette, if she had read, as we had, how Roman had sacrificed Augustine, she wouldn’t be anywhere else.

It was all in the journal. How Roman had learned young that there was more power available in this world than money could buy. How he’d searched for ways to make that power his.

He’d detailed every sacrifice he’d made over the years, every spell or curse he ever tried, but he’d killed Augustine specifically to hurt Thisbe. Because Thisbe had embarrassed him and he couldn’t touch her. Because that scared him, and fear made him angry and desperate. He’d written about how he’d collected Augustine’s blood to ward the grounds of his father’s house and about the intricate process of preserving his skin to bind the book. But he’d never buried Augustine. He’d never done any of the rituals to send the soul on its way back to the beginning.

Because he wanted more than Augustine’s death. He wanted his life as well.

By the time Roman inherited the land from his father and was ready to build his mansion, there hadn’t been much left of Augustine but some bone, but he’d ground them up with all the rest of the bodies and souls he’d collected over the years and he used them to create the concrete of those pillars that ringed Le Ciel. Because he believed that the power his sacrifices demonstrated would protect him and his descendants from any sort of attack or magic.

Roman had used the man’s skin to protect his words, and he’d used his body and soul to protect his house. And somehow, Roman had figured out a way to keep coming back, again and again.

Which is why Augustine had never come back, and why Thisbe was still waiting. Or she had been, until she’d gotten her hands on Piers and, in turn, on Roman’s journal.

As Odane and I made our way up to the front of the house, light was just beginning to break at the edge of the eastern horizon. Sunup on the fifth day.

“Come on,” I said, picking up the pace.

“Were do you think she’ll be?”

I thought for a moment. My mother had started working at Le Ciel when I was a baby. She’d started as a tour guide, just like me, and then worked her way up until she helped manage the place. She would have known every nook and cranny of that old house, but there was only one place I thought she would make a stand—the inner sanctum of Roman Dutilette’s world.

“She’ll be in Roman’s library. Whatever she has planned, she’d do it there, because that was his favorite room. It’s where he ran his entire empire. It’s where she would want to bring him down.”

The front door was open when we reached it, and we slipped into the cool darkness of the house. “This way,” I whispered, nodding in the direction of the library. From high on the walls, portraits of Roman and Josephine watched us pass, their eyes cold and disapproving of our presence in their domain.

As we made our way down the hall, I heard a voice at the same time that I detected an odor in the air that didn’t belong there.

“Smells like gasoline,” Odane whispered as I wrinkled my nose. “I think she’s already doused the place in it.”

My eyes widened. I’d known it would be bad—that she’d want to destroy anything left of what Roman had built—but I hadn’t expected to walk into a powder keg.

“We can go back if you want,” Odane whispered. “Get some backup before we get in there.”

I shook my head. I was more sure now than ever that my mother—that Thisbe—was in here, and that Piers would be, too. And I was pretty sure we were out of time.

I nodded toward the library and started again, moving down the hall toward the voice. Outside the library’s doors I hesitated. The voice was chanting, a resonant song of sorrow and pain in words I’d never heard, but in a voice that sounded like my momma humming to me as she stroked her fingers down my neck. I couldn’t seem to stop myself from closing my eyes, just for a moment, and remembering the mother I’d once known.

“Chloe?”

I blinked my eyes open and found Odane watching me warily.

“Are you sure you’re ready to do this?” he whispered. He was looking at me as though he was trying to decide something. “If you can’t, go now, and I’ll manage. But if you go in there, you have to be ready. Focused. You can’t go soft on me. You can’t think of her as your mother—not in there.”

I took a deep breath to steady myself but gagged on the sharpness of the fuel that soaked the wood paneling and carpets all around us. It was enough to remind me of what I was doing—of who the woman in that next room was to me now. “I’ll be fine,” I told him, and I hoped I was telling the truth.

Odane nodded, and we both eased ourselves into the library.

Even though it was August and not even a little bit cold, a fire was burning in the library’s hearth. Its unnaturally red flames threw shadows across the floor, and its heat made the whole room feel like an oven. In the strange glow of the flickering fire, Thisbe had her back to us and was bent over a low, wide couch where Piers lay, unconscious. I almost gasped at the sight of him, but Odane’s hand covered my mouth in time, and his arm kept me still.

Thisbe didn’t notice our entrance at first. She was busy with her deep, discordant chanting, and her focus was on the white symbols she was drawing on Piers’s half-naked body.

A moment later, though, she went stiff and raised her head to sniff the air like a wolf scenting her prey. A smile crept across her face as she turned to face us.

She looked older than she’d ever looked before—the smooth-as-satin skin I’d hoped to inherit was now creased with lines that should have taken more than a handful of weeks to form. Her hair, which she’d always worn tucked back, was wild about her head and shot through with gray like some kind of Frankenstein’s bride.

Her eyes narrowed when she saw me, like she didn’t recognize me right away, and then all at once her face lit with recognition and the chanting stopped.

“Chloe?” Her voice sounded like it always did when she was crooning a song or telling a secret just for me, and I had a sudden, overwhelming urge to go to her. To bury myself in her arms like I’d done a thousand times before as a girl. Do you really believe I would ever hurt you? a voice whispered.

Before I could take a step toward her, Odane’s hand on my arm steadied me and brought me back to myself. The look on his face when I met his eyes—a warning, a question—reminded me what we were there to do. I gave him a small nod, to let him know that I understood and that it wouldn’t happen again.

“Thisbe,” I said, because I couldn’t call her Momma and do what needed to be done, but the sound of that
name released something in her. Her face transformed itself into something horrible then, and all trace of my momma was gone.

She smiled at me, a creeping-up-your-spine kind of smile that made me regret ever entering that room, and I had the sudden realization that I’d been wrong. I wasn’t strong enough to face her like this. I wasn’t strong enough to face what it meant to be her daughter.

I heard a low chuckle rumble through my mind, amused. Like it knew what I’d been thinking and wasn’t surprised in the least.

You’re mine, the voice whispered. You’ve always been mine. Made for me and me alone, baby girl. Come to me now. Come to your momma.

Odane was there beside me, though, and when he took my hand in his, it gave me strength and anchored me to what was real. When he gave my hand a reassuring squeeze, it helped to mute the droning voice in my head.

“You came,” the witch said, her eyes lighting on me. “Just as I knew you would. Just as I intended for you to.”

I couldn’t speak, but Odane’s hand tightened around mine again. “The only thing we came for is Piers,” I said. “We’re not leaving without him.”

Thisbe laughed, a dry-throated cackle that reminded me of nails on a chalkboard. “Then you came for nothing, because this one”—she ran her finger across Piers’s throat—“he’s mine now.”

Odane and I exchanged an uneasy look. We had to get Thisbe away from Piers.

Distract her, Odane’s eyes told me.

“I thought I was yours,” I said, my voice breaking. “Isn’t that what you always told me? I thought I was your girl, blood and bone, heart and soul?” I shivered as I said the words she’d crooned to me throughout my childhood, hearing for the first time something more sinister in the words I’d always thought meant love.

“Yes, you are that, baby girl,” Thisbe said, her mouth turned down. “But you didn’t come to me like you were supposed to. You chose them instead.” Her face went thunderous. “You weren’t supposed to have a choice.”

“Why wasn’t I?” I asked, taking another step to the side, but she didn’t move from her place near Piers. “Because of those charms you wove into my hair? Is that why you could control me?”

She sneered. “Those? You think those bits of hoodoo were powerful enough to let me control you? No. Those weren’t anything more than shielding charms, so you never learned what you really are. I could still control you if I wanted to,” she said with a wicked smile. “Right now. Tomorrow. Anytime I wanted. Forever if I want.”

I flinched, my eyes darting to Odane, but he shook his head, letting me know he had my back. Letting me know he trusted me.

I only hoped his trust in me wasn’t misplaced, because now that I was away from the protection of his hand, that voice was back, calling me. Come to me, baby girl, it crooned. Leave all this and come be with me.

“What am I, Thisbe?” I asked, forcing myself to take another step away from Odane, forcing myself to ignore that seductive voice.

“You’re nothing at all,” she said. A smile as pleasant as it was terrible turned up her lips.

“I’m flesh and bone,” I said. “I’m real. Human, unlike you.”

She laughed again then. “You think so?” she asked, shaking her head. “You’re flesh and bone, all right, but human? How can you be human without a soul?”

I froze. “I have a soul.”

“You say,” she scoffed.

“Everyone has a soul,” I said. Because didn’t a body need a soul? I shook my head. I wouldn’t let her mind games get me all tangled up.

You’re already tangled up, baby girl. You’re already part of this.

“Stop stalling and let him go,” I said, ignoring that voice even as I wanted to sink into it. “You can’t win. The police are already on their way.”

“That’s a lie,” Thisbe said. “Always did know when you were lying, didn’t I?”

She stepped away from Piers then, not far, but just enough that her motion unnerved me. “You ever wonder why I was so good at picking out your falsehoods?”

I didn’t answer. She was right, though. I’d learned a long time ago that there wasn’t any way to lie to my mother. Not tell her things, maybe, but any lie I spoke and she knew the truth of the matter before the words had finished coming out of my mouth.

“You never could lie because I know you better than you know yourself. I made you.” She sneered. “I’ve been deep down inside you since the day I brought you into this world. You can’t escape me.”

Something deep within me shifted, like it was answering the challenge in her voice. Like it knew she was right.

“That doesn’t matter anymore. You won’t walk away this time,” I told her, feeling the truth of it. With the hanged man card warming my back pocket and the smell of gasoline heavy in the air, I knew I would do what I had to. I’d make any sacrifice I needed to make so that she didn’t leave this room a free woman. To make sure she couldn’t hurt anyone else. This would end with me, even if it ended me.

“I don’t plan to walk away from this, baby girl. Not in this old body, at least.” She huffed her delight when I didn’t respond right away. “Confused? I thought by now you’d have worked it all out.”

“Worked what out?” I asked, stepping aside and hoping to lure her again.

“What you are. What you’ve always been.”

I wouldn’t let myself play into her games. I stood silent, waiting for her to show her hand.

“What I made you to be, baby girl. And I did a good job of it, too, didn’t I?” She took another step. “Beauty and brains and as empty inside as a vessel. My vessel.”

I stiffened.

“You’ve felt it sometimes, haven’t you?” she said, her voice so low it was practically a purr. “True, you’re flesh and blood, but only because I deemed that you should be. I picked your father so your body would be strong, powerful—traveled the world wide to find someone worthy for the job. On the day you were born, I pulled you from my own body and stopped your first breath before your soul could breathe deep and fill you up. I gave you my breath instead. I put part of who I was inside of you.”

“No—” I said, not wanting to believe it.

“Yes,” she said. “That’s how it’s always been. True enough, you had some free will. I had to give you the charms in your hair so you wouldn’t suspect the hold I had on you, the connection we shared. After all, you needed to have a life if I was going to take it.”

I stepped back, horrified by what she was telling me. “That’s impossible,” I said, swallowing hard. But I wasn’t so sure she was lying. I’d tapped into her past so easily. And without the charms in my hair anymore, the connection between us was undeniable.

“Is it now?” She smiled.

“But why? You had Alex already. Why did you need me?”

“Every soul needs a body, baby girl, but about thirty years back that Frenchman’s energy started to wane. He was a powerful one, an old soul, but nothing lasts forever.” She laughed. “Nothing but me, I suppose. When I started going back to him more often to refresh my youth, I decided my soul needed two bodies. So I created you. Just in case.”

“In case of what?” I was shaking, but had to focus. I had to ignore the devastating truth in her words, ignore the voice I could still hear calling me in my mind, and draw her away from Piers. I had to keep her focused on me, but the more focused on me she became, the more her voice called to me, and the more I wanted to answer it.

“For when he came back to me,” she said, her voice soft and fluttery like a girl’s.

“But Augustine never came back to you, did he?” I asked, ignoring the pull toward my mother as well as I could.

Thisbe grimaced but didn’t respond.

“You waited and waited. You were faithful, weren’t you?” I asked, sliding a little farther away from her, praying she followed.

“I was faithful,” she hissed, stepping toward me like I hoped she would. “I’ve always been faithful,” she said, like she had something to prove.

“Not always,” I told her, poking at her weaknesses, trying to figure out how much she knew. Trying to distract her. “You had me, didn’t you? Unless you conjured me out of the air, you were with a man.”

Her face twisted into a snarl. “I was faithful,” she growled. “I did everything for him, to be with him. Only him.”

I shook my head. “You did all of that—you gave up your very soul and all your possible futures—for a man who didn’t come back.”

“He couldn’t!” she shrieked, and then slumped over with a sob like she’d been punched in the stomach.

I glanced at Odane. She knows.

Not good, his eyes seemed to say.

I didn’t disagree. She’d be more unstable because she knew. More desperate. Less predictable.

Be ready, I tried to tell him.

He nodded, just slightly, to let me know he understood.

“He couldn’t come back because of what you did to him,” I said, stepping toward her. “You didn’t want him to go.”

Her head snapped up.

“Yes, Thisbe, I know all about that.”

Thisbe’s eyes shifted, like she was nervous suddenly. “You don’t know anything at all.”

“I know you drugged Augustine—”

Her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t deny it.

“You tried to keep him,” I said, more confident now in my words, “and that’s how Roman killed him. But you didn’t know that, did you? Not until recently, at least.”

She glared at me, her eyes aglow with something not quite human. “I didn’t, no. Not until that boy of yours brought me that evil book.”

I froze. “What do you mean?”

Thisbe smiled. “I needed the charm that Aimes took from my cabin. I went to Le Ciel that day to kill him for it, but when I saw Aimes give Piers the package, I decided to change my plans. It was easy enough to get the boy’s attention. He was so eager to put an end to me, so eager to be your shining knight. As though a bit of brute strength could overpower me. He did everything I needed—retrieved the aloe from the old hag’s shop, helped me kill Byron—”

I couldn’t stop my mouth from dropping open. “Piers wouldn’t,” I denied, thinking of his gentle, scholar’s hands.

“Amazing what a little magic will do, isn’t it? Easy as playing with a marionette on a string,” Thisbe said, her mouth pulling up into a wicked curve. “True, he fought me the whole time, but you didn’t seem to notice how much he was fighting when you talked to him on the phone.”

My stomach turned. She’d had Piers then, and I hadn’t even known he was gone. I hadn’t trusted him—or us—enough to know he wouldn’t have treated me so short, no matter how mad at me he was.

“But why?” I cried as my guilt clawed at me.

“Because I could. It was easier to use the boy than to take the chance of anyone seeing me.”

“What did Byron ever do to you?”

“Nothing at all until he opened himself up to Roman,” Thisbe snarled.

“What?” I glanced over at Odane, but he shook his head to warn me against calling attention to him. So I forced myself to focus on Thisbe.

Thisbe chuckled, a dark, hissing sort of laugh. “You didn’t read all of Roman’s book, did you?” she said, stepping toward me.

I swallowed down my fear and held my ground. But she was right. We hadn’t read everything—there was still plenty that hadn’t even been translated.

“Roman thought he could control this world, but he wasn’t even enough of a man to make himself a son.” Thisbe sneered. “You think he was willing to let go of his precious land just because his life was at an end? No,” she snapped. “Roman found a way to leave a part of himself behind so he could come back, again and again, to watch over his precious house. He had a portrait done of him and his bride, a daguerreotype.”

“He used the picture?” I asked, remembering Roman’s cold-eyed stare looking up from beneath the glass of the picture Byron had brought that day.

Thisbe smiled. “People used to be afraid of photographs stealing their souls. It gave Roman an idea, and he found a way to leave some of himself behind in a bit of glass, so when another body found it, he could walk in this world again. Thanks to your boy bringing me the book, I finally knew what to look for. I didn’t just kill Roman this time. I destroyed his way of recreating himself. I made sure he’ll never come back again.”

I remembered what Lucy had told me about the strange way Byron had died—with the glass of the daguerreotype shattered and used to stab him.

“I trapped his soul—with Piers’s help, of course. Roman is through forever, and now that he’s dead, I can free Augustine from the evil he did to him.”

“The police will pin Byron’s death on Piers,” I said, horrified. They already thought he’d stolen the university’s artifacts.

“I was careful,” she said. “There isn’t any evidence they could link to him. If there were, then all this would be for nothing. Aren’t they already looking at that professor?” She smiled at me. “By the time they realize there isn’t a case, we’ll both be far, far away from here, anyway.”

“Piers would never go anywhere with you.”

“Of course he will. You think I didn’t have a plan all along?” She took a step toward me, and I found I couldn’t move. Not because I was scared—which I was—but because my muscles weren’t under my control any longer.

“I’ve been watching you your whole life, baby girl. Watching you and then watching him. I always thought he might have something more to him, but after that night where that girl nearly destroyed me, I knew for certain. When I realized your Piers could see that French boy’s soul, I knew I’d been right about him all along. About his worthiness.” She smiled, a sickening sneer.

“You can’t kill him,” I said, desperate.

“Kill him?” She looked genuinely surprised. “Why would I kill such a fine, fine specimen? No, I’ll use him once I free Augustine. No one will be the wiser—me in your strong little body, Augustine in his. You two have always been so head over heels, it’s the perfect cover. Who would suspect?”

I glanced at Odane out of the corner of my eye, but it was enough to remind Thisbe of his presence.

“Oh, don’t you worry. You’re not going to last long enough to tell anyone,” she said to Odane, reaching out her hand and drawing it into a fist.

Odane collapsed to his knees, his hands around his neck like he was trying to pull something away from it.

“Leave him alone,” I said, trying to lunge toward her but unable to move. “You can do whatever you want with me, but leave him go.”

She scoffed. “I can do whatever I want with you anyway, baby girl.”

At a flick of her wrist, I stiffened. Something came over me and bubbled up from inside of me all at once. Suddenly, I couldn’t make myself do anything. It was like being trapped inside of my body, paralyzed, but my limbs kept on moving without my say-so. I spun on my heels, my arms and legs all akimbo like a marionette. Then all at once it stopped.

“See?” Thisbe drawled. “You feel it, don’t you? Like something deep inside you finally got set free. That something is me. It always has been.”

It was powerful, the thing she was talking about—that something deep inside me that felt like it could fly. Part of me wanted to let it have all the freedom it craved, but I struggled against it. I fought against Thisbe’s power with every bit of energy I had left.

Thisbe’s mouth curved into a cold smile. “Go ahead and struggle all you want,” she said. “It’ll only make the whole process faster. To think, my Augustine has never been gone. He’s always been here, just as I suspected, and I’m going to free him now. I’m going to free us both.”

I felt weak, so weak. Not in my body, no—it was as strong and young as always, but deep inside myself, I felt different. Suddenly, I felt so far away from the skin I’d always lived in, like the power I was drowning in would overtake me at any moment.

But that other part of me pushed it away again with my last bit of strength. “Won’t. Work,” I choked out, remembering Lucy and all she’d been through. If Thisbe freed Augustine’s soul from the house, she would lose him, just as Lucy had lost Alex.

She me pinned with those devilish eyes of hers, and I couldn’t make my voice work. “I won’t lose him if I have a body for him to live in,” she said, smiling like she knew she’d won. “I have Piers all ready to receive him. There’s just the small matter of calling on the one spirit who can finish this once and for all.”

Thisbe looked me over, and then she dismissed me and went to stand near where Piers was lying on the velvet settee. On the side table was a bulbous glass bottle. Thisbe picked it up and unstoppered it. Then, chanting the same weird syllables in the voice that sounded so much like my mother, she poured the contents in a circle around them both.

In the corner, Odane was still struggling against the invisible hands that were strangling him, but his movements were getting slower and less forceful. I couldn’t move at all, but I knew something was going to happen—something bad.

In my mind, I screamed for her to stop.

Thisbe glanced up at me, surprise in her eyes.

Had she heard me? I tried again: I know what you’re about to do. It’s a bad idea, Momma, I thought, pushing the words in her direction, willing her to understand.

Something flickered in the depths of her eyes when
she heard me call her that, and the hand holding the bottle faltered.

You can’t trust Baron Samedi, I thought, pushing the words toward her again.

But it was the wrong thing to tell her. As quickly as she’d hesitated, Thisbe was back.

“You think I haven’t learned everything there is to learn by now?” she asked as she finished pouring out the circle and then anointed herself—her head, her heart, her lips. “I’m not afraid of a spirit.”

“You should be,” Ikenna said from the doorway. He looked at me and then saw his son struggling for breath. “Odeana called me and sent me over here,” he said, stepping into the room. He placed his hands on his son’s head, and Odane collapsed to his knees, his breath coming in huge, heaving gasps.

Ikenna looked straight at me again and asked, “This the witch?”

I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t move at all.

Thisbe, clearly surprised by this turn of events, growled. “You’re too late, whoever you are,” she said, touching her finger to the circle of wetness around her feet. In a flash, blue flames sprang up around her, their eerie glow throwing grotesque shadows across her face.

We have to get out of here, I wanted so badly to scream. The whole place was soaked with gas. It would go up like a bomb the second those flames hit it. But my lips were frozen, my voice stoppered tight.

But when the blue flames started to lick at my legs, I realized they weren’t hot. They weren’t real flames, or rather, they weren’t burning. They traveled across the floor until the entire room was ablaze in their icy glow—the entire room except the circle in which Thisbe stood.

Her voice rang out in strange, foreign syllables as she sliced her palm with a knife and dripped three drops of blood into the flames. When the blood hit the blue flames, they rose up in a blinding flash that I couldn’t turn away from or shut my eyes against.

All at once, darkness settled over the room, and the only light came from the blue glow of the circle around Thisbe and the strange bluish glow from Piers’s still body.

A man stepped out of the darkness between those spots of light. Drawing himself up to his full height in the center of that darkness, I recognized him as the skeletal man from my dreams. Baron Samedi.

He was dressed in all black, and his purple top hat was tipped rakishly over one of his empty eyes. Although he had the face of a man, his fingers clacked as he moved the bones that made up his hand. The overpowering smell of cigars and unwashed bodies, of the sweetness of rum and the rot of the grave, swept over the room. And all at once, I felt a sense of such desperate desolation that I would have done anything to make it stop.

“Ikenna Gaillard? My faithful servant,” Baron Samedi said, in a voice filled with the emptiness of a forgotten grave and the wetness of rattling phlegm. “You dare call me?”

Ikenna cowered in the corner, his body thrown over
his son’s.

“I called you,” Thisbe screeched, obviously displeased that Baron Samedi didn’t realize who had summoned him.

He turned to her, his gaunt face scowling, and examined her. As he looked her over, a millipede crawled out his empty eye and down into his black-as-night shirt. “And what are you to summon me?”

“I am Thisbe Bookman.”

Baron Samedi cocked his head, breathed her in. “But what are you? And why have you brought me here?”

Thisbe, visibly shaken, pulled herself upright. “I want to make a bargain.”

“With me?” Baron Samedi took a long draw off his cigar and blew a ring of smoke right into my mother’s face. “You don’t have leave to make deals with me.”

“I brought you a sacrifice,” she said, pointing at Piers. “A life for a life. I know how this works. You’ll take my offering. You’ll bring back my Augustine.”

Baron Samedi laughed. His voice was like metal dragging against cement as he laughed and laughed. “You know? You know?” He laughed again. Then, with a motion so fast and unexpected that all of us gasped, he flung out his arm and backhanded Thisbe. She tumbled out of her blue circle and hit her head against the marble end table as she tumbled to the floor.

“Momma?” I cried, suddenly free from whatever control she’d had over me. I ran over to her unconscious body and shook her. With her face slack, she looked more like an older version of the mother I knew. Her breath was shallow, though, barely there.

“Ikenna,” Baron Samedi said in his rattling voice. “I am not pleased you let this happen.”

“No,” Ikenna said, visibly shaking as he tried to block Samedi from Odane. “I didn’t know.”

“A lie,” Samedi drawled, puffing again on his noxious cigar.

“I tried to stop it,” Ikenna pleaded.

“But you didn’t,” Samedi growled. “And now I’m here. And I am hungry.”

Ikenna trembled, refusing to look at the skeletal man.

“You know my price, Ikenna. You call me to the living, you give me a life.”

“Take hers,” Ikenna said, pointing at Thisbe. “She called you. Take her with you when you go.”

“That?” Samedi puffed on his cigar again. “That is so far past a life that even I won’t dig its grave. No, I need a real life. Young and fresh and full of power.”

“Then take her,” Ikenna said, pointing to me.

“No,” Odane rasped, but he couldn’t do much more than try to stagger to his feet before his father stopped him by raising a single hand. Frozen in place, he looked up at me, his eyes wide with shock and anger.

“She’s young and strong and drips with power. She’d make a welcome addition to your collection of souls.”

Samedi turned to me, his head cocked like he was trying to decide. “It doesn’t look to me like she wants to be taken,” Samedi said. “A sacrifice has to be willing.”

Ikenna smiled. “I can help you with that … Chloe,” he whispered, and I felt an energy wrap around me as his dark voice filled the room. “Chloe,” he said again. “Don’t you want to go with the good Baron?” he crooned.

No, I wanted to say, but I found that I couldn’t. Without me wanting it to, my right leg took a step forward.

“Chloe,” he crooned, calling to me again. His golden eyes practically glowed as he watched my other leg step forward.

Everything I was felt pulled toward Ikenna, toward Baron Samedi and his boney hands. I couldn’t seem to stop myself from feeling the pull of his words, from following the command in his voice.

Sacrifice, I thought. Yes. To give myself as a sacrifice.

It made a sudden, sick sort of sense in that moment. Perhaps this is what I was called to do all along. To give myself to stop a demon. To give myself over to save the ones I loved.

My leg took another step toward Samedi.

No, another voice called, rocketing through my head and drowning out the call of Ikenna saying my name. Chloe Sabourin, you are mine. Body and soul, baby girl, and no one else’s.

My feet went still and I felt pulled in two directions at once.

You weren’t meant for that side of the grave, the voice said. And then it called to me, until my own name sounded like a chant. Over and over, the syllables of my name rolled through my head, Ikenna’s voice warring with my mother’s. Over and over, until the soft chords of her voice began to drown out his.

I took a gasping breath and fell to my knees, Ikenna’s hold broken.

Samedi’s skeletal fingers scratched at the skin drawn taut against his sharp chin. “It don’t seem like the girl is willing, Ikenna,” he growled, turning on Odane’s father. “Are you so weak that you can’t bring me what I require?”

“But I’ve been your faithful servant all these years,” Ikenna pleaded from his knees.

“You have, at that, haven’t you?” Samedi said, examining Ikenna. “Maybe it’s time you see another realm then,” he said, smiling around his cigar.

Ikenna’s eyes widened. “No—” he started to say, but in a blinding flash of fire, they both were gone.

The blue flames died out completely then, leaving the room lit only by the light of the candles Thisbe had used while summoning Samedi.

“Odane,” I said, leaving my mother to go to him. “Are you okay?”

He sat up, dazed. “I think so. Ikenna—?”

“He’s gone.”

“The Baron?” he asked, still looking more than a little dazed.

I nodded. “We have to get out of here,” I said, choking out the words. “Help Piers, and I’ll get my mother.”

“Leave her. The police can deal with her later.” Odane pulled himself up, still rubbing at his throat, and then he walked over and struggled to get Piers upright. Straining, he managed to get Piers’s arm looped over his own shoulders. Piers moaned like he was trying to come to, but his legs were unsteady.

Cursing, Odane tried again, this time struggling to sling Piers over his shoulder. Piers isn’t a small guy, but Odane’s days on the rig must have helped, because eventually he was staggering under Piers’s weight. “Ready?” he asked, turning toward the door.

But when he turned, he knocked over one of Thisbe’s candles, and flames licked at the carpet. I lunged for the flame, but it was too late. Before I could smother it, the fire flared up, crawling across the carpeting my mother was laying on, making a quick meal of the ancient fibers as it consumed them with its hungry glow.

“We have to go. Now!” Odane shouted, stumbling a bit under Piers.

I looked back at my mother. “I can’t leave her here.”

“Now, Chloe!”

“Get Piers out,” I said, stepping back. “I’ve got to get my mom.”

“After all she’s done?” Odane’s eyes were wild.

“She stopped Ikenna,” I tried to explain. “And if I leave her here, I won’t be any better than she was. I can’t be like her, Odane.”

“You’re not like her,” he shouted, stepping back from the heat of the growing blaze.

But I felt something stir inside of me, and I didn’t know if I believed him.

Flames began to lick their way up the far wall. I knelt next to Thisbe and tried to slap at her face to wake her.

“Chloe!” Odane still hadn’t left.

“Go! Get him out of here,” I told him as smoke started to fill the room. It was only a matter of time before the flames hit the gas-soaked hallway.

“I’ll be back for you,” he said, straining under the weight of Piers’s body.

And then it was just me and Thisbe.

I shook the still-unconscious body of the woman who was my mother. “Come on, Momma. We have to go.” I could already feel the heat from the flames as they engulfed the room. “I have to get you out of here,” I said, mostly to myself.

“Baby girl?” my momma mumbled, her eyes glassy and unclear as she blinked at me. “Chloe?”

It wasn’t just the smoke stinging my eyes as I gasped and hugged her. “I knew you were in there somewhere.”

“What happened?” she asked, still looking like an older version of my momma.

“You summoned Baron Samedi.”

“Did it work? Where’s Augustine?” she asked, struggling away from me.

“He’s not here, Momma.” I tried to pull her upright. “Come on. We have to get out of here.”

Her eyes went flat. “Leave me.”

“What?” I tugged at her. “No. You have to come with me. I can’t leave you here.” Not after the way you saved me. But I couldn’t make those words come out.

She pulled away, and then met my eyes. Hers were dull, dead, like a woman who had given up. “There’s no reason to go out there. It’s all over. Everything’s over. I’ll be with him now.”

“No!” I tugged at her again. “You’ll be with me. What am I supposed to do all alone?”

She stared at me with those dead eyes. “You’ve always been alone, baby girl,” she said, pulling away from me. “I’ve only ever been living for him.”

I saw the truth of her words, then—the stark truth of what had always been my life.

“Go on,” she said. “Get out of here.”

I hesitated still, feeling the way the heat licked at my skin. In a moment, it would be too much to bear. In a moment, the halls would go up in flames and the smoke already hanging heavy in the air would be too much to breathe through. I couldn’t leave her, not to that kind of death. Even with all she’d done, nobody deserved that.

Outside the room, the hall crackled with flames as the gas-soaked carpets began to ignite.

“Go!” she growled. “I don’t want you here.”

I pulled away. She didn’t want me. Maybe she never had. And I wouldn’t die here for her.

Grabbing one of the side tables, I heaved it through the window, and then, my shirt covering my nose and mouth, I worked as quickly as I could to clear the rest of the glass away so I could climb out. Carefully, I hoisted myself over the low windowpane and eased myself outside, but a piece of glass sliced open my calf. Hissing at the pain, I looked back into the library in time to see the walls go up in flames completely, but the heat was so great that I had to turn away.

I staggered off the veranda and across the lawn to where a crowd of people had gathered. Odane was there, laying on his side and coughing up the smoke he’d inhaled. When he looked up and saw me, his eyes were full of the terrible relief that comes from having outsmarted death.

Dr. Aimes was kneeling over Piers, who was beginning to stir, and Mrs. Aimes had T.J. caught inside the circle of her arms, but her eyes were wild as she searched the crowd for Lucy. I staggered over to her and let her know that Lucy was safe at Mama Legba’s. She sobbed her relieved thanks before she took T.J. off to the side and pulled out her phone, leaving me alone to watch in a daze as the mansion that had defined my childhood was engulfed in flames. As my mother burned right along with it.

I didn’t realize I was sobbing until a voice said “shhhh, shhhh,” low and gentle near my ear. “It’s okay, baby,” the voice murmured as strong arms wrapped around me.

“Piers?” I said, finally realizing who had me. I turned into the safety of his broad chest and I clung to him with all I had, with my very life.

By the time we heard the sirens sounding far out in the distance, it was too late. The orange flames had devoured the mansion, and black, sooty smoke was already pouring forth from every window.

I didn’t leave when the screaming ambulance took Piers off to the hospital. We’d have time enough to figure out what was left between us now that he was safe, so instead I stayed where I was to make sure it was truly done. I watched the fire engulf Le Ciel Doux until the flames licked high up into the morning sky. Rooms collapsed and columns fell. As I watched the mansion burn, I thought I saw something move in those flames. Two figures reaching for each other in the bright heat of the cleansing fire.