CHAPTER TWO
After the incident with Tamara, I had seen the other witches out of the house and come back to the ballroom. Now I stood at the door, hesitating probably a couple of seconds too many before opening it. My trepidation wasn’t justified—Remy had donated his house in the Garden District to our cause, and to the witches of New Orleans, in its entirety; I should have gotten used to the place by now. But being without other witches at my side always made me nervous.
The door didn’t croak as I pushed it open, and I could smell the fresh coat of paint as I went past it. Paint cans sat on a tarp on the floor, just inside. I shut the door behind me and stepped further into the room.
Paint brushes worked without hands to control them throughout the ballroom, diligently coating the walls with a fresh, cream coat. Standing with his back to me, Remy held a paintbrush in his hand with his sleeves rolled up, directing the brushes like a conductor. Beside him, a small radio mounted on a stool played soft jazz. I glanced over at his suede shoes and noticed he wore red socks under his dark gray trousers. This was the only man I knew who could rock a pair of red socks. On anyone else, they would have probably looked ridiculous.
He hadn’t waited long to start fixing the damage Tamara had caused. He turned to face me as I approached, then let the paint brush slip into the palette on the floor next to him. The others continued to work without his direction.
“You should have waited for me,” I said, “I would have helped.”
“That’s alright,” Remy said, “What good is magick if you can’t use it to help with the chores?”
A smile crossed my lips. “This place is coming along great.”
“Thank you. It’s good to see a little color back in the old girl’s face.”
I scanned the room around me. “How long has it been since the house had any use? Before we started using it, I mean.”
“Almost thirty years, give or take a few. I stopped having a need for it a while ago.”
“And to think, all this time you were sitting on a big, old house too.”
“This is one of the things I love the most about Louisiana—all the old houses.” He paused. “About what happened earlier, with Tamara…”
“Yeah, what was that about?”
“She’s a… former acquaintance of mine. More like an ex-wife. Things didn’t work out very well, so we went our separate ways.”
“Didn’t she say you kicked her out of town?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes. Tamara was trouble. I knew it from the moment we first met, but I’m a sucker for dangerous women, and I fell for it all. That was, ‘till I figured out she was trying to stage a coup, wanted to take everything I had. Almost succeeded too.”
“What stopped her?”
Remy narrowed his eyes. “I may have been keeping things… the way I liked them… but I had friends, back then. She was always too self-obsessed. In the end, I had backup, and she didn’t.”
“Do you know what she’s gonna do now that she’s back?”
“Honestly, no. But we should probably forget about her for now, don’t you think?”
“Sure,” I said, though I wanted to talk more about Tamara—the woman who had Remy’s heart once upon a time. Remy gestured to the center of the ballroom, and I started moving toward it. When I reached the chandelier, which stood at the center of the room, I stopped and turned to find Remy holding what looked like a cat carcass in his hands.
“What the hell is that for?” I asked.
“Relax. It ain’t going nowhere. In fact, that’s part of the reason why I brought it in here. Less places for it to hide, at least until we move the furniture in tomorrow.”
I examined the cat from where I was without getting any closer. It was a calico; black, white, ginger, and thin. “You’re telling me that cat isn’t dead?”
“Oh, it’s dead alright; probably about six hours dead, now.”
“You didn’t—”
“Nah, I found it nearby.”
Craning my neck around to study the empty room, I asked, “So, how is it going to…?”
Remy set the dead cat down on the floor. It had been semi-wrapped in a tarp, and he stretched this out, now, so the cat was lying on a square of fabric. I didn’t want to look at it—the poor thing’s eyes were bulging, its jaw hung open, and its tongue and gums were already starting to blacken. I turned my eyes away from it and focused on Remy.
“Don’t tell me you’re grossed out,” Remy said.
“No,” I said, perhaps a little too defensively. “So, what do you plan on doing with this thing?”
“We are going to wake it up.” Remy cracked his knuckles. “You’ve been a good student; you’ve already learned more than I thought you would.”
“I didn’t know what I was doing until I was told what it was.”
“Maybe not, but your soul did. Your soul was telling you what to do, guiding your hands and mind. Like when you gave your blood to those snakes and made them grow. That was the kind of blood magick only learned practitioners use.”
“Because I’m a high magician.”
“Exactly. Now, imagine what you could do with some serious training—some serious discipline.” He clasped his hands together and smiled. “But I think your training has been going along well, and now it’s time to graduate you. So, we’re going to bring this cat back from the jaws of death.”
I turned my eyes on the cat again, then frowned. “How?”
Remy took a deep breath and circled around the cat, and around me. “What is blood magick?” he asked.
“It’s about using your own energy to empower your magick.”
“Yes, but it’s so much more than that.”
A question had risen into my throat. I had to swallow it down to prevent it from manifesting. Asking Remy how it was he maintained his pseudo-immortality probably wasn’t going to be part of his lesson plan for the day, but maybe he was leading up to it? If he was, I wasn’t about to spoil it by asking a question out of turn.
“So, you’re telling me you can bring this cat back from the dead,” I said.
“I can,” he said, “But what I want to find out today is if you can, using high magick instead of a recited incantation with several witches, which is how this sort of thing is usually done.”
“What… by thinking it?”
He came full circle and stood in front of me again. “Yes, and by adding a little blood to the mix.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “This seems dangerous.”
“Blood magick is just as much about the blood itself as it is about intent. If you hesitate, if you aren’t sure, the magick won’t work.”
I stared at the cat again. “What would we have to do?”
“Just do what you would usually do, and try to bring this cat back from the jaws of oblivion… before it’s too late.”
“Too late?”
“Wait too long and the spirit departs.”
I nodded and knelt to retrieve my knife from its ankle sheath. I gripped the handle tightly in my hand and drew the knife up, but kept my knee against the floor. I stared at the cat’s cold, rigid body and pressed my lips into a tight line. Slowly, I lined the edge of the knife up with the palm of my left hand.
What I was about to do shouldn’t have been natural. Magick itself was the most natural thing in the world—in the universe. Its power was limitless, assuming you knew how to wield it. You could do anything. But just because you could didn’t mean you should. Binding people against their will, killing people outright with magick, and reversing death’s decision, were the kinds of acts that would take a witch down a dark path.
What made me draw the knife along my palm and split the flesh was Remy himself. He had lived over two hundred years, had cheated death time and again with magick, and he was still here. No angry God had come to strike him down, no great curse had come over him. Maybe he was privy to some secret I didn’t yet know.
I hoped that was the case.
Drop after drop of crimson blood fell upon the carcass, sinking into its dull fur. I shut my eyes and imagined the cat starting to twitch as its heart began to beat once more. I felt its blood beginning to warm and could almost hear it slowly oozing through dead veins and arteries, gradually moving faster and faster. A strong wind slammed against the ballroom’s windows, stealing my attention and making my eyes snap open.
Through the glass panels in the door itself, I saw waves of dark leaves relentlessly strike, one after the other, causing the door to rattle on its hinges. Something about this wasn’t right. It was as if the wind itself were objecting to what I was about to do, howling for me to stop, go no further. My heart started to pound with a kind of ferociousness I hadn’t known was even possible.
“Madison,” Remy said, and I turned my eyes upon the cat… but it wasn’t there.
“What the hell!” I yelled. “Where is it?”
“I’ll find it.”
I scanned the room and caught Remy moving around in my periphery while the wind continued to batter against the door. “I shouldn’t have done this,” I said. “I shouldn’t have tried to do it!”
“Madison, here,” Remy said.
When I saw him, he was standing close to the small stack of paint buckets by the exterior door that the wind was hitting from the outside. A low, growling sound came from behind the paint cans. I almost didn’t dare approach, but I was too curious not to. Stupid, sure, but mostly curious. I had brought this creature back from the dead. I wanted to see what it looked like, what it sounded like, and more importantly, what it wanted.
But Remy put his hand up, gesturing for me to stop. “Wait,” he said, and he knelt. He extended his other hand out to the stack of painting equipment and began rubbing his index finger and thumb together. “Here kitty,” he said, “No one’s going to hurt you.”
The cat hissed loudly, a sound I could hear even from where I was standing. My heart was pounding so hard it caused my vision to shake. I thought my knees would give way and send me crashing to the floor.
I checked the cut on my palm and noticed it had mostly healed, but the blood I had drawn had pooled in the crevices in my hand and was on my fingers now too. When I looked up again, Remy had started to approach with a cat quietly sitting in his arms. It looked a little startled—its pupils were dilated, and its ears were pointed backwards, a clear sign of agitation—but otherwise looked like a normal cat.
Remy pulled a pouch of cat treats from the duffle bag he had with him and brought some up to the cat’s nose. The cat sniffed the treat, then licked it, and then started to take little bites out of it. A moment later, it started to purr.
“No fucking way,” I said, allowing the words to slip out of my mouth unfiltered.
“Good job,” Remy said, looking almost as smug as the cat in his arms.
“We didn’t just bring a cat back from the dead.”
“We didn’t—you did. The process was a little rough, but you’re a blood witch; it’s to be expected.”
I noticed then the wind had stopped howling, too. “So, now what?” I asked.
“Now we find this guy a home. I suspect he died of some illness, but he seems happy and healthy now.” Remy sniffed the cat’s head. “Even if he does need a bath.”
Daring myself, I extended my hand toward the little fluff ball suckling and taking bites out of a cured meat treat. It sniffed me, then rubbed its cheek against my fingers, and went back to eating.
“That’s… incredible,” I said.
“It is,” Remy said, “This magick is widely misunderstood because, in the hands of the wrong kind of witch, it can be an incredibly potent weapon to be turned upon the innocent.”
I stared Remy in the eyes. “You’ve come a long way from the first time we met,” I said, “But you can’t expect me to believe you’ve never used blood magick in a less than altruistic way.”
“No, I’ll concede I haven’t always been on the level. A man doesn’t grow to be over two hundred years old without acquiring some enemies and personal antagonists. But I know the lighter side to my dark magick, and I’m willing to share that with the right person.”
The cat finished eating its treat, and Remy set it down on the ground. It arched its back high into a stretch, then shook wildly, sending a shower of dirt in all directions before trotting off and finding a good spot to sit down and start grooming himself. There was blood on the floor, too. I hadn’t noticed it before, but the wound I had cut into my hand had dropped little flecks of it here and there.
“Dammit,” I said, “The floor just got waxed a few days ago. We shouldn’t have done this in here.”
“Relax, we’ll clean it up.”
“We’d better. Otherwise the decorators are going to have questions when they come over tomorrow.”
“There won’t be any need for you to worry about that. I’m making sure the house is in the best possible shape for our masquerade ball. I’m actually looking forward to this big event you’ve put together.”
“Are you?”
He nodded and gestured over to an inner door on the far side of the room. “I feel like, slowly, the witches of New Orleans are starting to see me as just another witch. It’s starting to almost feel like acceptance.”
“I think they’ve just been through so much—with the demon bloods and the vampires—they’ve realized you’re not the worst thing to have ever happened to them.”
“I’m sure some do still think that, but the good thing about masquerade balls is that they provide a certain level of anonymity. It’ll be good to be able to walk around a room without getting judged for once.”
We reached the other end of the ballroom and went through the door, then into an adjacent hallway. At the end of this dark hall was Remy’s office, the door ajar, a rectangle of light spilling out to mark its position. He gestured toward his office, opened the door, and allowed me to walk in first.
“Let me remind you that there will be vampires at this ball,” I said, “Vampires who, two hundred years ago, stuffed themselves into coffins just to get away from you. A little judgment will be inevitable.”
“I haven’t forgotten that,” he said, his voice suddenly taking a turn for the dark, the grave. “I plan on making amends for what I did. They’ll never understand that what I wanted was to protect the city I loved, to keep this sacred place safe from the predations of their kind. Everything I did, I did to ensure our species had a future here.”
“You know what they say about the road to hell.”
“I do, and when my time comes to walk it, I’ll do so fearlessly.”
I took a deep breath and surveyed Remy’s office. The room was modest in décor, if not in size. Remy hadn’t moved in here long ago, so all he had was a desk and a bookshelf—the essentials. But I found myself looking forward to seeing what Remy would fill the room with. Trinkets from years ago? Books long forgotten but immensely valuable? Masks of indeterminate origin and purpose?
“So, I guess we’re done for the day,” I said.
He nodded and, from his desk drawer, retrieved a small pouch. He handed it to me. “Open it,” he said.
The pouch was made of soft fabric and had been tied at the top with a leather throng. I pulled it, and the top opened up, releasing a stench so powerful it made my eyes sting and fill with tears. I pulled my head away so as not to breathe the aroma in directly. “What the hell is that?” I asked.
“A poultice,” he said, “For your hand. It stinks to high heaven, but it’ll heal most wounds and fix that scar on your hand. It’s yours.”
“Thanks. God, that’s an awful smell.” I tied the throng back into place, but the lingering stench stung my eyes, forcing me to blink away unwanted tears. When I regained my vision, I found myself looking at the door directly behind Remy’s desk. I had explored the entire mansion in the time we had been using it to host our lessons, and had never come across a door with a padlock on it.
This was the only such door in the entire house. The fact Remy had placed his desk directly in front of it was no coincidence, either. I had wondered what was behind it ever since I first laid eyes on it, but hadn’t ever asked.
“Are you alright?” he asked. The smile on his face suggested he enjoyed my discomfort.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Anyway, I should probably get out of here.”
He nodded. “I should as well. I’ve done as much as I can in the ballroom for the day.”
I headed for the door with the bag of poultice in my hand. It was squishy, and oddly warm, despite being encased in a leather pouch. But I stopped at the door and looked over my shoulder at him. “What we just did,” I said.
He turned his eyes up at me but didn’t say anything.
“Can we do it to a human?”
Remy shook his head. “Never,” he said. “You should never try and bring a human soul back from the dead. Things don’t quite work that way.”
I nodded and made my way out of the room, and then out of the mansion. I caught a glimpse of the cat strolling along the halls as I went, likely trying to get acquainted with his new home. Why couldn’t this kind of magick be used on a human? The cat seemed happy as ever, and according to Remy had probably been healed of whatever illness took its life. It didn’t seem fair that this magick couldn’t be applied to humans.
Maybe it was simply that no one had figured out how to do it yet.