Garden of Bone: Book 6, page 13
"What have you been doing, child?" Grandmere confronted her. The distress was very unlike her, although Eleri had to admit her recent forays into the city had been very unlike anything she'd done before.
"What do you mean?" Eleri asked cautiously, as the answer could refer to any number of bad, stupid, or careless things she might have inadvertently done.
"I've been worried! And you've got spells again."
"What?" Eleri stood up straight, confused. No, she didn’t.
"You've got spells," Grandmere told her again, waving her hand up and down Eleri’s form, as though Eleri might see them. She didn’t. Before she could ask again, Grandmere was pulling her into the kitchen and closing the back door behind her.
It appeared she’d been sitting here at the ready to check her great-granddaughter this time. Picking up the partially burned bundle of herbs and flicking the tiny Bic lighter at it again, she held the herbs near Eleri.
This time, the smoke clung to Eleri, and she frowned.
"Told you," Grandmere announced with a defiance that was unexpected. Then she stared her great-granddaughter in the eyes and demanded an answer. "Where did you go?"
"I went to the ... with the ...." Eleri stumbled over the words, because her brain had nothing to tie them to. She’d gone to see the house in her dreams, she knew—but what did it look like? It was tall. She forced herself to remember specific facts. Did it have colors? What street was it on?
"You can't remember," Grandmere accused.
"No, I made a point to remember it this time," Eleri rebutted the old woman. "I memorized the address." That much, she knew was true.
"Okay," Grandmere said, almost taking a stance with her hands on her hips but clearly fighting the urge, wanting to be kinder. "What is the address?"
"It's ..." Eleri began the sentence with confidence, but after two words, "It's at ..." she was done. She didn't have it. "Damn it!" she shouted into the kitchen air, despite knowing how Grandmere felt about curse words. But this time, her great-grandmother did nothing to stop her. Instead, she sighed and moved closer, offering kindness and maybe pity. Eleri took it. She probably deserved it.
"Let me remove these, to see if it helps. Close your eyes."
Eleri smelled strange smells and heard clinks along the counter that perhaps were crystals or bones hitting the surface as Grandmere picked them up and used them and then set them aside again. A soft hum came from her grandmother's throat, but Eleri couldn't distinguish the words. When at last she opened her eyes, she asked her Grandmere, "What did you do?"
"I called upon every God I know," Grandmere told her.
25
Darcelle sat inside her grand home. Something was going on outside with her sisters, and she didn't like it. Then again, her sisters were always involved in something she didn’t like, so she wasn’t about to join in now.
She hadn't cleaned up Alesse's room, but she had tried to put the rest of the house back together. Why had someone tossed the place? And why was Alesse gone?
She should have been more worried about her sister, except—well, all of the Dauphine girls could take care of themselves. Momma had made sure of that. She was worried less about Alesse and more about what Alesse might have brought into their home.
Lafae and Gisele came in through the side door, Cabot following close behind. A scowl rode across Cabot’s features, but when did it not? Darcelle didn’t like him and she didn’t like what he was. But he was always here, unfortunately, almost like family.
"What crawled up your ass and died?" she asked him. She was bitter right now. No one else ever cleaned the house. That was up to her. It was her house. It didn't matter that it was hers, though. Everyone lived there.
But everyone else could leave. She was stuck. She could have gone out into the courtyard with them, but she didn't really like playing her sister's games. They came and went freely. Often enough, their freedoms served to stop her from trying to break free. She wasn’t going to join their games, and her captivity was her only valid excuse. She wasn't going to do them any favors if she could help it. Cleaning the house was the extent of her service, and she did it for herself, not them.
"Some witch walked into our courtyard two days ago," he announced, and Darcelle raised her eyebrows.
She almost asked him, "Our courtyard?" Although Cabot was in and out often, this wasn't his, though he seemed to speak of it like it was. She really didn't care that some woman had come into the courtyard. It was actually a major coup. Maybe it meant the forces on the house were weakening, but she worked to hide her excitement.
Her lack of response bothered Cabot, and he glared at her. "Did you let her in? Is she the one who did this to the house?"
Darcelle sighed. "If she came two days ago, then she didn't do it to the house. This happened to the house late last night." She didn't like his tone, his topic, or his complete lack of math. Clearly, the timing was wrong, but in typical Cabot fashion, he didn’t care. He just wanted to lay blame. Truly, Darcelle didn't give two shits about who specifically walked into the courtyard—only that someone could.
Instead of dealing with Cabot, she turned to her sisters. "Do either of you know where Alesse is?" They shook their heads in unison. Either they both knew and were lying, or neither did and they cared even less than she did.
Lafae offered, "Probably ran off.”
Honestly, that would be more like Lafae than like Alesse. Alesse was the oldest of the four, and yet somehow still the least dependable. The award for “most dependable” fell to Darcelle, the second sister, though that wasn't by choice. Lafae's scowl remained on her face, almost matching Cabot's.
Darcelle was not fond of the way the others let the wolves into the house. She wasn’t fond of wolves in general, but she became more concerned when they were in the house. Momma had been the first to let them in, to start alliances between them. Her sisters had merely followed suit. But these days, the house seemed an open pass-through for all sorts. Darcelle would have kept it for herself. But like many things, it wasn't her choice.
She looked Cabot up and down almost disdainfully and asked him, "Where's Caspian?"
His younger brother was usually a constant attachment at Cabot's hip, except when Cabot was out causing trouble. Caspian must have gotten the recessive genes, for he didn't change, as Cabot did. He also seemed to be recessive in many other things, Darcelle thought snarkily. He was nothing more than a lackey. At least she had been able to make him into her lackey, as well.
Unfortunately, Caspian owed her something—and Cabot didn't seem to care. In fact, Cabot didn't know about the deal she’d struck with his younger brother. It might have been the only reason she tolerated either of them in the house.
"Well." Darcelle looked at her sisters and felt her mouth pull down. "Have fun playing with your little witch. And let me know if Alesse returns."
She walked away as they spoke animatedly behind her. She caught only the words that came out the loudest: "witch," "Remy," "open gate," and "bone."
Apparently, whoever had come in had found something human in the courtyard. Darcelle shook her head. Her sisters would have taken care of that. It was truly no threat to them and wouldn't make her lose any sleep. In fact, as she listened, even walking down the hall, it sounded like her sisters had cast a nasty spell on the woman. So the witch had left, hopefully never to return.
Darcelle walked away, heading into her room and thinking about Caspian. Caspian owed her blood.
26
Eleri was grateful to Grandmere for removing the spell, which had brought back at least some of her memory. Though she still couldn't recall the address of the house with the courtyard, she now remembered that it was the house with a courtyard.
She remembered the beautiful, orangey-peach color of the exterior and the distressed paint that made the house appear old and stately. The black wrought-iron that ringed the patios butted up against the sidewalk and the upper floor's balconies. She remembered the gate across the courtyard. She did not, however, remember the address—though she knew she'd made a concerted effort to memorize it.
"Do you remember who was there?" Grandmere asked her.
Eleri nodded. Now, she did. The faint scent of thin gray smoke lingered in the kitchen and, once again, the bundle of herbs sat on the counter, smoking ever so slightly after the flames had been doused. “There were two women initially. One was named Lafae and the second was Gisele.”
"How do you know their names?" Grandmere asked.
Eleri shrugged at her. "They introduced themselves.” She wondered why Grandmere might ask, as though it were unusual for anyone in the South to say hello or offer their name and the shake of a hand. She was surprised she hadn't been invited inside for lemonade—although, then again, maybe she had.
Grandmere turned away sharply, shaking her head and pacing a short circle in the kitchen. "Lafae and Gisele," she said. "How old were they?"
"I don't know," Eleri said. "We didn't trade ages."
"But were they close to your age? Closer to mine? Middle-aged? Teens?" Grandmere wouldn’t let up, agitated in a way Eleri couldn’t recall having seen her before.
"Close to my age, maybe just a little bit younger."
She could have sworn she heard her great-grandmother swear slightly under her breath. That, too, was new. "What is it, Grandmere?"
"Dauphines!" she said. That meant nothing to Eleri, so she looked at her grandmother, raised her shoulders and shook her head, indicating she had no clue what was going on.
"The Dauphines. Remember the family I told you about, the one that runs some of the voodoo shops? The ones who know what they're doing."
"Oh." Eleri began to catch on. "That might be why Cabot, the wolf—" she mentioned, watching her grandmother's scowl deepen even as she progressed with the sentence, "—looked at me and said Remy, as though it was some kind of curse."
"To them, it is," Grandmere said, enunciating each word.
Eleri could feel the blood in her veins starting to chill and run cold. "What was it, Grandmere? I don't understand."
"The Dauphines and the Remys have been ..." She didn't finish and Eleri looked up sharply.
"What, is it a blood feud?" She said it as a joke. Only as the words came out did she realize that this was exactly where Grandmere was headed. "A blood feud?" she asked again, this time incredulous.
"No, not like that. We've been on opposite sides of disagreements over the past …" Her great-grandmother let the sentence trail off. That made Eleri more nervous.
"For how long?" Eleri demanded. She couldn't imagine Grandmere having gotten into an argument with anyone. Frederick, maybe. When he was younger, he'd run a little hot-headed. He'd had to cool before Grandmere agreed to make him the new head of the family.
But even if Frederick had gone to the Dauphines and started some kind of witch fight, Eleri thought—almost laughing at the term herself, though she couldn't because of the fierce expression that remained on her Grandmere's face—she could not imagine her Grandmere getting involved. No way would Grandmere have picked up Frederick's mantle and followed him. If Frederick had a tiff with someone, the old woman would have told him to stuff it.
So Eleri wondered and repeated, "How long, Grandmere?"
"Since the seventeen hundreds," Grandmere said slowly, almost as though she understood Eleri would have a tough time swallowing it, and she did.
"Literally, the seventeen hundreds?"
"Well, the late seventeen hundreds. The Dauphines and the Remys were some of the first families in this city. We have ancient roots."
Eleri knew that about the Remys already. Donovan had looked up as much and shared it with her. She knew the family had been in town for a long time, but it hadn't occurred to her that they had a “Hatfield and McCoy” relationship with some other local family.
"Are they Haitian?” she asked, thinking of their dark skin color and voodoo roots. Of course, it seemed everyone in New Orleans was a mix of something—French surnames, skin tones, religious backgrounds. She and Grandmere were the same as the Dauphines in that sense.
Grandmere shook her head as though shaking off a thought she didn’t like. "I don't know if any of us even remembers truly where we came from. Sure, there are stories about our roots, and we believed them for a long time. But I must admit, the new advances in science disprove a lot of it."
Eleri found it interesting that her Grandmere might be invested a little bit in science to go along with her voodoo—though, again, she was forced to admit she'd seen the two hand-in-hand.
She stuck with her original line of questioning. "So these Dauphines ... what are they? And if this feud goes back to the seventeen hundreds, why is anyone still carrying it on?"
"It's old. One does not simply drop something like that. And it's difficult." Grandmere looked to the side, a shadow of something like shame passing across her face.
Jesus, Eleri thought. This evening was full of revelations, and none of them were good news.
"When I was younger, they lashed out at us,” Grandmere told her, though she avoided Eleri’s eyes. “I, well … I helped lash back. It didn't make any friends of the Dauphines, you could say."
Eleri didn't ask, not even sure what “lashing out” and “lashing back” might have looked like in Grandmere's youth, which had been close to a hundred years ago. She wasn't sure what kind of voodoo might be involved, what might have been real slights, and what might have just been perceived or blamed, that might have prompted retaliation in an ongoing feud.
Whatever this long-standing feud was about, though, it might explain why she was so unwelcome in the Dauphines’ home—even though she had seen that vision of Emmaline and followed it to the building, and even though she had dug up the human bone. She put those pieces together now for Grandmere.
"The tibia I found, Grandmere—it was in their courtyard." Grandmere merely nodded.
That was not a revelation to her. "I'm not surprised they have human bones there."
Eleri remembered that Grandmere had human bones in her closet. So I guess it doesn’t seem that strange that the Dauphines have them in their courtyard. She changed the subject. "There is also a guy there named Cabot."
"Cabot," Grandmere frowned. "Not a Dauphine? Did he look like them?"
"Well," Eleri said, "he was lily white, so no." The Dauphine sisters had been dark as night, beautiful in the way that their skin glowed. But now, Eleri wondered, maybe a little scary.
"Was there anything special about this Cabot?" Grandmere pressed.
Eleri started to answer before thinking twice, and then she said, "He's like Donovan."
"So the Dauphines are hanging out with a wolf?" Grandmere leaned forward, her curiosity piqued.
Eleri nodded, her brain struggling to process the ease with which this conversation occurred.
“Oh, I’ve heard rumors about them developing some kind of alliance.”
Grandmere gathered her supplies from the counter in a rush. But as she did, she looked back over her shoulder at Eleri. "Do not go back there, child. It is not safe. I was worried when you were spelled, but I thought some random practitioner had spelled you. If it's a Dauphine— well, that worries me more. You must promise not to go back."
Eleri nodded at her Grandmere, but did not consider it a promise. She wasn't sure it was something she could promise. She'd have to look into it more. It depended on whether Emmaline turned up again. She couldn’t promise to not follow her sister.
Just then, her phone beeped and she saw a text from Donovan. The case in Montana was getting wrapped up. The report would be written once they got home, where they had desks and computers at hand, though they were sharing all of their notes and sending copies to each other.
She smiled and texted back, telling him just a little about the courtyard, including the Dauphine sisters and Cabot.
Donovan texted back immediately. "Eleri, be careful! Stay put. I'm on my way."
It surprised her, the two warnings coming so closely together, but she sat at the counter and scrolled through her phone absently for something to do. That was when she caught the email from Agent Almasi.
27
Donovan changed his flight leaving from Montana, and instead of heading home to South Carolina, he bought a ticket directly to Louis Armstrong airport in New Orleans.
He booked the change in his flight before contacting SAC Westerfield. If Westerfield said no, it would already be too late. He was prepared to push back with “yes.” He would leave the FBI before he would leave Eleri in a lurch, and she didn't seem to know yet exactly what kind of lurch she was in. He’d told her what he dared over text, but it wasn’t everything.
Though he and Wade had looked at the numbers, they had not created a second map with cute red dots growing as populations did. However, the numbers in New Orleans were alarming—no, beyond alarming. Not only was something going on there that had been attracting the Lobomau for the past ten years, but something was also happening with specific groups of Lobomau.
Wade’s family kept tabs on wolves all over the US, allowing them to trace specific members. He had the names of children born into his own family and related families. The families that had come to the New World back in the day, seeking freedom for their kind. They’d tracked themselves, looking for safety in numbers, even when they were in distant locations. Families like the Littles and the de Gottardis had grown up, spread out, and even spawned members that had gone off to join the Lobomau.
There was nothing really strange about that. The Lobomau groups weren't limited to specific families, per se. Many times, they recruited members as they went. Sometimes, younger members of one family would be recruited in by older members who’d already passed whatever tests were necessary.
Wade's family, and perhaps some of Donovan's relatives, had been seduced into a lifestyle that let these Lobomau run roughshod over cities. They acted like gang members. They had leaders like gangs. They stole, fought, and killed like gangs. Donovan couldn’t deny the appeal of it. As someone who'd been taught that he had to live in hiding—by seeing the reactions to his father when his father changed—he understood the allure of a life that allowed him to believe his own genetics and nature were superior to mere mortals.
