Adamant Spirits, page 152
The sound of her voice snapped him from his reverie. He stood and came around the chair to her. He wrapped his arms around her from the side, and she let him, without the trouble of what it might mean. They had been through so much, and they both wore their scars from their failures, visible only to one another.
“Open your mind for a moment, Lauren.”
“Open it?”
“Find my star in your night sky. Let it shine. Just for a moment.”
It wasn’t until he mentioned the night sky of her mind that Lauren realized, in her distress, she hadn’t been blocking for some time. That he didn’t know that… that he asked her to let him in… it had to mean he hadn’t tried.
She spun in his arms so they were face to face. Nicolas dropped his forehead to hers, and she closed her eyes and conjured the night sky even easier than the last time. It was dark and devoid of stars, further evidence he’d respected her boundaries. Maybe he’d respected them all along.
Lauren breathed out and let her mind expand. A bright star appeared in the distance. It twinkled so bright it turned the night to day.
“Okay,” she whispered.
Sometimes saying things out loud feels weird. Like words aren’t enough.
Lauren didn’t quite understand, having never communicated in this way, but yet she did. Words were words. In here, words turned into something else, combining with feelings and experiences, blending language with emotion. I’ve never felt safe admitting I’m afraid. The confession flowed without the constraints of willing her lips to find the right words. I don’t like being in a position where I can’t find my control. My whole life has been a series of things I can’t change, and I’ve spent so much of my energy looking for things I can.
We’re more alike than you think, Lauren.
Oh, I know that, Nicolas. I’ve known that longer than you, maybe. I didn’t want to admit it because… well, because that’s one more thing I can’t control, I suppose. I can’t conceive that you remind me of the people who have chosen to hurt me as an alternative to loving me, but might also be someone who understands that in his own way.
I’m still searching for my own control. I know who I was, and I know who I want to be, but I don’t know who I am.
You’re my friend, Nicolas. She took his hands in hers. Her eyes stayed closed, the warmth of his face pressing into her own. I’m still learning too, you know. I thought I could predict you, but you’ve surprised me, over and over.
I don’t want to confuse you.
I’m not confused. Not about us, not about Cameron. I know you want to know how I feel about him, how I could stand to be near him after what he did, and I know you won’t ask.
You don’t have to tell me about this, Lauren.
I remember you telling me how hard it was to figure out Mercy wasn’t the one for you. Because it’s not an objective test. When you really love someone, it’s the least objective thing you’ll ever experience, and logic is useless if you’re already lost to the way you feel. He made a mistake, but it didn’t erase the man I knew him to be. And are we not, all of us, human? I know I’ve made mistakes. It was easier to believe it was a simple, human mistake than to accept I loved a man who lacked the strength in character to do what was right. I will always love Cameron, because he came into my life and loved me at a time where my family had me believing I was unlovable. He showed me what family could be, and then he, too, took that away. But my eyes are open now, and I won’t get drawn back in, no matter what he was to me, or what words he dresses his meaningless apologies with.
Thank you for trusting me. I know I’m not the easiest guy to have a serious conversation with.
Cassidy stole my boyfriends and bullied my girlfriends. You might be the closest thing I have to a confidante these days.
I started off wanting more than anything in the world to be near you, but then I had to stop and ask myself why. Until I can understand myself, I can’t go chasing every feeling that occurs to me. He squeezed her fingers. But I know I love you. Maybe that’s a romantic love, and maybe it isn’t, but I care about you enough to back off and give you room to breathe. To just be your friend and be there when you need someone who understands. When you need to disappear into your own night sky, but don’t want to be alone.
Lauren opened her eyes. She rested her palm against Nicolas’ stubbly cheek, and his eyes opened as well. “I know I’m not alone. Not anymore.”
His chestnut eyes bored holes in her soul. “We’ll find her, Lauren. If we have to fly to Paris and kick down every door, guns blazing, adrenaline leading over better sense, then so fucking be it.”
Lauren sniffled. She smiled. “When you say it that way, Nicolas, I actually believe it.”
“Believe it.”
Charlotte
Charlotte Fontenot had only ever had one sibling, but she was raised with seven children.
Her father’s brothers each lived a few blocks away on either side, and between them had six children. Charlotte and Annette mainly played with Fleur and Remy, Uncle Luther’s fraternal, mischievous twins, who were a couple years older than Charlotte. Julian snuck over, too, before his mother’s paranoia grew to be too much, his sister Courtney in tow. By the time the two youngest came of an age old enough to play—Theodore, by Uncle Luther, Noelle by Uncle Lowell—they had a quorum.
The Garden District was their playground. Depending on who you asked, their world was twenty-something or sixty-something square blocks of sleepy turn-of-the-century Victorian and Greek Revival townhomes and cottages, teeming with the subtropical presence of verbena, lantanas, and other vibrant flowering plants Charlotte could never name until she was far older. Their world felt sheltered in the towering leaves of the banana trees and the live oaks whose massive, bulbous roots lifted sidewalks and changed the entire landscape.
If the young ones were playing, the older children were relegated to backyards or nearby parks. Sometimes they’d slip off to Lafayette No. 1 and hide behind the decaying tombs, amongst the discarded remnants of guidebooks and coke cans. Though their geography was limited, their imaginations were not, and they played hide-and-seek and capture the flag in the green rolling hills of Haiti, or the low, grassy tundras of the African plains.
When the younger ones were not present, that was another story altogether.
Fleur, Remy, Charlotte, Annette, and Julian could go nearly anywhere they pleased by the summer Charlotte was eleven. Their boundaries were so far away—Napoleon Ave. to the west, Jackson Ave. to the east, Carondelet to the north, and Magazine St. to the south—by a child’s standard that they may as well not have had them at all. Remy and Fleur were impish children, though, who were never satisfied unless these rules were thwarted.
That summer, Remy told the other four in the older bunch about a supposed haunted house at Jackson and Tchoupitoulas, which was seven whole blocks south of Magazine, an invisible boundary set by their parents. It was so far beyond the boundary, another block and they’d be at the shipyards that guarded the riverfront.
Fleur was all-in, of course, and Annette and Julian, true to their nature, balked at the bold roguishness of the suggestion. Charlotte, then as always, found herself in the position to be diplomatic. To weigh the risks against the concerns. Sometimes she sided with her devious twin cousins. Other times, she recognized the younger ones were all too right. She was ultimately, always, the tie-breaker, and this was a power she took with the gravity it deserved.
But this summer had been dry for adventure. Luther and Josephine, for most of the summer, had their children at the lake house they inherited a few years before. Lowell and Julia sent all their children to Julia’s mother in Baton Rouge, so they could enjoy the first cruise of their marriage. Charlotte’s parents, who were as close to the adults in this equation as the children were to each other, arranged to spend a month on Deschanel Island, a stretch of family land in the Gulf owned by Charles Deschanel.
Bored and hungry for an escapade at long last, Charlotte voted. After all, what was a few blocks? “Let’s roll.”
They trekked down the lush avenues, intrepid explorers from the world of the bourgeoisie, down first St. Charles, bounding along the streetcar line, then with a turn on Jackson, the homestretch. Charlotte paused when they crossed over bustling Magazine Street, which was as much a boundary their parents set as it was for their world. Beyond, the old, tattered Irish Channel had yet to be restored into what it would become. To Charlotte’s young mind, what lay beyond were bad things. Dark things. Passing over Magazine Street, they passed through the veil of magic protecting them from bad and dark things.
But the matter had been decided, so she trekked bravely forth. She was surprised to see that beyond Magazine, the homes didn’t look so very different at all. Brightly colored rows of shotguns were welcoming, not menacing. She chided herself for the foolishness of thinking this to begin with, but the nervousness in her belly didn’t entirely dissipate, either.
“This is it,” Remy said.
Looking up at the Victorian mammoth, which listed several degrees to one side and was held up, she guessed, purely by the gray, rotting wood that had long ago shed itself of any paint, Charlotte had no doubt in her young mind that the place was haunted.
Several signs, placed presumably by the city, notices of unpaid mortgages and imminent condemnation, yellowed and curled in a mosaic on the door. They held on by pure determination. Anything else had fled years ago with the owners, the paint, the signs of any life at all.
Charlotte crossed herself. She’d prefer Miss Havisham to be roaming around in her moldy wedding dress, but she didn’t think they’d be so lucky. There were ghosts here, of a time forgotten. Of memories and happiness. Women had been kissed in the house, and boys had played in the yard. Once.
Remy, as always, was the first inside. Whenever Julian had accused Charlotte of being reckless, she liked to point at the unruly twins and say, “Really?” Fleur was a half-step behind him, hands on her swaying, already sensual hips as she sashayed into the rotting building.
“Be careful!” Annette cried. “No one’s lived here in years, and it’s been left like this.”
“Are we here to be pansies, or are we here to see a damn ghost?” Fleur called back from the door, then popped back in.
Charlotte shrugged at Annette and Julian, who she knew were waiting for her to take lead. She followed her older cousins into the tall doorway, and the others fell into formation.
The inside had not fared any better. Dusty covers shrouded the furniture, but the cobwebs had long since taken over the job. The front door didn’t close all the way anymore, so the floor housed all manner of dust and exterior detritus. Vines broke through the boarded windows to create pinholes of light dancing over the filthy floor.
And the floor. The warped wood, exposed to the elements, bowed inward, revealing gaps that led to… Charlotte wasn’t sure she wanted to know. Homes in New Orleans weren’t structured for basements because of their proximity to sea level, but this home was raised several feet from the earth, and those gaps didn’t reveal foundation. They were dark, like standing at the opening to a long tunnel you couldn’t see through.
Annette’s screams tore through the musty air. The other children scrambled in search of her, and Julian was the first to find her, in the kitchen. By the time Charlotte arrived, Remy and Julian were already trying to pull Annette from the cave her foot had created in the old linoleum. She’d sunk in as deep as her knee, and her other leg lay twisted to the side. Annette sobbed, and Charlotte knew that if they didn’t extricate her very soon, she would devolve to full on hyperventilation. The nature of her shrieks were not simply fear. When they pulled her out, there would be an injury. If they were lucky, a twisted ankle. But they’d broken the rules, and that meant luck would not be on their side.
This was the moment of Charlotte Fontenot’s life where she first learned the varying nature of how people react to chaos.
Fleur was the first to flee. She was sure, she said through her pouty lips, that they would figure this out, but it wasn’t her fault Annette had gotten herself in a bind and so why should she be grounded?
Julian grunted and strained alongside Remy, but when Remy said he thought her foot might be caught somewhere, reality caught up with Julian and he retracted to the corner, crying into his drawn knees, as if his mother might come and make it better.
Remy met Charlotte’s eyes. His attempts to help Annette eventually faded to defeated grunts, but he also looked relieved when he admitted he needed to leave them there for a bit while he went for help. Julian fled with him, without looking back.
“Don’t leave me,” Annette pleaded to her older sister. Tears stained the entire top of her dress. This would be the last time Annette Fontenot signed up for an adventure. Charlotte knew it then, and she was right later.
“Never.”
Charlotte stayed in that haunted house, confronted with her sister’s very real fears, with her own. She never closed her eyes to escape, not only because Annette needed her, but because even at eleven, she understood that as soon as you closed your eyes, you lost your power.
Charlotte wouldn’t lose her power that day in the house, just as she didn’t lose it years later in the park with her assailant. She stared him dead in the eyes as he choked her with one shaking hand, fumbling with his belt with the other. Know me. I see you.
She never did see a ghost in the mansion, but she saw who she was.
Open your eyes. Know them. See them.
Charlotte squinted as the light penetrated her vision. When had the hood come off? Had she been asleep? Her kidnappers hadn’t hit her or knocked her out, so she must have gone somewhere herself, on her own. We can’t do that, Charlotte. We have to be here, and present. No matter what horrors await.
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” Charlotte whispered as more of the room came into focus. The first thing she noted was the floor. Solid. Marble. Her feet weren’t bound, like her hands were, and she pressed her sneakers into the ground to help center herself. Blink. Focus. There was a lot more to this room than a floor, and as she scanned around, shock set in. She’d been here. She knew this place.
Jackets, dresses, and other clothing on racks. Spinning shoes, twinkling under the harsh lights.
She rolled her head to the side, and this was when she noted she wasn’t gagged, either. The expectation of cotton in her mouth had created the illusion of it, and now this illusion faded as she coughed out the air trapped inside and gulped fresh air in.
Charlotte blinked again and the first person in the room with her appeared. Lawrence. Her Lawry. He hadn’t fared as well, and was both gagged and bound at every limb. When he saw she was awake, he struggled against the chair so hard he knocked himself askance, into a nearby wall. Someone appeared behind him and righted the chair.
A woman. Charlotte had never seen her before. She was quite striking, in her middle age, most likely, with golden hair piled high and severe lips painted in the color of blood. Heels clicked, and she disappeared from view.
Poor Julian. He would be worried sick.
Charlotte kicked her legs out and rotated her ankles to circulate blood and restore feeling. She did the same with her trussed hands, in a more limited form, but then someone was behind her, tugging at the rope on her behalf. After a few seconds, her hands, too, were free.
Charlotte was free. Nothing tethered her to this chair, not anymore.
So why could she not move?
More heels on marble. This time, two sets. The screech of metal dragging across something hard. Two chairs appeared opposite Charlotte. Look up. See them. Know them.
The woman before, and Gabrielle Henry.
Across the room, Lawrence screamed through his bondage. Charlotte ached to see him this way, and she wanted desperately to go to him, and she would, but while these women had set her loose, she was not free, and she did not yet understand anything that might help her survive this day.
“Are you hurt?” the older woman asked. If Charlotte wasn’t misreading things, she would say the woman’s concern was authentic. This didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense.
“Sore,” Charlotte said. She nodded at Lawrence. “Let him go, too.”
The Many-Faced Heiress grinned into her hands.
The older woman smiled as well. “I’m afraid that has nothing to do with why you’re here. That’s another matter. Between me and Lawrence’s pitiful father.”
“What do you want from me?” Charlotte knew whatever freedom she possessed was an illusion. Whether the danger was men positioned outside the door with guns, or the magic living, waiting, inside the minds of these women, she would not make it far if she ran. She had to know them, to see them, to survive. Just as she had known and seen Gregory. Known and seen her teacher. Known and seen the man in the pub.
“Not to hurt you,” the older woman said. “I regret the way you were brought in, but if I know you, you would not have come on your own. And fate decided this was how we were to meet.”
“You don’t know me at all,” Charlotte asserted. “But you will.”
Gabrielle sniggered.
“Don’t know you?” The older woman crossed her bare legs. She leaned forward, and Charlotte witnessed the careful precision in every drop of paint sitting upon her face. This was a calculated person, not someone likely to miss even a detail. “There’s no one in the world who knows you more, Charlotte. Nurture is a strong influence, but there is nothing, nothing that surpasses nature.”
Charlotte didn’t understand any of the woman’s vague ramblings. She looked again at Lawrence, and she hoped he could read in her eyes the things she’d refused to say the day before.
Her focus shifted back to her captors. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Tell me what you want. Tell me who you are.” She laughed. “Or don’t.”
“I always imagined this day in my mind, but I never saw it unfolding quite in this way,” the older woman said. “I won’t leave you in suspense anymore, Charlotte. Twenty-four years was long enough.”
