This Wicked Game

TWENTY-FIVE

Claire had dinner with her parents and then went upstairs. She tried to read, but her eyes skimmed over the words, her brain absorbing nothing. She read the same page four times before she gave up and set the book aside.

She lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling and thinking about Marie. The letters left no doubt that at least one version of the Cold Blood spell had been hers.

And yet she’d hidden it well.

Other than rumors, no one had even heard of it. If Therese couldn’t find anything out through her mysterious “unconventional channels,” the firstborns were in serious trouble.

Claire turned over the possibilities in her mind, grasping at anything that might give them answers. Anywhere the spell might be recorded.

But she came up empty, and after what seemed like forever, she finally got up and walked across the room. She searched the floor around her desk and armoire until she caught a flash of red peeking out from under the wardrobe.

Bending down, she picked up the gris-gris bag she’d thrown across the floor a couple of nights before. She lifted it to her nose, the scent of sage and verbena and the underlying smell of the Solomon’s seal chips still strong.

She took it back to her bed and put it under her pillow. Then she lay down, recalling the words to the Insight spell and murmuring them into the darkness.

Claire moved through the hall, not of her usual house, but of another, smaller home that felt welcoming even though it was unfamiliar.

Candles flickered from the sconces on the wall, frankincense heavy in the air. She followed the smell, coming to a small room off the main hall. Soft golden light reached to her from within. She stepped into the room.

The first thing she noticed was the altar on top of a table in the corner. Candles of every color and several wax dolls sat atop a fringed cloth as the smoke from a stick of incense coiled into the air. The plaster walls were cracked in places, but the room was comfortable and warm with flames emanating heat from the fireplace.

The rustling of paper forced Claire’s attention to the writing table against the wall. A woman sat there, long black braids snaking down her back as she bent her head to something on the desk, her hand moving swiftly back and forth. She muttered softly as she wrote.

Claire moved closer, aware that she was dreaming and would not be seen. As soon as she looked over the woman’s shoulder, she understood. The woman was writing not on paper, but in a book. Claire recognized the script, both from the letters they’d found and the spell book that felt more familiar than ever.

It was her great-great-grandmother Marie.

She finished her writing with a flourish and stood, leaving the book open on the writing table as she crossed to the altar. Claire caught a glimpse of the page on which she’d been writing.

A Plea to the Loas

Claire wanted to finish reading what was on the page, but Marie commanded her attention as she picked up a chunky dish on top of the altar. She began choosing things from the table, throwing them into the dish so quickly that Claire could barely follow her movements.

She ground the ingredients together before lifting a tiny carafe and tipping it over the stone bowl. A stream of glistening oil poured into the mixture. Marie again mixed everything together before turning to a pewter pitcher, pouring a clear liquid from it into the dish.

When she’d again mixed everything together, she picked a brush up from the table and carried it, together with the stone bowl, back to the writing table.

She sat down and began brushing the mixture over the script. Claire watched in fascination as the words began to fade. Marie was still brushing toward the bottom of the page when the top half disappeared completely.

By the time she leaned back to survey her work, the entire page was blank.

She looked at it with satisfaction, stiffening with some kind of awareness before turning her head in Claire’s direction. Her eyes seemed to meet Claire’s through the veil that separated them.

Then, very deliberately, she turned back to the book, closing it and leaning back, almost as if she were trying to show Claire the volume in which she’d been working.

The cover was cracked, with a slightly green cast. Despite the faded images—a giant snake winding its way around a twisted vine border and words Claire couldn’t quite read—she recognized the book as the one that held Marie’s spells. The one that sat, usually undisturbed, in the safe under the counter downstairs.

Marie took the book over to the altar, where she placed it in front of the lit candles. She began to chant words in a language Claire couldn’t place, steady and rhythmic, almost as if in time to a silent drumbeat.

Then Claire was pulled back and back, through the halls of the candlelit house, the walls and rooms fading to black around her.

The last thing she heard was Marie’s voice, echoing through the darkened halls of her sleep, sending her a message she almost understood.