Read A Necklace of Water Online

Authors: Cate Tiernan

A Necklace of Water (6 page)

BOOK: A Necklace of Water
10.19Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

“I don’t know,” I said miserably, and right then I truly did feel miserable, and scared, and deeply ill down to my bones. Tears welled up in my eyes, and I rested my head on the table. If they knew …

Nan put a cool hand on my forehead. I had the sudden fear that she would feel the dark vibrations, left in my skin like a scent.

“Hmm—you don’t feel feverish,” she said, looking at me with concern. “Let me get you something to settle your stomach.”

“Yes, please,” I said with feeling. “I ate something at Racey’s last night—maybe it was bad. Maybe I should call her and see if anyone over there is sick.” Still able to think on my feet.

“What did you eat?” Thais asked, coming to sit next to me. “You want some plain toast?”

My stomach recoiled, and I grimaced. “Um, a taco. And no thanks.”

Five minutes later I was carefully sipping tea made with fennel, ginger, honey, and ground aniseed, still feeling like death might be a good option at this point. I didn’t know why I felt so wretched and wondered if Daedalus did too. Maybe one got used to the effects of dark magick. Right now I never wanted to find out.

“Sip that slowly, honey,” said Nan, and sat back down to read the newspaper.

“I don’t think I can go to school today,” I ventured.

“No, not if you’re this sick. Thais can get your assignments. Another good thing about having a sister.”

I looked at Thais, who gave me an overdone perky nod.

“Yep,” she said brightly. “I know you don’t want to fall behind.”

Nan gave me a knowing smile, and I moaned and hung my head over my tea. My stomach felt a tiny bit better.

“Oh, goodness,” said Nan, reading the newspaper. “Your school—they’ve done asbestos testing and have found that some of the old insulation contains asbestos.”

“It’s an old building,” said Thais, finishing her coffee.

Nan kept reading, one hand absently breaking off pieces of cinnamon toast. It smelled really good, and I started to wonder if I could maybe handle a small piece. Then my head throbbed again, a wave of exhaustion came over me, and I decided against it.

“Listen to this,” said Nan. “Because they’ve found evidence of old asbestos, they need to shut the school down for several days while they determine whether they need to rip it all out or if they can just seal it up.”

Thais’s face lit. “We don’t have school?”

This was too good to be true.

“Not for the rest of the week,” said Nan, frowning as she read. “They’ll make an announcement tonight on the school’s web site about what will happen next week. If they actually need to rip out the asbestos, they’ll try to divide up the classes and house you all in other buildings, like at Tulane or Loyola.”

“Yes,” I said gratefully, and drank more tea.

“Wow,” said Thais. “Back in Welsford, there were a grade school and a courthouse that had asbestos. They just sealed it all up, though.”

“Well, you two have gotten a reprieve,” said Nan. She still sounded tired, not totally herself, and I wondered again what had happened to her and Daedalus during the rite.

“Excellent!” said Thais. “No school!”

I remembered to be Clio. “So I’m wasting a perfectly good illness. Way unfair.”

Nan sent me a tolerant look, one I knew well. “The injustice. Go on back to bed, honey. I’ll come check on you in a little while. Is that tea helping?”

“Yeah. I’ll take it up with me. Thanks.” I carried it upstairs, feeling like I was made of glass and might splinter apart at any moment. I’d never felt this bad from a regular hangover, not that I’d had many. One night of throwing up cuba libres through my nose had pretty much taught me how to cut off my liquor intake before it got to that point.

This felt much worse, like my
soul
had a hangover. What had I done?

I set the tea on my bedside table and crawled back under the covers. Thank God there was no school—the universe was looking out for me. I wanted to sleep for a year and then wake up to find life back to normal.

I felt Thais coming closer, then heard her foot-steps on the stairs. I closed my eyes when she came in and gently sat down on my bed. If she suspected that I’d started studying with Daedalus, she would be so mad. And worse, so hurt.

“Where were you last night?” she asked.

I opened my eyes. “Racey’s. I told you.”

She nodded. I couldn’t tell if she believed me or not.

“Too bad about Luc’s face,” she said.

I watched her expression, which looked guarded. As mine probably did.

“Yeah. Bastard.”

“Yeah. Anyway, Petra seemed to think it was only temporary. So—” Suddenly her eyes met mine, sharp and green. “Richard. I think he’s hot for you.”

“What?” I practically yelped, my heart starting to race. “Richard and I can’t stand each other.”

Except for when we were locked together, our mouths fused, our hands all over each other … But Thais didn’t know about that. No one did, except me and him.

“I don’t know,” she persisted. “I saw how he was looking at you. He looked … like he wanted to eat you up.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I bluffed. “He’s so … supercilious. Like he’s always sneering.”

“Yeah,” Thais said thoughtfully. “Well, watch him the next time he’s around. See if you notice anything.” She stood up. “I can’t believe there’s no school! I’m going out. Petra still looks kind of under the weather—I’ll see if she needs anything. What about you? You want some ginger ale or something?”

“No thanks. I’ve got this.” I gestured to the tea. “What are you going to go do?”

“Go to the grocery store, other stuff,” she said vaguely, heading out the door. “Hope you feel better—I’ll see you later.”

“Okay.” Once she left, I snuggled down under my covers again, trying not to cry, knowing I would only feel worse if I did.

So Thais thought Richard was hot for me. I had an image of myself lying on the cool wooden floor of his apartment after I had furiously and unsuccessfully tried to take him apart. After the hitting and screaming and crying I had lain there like a sack of laundry, and he had said, “I don’t love you. I don’t love anybody. But I see the value of you, the incredible worth of you, more than anyone I’ve ever known.”

Now, lying here in my bed, knowing what I had done last night, how I had taken something beautiful and utterly destroyed it for my own purpose, I started weeping silently. Richard was wrong. I had no value and no worth.

W
e didn’t have anything like Botanika back in Welsford. I’m sure occult bookstore-coffee shops existed in Connecticut, but I’d never been in one. I wasn’t totally comfortable here, still felt like an imposter somehow, among the nose rings and dreadlocks and pink and blue hair. There were some normal-looking people too. But I was pretty much the most boring person here.

Botanika took up the whole front half, almost a block long, of a building that looked like it had been a department store back in the thirties. Huge glass windows overlooked the street, and the interior hinted at what it might have looked like eighty years ago, with pressed-tin ceilings painted a dark copper color, ceiling fans on long poles, all connected to each other by pulleys, and tall columns supporting a roof that must have been eighteen or twenty feet high.

Inside, all the way to the right, was the coffee shop, with its small square black tables and old-fashioned library chairs. Each table had a green-shaded banker’s lamp, and the whole place was wi-fi, which explained all the students with laptops.

In the middle section, right when you came in, was a small area with funky clothes, bookshelves lined with all kinds of alternative books, and other shelves with candles, incense, herbs, and oils.

To the far left was a smaller section, less well lit, with more shelves of books. These were more serious, books about witchcraft and voodoo, with detailed information on herbs and stars and the tarot. These were for scholars, people who practiced the craft. The books out front were more for dabblers, people who were curious but not necessarily serious.

At the back of the darker section was an area that was actually restricted. Two rows of bookcases faced each other, with a gold cord across the opening and a sign saying that no one under eighteen was allowed in.

It was easy to duck under.

After the rite, I’d been so upset about Daedalus and what I should do. I couldn’t believe Clio didn’t feel the same way. But my huge emotions had boiled down into one cold, coherent thought: revenge. I was here to figure out what form that revenge could take. After seeing Luc, I’d thought about doing something like that, only permanent. But Daedalus didn’t seem like he would care about his looks much. Daedalus was all about power.

So I wanted to take his away from him.

Of course, I had no idea how to pull it off. As Clio had pointed out just yesterday, I wasn’t a trained witch. I did have some power, and Clio and I together had tons of power, but she’d made it clear I would be doing this alone. This was my first recon trip—I needed to do research, figure out what was involved. If there was anything that I could do now, I would. If it was something that would take years of training, well, I probably had the time.

The books on these shelves looked older, beat up, as if their lives had been hard. Who knew how many generations of witches had used these books and for what purposes? They were loosely organized, but nothing was labeled
Dark Magick (Revenge).

I started pulling things out. There were books about garden spells, crop spells, spells that used the moon phases, spells based in herbs or crystals or other tools. A few of the books had spells that seemed kind of dark—like how to make your neighbor’s crop fail while yours thrived. But nothing seemed big enough, specific or ruthless enough.

One by one I examined titles, and again and again I had to stop myself from getting lost in something fascinating that didn’t relate to my mission. There was a whole book about how women could use spells in conjunction with their monthly cycles, drawing on their changing power. Who knew if that was real or not, but it would be so awesome to read. I had to flip through as many books as possible before someone kicked me out. Next month I would be eighteen, but they probably didn’t care about that today.

Finally I saw a book with
Beware
written on its spine in faded, flaking gold leaf. I pulled it out carefully and opened it, half expecting its pages to crumble into dust in front of me. In fact, inside, its ink was so faded that I could barely make out words on the pages. Frustrated, aware of time ticking by, I rifled the pages with my thumb, wishing that suddenly one page would be totally clear and exactly what I needed.

Which didn’t happen. All that happened was a small piece of folded paper fluttered out from between the pages and seesawed its way to
the dark green linoleum floor. I picked it up and of course opened it. Maybe it was an ancient shopping list. Maybe a love note from someone.

It was an address, scrawled in faded pencil, hard to make out. It said,
Mama Loup’s.
I didn’t recognize the address. Which meant nothing, because I was still finding my way around this city and constantly got lost on the meandering streets. I slid the book back onto its shelf, ducked under the gold rope again, and headed to the front door, where a stand held tourist stuff in case someone happened to wander in off the sidewalk.

I pulled out a map of New Orleans and looked up the street, just out of curiosity. I mean, I’d found it in a book called
Beware
, in the restricted section of Botanika. The street turned out to be really short, maybe three blocks long, stuck between two longer streets that framed it like the letter
H.
It was on the edge of the Quarter, close to Rampart and Esplanade.

I decided to go.

It took me a while to find it, despite having looked at a map. I drove down the block, looking for a parking space, and I noticed how run-down everything looked here. New Orleans in general seemed to have a laissez-faire attitude toward litter and keeping public spaces tidy, but I was always shocked when I went through the poorer neighborhoods and saw how incredibly third world they looked. I was equally shocked by the fact that no one seemed to think this was unusual or alarming.

This was one of those streets. Only four blocks from the bustling French Quarter, with its tour buses disgorging tourists by the thousands, this street seemed far removed from anyone’s attention. It was distinctly run-down, with crumpled wire hurricane fences sagging on their posts, trash and weedy brown grass clumps everywhere. It was mostly residential, and the houses here were small and unkept, with tiny, raggedy yards, peeling paint, shutters lurching on one hinge.

After circling the block, I took a parking spot on the street that had at first seemed too far but now appeared to be a reasonable option. I sat in the car for a moment and said every protection spell I could remember of the ones Petra had taught me. I tried to protect the pathetic tin-can rental car, myself, the air around me, and so on. I was aware of people walking by, looking at me, a white anomaly in their neighborhood of color.

BOOK: A Necklace of Water
10.19Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Barbara Pierce by Sinful Between the Sheets
Blessing in Disguise by Lauraine Snelling
Noah by Justine Elvira
A Noble Killing by Barbara Nadel
Hail Mary by C.C. Galloway
Lucid by P. T. Michelle
Quen Nim by Steve Shilstone
Just Stay by Mika Fox
Unholy Nights: A Twisted Christmas Anthology by Linda Barlow, Andra Brynn, Carly Carson, Alana Albertson, Kara Ashley Dey, Nicole Blanchard, Cherie Chulick