Ysabel (42 page)

Her husband laughed aloud, startling Ned. “Oh, God. Don’t let her know,” he said. “You’ll completely ruin her life this time around if she finds out Kim Ford feels that way.”

His wife hit him again. “Be quiet, you.”

Dave was quiet. It was Ned who said, after a moment, “Don’t hate her. Don’t even dislike her. She’s outside that. Even more than they are.”

The other three looked at him.

“Can’t help it,” his aunt said stubbornly. “The two of them play this game of hide-and-seek and then the loser gets killed for her? I don’t like it, that’s all.”

“You haven’t seen her,” Ned said. “It . . . makes a difference. It’s what they’re all about. I don’t think she has a lot of choice either.”

“Hold on,” his mother said.

They turned to her. The moonlight was on her face.

“You didn’t say one would be killed, Ned.”

“But I did,” he said. “That’s what she . . .”

He stopped. His heart was suddenly hammering again.

“You didn’t, dear,” his mother said, very gently. “Neither did Kate. I wrote it down.”

They were staring at her.

Meghan Marriner looked at her son.

“You said
sacrificed
.”

CHAPTER XVII

S
unrise, the first gift in the world. Promise and

healing after the hard transit of night. After a darkness beset with beasts—imagined and real—and inner fears, and untamed, violent men. After sightlessness that could lead one astray into ditch or bog or over cliff, or into the clutch and sway of whatever spirits might be abroad, bent on malice.

Morning’s pale light had offered an end to such fears for centuries, millennia, whatever dangers might come with the day. Shutters were banged open, curtains drawn, shop doors and windows were unlocked, city gates unbarred, swung wide, as men and women made their way out into the offered day.

On the other hand (in life there was almost always another hand), daylight meant that intimacy, privacy, escape from the unwanted gaze, silence for meditation, the solace of unseen tears on a pillow—or of secret love on that same pillow before, or after—were so much harder to claim. Rarer coinage, in the clear light.

It is more difficult—much more difficult—to hide and not be found.

BUT SHE
WANTS
to be found. That lies at the heart of this. She is prepared to become angry that they have taken so long and she remains alone.

Unfair, perhaps, for she’s made this difficult, but they are supposed to love her beyond words, need her more than breath or light, and she has spent a second night outside and solitary, and it has been cold.

She is not unaccustomed to hardship, but neither is she immune to longing. Seeing them both at Entremont when she came through to the summons has kindled need, desire, memory.

She would not let them
know
this, of course.

Not yet, and only one of them, after. But these sensations are within her now and, lying awake, watching stars traverse the open space to the south, as if across a window, she has been intensely, painfully aware of them, of lives lived and lost.

And of the two of them, somewhere out there, looking for her.

She isn’t certain why she’d said
three days.
No need to have done so. A small hard kernel of fear: it is possible they might not find her in time. She knows herself very well, knows she will not back away from this. Is aware that having arrived now in this place she has chosen she will not go forth again. Will not make it easier for them, or for herself.

If one of them needs her enough he will be here.

Meghan Marriner, showing no signs of fatigue, had taken Greg to the hospital at first light. She’d said last night she was going to do it, was not the sort to back away from that. Steve drove them in the van.

Kate, briefed over breakfast, was at the diningroom table poring over Melanie’s notes and the guidebooks she’d accumulated. Ned, at the computer, was googling as fast as he could type and skim. He’d had about three hours’ sleep, he was running on adrenalin, aware that he was probably going to crash hard at some point.

They were looking for clues based on what his mother had realized by the car barrier last night. Kate had gone pale when she’d woken in the morning and they’d asked her about it. But she’d remembered the words exactly as he had.

Up at Entremont, setting the two men their task of finding her, Ysabel hadn’t just spoken of killing.

She’d said the loser would be sacrificed.

They had nothing else to go on. Had to treat this as what they needed it to be: a clue to what might be happening.

Ned typed a different search combination:
Celts
+
Provence
+
“places of sacrifice.”
He started finding things about fées and fairy mounds and even dragons. Dragons. Not much help, though from where he sat he was a lot less inclined to dismiss all that than he would have been a week ago.

There really was too much junk online. Personal pages, Wiccan sites, travel blogs. Stuff about witches
and fairies—folk beliefs from medieval days. He skipped past those.

Further back, it looked like the Celts had merged their own gods with the Roman ones. Right. Conquered people—what else were they going to do? Except they did believe in human sacrifice. In worshipping skulls. They hanged sacrifices from trees, he read—that didn’t help a lot. Trees were everywhere.

They performed rituals on hills, high places, which offered a little more, but not a lot. Entremont had been such a place, but they’d been back already, and Ned was certain Ysabel wouldn’t have returned to where she’d been summoned. There was that other ruined hill fort—Roquepertuse, towards Arles—but Kim and Kate had gone there yesterday.

He clicked and typed and scrolled. Earth goddesses linked to water, pools, springs—Ned had been at one of those, and so had Cadell, at Glanum. Nothing. Goddesses were associated with forests—
all
the deities were, it seemed.

Much good that did them.

He found another site, read:
“They usually began with a human sacrifice, utilizing a sword, spear, a sickle-like knife, ritual hanging, impaling, dismembering, disembowelling, drowning, burning, burial alive . . .”

He shook his head, looked away from the screen, over his shoulder. Kate had Melanie’s notes and books spread around her on the table, was scribbling like a student with a teacher lecturing. Ned turned back to the computer.

The Romans, it seemed, had been shocked and appalled by all of this. Had banned human sacrifice. Sure, Ned thought, the Romans who were so gentle and kind themselves.

He tried other word combinations, found another site. Read:
“A Celtic oppidum must have been as gruesome as a Dayak or Solomon Island village. Everywhere were stakes crowned with heads, and the walls of houses were adorned with them. Poseidonius tells how he sickened at such a sight, but gradually became more accustomed to it . . . ”

He didn’t know what a Dayak was. Entremont was an oppidum. The word just meant a hill fort. They were back to that. He checked the top of the page for the source of this one. Some Englishman, in 1911. Well, what was
he
going to know? A cup of tea with his pinky extended and opinions on two thousand years ago.

Ned swore and gave up. This wasn’t his thing, it was making him nervous, and he didn’t have a sense it was leading anywhere. He scraped his chair back and went out on the terrace. His father and uncle were sitting there, coffee mugs on the small table.

His dad glanced up. He looked worn out. “Well?”

“I’m wasting time, there’s way too much. I mean, that’s what they
did
—sacrifices. So it could be anywhere.”

His uncle sighed. “Yeah, Kim thinks so too. Get yourself a coffee, you must be beat this morning.”

Ned shook his head. “I’m fine, I just want to get
going
.”

“Have to have destinations first, don’t you think?”

The glass doors opened.

“All right,” said Kate Wenger. “Here’s what I think. There’s no point checking every Celtic site in the books.”

“Tell me about it,” Ned said.

“I am, listen. If we’re right, this whole find-me thing instead of a fight is because Melanie’s inside Ysabel, right?”

“I still don’t know how that’s possible,” Edward Marriner said.

“It is,” Uncle Dave said. “Go ahead, Kate.”

Kate was biting her lip. “Fine. Well, my point is, if the search is happening because of Melanie, then the one thing we can do is focus on places
she
knows about. For Celtic sacrifices. Right?”

The three of them looked at one another.

“Google is not my friend?” Ned said.

No one laughed. “Only if Melanie googled something and made a note. That’s what I’m thinking,” Kate said.

She had his McGill sweatshirt on again, over her brother’s shirt, and jeans.

Ned’s father was nodding. “That’s good, Kate. It gives us something logical.”

“Were they logical?” Uncle Dave asked.

“Melanie is,” Edward Marriner said.

“And so’s Kate,” Ned said. “So what’s in her notes? About Celts and rituals or whatever?”

“I found two places we haven’t been to yet.”

“We have three cars,” Dave Martyniuk said. “Only two? Give me one more.”

Ned cleared his throat. “I’m going back to Aix,” he repeated. He’d told them last night.

“Why?” Kate asked, but softly.

Ned shrugged. “To the cloister. I’ll let you guys be logical. I need to go there.”

None of them said anything.

GREG, NOT EVIDENTLY THE WORSE
for two rabies injections with more to come over the next while, courtesy of Dr. Meghan Marriner, found the name of one of the sites amusing.

“Like, if the Celts were illiterate or whatever, why’d they name something Fort Books?”

Ned’s mother was in a mood. “I’ll make the next shot hurt if you don’t cut the jokes, Gregory. And I know how to do it.”

“He called Pain de Munition, east of here, Painful Munitions,” Steve declared.

“Ratting me out?” Greg said indignantly, but he looked pleased to have it recalled.

Fort de Buoux, apparently, was about forty-five minutes north, a hilltop off a rough road, nothing near it, a walk and climb to ruins—with a sacrificial altar at the summit. It sounded like a place where you could take an impressive photograph. Or hide.

The other site was farther north and west, more touristy, starred in all the guidebooks—something called the Fontaine de Vaucluse. A place where water gushed out of a mountain cave at certain times of the year. Melanie had noted that Oliver Lee wrote a section
for the book describing the place from ancient times, through the nineteenth century, up to how it looked today. Some Italian poet had lived there in medieval times, but it had also been a Celtic holy site.

That figures
, Ned thought, having googled goddesses and springs of water, caves and chasms in the earth.

“I’m still going into Aix,” he said again, as Uncle Dave and his father started sorting out who’d be in which car. He was beginning to come to terms—a little—with the fact that the others would listen to him and do what he decided.

More or less.

“Not by yourself,” his mother said.

“I’m not in danger, Mom. Brys is the one who was after me.”

“Not by yourself,” Meghan Marriner repeated, with a firmness that really was kind of impressive. It wasn’t a voice you could argue with; it didn’t actually
occur
to you to argue.

Ned ended up in the city with his mom and dad.

Dave was driving Kate and Steve to Fort de Buoux, Greg took Aunt Kim to the fountain. The idea, again, was to be in touch by phone, meet up if anyone found anything, or come back here for mid-afternoon to figure a next step if nothing happened.

It could actually have been funny in a different time and space, walking into town between his parents. Ned half felt like asking for an ice cream or a popsicle or a ride on the merry-go-round near the biggest of the fountains.

The cathedral was open but the door out to the cloister was locked. The guide who had the key and ran the half-hourly tours was coming in only after lunch. Ned didn’t even think of having his dad try to pick the lock. Not here. He wondered if his mom knew her husband could do that.

They went through the medieval streets back towards the main drag, the Cours Mirabeau. On the way they passed the café where he’d gone with Kate. He saw the chair he’d used to block the dog attacking him. He didn’t say anything to his parents about that. His father was looking stressed enough.

On the Mirabeau, lined with cafés on one side and banks on the other, shaded by enormous plane trees, he stopped. The feeling was becoming almost familiar.

“She’s been here,” he said.

“How do you
know
that?” his mother demanded. His logical mother, exasperation in her voice.

“Jeez, Mom, I have no idea. I just do. Same way, sort of, that I knew Cadell was at the tower last night, I guess.”

“Why ‘sort of’?”

She didn’t miss a lot.

Ned fumbled for words, looking at the tourists sitting at small outdoor tables. They seemed to be enjoying themselves. Why not? People dreamed of coming here, didn’t they? Of sitting at a café in the south of France in May.