A Necklace of Water (16 page)

“I know,” I said, smiling. “And your car will be okay?”

Kevin made a face. “The front end needs to be replaced. But insurance will cover it.”

“Yeah—it wasn’t your fault.”

It was mine.

But I’d been learning limitations, how to keep magick focused so it didn’t affect others….

My latte was too hot. Nervously, I placed my fingers against the tall mug and mentally crafted a limitation around it. Then I cooled it, drawing the heat into my fingers. I watched Kevin carefully—he seemed okay.
Yes!

If I learned enough limitations, if I really studied hard or if I never worked magick around him…

Smiling, Kevin put his arm around my shoulders and kissed me. “I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you too. I was so worried about you.”

“It was weird, but I’m fine now. Listen—Halloween’s coming up. And the Halloween dance at school. And the haunted house at the fire station on St. Charles, by Nashville. Would you want to do any of that?”

“Oh yeah,” I said. It would be so great to be a normal teenager with a boyfriend, doing “spooky” things that didn’t involve actual, sometimes terrifying magick. “I just have to check with my grandmother,”
I added. Halloween was the most important sabbat of the year in the
bonne magie
. I was sure a big circle or celebration was planned, and I had no idea if I would be able to make the school dance. Or if I would still be with Kevin by then.

“Great. We’ll need costumes. But nothing stupid, like salt and pepper. More like, I’ll dress up like rice.”

“Rice? What do you mean?”

He grinned. “You go as ‘white,’ and I’ll go as rice, and you just be all over me all night.”

I laughed—he looked so pleased with himself. “Very funny!”

And this was my ongoing dilemma: If I wanted, I could choose. I could turn my back on magick, be just a girl again, with a sweet, normal boyfriend; my lifespan would be normal. My life would uncomplicate itself; my future would simplify. All I had to do was choose.

Kevin stroked his fingers up my arm. “What are you thinking about?”

About how I’m lying to myself.
I smiled at him. “Just enjoying being here.”

“Me too.”

And so it went. I was on a seesaw, teetering between safety and desire, selflessness and selfishness. Right now, selfish desire was winning. I felt good with Kevin—calm, comfortable. Everything I hadn’t been with Luc. Kevin was a cozy hearth; Luc had been a wildfire.

Wildfires destroyed everything in their path.

Kevin and I were talking about going to see a movie when I suddenly felt,
Axelle.

Turning, I saw her and Manon coming out of the book section. Axelle’s eyes caught mine, and she smiled and waved in a patently artificial way. I smiled and waved back, just as artificially, and then smiled at Manon.

Good Lord. Was that Manon? It had to be—it was her, definitely, but … she was
older
. Not instantly recognizable as a child. She was … a teenager. She raised her eyebrows at me and smiled in a friendly way, and I pretended to let my jaw drop open. She grinned and nodded, and they went toward the exit.

“Do you know them?” Kevin asked.

“Remember my crazy guardian when I first got here? The dark-haired one was her.”

“Oh. Yeah, not very motherly. Or parently in any way.”

“Nope.” Just then, I felt Axelle in my mind and almost jumped. I could literally feel her, as if she were trying to eavesdrop, to know what I
was thinking. I was shocked and in the next instant wondered if she had done that when I lived with her, but I hadn’t known it. Maybe the reason I could feel what she was doing now was because I’d become more sensitive to magick.

Which was amazing. But I didn’t want Axelle in my head and tried to remember what I’d been taught about that. I could put up walls around myself. Clio had told me that the Treize pretty much blocked their minds all the time without thinking about it.

I quickly put up barriers around my mind—a small spell that wouldn’t stop anything big or powerful but would prevent casual eavesdroppers. At once I felt Axelle’s presence disappear. As she left Botanika, she cast me a thoughtful glance, as if surprised by this show of strength.

That’s right, be surprised
, I thought smugly.

“Uh …” Kevin said.

I looked over at him and realized with horror that he looked gray. Oh no. I had done it again! I had done magick without protecting him, and now he was paying for it.

“Oh God, Kevin, I’m sorry!” I blurted, putting my arm around his shoulders. Instantly I dropped my magickal barrier.

He blinked several times as I rubbed his back and felt overwhelmed with guilt.

“Do you want some ice water?” I asked. He nodded and reached out with a shaky hand. After he drank some water, he took a deep breath and shook his head, already looking better.

“I’m okay,” he said, but he sounded concerned and upset.

It was all my fault. I was literally damaging him, hurting him, by being around him. Kevin was the nicest guy in the whole world, and I was hurting him carelessly again and again. Seriously hurting him.

I had to break up with him.

We drove to his house in his dad’s car. I said I would walk up to St. Charles and catch the streetcar home—I didn’t want him driving by himself. The whole way to his house, I tried to get the nerve to go ahead and break up, but I just couldn’t. He was upset and worried about his “relapse,” and I felt like breaking up would be kicking him when he was down. I couldn’t even think of a good reason to give him. Not one good reason.

Overwhelmed and miserable, I kissed him goodbye and walked down the LaTours’ driveway to the sidewalk, trying not to sob.

I was an idiot. A dangerous idiot. This was what Clio and Petra had been talking about, how unschooled I was, how dangerous it was to
know just a little bit of magick. I was a bullet, careening around, hurting people right and left without meaning to.

I started crying, trying to hide it. Getting on a streetcar with a bunch of strangers seemed totally unappealing. Instead I kept walking uptown on Prytania Street, trying to distract myself with the incredibly beautiful houses along this section.

A car honked behind me, but I ignored it. Sometimes frat guys from Tulane or Loyola drove around honking at girls, yelling stuff. If they pushed me, I was going to rip into them.

“Thais!”

I turned to see Clio waving at me through the open window of our rental car. She immediately pulled up next to me. My first thought was,
Thank God, my sister
, and then I remembered I was still mad at her and turned away.

“Thais! Get over here!”

Sighing, I went and leaned in the open window. “What.”

“What is the matter with you?” she asked. “You’re walking along crying, and you won’t even come over to the car? What’s going on?”

I just shook my head.

“Get in the car,” she said briskly, sitting back and checking her rearview mirror.

Unable to fight anymore, I got in.

Clio pulled quickly out into traffic, making people honk. She flipped a general bird out the window and took a left, heading toward Magazine Street. It was a relief to be sitting down, even a relief to be with my sister. Glancing at her, I saw she looked pale beneath the summer tan that hadn’t faded much.

“What did you do today?” I asked, sniffling.
Study much?

“This and that,” she said offhandedly. “I was going home, but why don’t we go to PJ’s, get some coffee? I feel like I haven’t seen you in ages.”

I’d been avoiding her for days, since I’d heard her at Daedalus’s. “Whatever.” But I felt glad that maybe we could clear the air now. I sniffled again, wiping my eyes with my hand.

PJ’s had a back courtyard with rickety metal tables and overgrown plants that made it feel jungle-like. I got an iced tea and we took our drinks out back.

“Okay, now tell me what’s going on,” Clio said once we sat down.

“I don’t know where to start.” With, I’m killing my boyfriend because I’m stupid and out of control? Or, I’m studying dark magick with a creepy stranger so I can get revenge on a murderer with whom my own
sister studies? Or even the old standby, I lost my dad and moved two thousand miles away and sometimes I’m still not on my feet yet?

Pick one.

“I tried to break up with Kevin,” I said. “But I couldn’t get the words out. I feel like I don’t have any reason to give him.”

Clio stirred her coffee, thinking. “How about, I met someone last summer before you, and we broke up, but I really loved him, and now he wants to get back together. So, “bye?”

I frowned at her. “What are you talking about?” Did she mean Luc?

Clio shrugged. “It would be an excuse.”

“It would be awful! It would make me look like—” I shook my head. “That’s the thing. Any reason I give him is going to make me look bad. I care about him so much. I don’t want him to hate me.”

“You’re kind of between a rock and a hard place,” Clio said. “Tell him you need to take a little break because you’re under so much pressure with school and your new family and stuff. Then later, when you have all your limitations and barriers down cold, you can look him up again.”

She was actually trying to help me. I thought about it. “That’s not bad. How long do you think it’ll take me, with the limitations?”

“Well… like, two years?” Clio made a “sorry” face. “That’s to be really good, to be able to have them up most of the time without thinking about it.”

“Great.” Mentioning barriers made me think of what had set all this off. “Oh my God—just now, Kevin and I were at Botanika, and we saw Axelle and Manon. And get this—Manon looks like she’s about fifteen. She’s older!”

Clio’s eyes widened and her brows raised. “Really? It was obvious?”

“Yeah. I mean, she’s taller, she’s getting boobs—she’s a teenager! Isn’t that weird? Do you think it’s happening with all of them?”

“Well, Nan
seems
older, for sure,” Clio said, looking thoughtful. “Richard, I don’t know about, because I haven’t seen him. Who else have we seen recently? Luc, you can’t tell because of his face.”

What about Daedalus? How did
he look?
I wanted to say. It was hard sitting here, knowing she had this huge secret from me. But I had a huge secret too, I admitted. True, I wasn’t studying with someone she hated, someone who had killed our father, but I also knew that Clio wasn’t convinced Daedalus really had. It was hard to blame her for not believing my vision. Reluctantly I remembered that I hadn’t really believed
her
vision. So we were kind of even in a way. I sighed, not knowing what to do with all my conflicting feelings.

“Yeah,” I said, trying to remember if I’d seen anyone else. “God, if she and Richard age, it would make their lives so much easier. But … do you think they’re aging, like, until death?”

“I don’t know. All kinds of stuff happened at that stupid rite that we don’t know about—everyone did something different, caused different things to happen.”

“Yeah. It’s all so complicated.”

For a couple of minutes we sat there, lost in our own thoughts.

Clio looked up at me, her eyes green and clear. When I’d first met her, we’d seemed so identical I’d practically fainted. Now when I looked at her, I found her very familiar, but it wasn’t like looking at myself. We’re such different personalities that she didn’t seem like another me.

“The thing is,” she said slowly, “I’m not sure who to trust anymore. I always thought I could trust Nan, but she lied to me my whole life. I thought I could trust Luc. Ha. I sort of thought I could trust Richard. I thought I could trust our circles. Now I don’t trust anything—except myself. And you.”

“You trust me?”

“I do.” She paused. “We’re twins, identical twins. Two halves of one whole. I feel like I have to trust you. Listen—I think we should make a magickal pact, where we each swear to not betray the other.”

“Are you serious?”

“I’m telling you—you can trust me, no matter what. Trust that I would never do anything to hurt you.”

What about studying with Daedalus
? I wanted to shout. But she seemed so sincere…. This was all making my head hurt.

“I want to know for sure that there’s one person in the world I can trust, and that’s you,” she went on. “Will you swear with me? We could do a spell.”

“Yeah, because we haven’t gotten thrown across a room lately,” I said.

She frowned. “Thais, this is important.”

I thought it through carefully. Six months ago, ’d have thought I could trust anyone in my family, anyone I was related to. I would have trusted most people. Now—it was true: there wasn’t anyone I felt a hundred percent certain about. Could I really trust Clio? Could she really trust me? Nothing was that certain to me anymore … but I did still feel in my gut that neither of us would ever
purposely
hurt the other. I knew I could count on that.

I nodded. “Yeah, okay. We’ll do a spell. And we’ll swear to each other, on our mother’s grave, that we’ll never betray each other, no matter what. That whatever happens, we’ll have each other’s back. Right?”

Clio stood up, looking relieved. I was touched that this meant so much to her. “Right. Let’s go do it. By the way—where is our mother’s grave?”

“No idea.”

G
oddess, she was exhausted. Petra put down her bag and smoothed a hand over her silver hair. The house was empty—she’d felt that as soon as she’d come through the front gate. Perhaps Thais was with Kevin, breaking up with him. It was sad, unfortunate. Kevin was a nice kid. It wasn’t Thais’s fault that she hadn’t grown up with the craft and didn’t know how to control her power.

It was Petra’s fault.

But if she hadn’t split them up, they might very well be dead now. It was only chance that they hadn’t been killed in the last two months, first by Richard and then by … whom? It was still unclear. Oddly, Petra had been unable to discern any culprit among the Treize, and it certainly seemed like the attacks had stopped.

Well, it was all twigs down the river at this point. She was doing the best she could.