Oxford Shadows (12 page)

“That’s probably the fanciest place I’ve ever eaten in my whole life,” Louise remarked. “I wonder what Rupert must have thought of Le Perroquet.”

“He liked it very much.”

Her aunt’s mouth twisted and she gave Madison a sideways glance.

“No really, he raved about it in front of his father when we had dinner together.” Madison’s voice rose as she asked, “Why don’t you like him?” She unlocked her arm from her aunt’s and took a step back. “Actually, what have any of my friends done to piss you off, and—”

“Sweetie, don’t use bad words. We taught you good manners at school.”

Madison couldn’t help rolling her eyes, which upgraded her from a middle-grader to full-blown teenager. Frustration, with herself and with her family, boiled up inside, while words rushed to her mouth.

“Good manners? You freaked out in front of a waiter at the Turf you’d never met before, then treated the guy I love like shit. A guy who took the time to invite you to the best restaurant in Oxford so you could get to know him better.” Louise slanted her body away from the accusations, but before she could express herself, Madison forged on. “So really, whose bad manners are we actually talking about here?”

Her aunt’s face turned blank, but her posture remained rigid, the muscles taut in her neck. “You’re being unfair,” she said simply, with a shrug.

Madison’s temperature rose. “I’m
not
being unfair. I thought you coming to Oxford would give me some moral support, but it’s been the opposite.” Jackson’s doubts sprang to her mind. “I’ve even started to question your motives for moving to England.”

Louise tucked in her elbows and lowered her chin to her chest. The blush that spread from one cheek to the other over the bridge of her nose stirred Madison’s suspicions that her aunt was harboring a secret. She watched Louise, searching for other tell-all signs that something was off.

“Why are you here?” Madison asked.

Louise pressed her lips together and the resulting silence was her sole answer.

Madison’s heartbeat thumped. “What are you not telling me?” Dread made the pitch of her voice jump, and she clenched her arms to her chest.

Louise exhaled with a long breath. Her second reaction was a small nod. “Let’s find somewhere to sit.”

They were standing in front of St. Giles Church, and its cemetery. Madison hadn’t set foot here since her last visit with Ollie, when they had laid flowers—red roses—on Sarah’s grave. Louise wasn’t aware of Madison’s bond with the place; the graveyard simply offered an immediate respite from the city center’s buzzing traffic. The gravestones basked in the welcoming warmth of the afternoon sunlight. Madison psyched herself up and followed her aunt. Louise couldn’t know that Peter—Sarah and Pippa’s killer; Madison’s stalker—was also buried in one of those ancient tombs.

Louise found the tiny stone bench behind the last row of graves, just in front of the alley beside the church. Madison had sat here the night Rupert had confided in her, the night he had confronted his guilt and his mother’s death.

Louise patted the bench beside her. “It’s time for us to talk.”

“About what?” Madison’s voice trailed off and she started fumbling with her ring.

“Please sit down,” her aunt insisted.

Madison obeyed, her mind racing and searching for answers.

“I’ve come to Oxford for you … to finish what I started when I took you with me to boarding school.”

Madison felt her eyebrows squash together and she flinched slightly. “Finish what you started?” she repeated. “Why didn’t you follow me to Connecticut when I went to Yale then?”

“Because it wasn’t time.” Louise folded her hands on her lap and her gaze became wayward.

“Time for what?” Madison challenged her. “Can you
please
stop being so mysterious?”

Louise zeroed in on Madison. “All these years I’ve been preparing you. While your grandmother was playing magic tricks”—she punctuated her words with an exaggerated upward glance—“I was making sure you would be ready for the day of your calling.”

Things were moving too quickly for Madison to process. She pressed her hands together to still her need to break into a sprint and escape any freaking talk of a “calling.”

“What calling are you talking about?” she whispered.

“The one you’ve been waiting for since your first breath … since the second you were conceived.” Louise rubbed her hand through her hair and her tidy bob lost its symmetry. “The calling our line has been awaiting for centuries.”

“You can’t be serious. Out of everyone in my life,
you
, I mean …” Madison’s voice quaked. “You’re a nun. You can’t believe in voodoo, in lingering souls and all the craziness Mamie failed to indoctrinate you in.”

“There are things even your grandmother doesn’t know, things she should never know. She isn’t The One.”

Madison did a double take, rubbed her eyelids and blinked. “The One? Why are you turning all conspiracy theory on me?”

Her aunt’s facial expression sagged and she sighed. “This isn’t a joke. Unfortunately. I’m as much a prisoner to this curse as you are.” Her head tilted back to look skyward.

A curse? Madison jumped to her feet. She tried to reconnect with the world around her, but she couldn’t hear the thumping of the passing cars anymore, or smell the freshly cut grass surrounding the graves. Her senses were numb. Soon she was going to hear a Buffy-like statement:
In every generation, a slayer is born …
Or that kind of old crap.

Louise stood and joined her with shuffling footsteps. “There’s so much I have to explain.” She grabbed Madison’s elbow. “The whole New Orleans voodoo queens theatrics aren’t what we’re here for, what we’re meant for.”

Freeing her elbow from Louise’s grasp, Madison joked, “And there I was thinking that I already had a lot of baggage.”

“If you don’t believe me, at least talk with someone who can help explain certain things. A friend of mine, the one who shared the knowledge with me in the first place. She’s been following your progress from the very beginning.”

“Someone’s been stalking me and you haven’t even called the cops?”

“Hush, hush.” Louise took hold of Madison’s trembling hands.

Madison flinched under the contact of Louise’s skin but she didn’t recoil. She stared down at her hands entwined with those of her aunt. “Who’s this friend?” Her question was toneless.

“You’ve already met her. Her name is Aurélie.”

“The woman I met at your place last week?” The beautiful woman whose face had been familiar. A memory shot back into her mind. “I saw her before. In Baton Rouge. She visited you at boarding school.”

“She did. She kept a close eye on you all those years. Now she thinks it’s time for you two to officially meet.”

But Madison wasn’t sure she wanted to make Aurélie’s wish come true.

16

APPARENTLY RUNNING was supposed to clear her mind, help Madison take a step back from her troubles.
Blahdiblahdiblah.
She focused on matching her breathing to the rhythm of her feet. The task sounded simple in theory. But it wasn’t. She was so frustrated with her brainwaves getting wired back to her early afternoon, to the whole “calling” chat.

No, no, she had to wipe her mind clean of everything supernatural. And that included “Greensleeves,” Henry the Eighth, his six wives and God only knows how many mistresses he left heartbroken across sixteenth-century Europe.

A pain in the pit of her stomach radiated across her chest. The stabbing sensation peaked each time her foot landed on the ground.
What the heck?
Her legs weakened and she almost collapsed. She sagged forward and rested her hands flat on her thighs to give herself some support. The awkward posture wasn’t ideal for refilling her lungs, but she couldn’t stand up straight. Battling with her heartbeat and her breathing, she managed to get her vitals back to normal. With a fresh intake of air through her nose, she uncurled her spine and returned to her full height.

With the decrease of her heartbeat against her ribcage, she took in the restful environment around her. The murky smell of the Cherwell River had a sedative effect on her. She had left behind Christ Church Meadow and ventured onto the path skirting the stream. Her finish line was a bench where Rupert had planned to meet her. A few punters propelled their flat-bottom boats along the ambling river by pushing their poles against the riverbed. The slow-moving current didn’t do much to help them. The landscape was idyllic and Madison allowed herself time to enjoy the quietness that seeped into her clouded thoughts.

The flapping of a bird’s wings tore her away from the peace inside her. That and the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps.

“Run out of breath?”

The now familiar drawl twisted Madison’s mouth into a half-smile. She didn’t have to turn. Sam. She put her hands on her hips, kept her eyes riveted on the Cherwell and waited for him to join her at the edge of the path. When he did, she gave him a sideways glance. His New Orleans Saints cap was turned backward. He wore a tracksuit with a T-shirt that threatened to explode under the pressure of his bulging chest.

You could grate cheese over those abs.
“Not working?” she said. “I wonder how the Turf will meet their bottom line without your waiting skills.”

“I’m losing my touch these days, or so it seems. Apparently I scare off nuns. Not good for business.”

Embarrassment made Madison’s toes curl. “I’m
soooo
sorry about that. I’ve no idea what came over my aunt. If it makes you feel better, she wasn’t much nicer to my boyfriend.”

A grin spread across his tanned face. “That actually makes my day. Thank you, Pumpkin.”

Peering behind Sam, she noticed he was alone. “Do I look like a pumpkin? And anyway, what are you doing all alone in your free time anyway?”

“Same as you. Keeping fit.” His trademark cockiness brightened his eyes. “For that kind of exercise, I don’t need anyone else.” He lifted his arms to stretch. “But I know ways of exercising as part of a team, a two-person team.”

Madison wrinkled her nose. “Gross. I don’t need to hear about your kind of
teamwork
, thank you very much.” Sweat covered his forehead. “Have you been running?”

Sam turned to face her. She took stock of his strength. He wasn’t as tall as Rupert—nobody was—but he was broader, with that rough, brutal energy many girls craved. She enjoyed the view, but it was no more than that.

“I was practicing a few positions.”

“For god’s sake, stop with your dirty jokes. I get it, you’re super flexible and have endless stamina in the sack, but—”

Sam threw his head back with laughter. “That’s not what I meant. I’m practicing krav maga.”

“The Mossad … Israeli special forces martial arts thingy?”

Sam nodded. “Yes,
that
thingy.”

“Where did you learn it? Why?”

“My dad taught me.” His gaze lost its focus for a couple of seconds then zeroed back in on Madison. “As to why, let’s just say that I’m not always making friends.”

Madison tilted her head to the side. “Does it have anything to do with you being too big for your own britches?” Then she remembered the first time they had met and the arm-long knife he had had concealed underneath his leather jacket. Saliva stuck midway down her throat. Was it safe to talk to Sam? To tease him?

He must have sensed her fear. “I’ll never hurt you, Madison.” His voice had gone soft, and she might have heard a faint crack in it. He maintained eye contact with her and she didn’t try to escape his stare. His eyes conveyed warmth. She chose to trust him. And if she was honest with herself, she knew she had made that choice the first time they had met, the night he had saved her from the thugs. The whole vigilante persona should have worried her, but it hadn’t.

“I want you to …”

Sam’s eyes widened.

“… try and attack me. Share a bit of your krav maga skills with me. That way I’ll know where to hit the next time I’m attacked.” And that wasn’t a complete joke.

Sam circled her as if to assess her ability to fight. She returned the challenge by straightening up and raising her chin. She recoiled inside, only too aware of her low pain threshold.

“Krav maga uses striking techniques. There’s nothing heroic about it and you’re not supposed to play fair. You go for your adversary’s most vulnerable body parts.”

“No need to be part of the Secret Service to know I need to aim for the crotch first.”

“Don’t forget the throat, eyes, jaw, armpits. Krav maga isn’t so much about attack as counterattack.” Sam stopped circling her. The space between them had narrowed. “So, let’s assume you’re trying to take me out …” He waved his hands to prompt her to make a move.

Her feet shuffled. There was no way she could consider “taking him out.” Not while she was in her right mind. But for the sake of argument, she made her left leg break forward and threw her right hand toward the iron-hard muscles of his stomach. Only she didn’t even reach his belly. Sam grabbed her wrist and twisted it, so that her whole body bent in an unnatural direction, her face forced downward.