Seduction Read online

My next stop was at Sophie’s bedroom door. This was going to be tricky, I knew. Sophie didn’t like me, and if she was talking with Jeremiah, they were probably discussing something important. But what could be more important than someone’s life? I squared my shoulders and prepared to knock.

  And then I heard their conversation.

  “How can I?” Jeremiah said, sounding exasperated.

  “For God’s sake, be quiet!” Sophie hissed. “Do you want everyone to hear you? Would you like to explain yourself to the stupid American girl?”

  That made me take notice.

  “All right,” Jeremiah said. “But you ask for too much.”

  “Oh? And you think I do not deserve this thing I ask?”

  “It’s not that—”

  “I, who gave you up so that another woman might have you?”

  “She was my wife, Sophie.”

  “You were mine long before you married her!” Sophie spat.

  “And I am yours still.”

  She made a sneering sound. “So? What good are you to me now? Look at you, an old man.”

  “Sophie, that’s enough.”

  “And you want to see me become like you? Dried up, ugly, useless—”

  “I don’t think I want to see you at all, Sophie,” he said with an air of deadly quiet. “Good night.”

  When I heard him walking toward the door, I jumped out of the way, sprinting as far down the hallway as I could get, but I don’t think I fooled anyone. Jeremiah stood watching me for a moment as I peered over my shoulder, pretending to be absorbed in the wallpaper. Then he shook his head and hurried down the curved stairway.

  At that point I dropped the pretense that I just happened to be in the corridor when he left Sophie’s room. “Mr. Shaw,” I called after him. “Please listen to me. It’s about Marie-Therèse—”

  He stopped and stared at me, looking very irritated. “What about her?” he snapped.

  “Her birthday,” I said, breathless from all my running. “You have to call it off.”

  “Call off her birthday?” he asked, looking genuinely confused.

  “The celebration of it. The . . . you know,” I whispered. I mimed abducting Marie-Therèse and carrying her away, but I don’t think he caught on.

  “You ought to speak with Peter,” he said, preparing to bolt.

  I put my hand on his arm. “I’m speaking to you, sir,” I said. I was aware of how pushy I sounded, but I had to make him listen to me. “Mr. Shaw, I don’t exactly know what’s going on here, but it’s not right to send an old lady away from the only home she knows, especially since that place—the Poplars—is so strange.”

  “Strange? In what way?”

  I took a deep breath. “People die there,” I said.

  He frowned slightly, looking annoyed again. “I’m afraid I can’t help you,” he said, heading down the stairs.

  Then an odd thing happened. He stopped suddenly, looked around, and then climbed back up again and met my eyes with his own. “I know you’ve been to see the old man,” he said in a low voice.

  For a moment I was flummoxed. I’d always thought of him as the old man.

  “Azrael.”

  I gasped. Oh, God, I thought frantically. How did he find out? Who had followed me? A rush of panic flooded through my veins. One day an enterprising young fellow will visit me and then kill me for my old clock. Oh, God, oh God oh—

  “Thank you,” Jeremiah said. He touched my arm for a moment, and then retracted it. “Thank you for your kindness to him.”

  Thank you? He was thanking me?

  “Er . . . what did you . . .”

  But he was already down the stairs and out the door.

  CHAPTER

  •

  THIRTY-ONE

  If possible, things had become even more confusing. Peter hadn’t been any help, and Jeremiah Shaw, who eerily seemed to have been spying on me, nevertheless wasn’t about to change his mind about expelling Marie-Therèse from the house. I had to come up with something else to help my aging friend before she got sent to the Good-bye Corral as punishment for getting old.

  After wracking my brain for a while, I decided there might be one other person I could talk to. I didn’t think he could help me any more than the others, but maybe he’d be able to give me an idea or two.

  • • •

  “Azrael?” I called experimentally, hearing my voice echo eerily through the maze of tunnels.

  He didn’t answer me, but when I peeked into his candlelit alcove, he was shuffling toward the entrance.

  “Yes?” he asked quietly. I couldn’t tell if he was glad to see me or not.

  “Can I . . .” I felt horrible, barging in on him after he’d made it perfectly clear—twice—that he wanted to be alone, but it was too late to turn tail and run. “I’m really sorry,” I said, holding out a two-liter bottle of Perrier water and today’s edition of Paris Soir. “I know you didn’t want company, and you asked me not to bother you again, but I was just wondering—”

  “Ah, I see it is my young friend Katy Ainsworth,” he said, taking the bottle from my hands.

  “You . . . you don’t mind that I came here?” I asked.

  “I did not say that.”

  “Oh.” I hung my head.

  “But since you are here, perhaps we might share a cup of tea.”

  I looked up. The old man was smiling. I smiled back.

  “Besides, how could I turn away someone who brings me fizzy water?”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t bring any food today,” I said. “It’s Saturday.”

  “Quite all right. I won’t starve without your culinary creations, delicious as they are.”

  “Really?” Cervelles au beurre noir, a.k.a. buttered brains of baby cows, was on the schedule for Monday’s class. Chef Durant might like it, but personally, I’d boil my shoes and gobble them whole before I’d eat that.

  “I take it you do not cook regularly chez toi?”

  “No,” I admitted. I didn’t want to mention that even eating brains would be preferable to dining with those skanks. “There’s a cook where I live.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “You do?”

  He nodded his shaggy head. “I knew as soon as you mentioned the dreaded Joelle. The witches of the Rue des mes Perdues are a long-established coven.”

  I could only blink in response. “You know about them?” I whispered.

  He laughed heartily. “My dear, everyone knows.” He put the kettle on the charcoal brazier he used and took out two elegant china cups. “They’re a silly coven. A bunch of vain chickens with hardly any magic.”

  His talk of magic and covens made me a little uncomfortable. A lot of people associated witches with evil or Satan or something, which simply wasn’t true, although I’d discovered that once some people’s minds were made up, the truth no longer mattered to them. I was hoping Azrael wasn’t one of those people. “Er, by magic, do you mean—”

  “I mean what you do,” he said. “What you are.”

  I froze. “How do you know?” I squeaked.

  He laughed. “My child, magic practically rolls off you. One needn’t even see you perform to know that about you. I imagine Joelle is not the only one of your housemates who hates you.”

  He’d gotten that right. “I don’t know if they hate me, exactly,” I waffled.

  “They are envious,” he said with a chuckle. “Wildly, screechingly envious.”

  “Really?”

  He nodded.

  “I think they want Peter to join them,” I said.

  “The work-driven Peter.”

  “Yes,” I said tightly.

  “And will he?”

  I slumped in my chair. “I don’t know.”

  “Ah. Now I see. If Peter remains with you, he will not give his allegiance to them. That is why these women wish to force you to leave.” He brought me a cup of steaming, fragrant jasmine tea and sat opposite me. “Perhaps you should give this young man more credi
t than you do. He can, after all, make up his own mind.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But there’s a lot of pressure. It’s not just the beautiful women hanging all over him—I’m pretty sure Peter wouldn’t be swayed by them, if that was all there was—but there’s a big position with Shaw Enterprises, too, not to mention . . .” I was going to say he’s being groomed to be the coven’s resident alchemist, but I caught myself in time. I cleared my throat. “Er, not to mention college. Peter’s been all but promised an acceptance into the best university in America.”

  Azrael nodded. “Try having a little faith,” he said.

  I squirmed. There was also the matter of Belmondo, which I was also not about to bring up. I didn’t even understand that myself. When I thought about what I was doing with him under Peter’s nose, I felt ashamed. But good, too. Darkly, wickedly, daringly good.

  “So is this why you came to see me?” the old man asked, startling me. I must have been lost in thoughts of my lust for Belmondo. “Because my experience with affairs of the heart may be somewhat rusty.”

  Get it together, I told myself. Don’t lose focus. “No, I wanted to talk with you about something else,” I said, sitting up straight. “There’s a woman at the house, an older woman named Marie-Therèse. She’s going to be kicked out because they have this stupid rule that you have to leave the house when you get old.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why not?” I shouted. “Because it’s cruel and idiotic. All they care about is their looks!”

  “Oui,” he said. “That is what they use their magic for.”

  So he knew about that, too. “So anyway, they’re throwing her out like garbage.”

  “Now, now, Katy. Don’t exaggerate.”

  I felt my pulse pounding. “No? Okay, then. How’s this? They’re going to kill her.”

  Azrael sighed and sat back in his chair. “Kill her?” he asked, not sounding particularly shocked. In fact, he sounded as if he were listening to a nut. A nut named Katy.

  “Why are you acting like you don’t know what I’m talking about?” I pleaded. “I went to the ‘country house,’ ” I said, making caterpillars with my fingers. “No one lives there, Azrael. Nobody’s lived there for hundreds of years. It’s a shell, I tell you. Something happens to the people who get sent there, and it’s not good!”

  “All right, all right!” he said, laughing. “You Americans are so persistent.”

  “Persistent? We’re talking about someone’s life!”

  He shrugged. “Life,” he said. “What is life? A passing dream. The blink of an eye . . .”

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” I said.

  “Well, what do you want me to do?” he snapped. “Kidnap the woman? Engage in fisticuffs with her captors? Frankly, you would be better suited to that sort of activity than I.” He rubbed his neck. “I still bear the marks from our first encounter.”

  I winced. “I’m deeply, deeply sorry about that,” I said, “but right now I really need for you to help me figure out what to do.”

  “But what concern is it of yours? This Marie-Therèse is an old woman. You, on the other hand, are young, with your whole life ahead of you. Surely her fate, whatever it may be, cannot be of much importance to you.”

  I looked up at him. “I can’t believe you’d even say that,” I said quietly. “She doesn’t have anyone else, Azrael. It’s me or the dung heap for her.”

  His watery old eyes looked at me steadily. “Are there really people like you still left in this world?”

  “Lots,” I said, thinking of Whitfield. “My great-grandmother would never speak to me again if I didn’t help. That goes for just about everyone else I know too.”

  Azrael nodded sagely. “Eh bien,” he said, slapping his hands on his knees. “Then we must come up with a plan.”

  “Yes!” I agreed.

  “Ah, yes. I have it.”

  I leaned forward expectantly.

  “We’ll use magic.”

  I breathed a huge sigh of relief. “Whew. Great. Thank you. Er . . . what sort of magic do you do?”

  He looked surprised. “I? No, no, no. You’re the one who’ll perform the magic.”

  “Me? Me? But . . . but aren’t you a witch?”

  “I believe we’ve only established that you are, Miss Ainsworth.”

  I swallowed. I’d been trapped. “I’m an object-empath,” I said. “A telekinetic. I don’t do spells.”

  “Then perhaps you ought to learn.”

  I stood up in a huff. “Why won’t you help me?” I demanded, shouting so that my voice wouldn’t break with emotion.

  “Who said I could? Besides, no one ever learned anything by having things done for them.”

  I clenched my teeth together. “But there’s so much at stake,” I whimpered. “If I fail . . .”

  “Don’t fail,” Azrael said.

  I crossed my arms angrily in front of me. “Easy for you to say.”

  He smiled. “All right. A concession. If you need help, I shall help you,” he said softly. “Does that satisfy you?”

  So he was a witch after all. And he’d offered to help me if all else failed, which, frankly, was pretty likely. The chances of my succeeding at casting a spell that would protect Marie-Therèse from a coven of witches—even stupid ones—was, I knew, somewhere between zero and minus one. But I owed it to her to at least try.

  “Okay,” I said, less than enthusiastically. “I guess I’d better get to work, then.” I took our teacups to the basin. As I washed them, a sinking feeling came over me. Jeremiah. I had to tell Azrael about him. “Er . . .”

  “Oh, dear,” he said. “What is it now, little choux?”

  I set the cups out to dry and wiped my hands. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but somebody knows about you.”

  He glared at me. “Who have you told?” he demanded.

  “No one, I swear. But the other night Jeremiah—”

  “Who?”

  “Jeremiah Shaw. He’s Peter’s boss.”

  “He is one of the witches?”

  “I guess. He was at their full-moon ceremony.”

  Azrael’s wrinkled frown suddenly smoothed into an expression of understanding. “Go on,” he said.

  “He stays at the house sometimes. Whenever he wants to, pretty much. Anyway, I was trying to talk to him about Marie-Therèse, and he basically ignored me, but then—”

  “He asked about me?” Azrael whispered.

  “Sort of. He said he knew I’d been visiting you.”

  The old man nodded.

  “And then he thanked me.”

  He closed his eyes.

  “Why would he do that?”

  For a moment, I didn’t think he’d heard me. But then he spread his hands, palms up, in front of him.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve been careful. And I haven’t said anything. I don’t know how he knew.”

  “It’s all right,” the old man said hoarsely, and patted me on the head.

  “I don’t think he’ll try to rob you or anything,” I added.

  “No.” He smiled. His eyes were shining with tears. “Go cast your spell, little witch, and think on this no longer.”

  CHAPTER

  •

  THIRTY-TWO

  I was pretty disheartened about learning a whole new branch of witchcraft that I didn’t have any particular talent in, but supposed I was better off than I was before I’d consulted Azrael. After all, I’d asked him for an idea, and he’d given me one.

  Even though I didn’t think it would work.

  Nevertheless, as soon as I got back to the house, I took out the book of spells Aunt Agnes had given me and leafed through the contents.

  Weather, Summoning, Charms . . . I didn’t think so. I didn’t even know what charms were, except for things you hung on bracelets. The Dead? Really counterproductive, I’d say, under the circumstances. Protection was the next chapter. Protection?

  Yes, okay, that could work.

&
nbsp; But jeez, it was such a big deal! Incantations and calling in Elementals, creating a sacred circle made of salt, bowing to the Lords of Air. . . . How did the witches in A Compendium of Ritual Magic find the time to do all this pre-magic stuff, I wondered, as I moved the furniture in my room and set up the complicated spell. On TV, witches just had to know Latin and maybe wiggle their noses.

  Actually, I’d never had to do much of anything to make magic. In Whitfield, we just worked on whatever talents we already had, so I’d only ever done magic with solid objects, and that was pretty easy. I’d never had to scour parking lots for weird rocks or “wander through the astral plane” in preparation for the Protection spell, as Rosamund B. Leakey suggested.

  In fact, it was already after midnight when I finally got everything set up, so I skipped the wandering and cut right to the chase.

  “Hear me, ye lesser and greater spirits!” I intoned, feeling really stupid. I could just imagine what Peter would say if he heard me. Or Hattie. God, I’d never hear the end of it.

  “Thee I call from the far side of the Abyss. . . . Oh, crud.” Suddenly I remembered: Marie-Therèse had to be there. It said so in the book.

  All righty, then. Sighing and rubbing my sleepy eyes, I pounded on Marie-Therèse’s door.

  “What is it?” she asked, alarmed.

  I didn’t say anything until she opened up. “You have to come to my room,” I said flatly.

  “But why?” Her face was slathered in cold cream, and she squinted without her contacts.

  “Because I’m doing a spell,” I said, ragged with fatigue. I’d hardly slept at all the night before, and this activity had the earmarks of an all-nighter, too. “To protect you.” I scratched my head. “Come on.”

  “Protect me from what?”

  “Your birthday.”

  “But I feel much better about that,” she whispered as I dragged her down the hall. “The house was nice.”

  “The house is a sham,” I said.

  “What? How do you know that?”

  “Stand in the center of the circle,” I commanded, pointing to the ring of salt. I didn’t want to explain that I didn’t know how I knew the Poplars was bad news. I just did, whether or not Peter or Jeremiah or Azrael or even Marie-Therèse herself believed me. I just knew. And if I had to perform this hocus-pocus in order to get rid of the horrible certainty about Marie-Therèse’s future—or lack of it—then that’s what I was going to do.