Seduction Read online

  She looked up at me angrily. “What do you want now?”

  “Her earrings,” I waffled. “That is, the earrings on the mummy—”

  “The mummy’s earrings?” she shrieked. “Is that what you were looking at? Were you planning to steal them?”

  “Sounds like a movie title,” someone said. “The Mummy’s Earrings.”

  “I just wondered if they looked familiar to you.”

  “Familiar?” Sophie repeated.

  “Were they Joelle’s?”

  Sophie sighed. “Joelle again! Look, she’s with Belmondo, all right? If it makes you feel any better, Joelle often doesn’t come home after a date. Sometimes she’s gone for weeks. It’s just the way she is.”

  “And you didn’t recognize the earrings?”

  “No,” she said pointedly. “I didn’t.”

  “All right.” I nodded and backed out of her circle. “Sorry to have bothered you.”

  “Idiot girl,” Sophie muttered.

  I headed up the stairs to my room and lay on my bed. Peter hadn’t wanted to go into the house. I felt bad about how far our relationship had unraveled. If we were closer, I might be able to talk him out of joining the Witches that Time Forgot. But I didn’t think he’d listen to me anymore.

  He was being seduced. By the future. By what might be.

  And maybe I was too.

  Maybe we both ought to turn and run while we still could. If only the prizes being offered weren’t so tempting. If only it weren’t already too late.

  I opened Azrael’s book again. The binding was almost finished, but I thought some of the pages might be missing. The story took up nearly a hundred years later, during the worst years of the French Revolution.

  1793

  The Angel of Death

  Open revolt had broken out. The monarchy had been deposed and the royal family imprisoned. Self-appointed leaders vied for power over the citizens, who were still hungry even after the nobility’s blood had run red in the streets. To make matters even worse, it became known that, before his execution, the king had hired Hessian mercenaries to fight his own subjects in order to quell the uprising, so that no one, anywhere, of any persuasion or station, was safe.

  In the midst of this horror walked a handful of women, according to Sophie de la Soubise’s account of the day as she would relate it to Henry Shaw years later. Among the women was Countess Marie-Therèse LePetit, who walked purposefully beside Sophie through the dangerous streets, their opulent gowns concealed beneath plain cloaks taken from their servants.

  “But what is this place you’re taking me to?” the countess asked. She was very agitated. The hem of her skirt was heavy with the jewels that had been sewn into it. They were all she could salvage from her home, which had been ransacked and taken over by revolutionary “leaders,” men who stank of sweat, with dirt under their fingernails. The only thing she had to be grateful for was that her husband had died before he’d had to see the world as it had become.

  “It is an abbey,” Sophie said. “I was once its abbess.”

  Marie-Therèse gasped. “Surely not!”

  Sophie laughed. “Indeed, madame. There are more strange things in life than any of us can understand. But this place is a true sanctuary, and we’ll be safe there.”

  “Hey!” called a gutter cleaner who had never seen any aristocrats until he had watched them lose their heads under the guillotine’s blade. “You’re a fine one, aren’t you?” He pulled Sophie’s hood off her head. “Hair like spun gold.”

  Sophie slapped the man’s hand away. “Stop,” she whispered, skewering him with her gaze as if he were a butterfly pinned to a board. The man froze, rooted to the spot where he stood, as the women rushed away. “Hurry,” she urged the woman with her. “He’ll remember everything in a few minutes. If he talks, they’ll kill us all.”

  “Unless we can produce a miracle, they’ll kill us anyway,” Marie-Therèse said as they approached the doors of the Abbey of Lost Souls.

  But they did produce a miracle. Working together under the abbess’s direction, they used their combined magic—for once—in the service of something other than the preservation of their own youth. They produced a glamour that shielded the abbey from notice. “The building is not really invisible,” the abbess explained. “Just uninteresting to those who see it. It is a magic that one of our first abbesses, Sister Béatrice, used to perform.”

  Sophie laughed. “This is the first time I’ve been pleased to be thought of as uninteresting,” she said.

  And so the women had waited out the worst months of the Reign of Terror. At Sophie’s insistence, others with psychic abilities were also permitted to take refuge in the abbey and were thus spared the acquaintance of the “National Razor,” as the ever-present guillotine had become known.

  Within a year the abbey became crowded, not only with the new people seeking sanctuary, but also because of the aged among them who were so infirm that they were unable to move from their beds.

  “I don’t know what we’re going to do,” the abbess confided to Sophie, who had known her since childhood. She was new to her office, having taken over after the former abbess, a duchess, had the misfortune to venture outside, where she was set upon by thieves who cut her throat for her woolen cloak. “We’re running out of space.”

  Sophie shrugged. “So get rid of them,” she said.

  The abbess was taken aback at her friend’s lack of compassion for the old nuns. “But they’ve been here for centuries,” she said.

  “Exactly. It’s time for them to move on. Call for Jean-Loup de Villeneuve,” Sophie said. “He’ll know what to do.” She looked at her nails. “We need more money, anyway.”

  • • •

  Henry went alone to the ritual, as he had for more than a hundred years. Unlike the austere enclosure he had entered the first time Jean-Loup had brought him, the abbey now looked like a royal palace. The once-bare walls had been covered with lacquer and gold leaf. Thick carpets cushioned their footfalls. The rooms were filled with beautiful furniture and paintings taken from the homes of the new residents, rescued before the mobs broke in to steal them. In a corner, a woman played a harpsichord while people milled about dressed in their finest fashions. Even the “abbess”—who had never been a real abbess, or even a nun, of course—looked as if she belonged at a party in Versailles.

  “Welcome,” she said, curtsying to him.

  “Has Jean-Loup de Villeneuve arrived?”

  “Not yet. But as you know, he never misses our gatherings. Perhaps you’d like to . . .”

  He heard nothing more. His gaze had fallen upon a woman standing some distance away, a painted fan fluttering in front of her face. A woman he had dreamed about since before he’d left for America more than a century before.

  He left the abbess abruptly, his heart thundering, and went over to the woman with the fan. “My lady,” he said, bending to kiss her hand. “Henry Shaw.”

  “Sophie de la Soubise,” she said, an amused expression playing on her lips. “I think I remember you. You were just a boy.”

  Henry blushed deeply. He hadn’t considered how his own appearance had changed. He had not attended the life-extending rituals during the decades he’d lived in America, and consequently looked a great deal older than he had when he’d first met the exquisite Sophie. Now he resembled a man of fifty, while she still possessed the dewy face of a twenty-year-old.

  For all the long years between their first meeting and this, he had thought only about his own attraction to her. He had never dreamed that she would find him acceptable. “Forgive me,” he said, preparing to retreat in shame. “I’ve been too forward.”

  “Nonsense, Henry, darling,” she purred, taking his arm. “Let me show you around.”

  As they strolled through the opulent rooms of the abbey, Henry was nearly overcome with a sense of well-being he had never before known. Oh, he had certainly been content during his years in Massachusetts, and if he had been a man with a
normal lifespan, that contentment would have been enough.

  But his lifespan was not normal. It had been more than a hundred years since he had left Zenobia and their children, and already his life in America was beginning to seem more like a dream than a memory.

  He had returned to the colonies many times for the sake of his businesses. He had used different names through the years, pretending to be his own descendants. He had walked through the graveyard in Whitfield’s Meadow, where the African shaman’s spell had separated him forever from his mortal family, and had visited the graves of his wife and children, who had all grown old before meeting their ends. He had seen their children, and their children’s children, as strangers who passed him on the street without a glance of recognition. But it no longer pained him to be parted from them.

  And nothing, nothing he had ever experienced in those days had filled him with the perfect joy he now felt as he walked beside Sophie de la Soubise, enveloped by the warmth of her touch, intoxicated by the fragrance that surrounded her. With every step, he could almost hear music.

  “We’ve done so much to make this ghastly building a worthy home for our poor exiled ladies,” Sophie said. Even her breath was enticing. “Did you know that Marie-Therèse LePetit is here? Who would have thought that the countess could be a witch?”

  Henry barely heard her. Just being near Sophie caused his blood to beat in his ears.

  “Perhaps you’d like to see my quarters, Henry,” she offered.

  He accepted without a moment’s hesitation.

  As they sauntered slowly through the crowd, Sophie caught the attention of the current abbess. “Bring in our friend,” she said.

  The abbess nodded. How lovely it must be to be a siren, she thought.

  • • •

  While the participants gathered for the ritual in the bottom level of the abbey, Jean-Loup was looking at a much less pleasant scene. In a room that had not been touched by the incoming aristocrats, a chamber of bare stone and straw beds illuminated only by the candle carried by the abbess, lay the old women of the abbey.

  The abbess had opened the door in silence. Being new, she was not aware that Jean-Loup had visited this room before.

  The first time he had come, he had woodenly repeated Drago’s argument to the woman who had then been in charge: “These ladies are too infirm to leave their beds,” he had explained, “yet they will not die for decades to come.”

  The abbess of the time had nodded her head in agreement. “That is the price we must pay for our long lives,” she had said. “When we grow so old that we yearn for death, death taunts us by moving too slowly.”

  Even though he detested his son’s plan to kill off the old ones, he could see its merits. After so much time, was life really so desirable? He thought of his own long life. Of all the centuries he had lived, he wondered, how many happy moments had he known?

  Only the briefest candle’s flicker, he thought, picturing Veronique’s face.

  “Death would be a blessing for them,” the abbess said.

  “Yes.” He closed his eyes. “A blessing.”

  That had been long ago. Now no one even gave a thought to what happened to the crones in the special room.

  “They shouldn’t be here,” Jean-Loup said, offended by the constant neglect these women obviously suffered. Some of them had been lying in this place for fifty years or more. It was clear that they were never bathed and rarely fed. “This room is little more than a prison,” he pronounced bitterly.

  “But Monsieur de Villeneuve—”

  “It is my money that funds this establishment!” he roared. His echo reverberated off the damp stone walls, but none of the room’s occupants stirred. “See that they are moved to a decent dwelling, with windows and comfortable beds.”

  “Yes, monsieur,” the abbess said, chastened. “It will be done.”

  “Now leave me,” Jean-Loup said quietly.

  Without another word, she departed with her candle, and the darkness of the room settled around him like a soft blanket. In the silence, a faint hiss and a now-familiar sloughing sound, the sound of a snake moving over dry stone, signaled that he was not alone.

  “Do you think it matters to these creatures whether their beds are soft or not?” Drago whispered as he emerged from the darkness. He chuckled softly. “Ah, well, you’ve eased your own conscience. That was the point of your little tirade, wasn’t it?”

  “It will get you away from me,” Jean-Loup said. “At least I will not have to watch you feeding.”

  Drago’s smile vanished. “Then enjoy the sight while you can,” he said as he closed the door that separated this room from the rest of the abbey.

  • • •

  For a moment, Drago stood immobile in the dark room with only the feeble breathing of the invalids to break the profound silence. He had instantly forgotten about Jean-Loup, who pressed his back against the stone wall, trying to think of something, anything, other than the horror that was about to take place in front of him.

  Without making a sound, Drago moved toward one of the aged nuns and knelt beside her, quietly mouthing the words of the lullaby that his mother used to sing to him:

  My love, my love

  Walk through the door

  The voice that was calling

  Is calling once more

  “It works both ways,” he told Jean-Loup, who turned away. “Entering or leaving life . . . it’s all the same. Frightening but beautiful.” He sighed reverently. “And always, without exception, exciting.”

  His lips came close to the old woman’s, and he pressed against her chest with his hand. A rib cracked—so fragile—then, with a slight moan, she succumbed to him as he breathed in the last of her life force.

  The woman never awakened. She only relaxed into her pillow with a look of what might have been interpreted as sublime peace on her face. Then, in another moment, the unnecessary flesh collapsed in on itself.

  Drago took a deep breath. “So easy,” he whispered. The woman had been very, very old. Jean-Loup could almost hear the aroused thrum-thrum of Drago’s heartbeat while he imagined something dark and smooth moving behind the young man’s eyelids.

  The second woman also died uneventfully, but the third struggled to open her eyes in surprise. “Who are you?” she rasped, clutching at Drago’s clothes.

  He took her hand into his own. “I am the Angel of Death,” he said softly. He bent over the woman and she cried out, a small mewling sound that was soon drowned out by Drago’s own rapid breathing. From the corners of the room, a dark vapor began to coalesce, winding itself slowly around him and the crone he had been given to feed on.

  He sang the song to her, Veronique’s song, while he held her in place, careful to avoid her panicked gaze.

  Be well, my angel

  Be strong, be whole

  She pummeled his chest and tried to scratch his eyes, but with each struggle Drago appeared to grow stronger, surer, as the dark vapor in the room coiled around him, reinforcing his rightness, his purpose.

  Your suffering has ended

  Awaken your soul!

  “Ah, yes,” he whispered as the woman’s eyes glazed over in terror and her last breath found its way into her killer’s mouth. “This is a sacred rite,” Drago said, savoring the deliciousness of her life as it passed into him. “The blessing that I give to you. The harvest that you give to me.”

  Feeling sick, Jean-Loup closed his eyes. He never wanted to open them again.

  CHAPTER

  •

  FORTY

  “Yuck,” I whispered, wanting to spit the bad taste out of my mouth. Drago was too creepy for words. When he . . . I swallowed hard. Was Drago still around? I wondered as a frisson of fear crawled up my spine. Was Henry? Had Henry been Drago’s last meal?

  Whoa, I told myself. I was reading a history of the coven, not a description of its current affairs.

  Still, it had made me nervous, especially the part about moving the aged members of
the abbey into a separate home where they could be killed in private. Had that been the original function of the Poplars? Was that why none of the objects in that place told me anything about its past? Or why no one who had gone there was ever seen again?

  Too many questions, I thought as I got out of bed and pulled on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. I needed to talk seriously with Marie-Therèse. She’d changed her mind about the Poplars and was all for going there these days, but I still had a bad feeling about the place.

  “Marie-Therèse?” I called softly outside her bedroom door.

  Downstairs, the volume of conversation increased along with the consumption of alcohol. “Joelle? Who’s Joelle?” Jacques slurred.

  Sophie’s high, tinkling laugh came in response. “But sir, was she wearing earrings?” she asked in a thick American accent that was supposed to sound like me.

  “I wouldn’t care if she was wearing Saran Wrap, the cow,” Jacques said.

  I knocked. “It’s me, Katy.” The door gave way, as if it hadn’t been closed tightly.

  “Marie, are you here?” I whispered as I inched my way into the darkness inside. There was no answer. I almost turned around and left. I didn’t want to scare her if she was asleep or something. “Marie—”

  Then I felt it, the absence of human life, and I knew. I switched on the light.

  The room was empty. Everything was gone—the bed, the antique dressing table, even the pictures on her wall.

  “No,” I whispered, hearing my voice quaver.

  “Some guys in a truck came by about an hour ago.”

  I whirled around. Peter was standing in the doorway behind me.

  “Where is she?” I shrilled.

  “I don’t know. They wouldn’t talk to me.”

  “The movers? But I thought you were the one who was supposed to move her out. Did you refuse to do it?”

  “No. I thought you were being paranoid when you asked me to refuse. But I guess Jeremiah just took me out of the equation.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Hmm. Let me see.” Peter struck a pose like he was thinking hard. “Could it be that when you assaulted him on the stairs demanding that he cancel the old lady’s birthday, he had second thoughts about my loyalty?”