Page 5 of The Child of Rue Royale
Mother and I remain holed up in Chantal’s tiny house, where Chantal and I share her bed and Mother has the couch.
“A family outing,” Jade pipes in from the kitchen, her combat boots clunking around like she’s ready to go to war at any moment.
“Absolutely not!” I yell and look at Jade like she’s lost her mind. “You’re all loose cannons and can hardly be trusted when it comes to vampires. I am perfectly capable of protecting myself.”
“Chantal, do you think I’m a loose canon? I feel like I’ve gotten better with age.” Mother’s eyebrows rise, expecting a positive answer from Chantal.
But Chantal and I look at each other and simultaneously laugh at how ridiculous that thought is. My cat, Mercury, stretches his black arms on my lap, our laughs waking him from his slumber.
“Um, okay, Delta,” Chantal sings. “You just tripped a teenager at the grocery store.”
“No, she didn’t!” Jade snickers, disbelieving, but this is my mother we’re talking about. Of course, she did.
Mother’s eyes squint, and she drops her phone on her lap. “That little shit had it coming. But I have been a very good girl delivering potions to those bastards.”
The agreement between my coven and the vampires has carried on without me. Mother delivers the potions to them in exchange for the money she delivers to Violetta, our elder. Mother took over seamlessly—they still hate her, and she still hates them, and they don’t speak about Bastian or the pregnancy, and the relationship continues to be mutually beneficial.
“Listen. All four of us are not going,” I say, my shoulders suddenly feeling unbearably heavy.
“Well then two of us are, and that’s me and you, babe. I’ve got a grandbaby to protect now, so get with the program.”
I’m too tired from a long day at the shop to protest. I look at the clock; the meeting is only a couple of hours away, and my heart races. What could Cassius want to make right? What will we be walking into?
The women exchange looks around me. It’s hard to forget these three went with me to kill Franklin Maltese and we all almost ended up dead because of it. Jade’s mind reading saved us on so many levels that night, and I consider bringing her to read Cassius’s mind. But Cassius doesn’t really know her and probably won’t talk with a witch he doesn’t trust in the room.
“Fine,” I say, defeated. “You can go, Mom. I’m going to rest for a minute.” I sigh and walk toward Chantal’s bedroom, but Mother grabs my hand.
“Rosemary and Violetta are asking about the blessing ceremony.” She frowns when I roll my eyes because that’s the last thing I want to talk about right now.
The ceremony that welcomes a new baby witch into the coven. Under normal circumstances, it’s a perfectly lovely gathering. But we don’t know if my daughter will have vampire tendencies, if she will even be able to be in the sun.
Besides, the idea of seeing Violetta, the elder of our coven and thorn in my side, and her horrid sister, Rosemary, makes me want to throw up.
“Can we talk about it later please?”
She reads my tortured face and drops my hand, and I escape into Chantal’s room, grabbing Winnie and sitting cross-legged on the bed.
“Open,” I whisper, and her velvet cover flies open, the pages rifling to where I left off…the spell to bring my dead lover back. Pulling the drawstring bag from my bra, I sigh—its contents feel so light in my hand, yet it’s everything I’m clinging to. Bastian’s ashes. What’s left of him lies next to my heart all day, every day.
I look at the door, my hackles raised from doing something prohibited in my coven. Raising the dead. The forbidden spell that could mean my death. But also Bastian’s life.
I hold two of the three things needed to bring him back. One, his ashes, two, my magic, and the third, I’m carrying inside of me. His child, his blood. I must wait for the baby to be born to conduct the spell, and now I’m so, so close.
I think about Cassius and what I’ve been meaning to ask him but have been hesitant since we haven’t been on the best of terms. I want to know if Bastian kept any kind of journal or diary that would prove helpful in my spell work of bringing him back. Just reading something he wrote, a poem or a note, anything to help connect with his soul. It’s a daunting task ahead of me, and I need all the tools I can collect.
Because when I bring him back, the witches will come for me, and I have only one loophole up my sleeve. Bringing a human back is forbidden, but there’s no law about bringing a vampire back. It’s what I cling to, this small caveat I hope will hold up in a court of witches. Because vampires aren’t supposed to die, and just my luck, the one I was completely and utterly in love with did.
“THIS GUY IS THE BIGGESTstick in the mud, I swear.” Mother sighs, swiping her lips with her usual deep scarlet lipstick once we’ve pulled up to Cassius’s house.
“If you could not offend him, that would be fantastic,” I say, shutting the car door and looking at Cassius’s Creole cottage. The sky is dark and full of stars, the air embracing me, like this is something I should be doing. I think back to waving at the camera at Bastian’s, and I wonder if he saw. If that’s why I’m here.
Once Cassius opens the door, a flash of annoyance crosses his face at the sight of my mom, but he quickly shoves it down. Deep brown eyes grow cloaked with intrigue as we enter, surveying me, taking every inch in. I find my arms wrapped around my belly, a trait I loathed in other expectant mothers, yet a habit I find myself acting out time and time again. A sort of protection, I suppose. I stiffen my spine and let my hands fall to my side. Cassius won’t hurt me. Yet Mother keeps me paranoid, and I urge myself to stop allowing those feelings to win.
Cassius’s house is everything I expect a vampire’s lair to be. Dark, gothic, the glow of candles shaping shadows along the deep burgundy walls. Antique couches in deep greens and black with accents of gold spiraling up the armrests. We follow to his office where he points to two high-back velvet chairs of royal blue, fit for a king’s castle, but seating two witches instead.
“Please, sit.” He unbuttons his jacket as he takes a seat behind his desk. He remains unchanged, as vampires tend to do. Long, luscious locks spill over his shoulders, striking brown eyes, his movementsgraceful yet masculine. His hands form a temple in front of his face, rings adorning every finger but one lone pinky.
Mother loudly pulls her gargantuan seat closer to mine, her hand resting on my armrest, her body ready to fight at any given moment. I roll my eyes and find Cassius looking at her, an amused smirk on his face.
