“Hope not.”
He glances over his shoulder at me, black eyes curving with amusement. He thinks I’m joking but I’m being deathly serious. I really hope he’ll leave, and I don’t mean the restaurant.
I mean Brume.
Even though he may have had roots in this town, he doesn’t belong here. He belongs to a big city where disregard for people and its customs is tolerated, even encouraged.
* * *
After lunch,Alma heads back to the dorms and I head home via the cemetery. Every first of the month, I go to our family crypt to talk to Maman. I don’t believe in spirits or ghosts or magic of any sort, so I’m aware that when I go “talk to her” I’m actually talking to myself, but I find solace in this little tradition. It allows me to vent about school and boys and growing up, and put some order inside my heart and mind.
A fresh layer of snow cocoons the frozen ground like a duvet cover drawn snugly over the graves. I pass the Mercier family mausoleum and decide to stop by. The hinges are oiled, so the door whispers open. Geoffrey Keene might be a creeper, but he keeps the Mercier mausoleum in pristine condition.
I pad over to Camille’s raised coffin. The etchings are still so recent they cause a shiver to slink down my spine. Although Papa was both a mother and father to me, Camille was the one I ran to when I had my first period. The one who bought me my first bra and took me to the gynecologist.
“I hope it’s warmer where you are.” I split open a packet of sugar and pour it atop her carved name and dates of life. It’s an old Brumian tradition—instead of flowers, we celebrate the dead with sugar to sweeten the afterlife. “Your son’s getting famous. I don’t know if he told you.” I suspect that, unlike me, he doesn’t hang out in cemeteries. “He was invited to speak about his thesis at Cambridge. What an honor, huh? You’d be very proud of him. Oh, and he’s dating some girl you probably wouldn’t approve of . . .” I let my voice trail off before I add something vicious.
Outside, the wind presses against the small, marble-slabbed building, howls.
“Some new guy arrived last night. He’s awful.” I push some flyaways off my icy cheeks. “He claims he’s Eugenia and Oscar Roland’s son. Which is crazy because he was supposed to have died in the fire, too.”
Something awful strikes me . . . something I remember from the one and only time I stopped by the Roland mausoleum: beneath Oscar and Eugenia’s names is Slate’s. Well, Rémy’s. If they really are one and the same, then I hope he hasn’t walked through the cemetery and spotted the inscription.
I push the macabre contemplation away and refocus on Camille. “I was readingIstor Breouagain this morning, and it made me wish magic were real. Is it, Camille? Are there any truths in that book?”
Because if there is . . .oh, the spells I’d cast. I’d bring Adrien’s mother and mine back, give a pixie-haired girlfriend some warts, and make an infuriating thief vanish.
And this is why Humans were stripped of magic: we aren’t worthy.
“I miss you, Camille.” I run my fingertips over the quatrefoil andLoving MotherandHonorable Citizen of Brumeengravings, tucking in the sugar crystals. “Why didn’t you tell us you were sad? Why did you resort to arsenic? Arsenic!”
Anger and grief cloud my vision. I scrape at my eyes and then, ruing the poison peddler, stalk back outside. A sprinkling of sun darts through the cloud cover and gilds the snow and old headstones, yet brings me no pleasure.
I pass by Viviene without so much as a glance in her direction, then round our mausoleum. The narrow door is agape. Is Papa here? Who else has the key to our crypt? The undertaker? Unlike the Merciers, ours is always kept locked. Papa says grief should be private.
“Hello?” I call out.
Except for the wind jostling the bare branches of the linden trees, there is no sound.
Could the earthquake have cracked the lock and blown open the door? I inch closer and squint into the darkness, then press my fingertips into the cold iron door. The hinges screech.
My heart freefalls into my boots, then vaults into my throat as the room comes into focus, and I see Maman . . . or what’s left of her. Stumbling backward, I fling my hand up to my mouth and bite down on my knuckles.
I try to rip the image of ochre silk and gray flesh from my eyes, but it’s seared into my retinas. Bile rises so fast that I just have time to clutch my shaky knees and lean over before vomit blazes up my throat.
Who’d do this? Who’d desecrate someone’s grave? And why?
A long while later, I pick up a handful of clean snow and scrub my mouth, then kick some over the mess I’ve made. And then I stare back toward the open doorway, wishing I were brave enough to tuck Maman back in her stone bed, but I’m not brave and probably not strong enough to lift the lid.
As I shut the door, my fingers shaking as hard as my heart, I catch a glint of something on the dusty floor. Is that—is that a bottle of wine? Did someone use our crypt to hang out and get drunk?
Anger blasts back inside of me, and I wheel around. And then I’m running home because I need to tell Papa.
He’ll fix this.
My father can fix anything.
9
