His gaze drags over every inch of her. When his lips part, he releases a soft, desirous laugh. “Fucking hell, Claudia Jolicoeur.” His fingers curl into the soft fabric. He brings her dress to his nose and closes his eyes, inhaling deep. His moan is almost too low for her to hear, and it makes her heart pound. Need builds between her legs. Cassius looks at her with nothing but pure hunger.
“You better fucking win.”
THE CROW AND THE CLOCK
My stars say death, but my daughter’s say much worse.
From the diary of Elise Roe Jolicoeur
Tonight, Lamour is not drunk in the slightest, and when he’s not drunk, he laughs. He laughs a lot. As they sit in comfy parlor chairs across from each other in the observatory, he spends the first half an hour telling stories from his school days. There was the time that Sidra and Fox stole an entire tray of lemon bars from the Chow (the Treaty, which is a much cuter name) and accidentally left them under Fox’s bed, where the yellow gave way to green and the green gave way to gray and the whole room started smelling positively fermented. Then he tells Claudia about the time that all five of them may or may not have accidentally slaughtered a deer theycalled Banquo after a particularly potent operatic version ofMacbeth.
Then he talks about Astrologia. How Banneker taught it to him, how much he wishes he could teach it to an entire class without worrying that this knowledge would get them all killed.
“Do not misunderstand me, I love rhetoric. It was my major, and my original passion. But if Sidarphion were still here, and if the discipline were not denounced…” He looks around the observatory and sighs. “It would be a dream to see Astrologia come alive again.”
This is how Claudia feels about her mother. All she wants is one more flash of life with her where she can ask every question about the stars, and tell her once more that she loves her.
“Professor, do you think you could tell me…? Well, I have this question I’ve been wanting to ask… I mean, every day for the lastdecade, I’ve wondered… See, I’m well and truly haunted by this thing and—and I just… I didn’t know if I could ask… because it’s like…” She gestures widely to the room. “This whole thing is so… and you’re so…” Good gods, why is she stumbling so much?
“Oh, Claudia,” he says as he slumps across from her. “Have I made you afraid to ask questions?”
“No, no, you haven’t made meafraid…” she says, raising her brows and scrunching her nose. “But you haven’t really been… approachable. Or sober. Or—”
“I hear you,” he says, propping his elbow on his knee and holding his face in his hand. “You’re right. I’ve been unfair to you.”
Shaking her head, she says, “No, I started it. I forced you into teaching me. I’m sorry.” She looks down, anxiously picking at her nails. “I was never really going to tell anyone about your power, you know. I’m mouthy, but I’m not cruel.”
“I know,” he says, followed by a laugh. “I always knew you were good, Claudia. I only wanted to keep you safe. You made me see that the best way to protect you is to teach you. However odd the journey, I’m glad we’re taking it together.” He finishes thecoffee in his mug and places it down on his desk. “Ask me anything you’d like.”
She nods and takes a deep breath. “Some of this you’ll know from my thesis, but my mother is dead.” Before moving forward, she observes him closely. Lamour blinks twice as the sentence hangs in the air. He bows his head in sympathy, his wet eyes remaining locked on hers. “Ten years ago, I found her outside staring up at the stars, and she told me that the stars warned of her death.”
He clasps his hands in his lap. “I see. Given how quickly you’re advancing, it doesn’t surprise me that the magic is thick in your bloodline. She must’ve heard the stars that night, just as you heard them when the grimoire first spoke to you.”
“But she didn’t simply know she was dying. She knew when it would happen. Two months, she said, and she was correct down to the very day. How is that possible?”
He nods, reaching across the desk and flipping through the grimoire until he finds the page he’s looking for and slides it back to Claudia.
“The crow and the clock. Corvus, Horologium,” he says. “The crow for divining messages, the clock for knowing when they will come to pass. This spell illuminates time itself. It allows you to see the future with acute clarity.”
Claudia stares at the book for a long time, tracing the constellations with her finger and mouthing the spell.
Her eyes well. She clenches her jaw to keep any sound from escaping, though she wants to scream. The combination of relief and sadness is overwhelming. Finally, she has an answer to something that has haunted her for a decade.
But now, she has so many more questions for her mother that she’ll only get to ask if she beats Cassius MacLeod.
“What are you thinking?” Lamour asks.
She pauses for a moment, spinning her thumbs around each other in her lap. “Could I have stopped it? Can the stars be changed?”
He lets out a heavy sigh. “No. Not death.”
Claudia quickly closes her eyes and nods. “I see.”
It almost makes her feel better. At least now she knows there was nothing she could’ve done.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I’m just grateful to know.”
