With the luggage stuffed to capacity and our flight booked, we had nothing to do with the rest of our night but lounge around the suite and indulge in the meal Mary Alice had provided for us.
Or so I thought until a hard knock thwarted my stomach and hormones yet again.
Clem didn’t wait on us to acknowledge him, just opened the door wearing a grim expression. “You’ve got company.”
“Another delivery?” Visions of dollar signs twirled through my head. “Just how much did Neely order?”
“Trust me.” Clem flexed his hand where it rested on the door. “He didn’t order this.”
The tight set of his jaw warned me I wouldn’t like whoever or whatever waited for me in the hall.
“Show them in.” I shrugged. “Might as well. They’re already here.”
“Suit yourself.” Clem nudged the door wider. “I’ll be right outside if you need me.”
The thin hope Clem was wrong, that Neely was behind this late arrival, died a sudden death.
Hat literally in hand, an ornate walking stick tucked beneath an arm, Johan Marchand, my grandmother’s current husband, invited himself in without so much as a hello. Legs dragging, he shuffled toward the couch with the gait of the thoroughly defeated.
Given how our last encounter ended, with him threatening to declare war on the Woolworth and Lawson families, I had to wonder at the symbolism. And how he knew where to find us in the first place. Heck, how he got here from Raleigh so fast. There was no way, unless he had already been in the city, waiting, and that led to a whole host of other questions.
Linus must be asking himself the same things. Black had crept into his eyes, a warning sign Johan better have the right answers.
But all I could think was thank the goddess Clem had passed inspection. Having a Marchand so close was dangerous on multiple levels, for all of us.
“Grier.” Johan dipped his chin at Linus. “Scion Lawson.”
“Johan.” I applied the mask of Dame Woolworth with as much care as my earlier makeup tutorial, and it made me itch. “This is an unexpected surprise. Are you in Atlanta on business?”
“Yes.” He focused on me then slid his gaze past my shoulder to Linus, who held his scythe loose at his side as he circled the room toward the door. “Of the family variety.”
“How did you find us?” I spared him from interrogation at the edge of a blade by asking outright. “Who told you we were in the city?”
“I was given the address.” He presented an envelope suffering a calligraphic overdose as proof. “I assumed you had given Severine a copy of your itinerary, that her secretary had addressed this and left it for me on her orders.”
“Her secretary handed it to you?”
“Well, no.” His watery eyes lifted to mine. “But I found it on my desk and recognized it at once.”
Based on his puffy eyes and mottled cheeks, tonight must be the night for hand-delivering unpleasant news. There was nothing to do but brace for impact and hope we walked away from this encounter without being slapped with a declaration of intent to feud.
Over his head, I met Linus’s gaze, and his expression mirrored the turmoil of my thoughts.
The Marchands had located us, located me, but how? And who had done the tracking? Eloise? Her mother? Even Johan was suspect.
Fingers itching for the letter, I demanded. “This is from Severine?”
“Yes, she…” He swallowed hard. “My wife…passed in her sleep yesterday.”
Shocked, I didn’t call him out on the obvious lie about his source, just watched him sink onto the couch without waiting to be offered a seat. The bit about Severine dying was easy enough to confirm, but he hadn’t packed up and fled Raleigh the second her time of death was announced. Either she had been dead longer than he claimed, or he came by his information through means he was unwilling to disclose.
“There’s nothing for you in Raleigh.” He set his hat on the cushion beside him. “The girls’ mother inherits the title of Dame Marchand, and Rhiannon is still in mourning. She refuses to leave her rooms, hasn’t left them since Heloise passed. She sees no one and, in the wake of this latest tragedy, has closed the estate to visitors.”
Plan B went up in smoke, and I plopped down beside him, at a loss for words.
“I won’t pretend Severine didn’t have ulterior motives for allowing your visit.” He twisted the cane in his hands. “I also won’t pretend she made me aware of her intentions. I was her companion, not her confidant. She had the girls for that.”
While I doubted his claims of ignorance very much, I wasn’t going to rake a grieving man over the coals. “I’m grateful you caught us before she stood us up at the front gate.”
“Don’t be too grateful.” Fingers leaving dents in the paper, he extended the crisp envelope, its calligraphic address made ominous by the fact no one should have known where to find us. “Severine put this aside for you in case she passed before you reached out to the family. I never expected…” A tear rolled down his cheek. “Her will was so strong. She should have outlived us all.”
There was nothing for me to say. I hadn’t known her, and what I had known about her didn’t make me sad to hear of her passing. I felt…nothing, and that was something all its own.
“I should go.” He used the cane to stand. “I made arrangements to stay with an old friend while I’m in town. He’ll be expecting me.”
The way he walked, like life had lost all meaning for him, filled me with a hollow dread, like the message from my grandmother gained weight with each of his steps.
Clem saw Johan out, and that left me alone with Linus…and a sealed envelope that carried the faint scent of a perfume I couldn’t name.
Linus made no move to join me. He just watched, hands in his pockets. “Will you read it?”
The fabriclike texture under my thumb convinced me of its provenance. “It can’t be anything good.”
“I’m inclined to agree.”
“I could burn it.” I twirled her final words for me between my fingers. “Then I would never have to know what she cared enough to burden me with that she made its revelation a condition after her passing.”
Expression solemn, he nodded. “Do you want privacy to read it?”
I almost dropped the note in my surprise. “Are you that certain I will?”
“To leave it unread is to allow the dead to hold sway over the living.”
Thinking of Maud, of Cletus, I had to contradict him. “They do anyway.”
A shrug left me in doubt if I had won the point or if he had simply let it go. “I’ll cancel our tickets.”
“That’s it?” I cocked my head at him. “You’re really going to let Johan walk away without a fuss?”
Lifting his hand, he revealed his phone and a string of texts that grew as I watched the screen.
“I touched base with my team,” he admitted. “They’re verifying Johan’s information—both Severine’s time of death and the chain of custody on the letter you received. Perhaps if we can track down its origin, we’ll discover who and how they located us so quickly.” His lips thinned. “They’ll stick to him while we’re in the city, make sure this is the only surprise he has in store for you.”
The man was a pawn, a willing one perhaps, but a pawn all the same, and his queen was dead.
“I’ll place a few more calls,” he said, interrupting my thoughts, “see what I can learn.”
Aware he was giving me the privacy he thought I would need and a chance to decide if I was as ruled by curiosity as he, I hooked my pointer beneath the wax seal and ripped it open before I changed my mind.
You have proven yourself to be Evangeline’s daughter in all ways.
There was no endearment, but I would have been a fool to expect one.
And like your mother, I expected great things from you, but you have disappointed at every turn.
A stone sank to the bottom of my stomach, but I had come this far. I might as well press on.
You are a convicted criminal who murdered the woman responsible for your upbringing. You fraternize with Low Society rabble. You live as a human, with a human job and human friends. You disgust me. You are the worst possible outcome of the gamble your mother took on your father, and I have no one to blame but myself for not dragging Evangeline home where she belonged and locking her in her room until your birth. At least then I could have salvaged you. But no. She robbed me of my chosen heir and produced, just to spite me, a goddess-touched necromancer. With you under my tutelage, I might have gone on to claim the Society’s highest honor—the position of Grande Dame. Instead, you threw those aspirations in my face when you got involved with Clarice Lawson’s son and heir.
At that point, I had to laugh. It was that or cry, and I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction, even in death.
As if that wasn’t enough, you twisted the blade in my back. You wounded me, Grier, when you allowed Heloise to be murdered on your grounds. She was your kin, and you watched her die. Her blood is on your hands, the same hands that would have one day reached out to me for guidance now that you have embraced your powers in a gauche public display no doubt engineered to curry favor with that wretched upstart Clarice Lawson.
Anyone in a position to call Clarice Lawson an upstart was on the far side of a necromantic lifespan. The far, far side.
To ensure you never claim your birthright, that you are forced to blunder through your awakening to the detriment of all those around you, I have entrusted every scrap of knowledge, every artifact, every tome in the vast Marchand collection, to a third party who will not be swayed by your fortune, title, or wiles.
The paper fluttered from my limp fingers, and I had to catch it again to finish reading.
As no light will ever pierce the black veil you’ve shrouded this family in, neither will enlightenment lift the blanket of ignorance swaddling you in darkness.