Cordelia's footsteps crunched over the gravel parking lot as she approached the doors to the small community church; it had a modern sign with removable letters like a fastfood chain. Today, it read, "Children of Christ Daycare. Open M-F 8-5. Inquire within." She found the glass door unlocked and entered. Compared to some of the grandiose churches in New Orleans, the premises were hardly prepossessing, but it was much cleaner than the home she had just left. The thin carpet muted the sound of her footsteps. Down the hall, she could hear the cheers of a few children; to her right, the sanctuary was open but empty. It had a vaulted ceiling and fans at the very top.
"Miss?" summoned a voice. She turned to face an elderly woman with deep wrinkles around her blue eyes. Her hair had faded to gray; it had a frizzy texture. "Can I help you?"
Too damn many new people in one day. "Yes," Cordelia answered with a small smile. "I'm looking for Rosemary, if she's here. I was told she was at work here right now."
The woman crossed her arms. "You've found her, honey. I get off in ten minutes. What do you need?"
"I… I was directed here by your grandson, Jeremy. I need to talk to you—"
"About Misty, right? Everybody and their damn mother needs to hear me talk about Misty. Can't be honest to any of them. They wouldn't believe me, anyhow." Rosemary turned away and stroked a hand through her hair. "C'mon with me, then, sweetie. Can't have you melting if somebody dumps holy water on you." Cordelia's brow furrowed, and the woman glanced back at her. "Don't act like you got me fooled. You reek of witch." Cordelia flinched at the woman's sharp tone. "Stay here. I'll walk you to my house and we can talk. It's not safe here." Rosemary rounded the corner, and Cordelia could hear her report to another woman that she would head home early—she had a visitor.
The woman had a heavy leather purse and bright eyes. "Don't say anything too loudly," she warned. "I've seen you on the TV. You're lucky no one has recognized you." She strutted with long-legged strides out of the church. "This isn't the big city. You're not safe here." Once the door had closed securely behind them, she turned to face Cordelia. "I would guess that you already know what they did to my sweet granddaughter. That's why you're here, isn't it?"
Cordelia set her jaw, uncertain how to answer. "I—yes, sort of."
"Sort of?" Rosemary puffed. "I'm sure I could never grasp all of it. Keep up. My house is just across the lawn." In spite of her age, Cordelia nearly had to jog to keep up with the elderly woman. The yard of the church was freshly mowed. They headed down into a ditch and climbed up the other side, coming into the backyard of a small, modest house. "You're quite a bit late. Misty died almost a year ago. The authorities won't press charges against my son. The sheriff was there that night." As she fumbled for her keys in her purse, her lips twisted downward. "They had it in for Misty. She knew it, I knew it. I tell her, I say, 'Misty, you gotta get the hell out of this place before they chop off your damn legs,' but she says, she says, 'Gran, I can't leave. They'll kill my dog if I leave.'" The door popped open. "She was wrong. That goddamn dog is still suffering over there, shitting in the floor." With a wry shake of her head, Rosemary held the door open for Cordelia to enter. "Well, c'mon, honey, if you're going in. We can't stand around in the sun talking for any fool to hear. I, for one, don't plan on dying without Misty around to bring me back."
Cordelia shuffled into the home. "You knew about her powers, then?"
"Knew about them? Honey, I was the first person she ever brought back to life." The old woman cackled. "My mama was a witch—the real brand of them. Making things float around the house, doing all her chores for her." She dropped her things on the kitchen table, where a cat rested, all stretched out. "My mama died before she turned forty. She got the consumption. My little sister—name was Misty, too—she could set things on fire by looking at 'em. They drowned her when she was sixteen." Opening a carton of cigarettes, she offered one to Cordelia, who shook her head. She shrugged and lit it up. "What did you say your name was, hon?"
"Cordelia Foxx, ma'am."
"Nonsense, sweetie, call me Rosemary. So you're the principal of that fancy magic school in New Orleans, yeah?"
"I'm the Supreme witch of the coven there, yes."
The woman blew a ring of gray smoke. "Sounds fancy. Anyhow." She coughed into her hand. "I didn't think I had a shred of magic. I could stare at a pencil for hours and not do nothing but give myself a migraine. You either have it or you don't, and I didn't. When my sister died, I thought it ended with her." She pulled back a chair at the kitchen table in front of the lounging cat. "Sit down, honey. I'll get you something to drink and put on a record. A little background noise. Give the cat a scratch, dear. He won't hurt you."
Cordelia's tongue darted over her dry tongue as she tentatively scratched around the cat's thick neck fur. He purred in response. "When—When did you first know that there was something different about Misty?"
The elder flicked on a record player. Fleetwood Mac began to rock forth in scratchy tones. "Don't get ahead of yourself, sweetie. I've got a lot of story to tell." Rosemary brought a glass of water to the kitchen table and pulled out a chair opposite her. "My family died before my son was born. I told him about the witches much as I knew—he didn't give a damn. Thought it was a folk story just like Santa Clause and the Easter bunny. He was always pretty thick. Then he married that Evangelical whore when she was knocked up." Her cigarette went out, and she lit it again.
"I didn't believe it was his until I held that little girl for the first time. Looked into her sweet blue eyes, and knew she couldn't have been anybody's but mine. She was too perfect. That was when I knew—immediately. You probably think I'm full of shit, because all grandmothers think their first grandkids are the best stuff on earth, but it's the goddamn truth. You could look into her eyes and see how much she loved the world."
Hesitant, Cordelia replied, "I believe that." She tried not to think of the baby that she and Hank had wanted to have—before she knew his real identity, before he revealed how little he actually cared.
A smile tinted Rosemary's face. "She showed the signs early on. It started with the Disney princess type stuff. You could put her out in the yard, and the birds would land around her. Always loved animals. They always loved her." She killed her cigarette and put it down in a dish, blowing a final stream of smoke from between her lips. "When she was five years old, my cat got hit by a car." She nodded to the purring furball under Cordelia's friendly touch. "She was distraught. I went and buried him, and she went behind me and dug him back up. When he came back to life, part of me wanted to kill him again, just to make sure it wasn't some kind of Pet Sematary bullshit going on. But he wasn't acting evil. He was the same as always, and Misty was happy."
"But that was just the first time."
"Just the first time," confirmed the old woman. She cleared her throat. "She brought him back again a few years ago when he had kidney failure. He's older than her. Still fit as a fiddle. Anyway, I don't think you care about all the damn animals that Misty revived. It would take me an hour to tell you all of them. She found something to heal no matter where she went."
Cordelia took a sip from the glass of water and waited for the grandmother to continue. "When she was eight, I was driving her to the hospital to see her newborn brother. I was keeping her while Teresa was laboring. Hell, I kept her more than they did, regardless." Rosemary puffed heavily. "I turned out in front of a semi. It hit us right in the door. Flattened my car. It knocked me out for a bit, and when I woke up, there was blood everywhere. My arm was almost ripped off." She rolled up her sleeve to show a narrow scar, similar to Kyle's. "The car was on fire. Misty had big clots of oil and soot and blood in her hair. I tell her, I say, 'Misty, get out of the car. Go and get help.' And she say, 'It's okay, Gran, I can fix us both right up. Don't worry about nothing, Gran.'" A dry chuckle rose up. "The paramedics told us we were both miracles. There was no way the car could've been the way it was and both of us come out without a scratch."
"That's amazing."
"That was the first time she saved a person. She saved Mary when Teresa decided to have an unassisted home-birth. Breathed the life right back into that baby. Teresa was always an idiot. Didn't take care of none of those babies. I raised Misty and Jeremy, Misty raised Mary. I dread the day she has another one." Rosemary looked up to Cordelia with clear eyes. "I know you're not here to listen to my ramblings. What do you want to do with Misty, really?"
The Supreme pushed the glass of water away from herself. "After Misty was killed, she didn't—stay dead." Her lips twitched. "One of my students found her in the swamp. She was living off of the land, alone. After witch hunters entered the area, she came to live with my coven to be safe."
"I knew it! I knew they couldn't have killed her that easily!" Rosemary hooted. "A few days after they reported her missing, my record player and a bunch of my Stevie records were gone. No note—but I knew it had to be Misty. Oh, dear, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you."
A wan smile touched Cordelia's lips. "Yes. She revived several people for my coven. We had a dark time under the previous Supreme. But…" She shook her head. "I made a mistake. When our previous Supreme died, I—I was blind to my own power. We didn't know who would replace her. It caused a panic in the coven." She pinched the bridge of her nose. "I was a fool. The remaining council member and I had each of the girls attempt to complete a task—seven tasks. To prove their magical ability, to determine who would lead. Misty didn't want to participate. I convinced her that she needed to. It—It was all my fault."
"I take it that this story doesn't have an incredibly happy ending," purred Rosemary with a voice like poisoned honey, and Cordelia's chest cavity swelled with emptiness for a moment at the danger of the moment. How would she feel if someone had killed her daughter, her granddaughter?
Her voice shivered. "The third task required each of the girls to descend into hell—the witch's version of hell—and return before it was too late. The others woke up one by one, but Misty never did." The tears burbled to the surface and shed so that she could no longer focus clearly upon Rosemary's face. "I tried everything I knew. I tried to revive her, I called to her, I held her. I tried every spell I knew. Nothing worked. She-She turned to ash in my arms." She used her knuckles to rub away the tears. "I am so—so sorry." Her voice choked, and she stopped trying to speak. She no longer looked through the tears to the elderly woman, for through the haze, she could only imagine that Misty herself sat across from her.
"Now, now, dear, don't fret. Here." Rosemary thrust a handkerchief at her. "Wipe your nose. I know you didn't come all the way here to blow your snot all over my cat. Compose yourself, darling. Tell me what you need from me."
Feeling like a weepy child in front of Auntie Myrtle, she dabbed at her eyes and struggled to focus on the matter at hand as she stuffed away her emotions. "Misty's death was my fault," she murmured. "I need to try to bring her back. If you have anything of hers—anything that might help me unlock the secret of her magic—I want to try to make it up to her. Misty is so special, and she deserves—she deserves so much better."
"You were in love with her," Rosemary stated in a blunt voice.
"W-What? No—I was her teacher—"
"Oh, don't kid yourself. My granddaughter is gayer than a picnic basket, and you're hardly old enough to qualify as her teacher. You're weeping like a lost lovebird. A monarch butterfly that lost its swarm. You wouldn't be here otherwise." Rosemary pushed back from the table. The cat bounced off of the table and wrapped around her ankles. "Come with me. I'll take you to her room. I got as much of her stuff as I could when I saw Paul taking it to the dump. Rifled through what was salvageable. He tried to destroy most of it. Bastard."
Cordelia scampered after the woman, reluctant to argue her point when Rosemary was granting her so much freedom—and not killing her for what she had done. Rosemary pointed to one of the two bedrooms off of the narrow hallway. "In there is everything. It hasn't been touched since I saved it. I'm not allowed to see the other grandkids anymore. Now it's just me and Thomas." She bent down and scooped up the cat. "Stay as long as you want, take whatever helps. I'll leave you to it."
Her voice came in a low, barely audible whisper. "Th-Thank you." The woman left her, and the door clicked closed behind her. Cordelia walked to the twin-sized bed and sat down on it. The room hadn't aged. Misty had displayed posters of Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Nicks; she had an electric keyboard plugged into the wall. The sheet music hadn't been disturbed. Cordelia ran her fingers over the keys, and the vision responded in turn.
"Gran! Gran, come listen!" Misty was no older than twelve, Rosemary ten years younger as she appeared in the door frame. "I got it!" She banged a couple chords. "Listen, it's like this. 'The bright light is lying down. The earth and the sea and the sky is at rest with the ocean, and the days go by.'" Her grin brightened. "Was that right?"
"By George, I think it was."
"Yes!" The cat, younger and plumper, pounced up onto the keyboard and made a horrendous slamming of keys. "Thomas, no! You'll hurt Stevie!" The giggling girl wrapped her arms around him and kissed him once on the top of the head before she released him back onto the floor.
Cordelia opened her eyes. She touched everything, then, everything that answered, but it gave her memories and snippets—Misty and Rosemary picking flowers, Misty drawing in her sketchbook, Misty and Rosemary sharing the stories of their lineage. Feeling like an intruder, she opened the diary when she found it, but Misty had stopped keeping it around the time that she graduated high school. Cordelia put it in her purse anyway, along with a stuffed animal and a faded blanket, which held memories so strong that she could have viewed them for hours. She opened the closet and found several shawls and scarves; she couldn't fit all of them in her bag. She chose the nicest one and rounded on the bookshelf, but the only worn titles were the Harry Potter books and Misty's Bible, which she took.
She had a goldmine of access to Misty, and yet she felt no closer to saving her than she'd been when she was at the academy this morning. Swallowing hard, she circled once just to soak in the view. This was a place that Misty had lived and loved. She had lain on that bed and drawn that picture and hung that poster—and all of it was a memory of her. "I will fix this," she whispered to the empty air. "I promise, I'll fix this. I'll bring you back, if it's the last thing that I do."
After smoothing down the covers on the bed, she took her leave from the room. Rosemary had returned to the living room and perched on the couch, smoking another cigarette. The cat lounged in her lap like it was his personal bed."I hope you found what you're looking for." The elderly woman smile and stood, batting the cat back onto the floor. "Be careful on the way back to your car. Keep an eye out for yourself. Locals don't like the looks of outsiders."
"Thank you."
"And, Cordelia?" Blue eyes found brown, and only deep laugh lines separated her from her granddaughter. "Bring her back to me. Take good care of her." Her expression softened. "Misty loves everyone, but when she truly gives her heart to someone—that's forever. You can't undo that. Don't hurt her. I trust you."
She swallowed hard once. "I'll have her back here as soon as I can," she promised. Her tongue had swollen like a sponge in her mouth; everything felt dry. "And I'll never let her go again. I swear that on my life. I made this mistake already, and I owe her everything I can give her to make it up."
"That's a doll." Rosemary grinned. "I always knew my girl would find somebody just as special as she was." She patted Cordelia once on the shoulder. "Have a safe trip home. I hope to hear from you soon." Cordelia stepped out into the warm evening air, and Rosemary closed the door behind her.
She waited a moment on the porch and inhaled the sweet scent of freshly mowed grass. Somehow, her burden felt both larger and smaller at the same time, each breath more labored but still nearer to Misty than she had been this morning. With the sun at her back, she headed back to her car, head down and mind reeling with worries of how she could possibly set to reviving her fallen friend.
Friend? Was that all? Would she leave it at friend? There was so much unresolved that she couldn't begin to address. Her tumultuous feelings reminded her of the way she drew to Misty, a moth to a light. She loved Misty—she wouldn't deny that—but how she loved her remained in question. "I can fix those fuck-ups later," she reminded herself aloud as she unlocked her car and climbed into the driver's seat. The CD began to play again from where it had left off.
"Do I love you every night? Well I always did. Nobody knows nothin' 'bout it." She put the car in drive, turned around in the church parking lot, and headed back to New Orleans. She had work to do.
…
The dirt road where Queenie and Zoe followed Fiona stretched on for miles, and they walked until their bones ached, and they walked some more. "Do you even know where you're taking us?" Queenie had demanded more than once in a snarl. There was no sun here; the sky held the same gray hue no matter the hour. The temperature never changed, somehow both hot and cold, equally uncomfortable. The foliage had died on all sides, like a bleak autumn day turning to winter. Several times, they had passed other doors with different letters embroidered upon the wood, but they hadn't yet opened another in spite of the moans that rolled forth from them.
"You girls were foolish to come here," Fiona reminded them in a sharp tone. "You cannot thwart Papa Legba. He created the witch and gave her her powers. You ought to show a bit more respect than to fiddle with his plan."
"Why are you helping us, then, if you're so certain that we're dooming ourselves by even coming here?" Zoe snapped. Fiona's words made a snake of anxiety writhe to life in the pit of her gut. As much as she wanted to despise the former Supreme, she knew that Fiona was a powerful witch who knew more about magic lore than she and Queenie combined. "We can drop you back off with the axeman and find our own way, no cost to you."
"Don't be so impudent, girl. You'll need my help if you're going to get out of this alive." As they rounded another corner, the dirt road gave way to an expanse of houses. Fiona paused mid-step to appraise the sight, inhaling deeply through her nostrils. "Contrary to what you may think, I no longer claim the coven. But Cordelia is a sensitive girl. If she loses more of her wards, she will lose what's left of her damn mind, and I will not have her ruining my legacy."
Queenie rolled her eyes. "Legacy. Right." She crossed her arms and glared up at the houses. "Where the hell are we?" She glanced left and right. "This is—" Rounding on Fiona, her eyes flashed with anger. "This is Delphine's house! Just down the street, isn't it? Isn't it?"
Fiona inclined her eyebrows. "Indeed it is. You may be surprised the sorts of people who have this variety of hell."
Zoe glowered. "We're not idiots. You're looking for someone. You're taking our quest and turning it into your own agenda." She set her heels. "Just like you did when you were alive!" she accused. She turned to Queenie. "She's coming after Marie Laveau! She wants to figure out how to come back to life!"
The blonde woman set her jaw. "I have no interest in returning to the land of the living," she uttered, tone stern. "And this business of locating your friends will become much easier if we have powerful companions. Marie Laveau happens to be one of the options in this scenario, and my inkling tells me that her hell is right up there in the attic of that house. If you will get out of my way, we can stop wasting valuable time."
Zoe's lip curled. "Why should we trust you?" she demanded. "You killed Nan in the first place! And if you wouldn't have been such a goddamn lazy, horrible Supreme, Misty never would've died in that trial! We're here on account of you being a damn bitch—"
Her sentence cut off in the middle as she floated by her throat, invisible pincers grasping her there. She gasped and choked. "Mind your tongue, girl." Fiona held her hand out with a challenging tilt of her head. "Do not challenge matters which you will never understand. Do I make myself clear?" Zoe managed a nod. She dropped back to the earth with a grunt, and Queenie helped tug her back up to her feet. "We're going to awaken Marie Laveau. Once we have her help, she can help us track down your little Hogwarts friends. Whether you trust me or not, I've decided the plan. You can come with me, or you can stagger around on your own, blind and confused while you wait for Papa Legba to find you and punish you."
A trail of bruises darkened around Zoe's throat, and she glowered after Fiona, but she sauntered after the former Supreme as the blonde entered the mansion Madame LaLaurie. As predicted, doors left and right were practically stacked on top of one another, labeled with the same gold initials. They made a single-file line up the stairs, then up to the attic. The door had a double label. "Looks like we found 'em," Queenie observed at the emboldened, "ML/DL." Groaning and moaning uttered from the other side; the owners of the voices would, perhaps, never be truly identified. "Sounds like hell's going down in there," Queenie said, lip curling at the edge.
"That's exactly what's happening in there," Fiona replied tartly. She twisted the golden doorknob and pushed it open. Marie Laveau's dark shadow came into view first, a hot poker in one hand. In the other, she wrenched open the mouth of an unfamiliar white woman in a cage. "Marie!" Fiona snapped.
At the sight of them, a whimper rose from the cage beside the young white woman's. Queenie turned her head. "Delphine!" she exclaimed, eyes widening. "What the hell? Marie! Put down that damn poker!"
The voodoo woman turned slowly with her head tilted. She blinked once, twice, and then said in a monotone, "I cannot stop. Papa Legba says I cannot stop. This is my punishment." It was mechanical, like she had rehearsed the line in her head over and over. "I must live my worst crimes until the end of time. I must experience the pain I inflicted upon others and cause it again—and again—and again." She inserted the rod down the woman's throat. The woman in the cage writhed, grunted, and after almost a minute, she fell silent and still. "Don't worry. She'll come back to life in a moment or two. She always does."
Fiona snatched the poker away from her and slapped her across the face. "Wake up, woman! We have things to get accomplished, and your madness will not be tolerated here!" She tossed the poker haphazardly. It clanged and sizzled on the floor. "Free this woman! We've got shit to do!"
As Marie blinked in consideration, waiting for recognition to come, Queenie went for the keyring dangling on the wall and rushed to free Delphine from her cage. "You—You killed me," accused the portly woman from within the metal cage. She clasped the bars with wide green eyes fixed upon the black witch. "You killed me," she repeated.
"Well, I changed my mind again. C'mon outta there, girl. We need your help."
Marie turned to the two living girls. "You two just couldn't keep your noses out of the business of the dead, could you? You had to return and free the demons from their crypts. Witches never know how to mind their own and keep their own."
Lip curling, Zoe snapped, "We're not here to bring you back to life!" She crossed her arms irritably. "We're here to revive Misty and Nan. Anybody else who tags along better have a damn good cause to come back to life. We're just fixing the mess that you all made when you were too busy chasing immortality to notice that the coven was crumbling!"
Fiona hissed with a clenched fist. "Remember what I told you, girl, about minding your goddamn tone. We are still your superiors, and you will treat us as such."
With a snap of Zoe's fingers, Fiona's hair lit on fire. "Get off your goddamn high horse. We're wasting time arguing." The blonde locks sizzled back down to nothing but a smolder, apparently undamaged—benefits of the afterlife. To Marie, Zoe said, "Can you help us find our friends or not?"
The voodoo woman inclined her head. "I can. But I know someone who can do it better." With an open hand, she gestured to the Minotaur across the room. "Bastien will lead you to anyone."
Delphine scoffed, "And then he'll gore them to death!" She shuffled close behind Queenie, as if planning to use her as a human shield. "I don't want to find out what happens if we get killed when we're already dead, you stupid Negress."
"Hey!" Queenie threatened. "Don't make me throw you back in that goddamn cage, 'cause I'll do it!" Delphine sucked her teeth in silence and stared down at the floor. "That's better."
Marie crossed her arms. "You can take Bastien's help or leave it. I can make no promises. He tends to get antsy around white women."
Wincing a bit, Zoe touched Queenie's arm. "We better not. We're trying to revive them, not send them to some deeper pit of hell. But—really, we need to go. Every minute we spend here is a minute that Cordelia could find us. Once she knows what we've done, she's going to freak the hell out."
"Seconded," Fiona provided. The blonde turned clipped back down the attic ladder with Marie Laveau in hot pursuit. They trailed down one by one until they were on the street once again. "We should break into two groups," Fiona clipped.
"Who put you in charge?" Marie demanded.
Both Zoe and Queenie rolled their eyes skyward as Fiona retorted, "Do you have a better idea, then?"
A moment's consideration before Marie said, "Two groups it is."
Fiona inclined one brow. "I thought so." She crossed her arms and analyzed the group for a moment, as if waiting for the perfect match to occur to her. "Clearly, our talent pool is shallower than a dry riverbed. I'll take Zoe to look for our Cajun princess, and you three go to find that clairvoyant girl."
"What do we do once we've found them?" Queenie asked, thrusting out a hip.
Her brown eyes settled upon the opposing group. "You take your spirit back to the portal and cross over. Hope the other person will do the same once they have the opportunity. This is not the moment for heroism."
Ambivalence curled in Zoe's gut. She swallowed once. "I agree," she said finally, lifting her head to meet Queenie's eyes. "If one of us can't find the other, we take Nan or Misty and get Cordelia's help to come back. It will be safer that way."
A frightened smile, an attempted reassurance, twitched onto Queenie's lips. "See you on the other side, then."
"See you."
As Zoe turned to follow Fiona, she brushed the single tear off of her cheek and hurried to keep up with the former Supreme.
...
A/N: Thanks for reading!