He's bad, and he's back oh yes.


Persephone

VII


Lottie having a helter-skelter of a time with her feelings, in that there were a number of hotwires that took her from happy tears to out-and-out sobbing as fast as it took to blink. At first it was screams and joy and hugging Tia because she so happy for her she could gush, and then she remembered she was leaving and it poured out of her like blood. What's wrong, what's wrong? Tiana entreated as she noticed the broken pipes streaming down Lottie's face. They went out to the back, where she broke down completely and told her the news.

"I'm so happy for you, Tia," she wept into a stained napkin. "I really am."

"Then why're you sobbing so much?" she asked, and there it was.

"I have to go back," she said as steady as paving stones. "Soon." Less than a week, in fact. Tiana wasn't slow, and she caught up on it fast as fuse.

"You don't have to do anything you don't want to," she replied. "We'll take you back to Mama Odie, Naveen and I can... something will work, I'm sure of it."

"It's okay, Tia," she said sadly. "I... don't think I mind."

"Don't mind?" she echoed in fear. "You can't mean that."

"I've had a long time to think about it," she confessed, wiping her face. The wound was suturing now, the panic and fear healing in the face of someone else's worse fears. "It won't be so bad."

"But it's him!" Tia shot.

"I know," she answered. "He won't give me so mmuch trouble."

"He dragged you into hell and made you..." She couldn't say the words. "Trapped you," she settled on.

"He can't hurt me," she stated without actually knowing if it was true or not. Maybe she meant that he wouldn't hurt her, rather than couldn't.

"That isn't enough," Tia fought. "Don't let him ruin your life, Lottie."

"It isn't like that," she replied, feeling like an ocean. She could sense life washing around her, and it was no longer so scary. "I have to go back, Tia. It isn't anyone's choice."

"Then make it your choice," she argued.

"I am," she responded sagely. "I'm choosing to be okay with it."

"Why?"

"Because you are the first person in half a year to believe me about something I can't prove is true," she responded. "I see things, Tia."

"What do you mean?" Even clever hardworking Tiana was so of this world that bedrock ran through her. No spiritual ribbons in her hair.

"These feelings I talk about, they're all real," Lottie explained hesitantly. "I know when someone's going to pass. I see their spirits if they don't cross over."

"Like, ghosts?" Tiana surmised. "You see ghosts?"

"Basically," she confirmed. "That's why I'll return. The spirit world calls for me." She felt it stronger every day, like standing on a shore that was being washed out from under her feet.

"But he is the one who-" she began

"I know it's because of him," she interjected. "Shadow magic, or something like that," she explained helplessly. "I'm not scared, not really... it's like part of me belongs there too."

"But Facilier, he'll-" Any manner of wicked things, but Lottie didn't see it in her future. She felt safe, having bled the tears from the wound. To confess was to exorcise.

"He'll do nothing," she insisted. "He might be King of the underworld, Tia, but I'm Charlotte La Bouff!" She pronounced it like a rank and Tiana laughed like she might cry. They talked a lot longer, and Lottie told her how beautiful her baby was going to be, but when they said goodbye, it would be the last time in a long while.

She never told Naveen, knowing Tiana would fill him in and not having the heart for the same sad news twice; but when he hugged her he held her so tight, she thought that he surely must have guessed it. Maybe he knew better than his wife, who still thought of Lottie as her best and simpliest and sunniest friend in the world. Naveen had started to see the girl with power she didn't know what to do with.

Big Daddy was the next problem, but luckily she knew how to handle him. She started out talking about how he'd raised her to keep her word, to never back out on a done deal, then finished holding back tears, promising him she'd be back but that she really did have to go on a trip, a 'vacation' that she couldn't tell him about. She loved him but she had to hold up her end, she said. She'd be back before spring.

She didn't think he understood, but he hadn't really understood her since Douglas left, and seemed sad more than anything else. It was with a heavy heart that she packed a bag of things and dragged it across uneven cobblestones into the same backalley her life offrailed in. At least this time she felt as if she might be able to bear the weight. She walked to the centre of the square and stood there, nothing happening. Her shadow crept out from underneath her and seemed to look up in question.

"Well?" she challenged. "What are you waiting for? Get him!" As if sent on the words, it sunk into the cracks of the paving, and in a moment or two light flowed back out. Lottie cross her arms, took a deep breath and shut her eyes. It felt like sinking into a deep feather duvet, landing on firm ground at the bottom.

She could feel him in front of her even with eyes still shut, the same way she felt sickness or death or dishonesty, except he was sharper and stronger than all those notions put together. Like a sharp obsidian blade driven deep into the ground in front of her. His voice was the same sandy gravel, rough over things soft and delicate as herself.

"You promised there would be screaming."

Lottie opened her eyes, glad she'd taken the time to put on a full face of makeup. War paint. If he got to alter his appearance to look more intimidating, so could she.

"Maybe later," she responded. She wasn't sure if he was mocking her by also having his arms crossed over his body, but she felt like the silly half of a mirror.

"Why did you come back?" he asked. In spite of all the demonising she'd done in her head, he was only a man – a man possessed with power.

"I didn't have a choice," she answered.

"So you thought," he baited. "Are you sure?" He hadn't moved, and she wondered if it was because he didn't want to be the first to do it. If he was wary of her as she was of him.

"Yes," she countered. "I'm sure." She waited a moment, selecting her time like ripe oranges. "I'm your wife, after all." He hadn't expected that to come from her, and she was pleased to have shocked him. Yes, she couldaccept things she wasn't meant to, she could surprise him by saying it when he thought it was the last thing she'd do.

"Is that so?" he queried like he wasn't sure of it himself.

"All that power you promised Mama Odie I wouldn't use," she remarked. "It changes things."

"It does," he said almost approvingly. "I didn't think you'd notice."

"It's hard not to," she replied. "Ghosts aren't even the worst part of it."

"You saw them?" he questioned. She wondered how stupid he thought she was. "What was worse?"

"The worst thing is knowing someone's going to die in a day and that no one will believe you if you tell them," she commented, resentful now she could speak to the man who gave her this unwanted power.

"Oh, compassion," he tutted. "What shackles. The things you could've done if you were a little less pure."

"What's that meant to mean?" she retorted, and he gave a low chuckle.

"You can be the one deciding who passes that day," he commented. "Or close enough as makes no difference."

"That's awful," she spat. "I'd never."

"I know." He was sure with all the resolution of every preacher in New Orleans. He was absolute. As if he knew that it meant something, and Lottie was starting to think it did too. That it was her and him, and not anyone else. His eyes went down to the case by her side. "You brought bags?"

"Well, I'm not just going to stay in one outfit for three months," she commented aloofly. "What kind of slob do you take me for?" He seemed amused, or perhaps that was just his face. "You can show me to my room." His eyebrows raised like his eyes had gotten too big for their space, but she held to her guns and let him be surprised at her bossing him around. She couldn't be sure he wouldn't hurt her, but he always seemed more entertained by her displays of authority than anything else.

"This way," he instructed, gesturing to the corridor that opened up behind them. She wheeled her case over uneven floors alongside him, keeping her head up. If she showed him inferiority or fear, he would use it. "Here you are, mademoiselle," he soothed, leaning against a doorframe which opened as if compelled to do so. The interior looked like an airy studio overlooking a foreign city, and what looked to be the Eiffel tower in the distance. Of course it wasn't anything like Paris, but appearances could be deceiving.

"You ought to stop calling me that now," she commented, wheeling past him inside and setting her case by an ornate dresser.

"What the spirits consider you and what I consider you differ," he replied neutrally. "Enjoy your room."

"Oh really?" she caught back like a fishhook, "because seems like Mama Odie and the rest of them think you should be responsible for your actions."

"What kind of responsibility is that?" he came back, voice of gasoline and sun-baked mud flats.

"I don't know how you did it where you're from, but in my world you don't just go and hitch up with a lady and mean nothing by it," she said with principles like pearls around her neck. She wasn't asking him to do anything, but a little admission would be nice. Considering he did all this to her, to deny it now was a sour peach.

"We're not in your world," he reminded her, striding up and seeming awfully big all of a sudden. "Are you suggesting I should behave as a man to his wife?" Lottie wasn't ten and she wasn't stupid and she knew exactly what he was talking about, and figured her mouth had been running terribly fast for some reason.

"Um, no, I just... uh," she fumbled, feeling a whole size smaller. She told Tia she could handle him, whatever he was, and maybe it'd been a big fat lie she made up on the outside to comfort herself. Then all at once he backed off.

"I have to go," he announced like an insult, turning from her as if the room was on a slant and he ran out like dirty water.

"What? Then what am I meant to do?" she asked helplessly, noticing the shadow stretch between them, like it wasn't sure of who to go with any more.

"Amuse yourself," he said curtly, and then he was gone and the door shut.

Looking to her feet, Lottie realised she was alone – truly alone, as not even the shadow had stayed with her now it too was back to its home.

"Well," she said to herself, wandering to her bed and dropping into feathery covers. "I guess that's that." She resisted the urge to cry; here she was on her own in another world, the only company in four fake walls and a pretend-comfortable mattress.

She held the tears back because she knew if she let them fall they would never stop, and she couldn't crumple up and die of homesickness and heartbreak. She just couldn't. She promised herself she was going to stick through this and go back.

Before she got here she'd convinced herself it would be different. That the forces that pulled her down here would be happy, but she didn't feel very much at home. The room was beautiful, but it was foreign. A stranger's home. Perhaps she could do something about that, she reasoned with herself. Paris was nice, but it wasn't her. She got up and went to the far wall, glossing over all the details that must have been imagined by someone, him, and putting her palms flat to the plaster.

"This place could use a little more space," she announced to absolutely no one, and then with a very determined shove she pushed the wall and it slid back like it was on rollers. "Oh," she chirped. "That was easy." She'd seen him do far stranger things to a room in far less time, so she'd reasoned with a loan of his power, she ought to be able to do the same. She'd actually expected more challenge, but it was just that easy. Anything she could dream of became real, or as real as anything or anyone in here ever was.

By the time he returned Lottie was seven doors deep into building a dream-house that was quite literally made of dreams. It took no more than finding a keyhole that she wanted to be there to open up another room, then another after that, skipping down a long spiral staircase that opened up into a wide garden filled with midday sunshine like freshly-squeezed orange juice. The flowers weren't real and didn't smell, but they were beautiful and thinking of them distracted her from all the savage loneliness.

"Charlotte?" she heard her name from far away, racketing down the stairwell like a dropped dime. She didn't think he'd said her name like that before, but it was probably because he had nothing else to call her. She didn't know how long it'd been, absorbed as she was in arranging flowerbeds, but didn't leave her work when he slipped down the steps and into her garden like a tall drink of oil.

He loomed behind her and she made sure the sunlight blew his shadow backwards instead of over her, not wanting to be in his power. She could feel him without needing to look, a presence that was always there in the corner of her mouth, like an itch.

"You've been busy," he commented.

"What else was I meant to do?" she posed to her azaleas. "Curl up and die?"

"Perhaps," he insinuated, like maybe he wanted her dead. That way he could go and take another wife. Fat chance of that, Lottie thought stubbornly. She would live just to spitehim. "You worked out how to do all this?"

"Like it's hard," she dismissed, opening her hands with a perfect rose inside each one. She had once found his magic strange and fascinating, but now here it was in her palms, her fingertips. She felt his stare on the back of her neck like the beam of a magnifying glass. "What?" she ground out, still poring over each bud and petal as she breathed life into them and set them in the ground. They weren't alive, but she was. It could be enough.

"Nothing," he said resentfully, and she felt like grabbing him by the collar and shaking the secrets out like loose change.

"Some host you are," she mocked, and sensed his discontentment. Something was wrong about his aura, a prickly defence that was making him sour and humourless. He wasn't laughing like he used to. "I thought I was your honoured guest."

"Before," he responded curtly.

"And what now?" she retorted, putting her hands to the ground and getting up, facing him. "Now I'm just an imposition?"

"Your presence isn't my choice," he stated frostily.

"Well it's not mine either!" she bolted. "The least you could do is be nice."

"Nice?" he scathed, mouth twisted in so many knots of anger it was a wonder he could speak through it. "What kind of nice would you like?" He was putting suggestions out there again, like she should be frightened. Like he could intimidate her by pretending to be a man. Well Charlotte La Bouff was a proper young lady and she'd learned what real men were.

"You're meant to be my husband after all," she spat defiantly. "So if you're going to do something, might as well do it already cause' I'm not gettin' any younger over here!"

He was going to have to stop underestimating her, because surprise was becoming too common on his face. Sure, she was a good girl and she didn't kiss boys like the French did or let anyone get fresh with her and she was still ready for her wedding day – if she was ever going to have a wedding – but she wasn't stupid and she wasn't going to pretend there was no elephant in the room if it was trumpeting all over the place.

"That sounds awfully like an invitation," he remarked cautiously, and she wondered how bad it would be. In etiquette classes she'd learned about how you were meant to be a good wife and the needs of husbands, how it was best to not think about yourself too much and if you were married up with a person who didn't quite appeal to you, well you just bit your tongue and put up with it Missy, because there were a lot more girls less fortunate than you who wouldn't get a rich well-landed man ready to put a baby in them.

"I'm not scared of you," she lied.

"You should be," he threatened.

"Why?" she shot, and that had him like a pickle in a jar. "I'm not afraid of what a man does to a woman." She'd heard enough and learned enough even if it was him, she didn't see how it could be any worse than the stories from New Orleans – and still, somewhere, she didn't believe he would really hurt her. Like the spirits had forbidden it.

When she looked him in the eye, he didn't move. He could've been carved out of stone for how still he remained, watching her like he was attempting to unravel all of her meanings in a big ball of yarn.

"That sure is one mouth you have," he indicated. Hot air, words without meaning. For someone so intimidating, he was a whole lot of nothingright now.

"Well it's yours," she declared ferociously. "So learn to deal with it!"

For just a moment the way he was looking at her made it seem like maybe he mighthave another thought in his head. Something that wasn't about shutting up or winning arguments or who was bigger than who. As if he were thinking of another thing entirely that they were tap-dancing around like prizewinners.

But he stood like an oak and didn't blow in the gentle artificial breeze she drew through the open room. She started to wonder if all his dark threats were empty as his soul, and maybe all it took was challenging him to do something about it.

"I'll leave you to your work," he said coldly, and before she could spit one curse more he was gone. All that remained was his shadow, Lottie's old friend, who lavished in the bright sunlight and flipped like a fish. She felt for some naïve reason that it liked her, and let slip a smile as she put her palm to the ground it spread across, like petting a kitty that wasn't there.

"You're my friend, aren't cha?" she said tritely. In here she was going to need at least one, and no prizes for guessing who it wasn't.

She'd noticed that time wasn't really the same in here either. She never seemed to get tired or even hungry, and without indicators it could be an hour or a day since she last looked up from her potting. It was both a relief and tedious, wearing her down like a grindstone until she was bored sick and couldn't bear the sight of another fantasy dream-room in a house that wasn't real, wasn't hers and wasn't where she belonged. She cursed herself for being so stupid as to ever think she might fit in here, and traipsed miserably back to the room that was falsely named hers.

It was the same artifice as ever, and Lottie's only real possessions were in her little suitcase, brought over from the real world. So she did what she might normally do when feeling lost and insecure, and put on some fresh makeup.

To start, she washed off all the old stale paint with a dish of warm water she could summon with thought, and reapplied a fresh coat of cheeks and smiling mouth like a china doll. Give herself glass eyes and pouting lips and watch him try to get an expression out of her. She was busy brushing out and re-curling her hair when he reappeared again. Like a moth he flitted in and out, wishing to leave but somehow compelled to return. Or perhaps he got bored as well.

"What's the point in that?" he suggested while Lottie was aggressively curling her eyelashes. She'd felt him come in, and could see the black cutout in the corner of her mirror. "Are you trying to impress someone?"

"Hop off your high horse," she notched him down a place or two. "I'm not doing this for anyone's benefit."

"Then why-"

"Maybe I just like to," she interjected. "Some people enjoy things other than kidnapping girls and trying to commit murder and acting mean an' scary all the time." He had a laugh like an engine just trying to get going.

"Your summary of my business," he demeaned.

"Did I miss something?" she remarked cheekily, rolling up her hair and pinning it in place.

"Nothing important," he declared, and that was a whopping lie because she remembered the waterfall and the souls and she knew he had some sort of place in that. When she made contact with Douglas's passed grandmother and sent her on, she knew to whom the spirit had been sent.

"If it's so unimportant, you'd think you could put a little more effort in to making me feel at home," she commented. This was some of the worst hosting she'd ever encountered, and that didn't even include the part where she was kidnapped in the first place. "I am your guest after all."

"That was the first time," he remarked begrudgingly. "I didn't invite you back." So he kept saying, and it was going staler than three-day biscuits. Lottie wondered who he was trying to convince.

"You made the deal that meant I had to come back," she countered,, "so tell me why that ain't as good as the same."

"You didn't even try to resist," he accused. "Did you get sick of real life? Crawl back to my door and see if you'll be treated like royalty."

"No," she denied fiercely.

"Forgive me if I'm not sold," he squandered insincere words on her. "From my side it looks like no one was giving Princess Lottie enough attention, so you thought to come back into my realm, seeing as the spirits conveniently bound us together-"

"You bound us together!" she shot. "Spirits didn't paint me up like Mardi-Gras and plant a kiss on me with a silver knife."

"I was getting rid of you!" he snapped so viciously Lottie could believe he really meant those words and he had tried to push her away just like he was pushing now.

"Well if you hate me then just leave me alone!" she shrieked, and with knuckles wrapped tight around the handle of her hairbrush, she let her temper snap and turned and hurled it across the room at him. It was a beautiful silver brush that had been passed down through her family, but by the time it reached him it was a silver-black spike of jagged metal and coke. It flew past his face so fast he had to dodge it, sinking deep into the wall.

On this occasion she was exactly as surprised as him that it had happened, and both stared at the mean throwing-knife that had almost shaved a corner out of his face. Carefully he raised a hand and touched his fingers to the edges, which were sharp enough to draw blood from even the lightest touch. Like they'd been burned as fine as a hair by Lottie's fury.

"That's more like it," he leered as he squeezed the drops from his fingers. "See what you could do if you had a little more hate in your heart?"

"Oh you are just getting me there!" she hollered. "That was one of my favourite brushes as well!" She stomped her foot and the floor gave way to a hairline crack. Pictures shook off the walls, which buckled and palpitated; like the first time he'd lost his temper with her, now she was the one with her finger on the pin. She could feel the surges of power that ripped objects from their home and flung them at him like hurricane winds.

"You want to fight – little girl?" he derided, and as the floor started to crumble and give way under their feet he began throwing things straight back at her. A crystal ornament that shot from her dresser towards his face then rebounded and smashed a five-inch dent in the wall.

"I'm not a little girl!" she screamed over the howl of a personal tornado. As the dressings tore from her bed and pillows whipped around the space and were torn open, filling the air with feathers, a deafening roar cut in over all.

"You know nothing!" There was a flash of darkness rather than light, then he dashed forwards and the game was over. His hands were around her neck and her feet weren't on the floor, because she was dangling from the wall like a wind-chime. He had her hoisted up on his long, iron hands.

"You have but a drop of my power," he growled, and Lottie wasn't choking, but she wasn't comfortable either. She couldn't even reach him over the length of his grip. "Play with me if you like," he suggested blackly, "but you're going to lose."

Then he let her fall and she crumpled to the floor with a wheeze all broken-accordion with the keys ripped out. She remembered who – and what – she was dealing with, too late to take any of it back.

Before she could break and cry like the scared silly girl she was in front of him, he was gone.