“If you say so.” I shrugged, remembering the elaborate ritual that Juliet’s mother had prepared. “You said it takes things?”
“It takes people,” he corrected. “There are multiple people in this curse, sloppy work.” He shook his head again. “It loops.” He drew with his finger in the air. “That is the mistake. A curse is not unlike a computer program. I see a jumbled mess when I look at… for lack of a better word… the code that created it. It leaves a trace. You”—he pointed to my nose—“are in danger. But there is a third person. He is what I like to call an administrator of the curse.”
“So there aren’t normally three people in a curse?”
“No. Usually, just one. The cursed.”
“So, me?” That seemed obvious.
“No.” He shook his head. “In this spell, you are not the cursed.”
“Huh?” I almost laughed. “Trapped in someone else’s curse. Just my luck.”
Malique shrugged. “I don’t know the specifics; I just see the outlines of the curse. Its intent was to plague the subject for eternity, hence the looping.” He paused before continuing. There was a slowing at the carousel as a new set of riders boarded. “I feel I must tell you something, but I am not sure that I should. Raquel and I often disagree about this.”
“Shoot.” I stuffed a fresh wad of napkin up my nose a little higher.
“Are you sure?” He looked down at the table and let a spider run over his arm.
I nodded, fixated on the spider.
“You will not live another month.”
“Why?” As the question came out of my mouth, I wondered: Did I just say Why? Not, What the fuck? Why was I being calm about this man—a medium—telling me I’d be dead by July? What was happening to me?
“It is in the outline I see. Whoever designed this curse gave you a guardian from the dark—the administrator to protect you and the curse—but that comes with…” He stopped. “Well, there are concessions that are made when those elements are added. Probably whoever made the curse worried about a minor, so they put an administrator in the mix for protection. The need for an administrator is an odd addition, though. The problem is that the object of the curse who needed protection—presumably you—cannot live beyond the age of the cursing witch herself. It is the cost of the administrator. Kind of like a service fee, so to speak.”
“Did my mother know this?”
Malique shrugged. “I wouldn’t be surprised that the fine print wasn’t exactly spelled out for her. We are talking about demons here.”
I groaned.
“This protection also came at a great cost to the spell caster.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the spell killed the one who cast it. This is a nasty piece of business.”
“Oh, of course.” I laughed. Malique didn’t do sarcasm. “Of course, my curse would include a service fee. So, this is bad.”
“I’ve seen worse.” Malique sighed. “But not many. Whoever cast this used a bad demon for this one—I won’t say his name even for fear he finds me. He’s one of the old ones. Really, he’s too much demon for this curse. The spell caster didn’t have to use one of the ancient ones.”
I remembered the night in Challans; I’d seen the name of the demon. I also recalled the age of Juliet’s mother from my dreams. Life had been hard and although she looked much older than me, I estimated that her age was in the early thirties at the time of the curse. From the sounds of it, she was thirty-four—the same age that I would be soon. And then, I’d be dead. “Can I stop it?”
“Yes,” said Malique. “As the object, you have much power. Your blood is powerful.” He hesitated. “Except this is not a modern curse, so that poses unique complications.”
“What complications?”
“Typically, it can be reversed with blood and a reverse spell, but in this case your blood won’t work. You aren’t the physical bloodline of the original object. You are a duplicate in another body. You transfer from body to body because the original spell caster wanted the cursed to be punished for eternity. Unfortunately for you, you were caught up in his curse and you travel for eternity with the cursed, but your blood is now different from the original. You have a different body now. Do you see?”
“So I need the bloodline of the original object?” I knew this to be Juliet. I think I said “shit” aloud.
“Yes. I can give you a reverse curse to speak once you have the blood. It is quite simple and fairly straightforward and it just stops the cycle. It is actually the simple part of this.”
“And the hard part?”
“That is for later,” he said. “Let’s take it one step at a time. Just get some blood—even a paper cut amount is fine. One other thing. This is very important. This administrator’s purpose is the curse.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The administrator is a soldier of this particular demon. They are lesser demons. Often they’re damned souls who work off penance. Usually the curse they work has something to do with their punishment. In your case, your curse is the administrator’s purpose. It has been my experience that these soldiers are quite good at executing their orders. In some ways, they don’t have a choice and are punished severely for any failure. Do you understand?”
I stared at Malique in his wire-rimmed glasses as he spoke of Luke, my administrator. “So I shouldn’t tell him I’m looking for blood?”
“I wouldn’t.”
15
Juliet LaCompte
Paris, France, 1898
After that morning at the breakfast table, Varnier found reasons to avoid the apartment on Boulevard Saint-Germain, and Juliet continued to follow him. Two days after their encounter at the breakfast table, she followed him two blocks toward the Panthéon, where he stood on the street waiting. Juliet expected to see another prostitute, but instead Varnier checked his pocket watch until he spied a funeral procession. Two black chargers with full plumed headpieces pulled a glass hearse adorned with two wreaths in each back window. Varnier turned into the street and walked behind the procession as though he was a mourner. It was then that Juliet noticed his long black suit jacket and wondered if it had been someone he had known, but it was curious he didn’t mention it. People on the street turned to look at the hearse, which was always a curious sight in the normally lively Paris, but this hearse was drawing more attention with people gathering to witness it go by. As two women pointed to the carriage, Juliet stopped and pointed to the elaborate hearse. “Is that someone famous?”
“You could say that,” whispered the woman. “It’s that devil, Philippe Angier.” She motioned Juliet closer. “The magician who was killed in the duel at Bois de Boulogne.”
“The one who killed his children,” said the other woman. “I once saw him onstage—my husband took us. He called on the dead… could tell your fortune… that sort of thing.” The woman sighed. “He was a tall, handsome man, waves of dark hair… nothing like my Pierre.”