She laughed a little too loudly. “Well you could, but you never really do. You keep things from me. Don’t you?”
He tensed and Sandra knew he was expecting another fight. As a conciliatory gesture, she sat down on the bed next to him. “I want a real explanation for why I recall my lives, but Rick or Billy do not? Let’s start there.”
“Because you’re a witch and Marchant is not.”
“That doesn’t make sense. I’m having an existential crisis here, Luke, and I don’t know why you aren’t. The three of us are pawns. We don’t even have free will.”
“It’s pointless to have a crisis, Sandra. I had one on my first go-round with Juliet. I agonized at my failure when she jumped off the Pont Neuf and I thought…” He paused. “I thought I’d served my sentence. That I was done after she’d died—they’d send me on to real hell or give me back some of my memories—but I ended up with another version of her. I was in agony. I’d loved Juliet and she was back but had no memory of me. That was the way it was supposed to work.”
“Except Nora came back with Juliet’s memories.”
“Not at first. Like I said, it was agony seeing her. And then one day, I came through the door and she was sitting at the piano and I saw the recognition—the love in her face.”
“Won’t this spell just wear off eventually?”
He shook his head. “No. It binds for eternity, but you’re getting stronger each time you come back.” He kept rubbing his head and then fell back onto the bed. “Look at it this way. You live in a curse. I control things within the curse. Like I kill Billy Rapp or make Clint do it—it really doesn’t matter. I also protect you—I keep our finances flowing for generations, buy us houses, that kind of thing.” He stared at the ceiling like he was staring up at the stars, his tan skin against the crisp white sheets. “But this healing, the mind control—that doesn’t have anything to do with the curse. It’s coming from you. In fact, this power you have actually makes it harder for me. Each time you come back, it’s like you want to reassemble yourself, so Juliet starts with her memories and she sends you the piano skills. That’s the essence of who you are at heart.”
“Why?” The kiss had stirred something in her. She knew what it was like to make love to him and it was tempting to crawl on top of him now, but yet they were strangers again. She wanted to reach out and touch him, knowing exactly how he’d feel, but she stopped. He’d always kept things from her, no matter what she’d given him. While she had the stirrings of love for him from the past, she couldn’t forgive him for his omissions.
“You’re sounding like a six-year-old. You know that, don’t you?”
Sandra paced the floor in front of the bed. “Then help me. So my mother was a minor witch, so what. I’ve seen her. She dabbled in herbs and love potions. So what?”
“Because you’re a major one.”
“Very funny.” She took a sock from on top of the dresser and threw it at him. He reached up and caught it with perfect precision.
“I’m not kidding.” He leaned forward on the bed, playing with the sock in his hands. “You’re a major dark talent, like your father.”
“That’s crazy. My father—Juliet’s father—was a farmer.”
Luke shook his head before he spoke, preparing her for what was to come next. “No. Juliet’s father—your father—was Philippe Angier.”
The name sounded familiar. She cocked her head. “Philippe Angier?” Sandra searched her memories working backward—first Nora’s memories, and finally Juliet’s—until she found it. “The magician killed in the duel? The one you were discussing at Edmond Bailly’s shop that day?” Sandra remembered the composer and the artist, discussing Angier.
“Your mother was his assistant for many years. She was also his lover. He was notorious for impregnating his assistants and then killing his children as sacrifices. He was a real prince. You have his dark skills—in every one of your lives.”
“You went to his funeral. I followed you.”
He nodded. “I had to be sure he was dead. And I wanted to make sure that one of his brides wasn’t following you again.”
“The woman in the red dress? The one you killed on the Rue Norvins?”
“That’s the one. But that wasn’t the first one you saw, was it?”
“No,” said Sandra. “Juliet was followed to the train station the morning she left for Paris—a woman in a yellow lace dress.”
“Oh, he had a harem of them for sure.” Luke laughed. “Your mother wore the blue dress. When she got pregnant with you, she fled Paris for Challans with Angier’s grimoire. That’s where she met Jean LaCompte, who raised you as his own.”
Sandra absorbed what Luke was telling her. It had such a true ring to it and finally put all the pieces of the puzzle together for her. Juliet’s mother had said she’d lived in Paris. She recalled the purple costume and the face paint. It had been so theatrical because that was all the magic the poor woman knew. She hadn’t realized she was out of her element—or was so desperate she didn’t care. And the grimoire. She remembered the old book with the name of the demon.
“Philippe Angier never stopped looking for you. He was frantically searching for you before the duel—especially before the duel. He could sense you were in the city, so that’s why they were out looking for you.”
“To kill me?”
“Sacrifice you. Had they gotten to you, he wouldn’t have died. That’s why I didn’t want you dressing like a boy and cavorting about Montmartre, but you had other ideas.”
It was a moment of levity, and she poked him. “You’d have none of that.” She lowered her voice to mock him. “Lock you away? Why, Juliet… that is exactly what I plan to do.” She sat back down on the bed, heavily.
“I wasn’t that bad.”
“Hell you weren’t. It was like Alcatraz on the Saint-Germain.”
He put his hand over his face and laughed. “I was protecting you. It was a game of cat and mouse with him.”
They both stared up at the ceiling. He touched her lightly with his fingers, held her hand.
“Why would Angier want Juliet dead?”
“He thought his children gave him power. As long as you lived, he was weaker. Your death would give him power.” Luke stopped and considered his words. “And it would have given him power, Sandra. Philippe Angier was real. He wasn’t doing parlor tricks and theatrics. His powers came from a real demon. When your mother found out about you and Marchant and she realized that you were pregnant, that’s when she got the crazy idea for this spell. She was angry at Marchant, for your ruin, but also because Angier would know you were pregnant. He could feel it. You were in real danger; she was right. Her anger at Marchant was wrong, but she was so angry she wanted him ruined. She just screwed up the fucking spell.”
For the first time, her mother’s anger at Marchant made sense. It also explained why she never wanted Marchant painting her—the risk that Angier might see some likeness of himself hanging in a Paris salon and get one step closer to finding her.