My gaze went up as it always did when I looked at my new home. The two-story Italianate mansion dominated the corner with its double porches wrapped in iron railings. The mauve paint was faded and chipped. The tall black shutters still framed the windows, though some hung lopsided, barely clinging on.
A content feeling came over me as I stepped onto the sidewalk.
The lawn was overgrown, the fence around the house barely visible beneath mounds of wild vines, but the place had character—the neglected, soulful, earthy kind. This was my home along with Crank, Henri, Dub, Violet, and Sebastian. Some would call us squatters, misfits, the fringe of Novem society. It was all true.
The scent of hot spices leaked from the house. I opened the front door and entered the large foyer with its wide, sweeping staircase and the massive iron chandelier hanging above. The Crypt, the Gothic-looking dining room, was to my right and the living room to my left.
The wood in the house was rotting in the damp, humid climate. The expensive wallpaper had all but peeled away. The plasterwork was cracked and tiny bits fell randomly or whenever one of us slammed a door. 1331 First Street reminded me of a once-wealthy southern belle who was now flat broke and refusing to admit it.
My stomach growled. Voices drifted from the living room, so I followed the sound.
Dub was on the floor picking through a pile of stolen grave goods dumped onto the coffee table. Crank sat in one of the chairs across from the couch in her usual cabbie hat, braids, and grease-stained overalls.
Sebastian’s forearms rested on his knees as he leaned forward and spoke to Dub from the love seat, but at my entry, he went silent and lifted his head. The gray-eyed stare shot right to my stomach and made it weightless. Sebastian’s eyes were the color of smoke and silver. His pale skin, raven hair, and naturally dark red lips, paired with a rebel attitude and a poet’s soul, pulled me in like a dark, magnetic force.
Crank had told me that Sebastian could feel what others felt. And when he looked at me, it sure as hell felt like he could see past all the bullshit and right into the very heart of who I was. All my secrets, all my fears, hopes, dreams, beliefs—all those things I’d never allow others to know.
Footsteps echoed over the hardwood floor behind me. I broke eye contact with Sebastian as Henri angled by with a large stainless steel pot. I followed him to the coffee table, where he set the pot next to Dub’s loot. A stack of plastic bowls hung from his crooked finger, and there were silver spoons in his grip.
“How was Presby?” Crank asked.
I let my bag slide to the floor and plopped down on one end of the couch as Henri took a seat on the other end. “Tiring.”
Crank snorted. “And you were trying to talk us into going. Crazy talk, Ari. Crazy talk.”
Well, I guessed I couldn’t really argue the point anymore. Presby was stuffy, arrogant, and totally out of my league, so I could just imagine the experience Crank and Dub would have there. They might not be well educated, but I’d like to see a twelve-year-old Novem kid fix a motor, work for a living, and feed themselves on ingenuity alone.
My stomach growled again.
“Here.” Henri shoved a bowl full of red beans and rice my way. “Bon appétit.”
“Merci,” I said, using one of a few French words I knew. The food was hot in temperature and in taste, and extremely good. “More stuff for Spits?” I asked Dub after several bites, gesturing to the pile of grave goods on the table.
“Yeah.” He scratched beneath his short blond Afro and a frown appeared, creasing the light brown skin of his forehead. “Not the best take ever. Guess he can melt down some of these gold teeth. Few pieces of jewelry . . . I’ll need to go out again first thing tomorrow.”
Spits was a guy in the Quarter who bought the things Dub scavenged in the cemeteries. He cleaned the sellable items and then resold them to tourists in his antique shop, and the tourists didn’t have a clue they were buying and wearing stuff taken off dead people.
“Why the rush?” I asked.
He raised his grass-green eyes. “Mardi Gras. The tourists are here in droves. Spits is buying. They spend money, so . . .” He pulled something from his pocket and tossed it over the table.
A piece of metal hit me in the chest and landed in my lap. “What’s this?”
“Thought you’d like it.” Dub shrugged and went back to his sorting.
I picked the ring off my lap with two fingers.
“It’s got a crescent moon on it,” Crank explained. “Like your tattoo.”
I touched the small black crescent moon tattooed on my right cheekbone. I also wore a platinum moon on a black ribbon around my neck. New Orleans was once called the Crescent City, and I’d long ago adopted the symbol as my own because it reminded me of my mother, and the place I was born.
I held the ring out to him, trying not to let it gross me out. “Well, thanks for the thought, but I kind of draw the line at wearing something pulled off a dead person.”
“Says the girl who inhaled Alice Cromley’s toe bone,” Henri muttered with his mouth full.
I shot him a smirk. “It was a bit of ground-up bone; it’s not like I sucked down a whole toe.” As I looked away I caught Sebastian’s small smile. He shook his head at Henri and then resumed eating.
“Relax. I got the ring from a house in Audubon Place,” Dub told me. “You know, the big white one on the corner.”
“He found it helping me clear the house of rats and snakes,” Henri said. “Some of the Novem families are moving back into those behemoths. I think some of them used to live there. But you watch. They’ll be coming into the GD next, and then we’ll all be screwed and have to live in the ruins.” A string of what I could only guess were French curses flowed under his breath.
I rolled the ring around in my hand. It was heavy, made of silver and inset with a pale crescent moon cut from some kind of pale bluish stone. “I like it. Thanks, Dub.” The ring fit on the middle finger of my left hand. I left it there and finished eating.
Henri cast a glare at Dub, his irises flashing that odd hazel-yellow color. “We were supposed to leave the contents alone. You’d better hope the Novem doesn’t have any records of what was in that safe in the closet, or I’m out of a job. And if I am”—he pointed his spoon—“you and me are gonna go round.”
Dub rolled his eyes, let out a disbelieving snort, and grabbed a bowl.
While I wasn’t originally a fan of Henri’s bossy attitude, once I got used to his surliness, he was an okay guy and he had a gruffness about him that I liked. He could definitely use a shave and a haircut, I thought. And those eyes of his were sleek and arresting, like a predator’s. . . .
“This isn’t half bad, Henri,” Crank managed through a mouthful of rice and beans.
“Wait till you see the mess I left in the kitchen.” Henri propped his feet on the corner of the table, looking pretty damn pleased with himself. “I cook. The infants clean.”
Dub’s narrowing eyes lifted as he dropped the spoon into his bowl, a look of pure irritation on his face. “You suck, Henri. You don’t have to make such a big mess every time. We know you do it on purpose.” He flopped back, bracing against the chair behind him and dragging his bowl with him.
“Yeah,” Crank muttered. “Thell me about it.”
Henri chuckled and took a bite of his food—happy now that he’d annoyed the young ones in true big-brother fashion.
After we ate, I helped clean up the chaos in the kitchen. Dub and Crank chattered nonstop as Sebastian and I worked silently. Every once in a while he’d smile at something they said or shake his head. His mood seemed way better than it had when Violet first disappeared.
Once the kitchen was decent, I went upstairs to my room on the second floor, where a small fire already burned in the marble fireplace.
Probably Dub, I thought as I shed my blades and then clothes.
The great thing about the old mansions? En suite bathrooms. And though no one drank the water without boiling it, we were able to shower and use the toilet. The main water lines were working, and so as long as the pipes coming into and out of the house were undamaged, water was available.
I showered, noticing a few light bruises—courtesy of Bran—and then dressed in pajama pants and a T-shirt. After twisting my wet hair into a knot, I settled onto my sleeping bag.
“I can get you a mattress for the bed, now that you’re staying,” Crank said, peeking around the doorway.
“The sleeping bag is fine. Don’t trouble yourself.”
“It’s no trouble. If I come across one, I’ll snag it for you.”
I smiled. “Okay, thanks.”
I lay down, the room dark except for the fire, tucked my hands behind my head, and watched the shadows dance over the plaster medallion on the ceiling, wondering how my next day at Presby would play out.
Five
“OUR NEWEST STUDENT AT PRESBY BRINGS ATTENTION TO AN important subject . . .”
Oh great, not another one.
I let my forehead fall onto the top of my desk with a loud thunk. I’d been singled out all day by teachers in nearly every class. I guess yesterday, being my first day, they’d all given me a break (all but Bran), but today, apparently, I was fair game.
“. . . and while I intended to cover the Wars of the Pantheons later in the semester, I think perhaps now is a better-suited time, especially in light of recent events. Today we’ll discuss Athena. She is, after all, our enemy, one we’d be wise to study. So, who can tell me about her?”
Mrs. Cromley, of the Novem’s Cromley family of witches, presumably, and professor of history, leaned her slim hip against the desk and folded her arms over her chest. She was in her early forties, maybe. Pretty. Had that really intellectual look about her.
Someone spoke up behind me. “Athena was the Greek goddess of wisdom, warfare, strategy . . . um . . .”
When silence reigned, Cromley encouraged the rest of the class, “Chime in. Anyone.”
“Justice.”