Philippe reached round me and opened the door, which was so warped that it took a shove from him. He sent me a smug glance.
I tried not to dwell on how he smelled of cedar or perhaps pine as he brushed past me. Either way, yum.
I walked inside after he did, glancing round. Dark, with only the slim lights coming through the slats of the shutters.
Reaching back toward the wall, I groped for a switch. When I flipped it on, it didn’t work. Chills fingered up my spine as I backed up to the wall, wanting to feel it behind me in the near darkness. I continued scanning the room, my eyesight adjusting. Meanwhile, I held up Philippe’s revolver, evidently knowing just how to use it, comfortable with it in my grip.
Boot steps thudded as Philippe moved toward the window. There was a sharp sound as he pulled the shutter cords, and the room lit slightly more with wan moonlight.
It allowed me to lock onto a form across the room that was draped by a sheet. I nearly squeezed the revolver’s trigger until I concluded that, based on the shape and the exposed gilding on one side, what I was seeing was a covered standing mirror. Another look round showed a second shrouded frame above a fireplace. When Philippe got to it and peered beneath the linen, he spoke.
“Someone doesn’t like looking glasses.”
And that wasn’t the only disturbing element in this small cabin. As I surveyed the area—the simple kitchen in the corner, neat as a pin; the cot on the other side of the room—I saw a table near me.
A table with bones spread over it.
My boots reacted sharply, like the ends of vines digging into me. I gasped, flinching as a sudden memory grabbed me: a woman’s voice saying, “There is a cost for these.” Then the feel of the boots sliding up my legs as someone put them on me . . .
I jerked out of the memory, and my skin . . . It felt as if it were puckered. Yet when I ran my free hand over my arm, my flesh was as smooth as always.
I wasn’t certain what I had just experienced, but I knew for a fact now that there had been some sort of cost for the boots, and if I had remembered this little nugget of information because I was inside this cabin, the price was no doubt still to be paid to Amari.
Had their powers lent me the speed and strength to run from the witch before I’d paid for them? Why couldn’t I remember?
Sliding down the wall to the floor, I pulled at the boots again, wanting them off. Now.
“What’re you doin’?” Philippe asked, coming to me.
“Trying again,” I said. “If she’s not here, then at least I hope the boots will be when she returns. I think that’s why I was led to you, by fate, by a spell Amari cast, or . . . I don’t know. The boots belong here. When I caught sight of those bones on the table, the boots responded, and I had a flash of memory. Someone told me there was a price for these, and I don’t think I paid it.”
Philippe blew out a breath, then ambled over to the table and reached for a bone. When he made contact with one of them, he froze.
“Philippe?” My voice seemed to echo in the cabin until his took over.
“Liberatio,” he said.
My boots shifted on my legs, as if restless.
“Say it again,” I whispered, my breath quickening. He’d felt a psychic vibe from the bone.
Louder now. “Liberatio!”
My legs jerked. Or, rather, the boots did. At a sensation of release, a loosening, I pressed my advantage, sticking my hand between my calf and the vines, pulling them away from my skin. When the boot gave, I dropped the revolver, using both hands.
“It’s working!”
He came to a knee next to me, pulling at my other boot. And when he uttered the word again, we managed to yank both of them off.
Freedom!
We leaned back against the wall, laughing. I had the urge to hug him or kiss him or . . . Whatever it was, I didn’t do it.
I said, “Those bones . . .”
“From animals. Amari must’ve used them for the spell that she put on the boots.”
I kept laughing. Now the witch could have her property, and I would get that red-eyed creature off my trail. That would leave me free to discover the rest of my puzzling life.
Dropping a boot on the floor, I said, “Who needs to run that fast or be Jackie Chan, anyway?”
Philippe’s laughter faded. “Yes. Who needs that?”
The way he looked at me now wasn’t with amusement, or with a pirate’s gleam in his moonlit eyes. He was serious about something I didn’t quite understand.
“I think,” he said, “it’s time we left, cher.”
Why did it sound as if he had been waiting to say that ever since I had run into his shop?
I didn’t have the opportunity to answer, because my skin . . . It had begun to do something strange.
Shriveling. Puckering.
I lifted my hand. In the moonlight, I could see my flesh changing before my eyes, as if it were . . . scarred from burns?
A scream welled up within me as the female voice in my memory returned. There is a cost for these . . .
What cost had she been referring to?
My instincts shuddered, telling me to put the boots on again. When I reached for them, Philippe intercepted me.
“Forgive me, darlin’, but I did mean it when I said that I don’t need you to be Jackie Chan.”
As the skin all over my body—my face, my neck, my legs—pruned and ached, he gripped my wrists with one hand and quickly picked up the revolver I had put down with the other. He aimed at me.
“I had to get those boots off you,” he said, “because when I started being honest with you, I couldn’t have you running so fast away from me that I wouldn’t be able to catch up. I didn’t need you to fight me with the strength those boots clearly give you, either. That’s why I brought you here.”
I felt like a mummy without its bandages by now, and tears clouded my sight. The boots—they hadn’t only given me strength and speed. They had kept me from this—scars from the fire Philippe had seen. He hadn’t been lying about what he had divined when he had touched me earlier. The evidence was obvious on me now.
“You’ve probably guessed already,” Philippe said, letting go of me and standing, “that there was more to my vision than you running into my shop, Lilly.”
The sound of my name washed over me like acid, burning from the inside out. I was withered, wounded, betrayed.
I was Lilly.
He kept waiting for me to take his hand. “Come along with me now. I won’t hurt you, cher. I promise.”
“What will you do with me?”
“Take you back to your family. I saw that they are searching for you, offering money I can use for my maman’s health. We’ll both be much better off afterward.”
“My . . . family?” Why did the word leave a bad taste in my mouth?
He merely watched me, as if his vision hadn’t told him any other details about my parents, or siblings I might have.
There was a different burning inside me now. A heat. A hatred. And it wasn’t directed at Philippe.
Deep down, where nothing made sense, I knew I couldn’t return to my family. Not at any cost.
“Lilly,” he said, “you’ve made good with the witch. If Amari was the one who sent that red-eyed thing after you tonight, then you’re in the clear. We can leave, and I will take you to safety, where people know you.”
I felt the burning again, but this time I saw fire. Felt fire even as my skin began to wither. Smelled the smoke choking me, looked into a pair of eyes that were so like mine as flames consumed me.
Had my family done this to me?
With a yell of rebellion, I kicked, sweeping my leg under Philippe so swiftly that he didn’t have time to react. He fell to the floor, the revolver skidding away from him. Even without the boots, I was on him in a lightning flash, using a wrestling hold to pin his legs with mine, my arms threaded with his so he couldn’t move.
In the dimness, I could see his stunned expression, but he was laughing softly. “Seems you don’t need those boots. I didn’t see that comin’.”
He used all his power to kick me off him, but I sprang back at him, wrapping an arm round his neck, using my other hand to pinch him between the shoulder and neck in a spot that made him slump.
“Well . . . played . . . cher . . . ,” he whispered as he passed out, tumbling the rest of the way to the floor and taking me with him.
I didn’t move for a moment. I wanted to make sure he was down. And he was.
My pulse steady, I took my hand from his sweet spot, but I didn’t roll away from him. I stole a moment, feeling his muscled back against my chest, smelling his carpenter’s wood-chip scent, wishing . . .
For what?
I pushed away, knowing in my core that I didn’t love. I wasn’t certain I could, although there I was, still looking at him, my head tilted, when I heard someone come in through the front door behind me.
“Oh, Lilly,” said the female voice from my memory. “What’ve you done this time?”
4
The witch was framed by the door, backlit by the porch lantern. She held on to either side of the opening, dressed in a beige robe with a sash round the middle. Long, frizzy red hair framed a face that was covered by a cloth that tied behind her head, covering her eyes. There were two subtle dark circles on the white linen, ghosts of where a gaze would be.
From behind the witch, a teen girl with dark braids hanging over her shoulders ducked under Amari’s arm. She guided the woman inside the rest of the way, then went outside, apparently leaving.
“Get them boots back on,” the witch finally said to me with a backwoods drawl. Amari had a young voice. Was it because she led a charmed life? Or was she as young as she sounded?
Marveling that the witch hadn’t commented on Philippe, who was still lying prone on the floor, I obeyed her. As soon as I slipped the boots over my legs, they leeched to me, coming home, it seemed. I sighed as I felt all my skin moisten, unwithering, returning to normal just like that.
“Can’t even make a house call without havin’ to come back to this shit,” Amari said with a head shake. “I knew you’d be a challenge. Warned you over and over again ’bout how them boots work, but you’re full of yourself. I’m hopin’ you finally learned somethin’, though, since you’re back here again like a tamed pup.”