Chapter 16: XVI:

The woods smelled foul. Putrid decay filled the air of the otherwise unsuspecting forest. Estella walked forward across the uneven, rough terrain. An unseen force compelled her forward, dragging her feet up the mountain.

Behind her she saw her trek left a trail in the dense fog. When she turned back around to face the summit, she found that her climb began anew.

___

Her grandparents left three days later. They kissed their cheeks goodbye on the front steps of Saint-Tourre.

Estella gripped their coat sleeves tight, forcing Matthieu and Theodora to look at her. She had been traveling up and through the mountain each night since Theodora’s announcement. “When it is time, don’t turn around.”

If they were anyone else, Matthieu and Theodora would have at best patronized her or at worst brushed her off but they have been steeped for too long in the realm of magic and prophecy to disregard her. She was no Cassandra.

Clasping their hands over her’s, her grandparents kissed her again. “We will not. Remember your studies and stay with Jacques. Do not anxiously pace these halls, Estella. Je t’aime.”

And they were gone.

Jacques draped his arm over her shoulders as Matthieu and Theodora drove down the driveway.

______

Estella didn’t pace the halls but her mind ran rampant through them. In her dreams she still climbed the mountainside, uncertain if she would ever crust the top. She kept looking behind her, searching for her family members.

Her notebook page was blotted by her leaky pen, her hands smudged with ink as she sat at her favorite library desk overlooking the south lawn. She didn’t know what she had been writing, her notes illegible. In one swift movement she stood up from the desk and threw the pen at the trash can between the table and the misused upright piano that held her stacks of books.

“Trouble in magic-land?” Jacques asked from behind her. He didn’t even turn around from where he sat on the green velvet sofa reading the newspaper.

Estella scowled at him. “History, actually. I am supposed to take notes on the conversion of England.”

“The first or the second?”

“The first.”

“Mm. Would you rather help me organize files instead?”

She narrowed her eyes, “You’re reading Le Monde.”

“Correction: I’m avoiding filing.” He turned around in his seat and grinned broadly at her, “But I would be much more likely to get work done if my sister helped me.” Sister wasn’t exactly the right word to describe their relationship dynamic but siblings are what the two of them settled on. Jacques started calling her “petite soeur” when she first moved into the manor and it stuck.

“Correction: You’re avoiding Marianne.” Marianne was Jacques’s intern. She was a couple of years older than Estella and was the daughter of a daughter of a daughter of an old friend of Theodora’s. Her mother was also the English counselor on the Witches’ Council.

Estella had spent some time with Marianne growing up in between bouts of her transformation and its illnesses but not much. What she does remember about the girl is that she was highly organized for a child. Once Estella sat in a chair and watched Marianne perfectly pack a suitcase, not an item unceremoniously crammed inside it..

“Tomorrow? Oui, I will go.”

_____

“Have you heard anything?”

“No.”

“It’s been—”

“Two weeks.”

“What does Monsieur Saint-Tourre think?” Despite the closeness of their grandparents to Marianne’s family, she always referred to Jacques in the formal. He glared at her every time she used “vous.”

“I don’t know.” That wasn’t the truth but when you belong to a family as important as the Saint-Tourres you don’t give away their thoughts easily, even if the relationships go back centuries.

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The truth was that Jacques was worried. Estella saw his fears in the way he tapped his pen against his notepad, in the bouncing of his right knee, and even in the set of his jaw. While Matthieu and Theodora attended people often, it was never without communication. And the younger Saint-Tourres have received none from their grandparents since they landed in Greece.

Estella would have worried regardless but knowing that in all of Jacques’ 200 plus years with the two of them this was the first time they had not sent word home made it worse.

Theodora told her not to pace but it was Jacques who needed the advice. Thank god he had court today. It gave the Turkish carpet in his office at home a break. A noticeable tread pattern was forming.

Marianne glanced at her sideways, “What do you think?”

“I think that I don’t like it.” It was a careful response that answered the question without giving away any real information.

“How are you handling it?”

Estella held up the manilla folder in her hand, “By organizing files.”

Marianne took it as the gentle reprimand that it was,“Right. Sorry.”

“It’s okay. I just don’t want to talk about it.” Estella liked to come into Paris and see the people who came into Jacques office but the truth was that she didn’t quite know how to talk to the people who came into Jacques’ office. Including Marianne, who was maybe, slowly becoming a friend of some sort.

The screech of the phone in Jacques’s office saved them both from further conversation.

A pleasant assistant greeted Estella on the other end, “Bonjour, this is the solicitor’s office. We have the documents for the Babin case. We are closing soon for an extended holiday. Could someone come pick them up now?”

“Ah. One moment, please.”

In the other room, “Marianne, the solicitors are on the line. They say that the Babin documents are ready but that they need to be picked up now if Jacques wants to read them before next week.”

“Could you go get them? I have a lot to do before Monsieur Saint-Tourre returns. The office isn’t far. Only a block or so out from the Witches’ Quarter.”

Estella smiled despite the increased tempo of her heart. “If it is really not that far I suppose I can go for you.”

The Witches’ Quarter was the safest place in Paris. Protected by multitudes of misdirection spells, it was practically impossible for a human or other unwelcomed guest to make their way into the neighborhood. And depending on who they were, the individual could be met with rather unfriendly faces.

And while her family did not widely share Estella’s journey, it had been made clear that questions about her were not encouraged in the Quarter and anyone seeking her out was to be turned away. Immediately.

Witches were very protective of their young. She didn’t doubt that any one of her neighbors would turn away a stranger for enquiring too closely about a youth in the neighborhood. Not that she was a child. Estella was just shy of her twenty-first birthday.

The Quarter was also a place filled with magic of the everyday, domestic sort. Estella passed old women juggling potting supplies in the air as they refreshed their porch gardens. The cafe on the corner had a broom alone sweeping its front sidewalk just like her grandmother used to do in her kitchen.

It is a wonderful thing to be surrounded by such comfortable public domesticity. No one hides here.

Well, except for Estella but she tended to hide everywhere.

She’s rounded the corner to enter human Paris countless times with Jacques but still she stopped at the junction where the Quarter’s street crosses over into human territory. Agreeing to go alone to the solicitors felt like cocking the hammer of the gun. Stepping across the border alone felt like pulling the trigger. When and where was the bullet going to land?

She was already across the street by the time the feeling sunk in.

Too late. Gun fired.

Marianne was right, the solicitors’ office was not far from the Quarter. She could see it just down the street.

From the outside, the office was unassuming though the windows were rather dark. A lone lamp shone through the window signaling that someone was within.

The air around her thinned, her breath came out in huffs. As she approached the door the office seemed to blur out, like a different place was waiting on the other side.

Someone was breathing on her neck. Someone was opening the door for her, reaching around her body to usher her inside.

“Estella!” Marianne shouted, causing Estella to jump. She turned only to see a blur of movement as the person behind her withdrew when Marianne threw her weight at it in a tackle. Marianne’s abdomen collided with the iron railing on the stoop instead.

“Marianne! Mon Dieu, are you okay?”

“Ow. Fuck. What was that?”

“Are you all here for the Babin files? The young women looked up to find a bored man staring down at them from the doorway. He glanced at his watch, “Well?”

“Oh. Uh. Oui.”

“Bien.” He dragged the word out. “Here. Goodbye.” He handed Estella, still leaning over Marianne, the folder as he pushed his way past them, leaving for his holiday.

Marianne grabbed the folder and Estella’s hand, forcing her to run back to the Quarter’s border down the street.

“My mum called me after you left. She asked after you and when I told her where you went and that you went alone she said that I had to go get you.” What Marianne doesn’t say is the rest of her mother’s word. That she does not understand what haunts and hunts the youngest Saint-Tourre, that she lives on time borrowed by another.

She looked to Estella, waiting. For what? For her to tell her what was going on?

The Saint-Tourre family was loved by many for their services to the greater supernatural community but they counted their friends few and trusted even less with their secrets that they kept hidden in layers. What would Estella tell her if she did ask? What did her mother truly know?

“We should go back to the office.”

Marianne nodded and looped her arm through Estella’s as they walked through the Quarter. They would not whisk her away without a fight.