Music and Malice in Hurricane Town, page 15
But Jude couldn’t speak. She instinctively tried to clutch at the Phantom, but he was no longer there. Jude staggered to keep her footing as she suddenly found herself in the mirrored parlour of Sofia’s store, where the witches performed their private spells.
Belle was there, sitting at the covered table with her fortune-telling cards spread before her.
The sudden silence and stillness made Jude’s head spin after the noisy chaos of the swamp.
“Don’t worry,” Belle said. “I’ve taken Krag’s card out.” She held it up for Jude to see before slipping it between the pages of a large spell book that rested on the table at her elbow.
“What?” Jude frowned, trying to work out what was going on.
“I only want to tell people about the good things that are going to happen in my readings,” Belle went on. She looked up at Jude and said, “Well, come on then. Take a seat.”
Jude wanted to reply that she didn’t want to take a seat and that she didn’t want to have her cards read either. But her legs were already walking over to the table and she found herself sitting down. Belle’s cat, Dazzle, leaped on to the table at the same time and sat down regally on top of the spell book, surveying the scene with eyes that were as impossibly blue and beautiful as Belle’s.
“Now, let’s find out about your love life,” Belle said.
Jude immediately thought of Leeroy’s cruel fingers and even crueller words. She shuddered. “I don’t want a love life,” she said.
“Nonsense, Jude,” Belle replied. “All girls want lovers.”
She spread three cards on the table. When she turned the first one over, it was the one card neither of them had expected because it had already been removed from the pack – Krag, the prince of the cool legba.
“That’s a neat trick,” Jude said. “How did you get it out of the book?”
Dazzle was still sitting on top of the tome and hadn’t moved the whole time.
Belle stared down at the card, her face pale. “That was no trick,” she said.
She reached out and quickly flipped over the remaining two cards to reveal two more Krags, identical to the first.
It must be some kind of joke pack, Jude thought.
Belle frowned at her. “Your love story will be a great and powerful thing,” she said. “But your soulmate has a terrible darkness inside him. One that could rip him apart and take the whole world with it.”
Jude wanted to remind Belle that she’d said she only told people about the good things in their future. But a movement in the mirror caught her eye and when she looked up she thought she caught a glimpse of a horse’s sleek, muscled body flashing past in the reflection. But that wasn’t possible. Horses had been forbidden in Baton Noir for years.
She shook her head. It must have been a trick of the shadows. All of this was just a trick.
“There’s no such thing as soulmates,” she said, looking back down at the Krag cards before her.
It wasn’t the infamous legba himself that drew her eye so much as the horde of chaos horses gathered behind him – glossy black creatures with death in their eyes and red flames snorting from their noses. The terrifying beasts that would one day bring about an end to the world.
A snorting noise made Jude look up and then she was on her feet so fast that her chair fell backwards.
The great dark horse was there, right there behind the mirror, real fire flaring from its nose, real malevolence in its eyes as it came closer and closer.
Jude wanted to run but found herself rooted to the spot.
She couldn’t move. Not even when the monster of a horse reared up on to its hind legs, not even when the glass smashed beneath its hooves and the shards flew out to pierce her face, blind her eyes and slash her skin.
Blood filled her vision and all she could hear was the clip-clop of hooves as the chaos horse forced its way through the broken mirror, into the room and right out into the world.
And there was absolutely nothing Jude could do to stop it…
Jude felt the cold before anything else. It was a soulchilling, bone-deep cold, not something she had ever felt before in the permanently warm Baton Noir. For a confused moment, she wondered whether perhaps she might be dead and lying in a grave. Surely that could be the only explanation for how she could be feeling cold inside her skin and even inside her head.
Her eyelids felt like they’d been glued shut, but she managed to peel them open and found herself lying on a lumpy couch in front of a fireplace in an unfamiliar room. As she sat up she felt Ivory stir inside her mind, the cajou queen’s disorientation mixing with Jude’s own.
Moonfleet, Ivory muttered. We’re in Moonfleet.
Jude looked around and saw that Ivory was right. She’d never seen this room before but she could tell immediately that it belonged to Moonfleet Manor because the window looked out on to the grounds where she could see the cajou tree and, beyond that, the Owlery. With relief, she realized that the chaos horse scene she’d just witnessed was nothing more than a new nightmare, given to her by Sheba’s horrid creature.
Now she was in a large drawing room with floor tiles the same absinthe shade as she’d seen out in the hallway and a fireplace made from black cajou wood. Jude saw that the faces of the damned were carved into it and she shuddered as she looked at their anguished expressions and eye-rolling suffering. She heard the Phantom’s words inside her head once again: built by madmen…
The walls were lined with portraits, and all the painted faces gazing down at her were, quite clearly, members of the Majstro family. They were all dark oil paintings, angry smudges of greys and greens and blacks, but there seemed a strange stillness to many of them as if they might move at any moment, and Jude was sure she could feel the prickle of their eyes watching her. They were all noticeably good-looking, as was common with descendants, and many had the same smoky-grey eyes as the Phantom.
As if this thought had summoned him, André himself suddenly opened the door and walked in carrying some clothes.
“Oh, good,” he said, when he saw she was awake. “How are—”
“Where’s Sharkey?” Jude asked, scrambling to her feet.
Her dungarees were still damp from the bayou, which explained how cold she was, and also why she smelled like fish and swamp slime. She felt dirty, tired and small.
“He’s at St Germaine’s hospital on Praline Street,” the Phantom replied. “He will be fine,” he added quickly. “But his leg is being treated. He will need to stay there for a day or two.” He gestured at her vaguely and said, “I am sorry about the wet clothes. Paris is not here. And I didn’t like to presume…” He trailed off, a note of uncertainty in his voice that Jude hadn’t heard before.
“It’s fine,” Jude said quickly. “Even if she had been here, the last thing I want is to be undressed by your girlfriend.”
“Paris would be most put out to hear herself referred to as such.”
“Your whore, then.” Jude surprised even herself with the note of venom in her voice. But she’d just recalled the nightmare she had seen Sheba’s creature drag from the Phantom and anger bubbled up in her now. She knew that he hadn’t been truthful with her.
“There are things we must discuss,” the Phantom said with a sigh. He put the pile of clothing down on a nearby chair. “But first you should change.”
“Isn’t there somewhere I can shower first?” Jude asked. She didn’t think she’d ever felt dirtier in her life and a mansion like Moonfleet must have dozens of bathrooms.
The Phantom paused, then said, “I regret not.”
Jude crossed her arms over her chest. “Why?” she said.
“The upper floors of the house are … not accessible at the moment,” he said.
And then Jude heard it, the faint sound of sobs coming from somewhere beyond the room.
“That girl’s on the stairs again, isn’t she?”
“She is no girl,” the Phantom replied.
Jude walked across the room and pushed past the Phantom to stick her head out into a gloomy corridor. It stretched away before her, sconces flickering on the walls, casting a dancing light over the dark green tiles. The sound of sobbing was clearer now and this time Jude realized that there were words too – the same phrase, repeated over and over again.
“Why did I do it?
Why? Why?
Why did I do it?
Why did I do it?”
“It certainly sounds like a girl to me,” Jude said, looking at the Phantom.
“It is my sister,” he said. “Violetta.”
He beckoned her back into the portrait room, drawing the door closed behind him.
“Violetta!” Jude repeated. “But Violetta Majstro is the one who tortured those servants in the attic. She was lynched.”
She couldn’t help glancing towards the window at the dark cajou tree in the grounds outside, its crooked branches spread out against the afternoon sun, like spindly spider limbs.
“Yes,” the Phantom agreed. “Violetta died and my father, in his madness, decided to chop down the cajou tree from which she’d hung. A new tree appeared in its place overnight. It refuses to be removed, you see. But the wood from the original tree was made into the double staircase you saw in the hall. And Violetta’s spirit is often there on the stairs. On a bad day, she will not let anyone pass. Today is a bad day. That is why I cannot offer you a shower. A change of clothes will have to suffice. I’ll be just outside the door when you’re done.”
And with that he turned and walked out, closing the door behind him.
Is it really Violetta on the staircase? she asked Ivory.
I believe so, the cajou queen replied. A wild and wretched spirit, by all accounts.
Jude shuddered and was about to pick up the clothes when a painting caught her eye and frowning she went to take a closer look. It was of a young man and two girls, standing on the lawn outside Moonfleet. Jude could see from the dates that it had been painted sixty years ago.
The painted girl staring from the canvas was no more than fifteen years old, pale with light blond hair tumbling over her shoulders. She had a delicate beauty, with her angular face and rosebud lips. Beside her stood a younger dark-haired girl of perhaps six or seven. And behind them, one hand placed on each of their shoulders, was a man. He was tall and slender, dark-haired and handsome. And even though he wasn’t wearing a mask Jude immediately recognized the grey eyes gazing out at her from the canvas. Her breath caught in her throat.
“Is that…?”
André, Ivory replied. Before he became the Phantom.
Jude stared at the painted figure. Like all the other Majstros, he was incredibly good-looking and she wondered what could have happened to his face to make him want to cover it up.
Do you know? she asked Ivory.
Perhaps he annoyed the wrong person in a fight, the cajou queen suggested.
Jude looked back at the painting. There was something fierce and protective about the way he had a hand on each of the girls’ shoulders – a sense that he was holding on to them tightly, as if fearing they’d be taken from him. And there was something about the look in his eyes too, a sort of resignation and knowing. An acceptance of something dreadful.
Jude’s eyes went to the brass nameplate and she saw that the two girls were also Majstros. She’d never heard of the younger one, Enid. Perhaps she’d moved away or died years ago. But the second sister she knew very well – all of Baton Noir did. It was Violetta Majstro, the evil perpetrator of the horrors in the attic.
Seasoned police officers had apparently had nervous breakdowns as a result of what they’d seen all those years ago. Terribly mutilated bodies, ravaged by cajou acid burns, flies’ eggs laid in open wounds, maggots eating people while they were still alive. There was one woman who was said to have had all her arms and legs removed and gold coins sewn behind her eyelids. And a man was found chained to the wall with a stick protruding from a hole that had been drilled into his skull. The stick, they said, had been used to ‘stir his brains’.
A warped and evil bunch, the Majstros, Ivory said, as if reading Jude’s thoughts. And no wonder. They’re descended from Krag, after all. Their wickedness manifests itself in different ways, but they’re all touched by evil, or warped by the madness of the moon eventually. Take Julian Majstro over there.
Jude turned away from the group portrait to look at another nearby painting of a dark-haired man in a grey silk suit.
Blackmailer. Swindler. Slave-trader, Ivory said.
Jude recalled Ivory’s claim that the table in the Ghost Room was laid for Julian. She saw again that shadowy twitch of a robe, the glimpse of bony ankle…
And Dorian Majstro, Ivory went on, that handsome man in the hat. Pirate. Thief. Gambler. Next to him is Vincent Majstro. Smuggler. Arsonist. Merchant of flesh—
“That’s enough!” Jude whispered. “I don’t want to hear any more.”
But I haven’t told you about the best one yet, Ivory protested. Over in the corner—
“Would you shut up?” Jude hissed. “I don’t care about the Majstros.”
She snatched up the clothes. All the painted eyes in the room seemed to stare at her and she thought she saw Violetta actually blink.
Jude hastily turned away and dressed as quickly as possible, trying to ignore the prickling sensation of all those eyes fixed on her. As she slipped out of her dungarees, a small object fell from the inside pocket, landing with a clatter on the floor. Jude bent to pick it up.
“Oh my gods,” she said, holding it to the light. “It’s a bone flower.”
Made entirely out of one smooth piece of bone, the white flower was cool to her touch. Extremely unusual, Jude had never seen one in real life but knew they were said to grow in Sheba’s shadow.
She suddenly remembered how Ivory had taken control of her body for those moments in the water, and how she’d felt her grab on to something on the riverbed and pull it up.
“Why did you do that?” she said to Ivory. “It wasn’t exactly the most convenient time for picking flowers.”
I don’t know, it was instinct, Ivory replied. I was just trying to grab hold of anything that might be useful.
Jude wasn’t at all sure she believed her. The words sounded just a little bit too rehearsed.
Really, Ivory said, obviously sensing her doubt. I just grabbed hold of whatever was in reach. You may as well keep it. It’s pretty.
“It’s valuable,” Jude replied. “Bone flowers fetch handsome prices for cajou spells. Perhaps Sofia will buy it from me.”
She slipped it into her pocket for safekeeping. The clothes were clearly Paris’s, a pair of fitted black jeans and a beautiful white silk shirt. Jude felt ridiculous in them. She was not as well fed as Paris and had never had her curves to begin with. The jeans seemed to hang off her hips, making her feel bony and scrawny, and the white shirt became smudged and dirty the moment she put it on. These were a beautiful person’s clothes and Jude felt her own plainness intensely, like she was a child playing at dress-up.
It doesn’t matter what you look like, Ivory said. You shouldn’t be worrying about whether André will think you attractive.
I’m not! Jude said, her face going hot.
You cannot trust the Phantom, Ivory insisted. He is dangerous.
He saved my life, Jude replied. And he said pretty much the same thing about you remember.
Her head ached and she felt suddenly tired. How she longed to be back on her little balcony, sipping a cold mint julep and playing jazz into the evening. But that wasn’t an option so she called for the Phantom to come in.
The door immediately opened and he stepped into the room. It was impossible to read his expression behind his mask but Jude was sure she must make the most ludicrous picture in Paris’s clothes, like a pig dressed in silks, and she lifted her chin slightly to compensate. At the same time, she couldn’t help recalling Ivory’s words from a moment before. The cajou queen was right. What the heck did her appearance count for at a time like this? It certainly shouldn’t matter one jot what the Phantom of Moonfleet thought of her.
“I saw your nightmare,” Jude said, determined to get herself on track. “Back at the bayou.”
She recalled it now, the image she’d glimpsed inside the bubble. It was one she knew well, one that haunted her own dreams. In fact, it was one of her nightmares.
There’d been the wooden pier, the candles flickering in jam jars hung from swamp trees, the birthday balloons, and Jude herself, standing alone in her party dress, looking around desperately, screaming for help that was never going to arrive in time as her little brother was eaten by alligators in the water below.
“Yes,” the Phantom said slowly. “I thought you might have.”
“Well?” Jude said. “What’s the explanation? You weren’t there. So how do you have one of my nightmares?”
“I was there,” the Phantom replied. “Although you didn’t see me.”
“All right,” Jude said stiffly. “Why were you there?”
The Phantom crossed his arms and looked down towards his boots. “Can it be that you don’t already know?” he asked.
“Know what?”
You should have let me finish, Ivory whispered.
Almost against her will, Jude felt her eyes slide over to the portrait in the corner of the room. A deep flush of heat rushed up her face. She recognized the man immediately, how could she not when his face was branded on to her soul? She heard his voice inside her head once again:
Well, well. Is it somebody’s birthday?
And then Ivory was laughing softly, each giggle like a nail driven into Jude’s skull.
Theodore Majstro, the cajou queen laughed. Drunkard. Drug addict… And child-murderer.
“My father killed your brother,” the Phantom said. “To punish your father for an unpaid debt. By the time I got there it was too late to stop him. But it is a scene that has haunted me ever since. The sound that those gators made … well, I expect you still hear it too.”
“But … but Pa always said it was some warlock from outside the city,” Jude began. “Why would he lie?”
