How to Claim an Undead Soul (Beginner's Guide to Necromancy #2)(8)
A plan had taken shape while I was trying to keep my head attached to my body with moderate success, and I was eager to set it in motion. But first, I had one more call to make.
“Odette?”
Odette Lecomte was a seer. The desperate, the hungry, and the curious traveled from all over the world to beg for an audience with her. Clients paid in favors and promises, gold and jewels, and other more precious things to sift their futures through her gnarled fingers. Those glimpses into other lives, other minds, made her a veritable encyclopedia of knowledge both common and forbidden. And she had been one of Maud’s best friends. That made her as good as an honorary aunt to me.
“Ma coccinelle.” My ladybug. The endearment, shouted over the crash of waves, was better than a hug. “You called for an update, yes?”
“Yes.” I crossed my fingers tight. “Have you found anything?”
“Nothing good, bébé, nothing good. Let me get in the house, and I will tell you what I’ve found.” The steady roar quit like a pulled cord on a noise machine. “There. That’s better.” Her breath caught before she groaned, a long exhalation, and I imagined her sinking into her plush couch. “I spoke with Dame Marchand.”
Dame Severine Marchand, my maternal grandmother, whose name Maud had forbidden spoken in her presence, whose existence had been all but scrubbed from my memories, until it occurred to me she might have answers about my absent father and Odette a way to get them. “And?”
“The Marchands have disowned Evangeline and wiped her from the family histories. Her own mother attempted to pretend she had no idea who Evie was until I reminded her with whom she was speaking.”
Evangeline Marchand, my mother, died when I was five. I don’t recall much about her. The way she smelled when she peppered my face with kisses, the melodious current of her voice when she sang to me in her native tongue, those things were lost to time. Thanks to Maud’s photo albums, I know I’m the spitting image of her. We share the same thin lips, high cheekbones, and sharp chin. Whoever my father was, his only contributions had been the wave in my dark hair and the color of my eyes.
“Oh.” Mom hadn’t been close to her people, but disownment within the Society was an irrevocable severance of the bloodline. There was no going back even if a reconciliation was reached. I tried to laugh it off, but the words got hung in my throat. “That would explain why they skipped her funeral.”
This also shed light on why my grandparents had never come to claim me. Maud would have fought them tooth and nail to keep me, but she had never had to sharpen her claws. I had no memory of them, I wasn’t sure I had ever met them, but none of that mattered now. As far as they were concerned, I was no one and nothing to them.
“Evie’s relationship with her mother and stepfather was always strained, she never explained why, but I had no idea such extreme measures had been taken. Though this explains why she sought asylum with Maud. Without her family name, no other Society family would have acknowledged her, let alone aided her.”
I sank into one of the rockers bracketing the back door before my legs gave out on me. “Do you think Maud knew?”
“Maud wouldn’t have cared if she had known. She loved your mother fiercely. She wouldn’t have allowed the Society—or anyone else—to dictate the rules of hospitality in her own home.”
Hearing that allowed me to relax enough to push off the planks with my toes. Maud was to Mom what Amelie was to me. “Do you have any idea when they disowned her?”
She hesitated long enough I could tell the answer pained her, and that it would hurt me too. “The day you were born.”
I shut my eyes and focused on my breathing until I was certain I could hold myself together for Odette. “Do they know who…?”
“Dame Marchand swore Evie kept his identity a secret.” Odette paused for a moment. “For what it’s worth, I believe her. The risk of scandal would have been too high for her mother to ignore. I imagine they would have given her the choice of her family or you.”
So much for holding myself together. Fat tears rolled down my cheeks. “And she chose me.”
“She was your maman.” Her voice wavered. “Of course she did. Every time. Always.”
“I appreciate your help,” I said weakly, eager to sever our connection and lick my wounds in private. “I’ll drive out to see you soon.”
“You know where to find me. Je t’adore.”
“Love you too.”
I ended the call and sat there for a while, listening to the night birds and the buzz of insects.
“Things can never be simple,” I complained to the old house. “A phone call to clear up my paternity was asking for too much.” I ground the heels of my palms in my eyes. “Someone must know or at least suspect his identity. We just have to find them.”
The porch light flared in encouragement.
Hinges groaned as Woolly opened the back door, urging me in away from the mosquitoes, and I heeded her advice. After a hot shower to loosen my twinging muscles, I set the plan Taz helped shake loose into motion by dressing in my nicest jeans and least holey top.
I was going to beg Cricket to give me my job back.
I might fail just as hard on this front as I had on all the others, but I needed an outlet, and being a Haint meant something to me. Plus, knocking around the house alone for a week had me bored out of my gourd.