Triad

Chapter One

Amelia Charvez sat in the window seat of her New Orleans apartment and looked out over the courtyard below. The sounds of the water gurgling in the fountain floated up on the wind. She breathed deeply and took a sip of the red wine that her sister Emily had brought by earlier in the day.

“Lee, come in here and tell me what you think of this sauce,” Em called out to her from the kitchen.

Lee stood up and sauntered into the kitchen and tasted the sauce for the redfish her sister was making them for dinner. “More garlic and black pepper, I think,” she murmured.

“What’s going on with you?” Em asked as she tossed in another clove of garlic and ground some pepper over the pan. “You seem distracted.”

“I am. There’s something up, something on the wind. I’ve been dreaming a lot.”

“The tall, golden-haired man again?”

“Yeah.” Lee shivered at the mention of the man who’d been haunting her dreams for the last two months straight.

“You need to have a reading. This sauce is gonna have to simmer for another half an hour anyway, go down to the shop and have Tante Lou give you one. Go on. I’ve never seen you so distracted before.”

Lee started to argue but shrugged her shoulders, giving in to her sister’s suggestion.

“Why not?” She put on her sandals and ran her fingers through her hair to try to tame the curly mass. “I’ll be back,” she called out as she walked out and down the steps into the lushly appointed courtyard. She breathed deeply of the sweet greenery and pushed through the black iron gate that led out to the street.

Lee walked from her apartment on the edge of the quarter the several blocks until she emerged into the heart of the French Quarter, with its music and magic in the air. She walked two more blocks to her grandmother’s shop and went inside, feeling calmer immediately as the scent of incense hit her nose and the familiar surroundings came into view.

“Sugar! I knew you was coming in! You need a reading, yeah?” her Tante Lou called out as Lee walked through the black velvet curtains that separated the shop from where her aunt held readings in the back.

“You must be psychic,” Lee joked and grinned at her aunt and dropped a kiss to her cheek. She sat down on the small loveseat, tucking her feet beneath her bottom. Tante Lou took her hand and ran her thumbs over the palm gently, soothing her.

“You been dreaming, yeah?” she asked, eyes closed. “Sug, you are facing some big 5

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changes. A man, golden-haired and powerful, he comes. He is part of you.” Lou was quiet for a bit, breathing slowly. Lee waited patiently for her aunt to continue. “But that does not complete the circuit.”

She opened her eyes and looked at Lee. “Lee, honey, this man, he is nothing to fear. But you do have some powerful things to face, some of them dark, very dark. I can’t see a whole lot, watch yourself. Practice. You have a lot of power, you simply need to hone it, to use it. You know we’ve been feeling some rather disturbing energy lately. The energy your grandmere and I have been feeling is dark and cold. Threatening. You’ll need to watch out.”

Lee knew this, she’d had her dreams and also some conversations with her grandmere about it. New Orleans was a hotbed of magic, which made it a great place for her to be but it was a dangerous thing as well. There was so much old and powerful magic there, just waiting to be tapped into, it often attracted those who were less than responsible with it.

“So to cap up, I’m gonna meet a guy who is my other half and that’s good, but there is some supernatural shit coming down the pike?” Lee asked bluntly.

“Not your other half exactly.” Tante Lou hesitated, reaching for the proper words.

“He is part of you, you are part of him and you are meant to be with each other. But there’s more, I can’t say what. It is good though. The other, yes, bad doodoo.”

Lee laughed and kissed her aunt’s cheek and got up and went back out front. She greeted her cousin, grabbing a pack of spring rain incense and some tea and dropping money on the counter, and headed home.

* * * * *

After dinner with her sister, Lee sat in her window seat and stared out into the night. This dark power on the horizon posed a big threat to them all and she knew she had a responsibility to deal with it. Her power didn’t come for free, she knew that as an inherent witch, she had a duty to use her gifts to protect those who needed them. Problem was, she knew what she had to do and it entailed swallowing her pride and calling her mother and restarting the training she’d set aside years before. It wasn’t like she’d totally rejected her power, she did small magics from time to time, she knew she had the raw power. She needed help in using it effectively. Sighing resignedly, she picked up the phone and called home.

“Maman?”

“I’ve been waiting for you to call, cher. Tomorrow, eleven o’clock. Come out to the house, we will start. Lock your doors. Je t’aime,” her mother said, sounding imperious, and hung up.

Lee looked at the phone and with a wry smile, hung up and checked the locks and went to bed. Her mother was a no-nonsense woman and a very no-nonsense witch. The women in the Charvez family were born with magical gifts. Some, like Tante Lou and 6

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her grandmere, could read the future. Some, like her sister Emily and her cousin, could read people, their intentions, their wants, hopes, dreams. And the most powerful and rare of all were the witch dreamers.

A witch dreamer was able to work magic both awake and in her dreams. They also had a touch of clairvoyance, could see snatches of future events occurring as waking dreams or while unconscious. The witch dreamer could dream walk, she could project herself into the subconscious of others and work her magic there. There were only three living witch dreamers, it was an exceptionally rare gift. It seemed to be singular to the Charvez women—Lee, her mother and her great-aunt Elise—just one woman a generation.

Lee had accepted that but hadn’t done a whole lot to hone her power. Against her family’s wishes she’d gone off to college at Tulane, refusing to believe that she had only one path for her life. As conciliation to the family, she’d planned to go to graduate school, to get her MBA so she could help run the shop, but she’d gotten distracted. Distracted by art, something she never thought she’d have the talent for. But now, two years later, she’d built up a steady customer base and two shops on Royal Street had her paintings in the front windows. It was a good living, enough to pay her rent and allow for a nest egg, and she could still do her part in the running of the shop.

* * * * *

Lee thought about all of this on her way over to her parents’ home. Thought about her responsibility, the legacy of the Charvez magic. And she realized that she had a lot to learn, a lot to be taught and she felt a twinge of guilt for waiting so long to truly figure that out.

Still, all of that worry fell away when she caught sight of the house. The house on First Street was the house Lee grew up in, the place she and her siblings were born. Before that, her grandparents had lived there. It generally passed down from oldest daughter to oldest daughter and would be hers someday but she had no plans to kick her parents out, she quite enjoyed the privacy of her two-bedroom apartment in the French Quarter. She loved her mother but it was easier to love her from a bit of a distance.

She breathed deeply and took in the heady smells of New Orleans in the early summer. It was hot and moist and burgeoning with the heady, fecund scent of flowers and trees, grass and dirt. Nature was tangible, it hung in the air. As always, there was the underlying scent of power and death from Lafayette Cemetery just a few blocks away. No place on earth smelled as heavenly, as magical and heady, as New Orleans did.

Lee parked in the driveway and walked around the back and in through the kitchen. She called out a greeting and kissed Georgie, the woman who managed the household and had since before Lee was born. Georgie was a cook, a maid, a social 7

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planner and a member of the family. She murmured her greetings to Lee and stuffed a plum into her hand. “Eat it, girl, you getting too skinny.”

Lee smiled wryly and bit into the juicy plum and her eyes slid shut at the pleasure of the sweet juice bursting over her tongue and sliding down her throat. “Oh good lord, this is so good.”

“Off my tree. Stop by before you go, I’ll make sure you get a few jars of my jam and one of the tarts I made this morning.”

“You are too good to me,” Lee said with a grin.

“Your mama is in the front room. She’s waiting for you.”

Lee winked at Georgie and walked through after tossing the plum pit into the trash and wiping off her hands and chin. The house was cool and calm as she walked through to the front room where she saw her mother sitting in a wingback chair near the windows overlooking the front lawn and garden.

She bent and kissed her mother’s cheeks and flopped on the floor at her feet and rested her head on her mother’s knees. Her relationship with her mother had always been complicated. Marie Charvez was a powerful woman, a powerful witch, and she knew that her daughter was as well. She took a great deal of pride from the fact that she’d birthed a witch dreamer with so much potential and she’d pushed Lee hard for most of her young life. So hard that at times Lee felt more like a project than a daughter. Things had come to a head when Lee had decided to go off to college rather than pursue her training. She and her mother hadn’t spoken for nearly six months and it had been the most difficult time of her life. Slowly, with the steadfast urging of her father and Tante Elise, she and her mother had come back together with a better understanding of each other. Years later, Lee felt that the time spent apart and then struggling to meet each other as mother and daughter had made them closer than they would have been had she stayed and been obedient to her mother’s master plan.

“Good morning, Maman.”

“Good morning, cher. You look lovely today. The humidity is making your hair curl up even more than it usually does. You look wild and tousled,” her mother said quietly, with amusement in her voice. She sat up, her tone turning businesslike. “You will come to me, each day at eleven. We have a lot of work to do. I feel something in the air. I’ve been dreaming a lot. Something powerful is…” she broke off, trying to define what she meant.

“Surging. No, surfacing,” Lee said hesitantly, searching for the right words to describe what she’d been feeling.

“Yes. As always, there are currents of power here. We all recognize each other, the white path is stronger than the dark one but we keep to our places and behave, it is the order of things. Lately, the dark, it is rising, yes, surfacing is a good enough word. You must work to harness your power. I’ve spent a lot of energy over the last ten years, shielding you from things. I cannot any longer. Your power is like a spotlight, Lee, it is 8

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blinding, it attracts the eye. You are the strongest of us in generations but you must learn to handle it, to wield it. I fear that you will have to.”