In this dress, her hair provided a little more cover given that the dress dipped low in the front. It started with spindly straps at her shoulders and it clung to her curves, showing off every aspect of her body. She might as well have been naked, she thought. That was the convent talking, she told herself. There was nothing wrong with this dress. Her curves simply didn’t lend themselves to the straight lines of the day’s fashion. It was no more revealing than the soft pink and blue ones she’d tried in the shop where Meline worked.
“You were right about her hair,” Lisette told Meline. “She’s striking, isn’t she? With that pale skin and black hair. She’ll gather all eyes and all of us bright things will seem like obnoxiously colorful flowers next to her.”
“Or,” Severine offered, “I’ll seem like the dead come to life.”
Lisette laughed, but Severine hadn’t been joking. She didn’t care about setting a new fashion trend. She cared about being seen. No longer did she intend to be the silent specter. It was time to say it, if only to herself. She took a deep breath and told herself she needed to be noticed so she could find her parents’ killer.
Chapter Three
They worked on her wardrobe late into the evening and then Severine walked both of the girls to the streetcar with her big dog. She dug her fingers into the fur of her massive Anubis as the two walked back to the French Quarter mansion. She wasn’t afraid when Anubis was with her, and he always was. He was her silent shadow and had been for the last two years. As a Neapolitan Mastiff, he was a good one-hundred and thirty pounds of sleek muscle covered in shining black fur. His jowls hung low, and his gaze fixated on Severine. In the convent, he’d been her constant companion, and she had every intention of continuing on.
Her route took her past one of the old cemeteries, and Severine couldn’t help but turn toward it. There was a DuNoir tomb where her parents had been laid to rest. She made her way through the rows of the dead, feeling as though she was following one of those specters to their crypt.
She had seen it in her dreams time and again and now standing before it, she wondered if she should be afraid. There was nothing outwardly intimidating to the squat, white marble tomb, aside from the usual sense of mortality that comes with visiting any cemetery. She knew that Flora would have said that Severine was morbid to be at the tomb in the dark, but she didn’t feel morbid. Or, for that matter, afraid. She needed to see them again, even if it was through stone.
“It’s time,” Severine told Anubis.
He huffed at the sound of her voice, and his ears pricked forward.
There was nothing to say to her parents, she thought. Neither her parents nor her more distant relatives. The living DuNoir family felt as though it had come down to just Severine given how abandoned she’d felt at the nunnery. She had, however, a half-dozen cousins, two brothers, and her mother’s side of the family with a grandmother, a half-brother, and two female cousins in Oregon. The dead relatives were in front of her, and she wouldn’t be surprised if they found her as wanting as the living.
Her wardrobe had been finished. Her bags, such as they were, were packed. Nearly all of it had been purchased on the journey back home. She could go to the big house tomorrow. She could call on Mr. Brand as she’d promised and then begin the journey.
She fiddled with her hair, unused to the feel of it flying around her face. Meline had suggested the look, and Severine would embrace it—even if it drove her mad. So she tucked it behind her ear, then out again, as she considered the last few days.
What do you like to do?
Lisette’s question was bothering Severine almost more than the death of her parents, perhaps because she was still trying to settle into her new life. What do you like to do? Severine hadn’t had an answer. She had no idea. What did she like to do? Had she liked things when she was a child? What had she done for fun?
Severine remembered her dance lessons. She had loved those. She had loved her black horse. What had happened to him? She’d only had him for a few weeks when her parents died, but she had loved him desperately when he had been hers.
Slowly Severine turned away from her dead. They had lived and died and had their chances, and Severine wasn’t sure what she’d do with hers now that she had it, but she knew one thing—she would find out what she liked.
What a ridiculous goal to set. Find things I like to do. Severine huffed softly as she returned to the home. It was dark and there was but one flickering light burning as she walked up the steps. This time, however, her hair didn’t stand on end as she walked through the doors.
She let Anubis go before her and found the puppies sleeping in their basket. Since they were Neopolitan Mastiffs as well, they weren’t tiny little things, but they were still young having been just old enough to leave their mother as Severine was leaving Paris. Their sweet black bodies were curled into together and Anubis huffed down on them in greeting. Not knowing how often she’d be gone from the house, she had wanted Anubis to have companions. And the puppies were helping fill an empty place inside her as well.
Severine’s long black hair, her oversized black dog, her dark colors when it was the age of bright things, and her goal to find a killer. At least, who she was
