“At the party?” Lisette clearly knew the details. Or at least, she knew what had been printed in the paper. No one knew what Severine knew, and she wondered just what that meant for her in the coming days, with the goal she hadn’t been able to even say in her own mind yet.
“Stop!” Meline ordered her friend. “That’s her family.”
Severine swallowed thickly and then reached out, taking the cup of coffee she’d been sipping from the mantle. She adjusted herself on the stool, grateful her dress was black to match her feelings. She had never stopped mourning her family. How could she when her parents were dead, and she had been bundled away from everything? There was nothing for her to move on to in the convent. When adding in how dissatisfactory things had been for her, it was as though she had to mourn both what had been and what she’d always wanted at the same time.
“It’s all right,” Severine said. “I’ve told the story every time a new acolyte appeared at the convent. There had been a party the night they died. I had turned twelve years old, and Father had just bought that big house in the country. He was so proud of it.”
Severine could see him, throwing the doors open, wanting her to bounce on her toes or rush in and fly up the stairs. She had disappointed him when she’d slowly walked in, closed her eyes, and breathed the place in. Her mother had laughed and demanded a drink as Father squatted next to her.
“What do you think, Sevie?”
She’d flinched at the name and then whispered low, “It’s so big.”
“Bigger than the last place,” Father agreed, picking her up and throwing her on his back. “Bigger than most places. The big house.” He had laughed and the name had stuck.
It had been ridiculous. It was ridiculous. It was a few hours travel into the countryside with acre upon acre around it. The lane was lined with cypress trees and ancient oaks and there was a lake. The house was made of stone and gray brick. The floors were black walnut and shone with so much polish, she could see her dark eyes in the reflection. Paintings on the walls were from modern geniuses and grand masters. There was a room for everything, and Severine had gotten lost so many times, her mother started sending a maid to come and get her in the morning to walk her to breakfast.
“Father had bought it off some brilliant early businessman.” Severine laughed, and she heard the bitter tone to it. “Those American royalty types who’d gone mad and lost everything. He loved that even more, I think, than building his own place.”
“Oh,” Meline said and her blush was dark.
“Mean, wasn’t it?” Severine said, and she didn’t apologize for it. “He was murdered, after all.”
Lisette gaped and then asked, “Do you think that’s who killed him? The people who loved that house before?”
Severine shook her head. It wasn’t that at all. It was the feeling behind her father’s triumph. He loved that house more because someone else wanted it. He was murdered because that was the kind of man he’d been.
She just went on. “Father had invited everyone he knew. His business partners and associates, my brother, my uncles and their wives. I was surprised he hadn’t invited my mother’s first husband just to show that Father had done better than he.”
“It’s awful they never learned who did it,” Meline said, unable to help herself. Or she was trying to steer the conversation away from Severine’s description of her own father.
Lisette eyed Severine and her gaze was bluntly honest. For once, however, she held her tongue.
So Severine spoke for her. “The most likely killer is, of course, one of the people who were there.”
“You mean like the servants?” Meline asked. That had been the theory thrown around and Severine was sure they had been treated quite cruelly as answers were sought.
Severine had rolled her eyes at the idiocy then, and her opinion hadn’t changed.
“Dumb idea,” Lisette muttered. “Why would some poor Joe who polished the silver murder rich folks like that?”
“They wouldn’t,” Severine answered. “They were all new. They didn’t have time to grow an abiding hatred for good reason. My parents were killed by someone they knew. A person they had invited to the house. Anything else is just foolish.”
“Why did you come back, cher?” Meline asked, the conversation overtaking her desire to leave Severine alone. Her tone was gentle and Severine could guess that Meline would have taken the fortune Father had gathered—probably stole and cheated for—and escaped to where the DuNoir name didn’t carry so much weight.
“I couldn’t stay in a convent forever.” It was a lie, or at least only half the truth and both Lisette and Meline knew it.
“The world is a whole lot bigger than New Orleans. You’re rich, aren’t you?” Lisette said, shaking her head. “You could go anywhere.”
“I could,” Severine admitted. She examined herself in the mirror. It was a relief to turn from her thoughts and face herself instead. She didn’t look bright or really all that young. She did, however, qualify as a ‘thing.’
What would her parents have thought, she wondered, of their daughter now? Would they have been horrified to see the wraith she had become? But that was ridiculous really. She’d always been ghostly. Their deaths had only made it seem natural instead of wrong.
Ghostly wasn’t entirely fair, either. Earlier in the day, Meline had brought a friend of hers over to turn the long straight hair that reached past Severine’s waist into deliberate lengths. Locks of it hovered at her shoulders, and the rest nearly reached her waist. With the loss of the weight of her hair, it had become just barely lively. It curled at her cheeks and at the ends. With the smallest bit of hair oil and long minutes brushing, her hair had the look of a raven’s wing. It was
