Haunted Love

Thalia Lanoue dreamed a familiar dream, but the dream’s familiarity did not stop fear from consuming her.

The world was on fire with storms of magic and the light spectacular. The roar of winds, of hurricanes and maelstroms tore at Thalia’s body, sending a soul-deep chill down into her marrow. Standing in the void at the end of worlds, those same winds churned through all five of her senses, punctuated by her heartbeat and an undercurrent of guttural and yet somehow melodic chanting.

“Please!” the sound of the voice that carried over the current was as familiar to Thalia as the dream, and her fear mounted.

It was him. He was trapped in the circle, and he was screaming, calling out to her for help.

Over his plead, another figure chanted. The words within the chant had no meaning. Their language might as well have been that of demons or dragons, or creatures beyond the ken of even her wildest fantasies. Yet she knew the words and their rhythmic melody. She knew their meaning, knew their intention, clearly as if the sounds of them had been tattooed into her own skin.

“Tethered. Bound. Owned. For life eternal.”

Outside of the circle, the chanter stood, arms raised, the fires of magic answering his command and yet their light did not reveal his features. Inside, cast in shadow and darkness amid the brilliance of colours and light of magic, the owner of that most precious voice was crouched in fear and agony. With his arms over his head, Thalia couldn’t see his face. She never did, but that didn’t stop her from hearing his plead.

“Thalia, please! Please, help me!”

The second line of the caster’s spell rose up and drown out his call:

“Tethered. Bound. Commanded. For unyielding time.”

The noise and chaos pressed down on Thalia like a Zero-Gravity carnival ride. She couldn’t move. Despite her best efforts, the weight of the chaos pulled her down, even while that otherworldly chant rose up and out of the standing figure.

The magic tore through the darkness, and Thalia knew that her time was running out.

The final piece of the spell locked in place as the caster’s voice roared in triumph:

“Tethered. Bound. Stripped of power, life, and soul.

Mine to do with as I will.

My descendants’ to do with as they will...”

“Thalia!” Desperation. Pain.

Thalia’s fear on the man’s behalf was shattering and cold. She ran through the thick air and sand of dreams like the very world weighed her down and the distance would never close between them. Time was running out. Time had never been in her favour. She would not get to the circle before the spell was completed. And then it would be too late.

Wild ribbons of magic tangled like flames around the dark form that crouched in the circle. Silken threads of craft and spellwork twisted and pulled at the body lying in their grasp. The figure sobbed in pain and confusion. It screamed in anger. It struggled and heaved and surged. But the spell had taken hold. The magic had been threaded through him. The circle had been drawn. The figure in the center was everything and anything that the guttural, cacophonic melody of the chanter decreed.

Tethered. Bound. Helpless.

Tethered. Bound. Undone.

Tethered. Bound. Your body is gone. Your spirit is gone. Your power is my own.

To do with as I will…

And it was done.

A hot gust of wind pushed Thalia back as the spellcraft exploded into full manifestation. Her slow trudge forward came to a stuttering halt, even as her heart and soul screamed for her to move. But it was too late. The circle closed, the magic rose up in a funnel of flame and lightning, roaring like a hurricane in the haze of power, and the man who called out to her was swallowed by it.

In the heat of the magic’s fire, in the surging of the raging storm, in the throes of pain and anguish, Thalia lifted her arms to hide her face from the light and power radiating from the circle and the victim, and the caster. She turned away, hating herself for refusing to bear witness to whatever might next transpire.

And she was met with cold and darkness and a starless void.

The calm and quiet was almost deafening compared to the raging maelstrom left behind, but even the dreadful relief of that silence was nothing compared to him.

Gentle hands caressed her face, their owner unseeable in the darkness, but she knew him. She recognized the spirit that had been bound within the circle. Her relief at his presence consumed her.

“You’re here,” she barely breathed the words as she took eagerly to his embrace. His fingers tangled in her hair in a desperation that matched her own. His lips found hers in the dark. Soft kisses. Pleading, desperate kisses. A voice turned hoarse and ragged by relentless screams now spoke her name in a whispering caress.

“Thalia.” A gentle echo in an otherwise silent world. The sound of something rippling through the vast eternity of nothing. His voice sent flames of another kind through her body, warmed her, melted her from the inside out. “Come back to me. Please. Save me.”

A hundred times before, she’d dreamed this same dream. A hundred times before, she promised she would try. A hundred times, and now, knowing what would happen, regardless of what she said or did, Thalia could only hold on to that figure in the darkness, and let those desperate kisses consume her. Skin against skin, breath joining breath, he pulled her down, pulled her under.

“Can you feel it, chèrie? Things are changing now.” His mouth covered hers and his lips fluttered over her own as he murmured, “It’s almost time.”

Could he see her in the dream? Is that how he was able to land kisses on each sensitive spot along the curve of her neck without missing a single point? Is that why he could feel out the curves of her body so easily? Was that how he could lift her hips to his and turn her world upside down with a gentle stroking caress?

She was ready for him. Her body hummed quietly with desire as he pulled her closer. Kisses on her neck; his body settled between her legs, in the abstract and hazy nature of dreams, each sensation magnified her pleasure and her desire. Any moment now and he’d take her for his own…

“What’s my name, chèrie?” The question was unexpected. It was not usually part of the dream. She pulled back, confused, even as his kisses fell against her shoulders and collar bone.

A sound reverberated in the darkness that was not a part of the dream. Thalia turned her head in its direction.

“Stay,” a gentle hand guided her back, a desperate plea behind the soft command. “It doesn’t matter. Let it go.”

She turned back, kissing that figure hidden in the darkness and knowing that their time was short, and that regardless of what happened next, the dream would soon start over with fire and wind and magical storms.

His mouth settled next to her ear. “It’s time. Save me. Give me my name.”

She knew his name. It was on the tip of her tongue, in the taste of his kiss, in the sensation of his hands on her body.

The sound got louder, became familiar, repetitive, and irritating. It pulled her away, pulled her out of the sightless void.

“Thalia…" His tone became more pressing. Hands interlocked with hers. “My name?” His mouth covered her own. One last kiss as she wrapped her legs around his waist and invited him to take her.

“Your name?” she whispered the question, her lips curving into a smile against his own, “My dearest love, your name is—”

The phone blared, the dream shattered, and Thalia awoke to a moonlit night and empty arms.

The cellphone’s vibration and its shrill ringtone cut through a hot but otherwise quiet night.

Thalia stared up at her ceiling. Her heart hammered, both in the shock of her waking and in the throes of a passion yet unfulfilled.

Shit. What had his name been?

She put her hands to her face and breathed deeply, grasping at the straws of her dream. It was the furthest she had ever dreamt. Usually, they shared a few kisses in the dark before the chaos of is sacrifice started anew. This time, he wanted a name, and she had known it... What the hell was it?

The cellphone wailed incessantly.

It was no use. The dream had ended, and her knowledge of the man and the name he so desperately desired had gone along with its unsatisfying conclusion.

Thalia groaned in frustration and rolled toward her bedside table. The screen of her phone illuminated her bedroom with a white-blue glow that was almost offensive when compared to the darkness of the void and the startling colours of the magic of her dreams.

“Do you have any idea what time it is in California right now?” Thalia hoped that her voice sounded groggy and irritable rather than horny and irritable. As poor as her older sister’s timing was, Thalia couldn’t bear the thought of Sylvia thinking she’d called during some torrid midnight tryst.

“Sorry, sugar, I hate calling you like this.” Sylvia’s voice was oddly thick and her usually light Cajun lilt was a little more prominent. The statement was followed by the sound of a slightly wet sniff and a hiccup.

“What’s the matter?” Thalia pushed herself up in bed and pushed her hair out of her face. It was hot for early summer, and humid, and that didn’t take into account Thalia’s rather hot dream. Now that she was awake, her body felt sticky with sweat, and her blankets and sheets were unbearable.

“It’s mom, honey.” There were sounds filtering across the line from Sylvia’s end of the phone. Clinical, cold, and not unexpected. A hospital ward, and Thalia knew what Sylvia was going to say even before her sister uttered the words: “She’s finally let go.”

The news didn’t make Thalia feel any less of the heat that stifled the bedroom, but it did fill her with a sense of cold dread.

The witch is dead. Long live the witch.

The words tolled unbidden in the back of Thalia’s mind, in a voice that was not entirely her own and yet did not entirely belong to the man who had occupied her dreams.

Everything is different now, Thalia.

That explained it. The difference in the dream, his asking for a name. The magic of her craft had known that the Lanoue mantle had been passed to her, and in her dream, that knowledge had manifested as a request for a new identity. The confirmation of her power by an act of power that countered that other nameless figure and his awful magic.

Tethered. Bound. Owned…

Unless the spell was meant to capture her, and the lover in her dreams had been bait for a trap. God, how had she never thought of that before?

“Thalia, honey, did you hear me?” Sylvia’s voice was frail and brittle now.

“Sorry, I heard.” Thalia swung her legs out of bed and leaned over her knees. Her free hand pressed against one eye. She focused on the sensation. Let the slight discomfort bring her back to the present. “When did she go? Just now?”

“Ten minutes ago? It was peaceful. In her sleep.” Sylvia breathed down the line, a shaky breath acting as a dam against tears.

Thalia didn’t know what to say. She waited to feel something, anything, but nothing seemed to come up. When her father had died, her grief had been immediate and consuming. The knowledge of his loss had sent Thalia into a tailspin of inconsolable mourning. Granted, she had been twelve, not twenty-three, but the difference between that moment and this one was jarring. Her mother was dead, and yet Thalia felt no heartache, no sorrow, and no feeling of loss.

She supposed that was because she was the youngest of her mother’s children. Thalia was the seventh daughter her mother had given birth to, and although it had been a calculated choice on her mother’s part to have seven children, Lani Lanoue was not the most nurturing or doting of mother figures. To be honest, it was Sylvie, eight years her elder, who felt more like Thalia’s mother than the Lanoue matriarch ever had.

So, try as Thalia might, she could only stare at the old carpet covering her bedroom floor and take in the information that her mother was dead with the same passing interest and level of regret as finding out a favouite TV show character had been written out of the next season’s script.

“I’m sorry, Sylvie,” she said at length. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Don’t worry, sugar. I know you and mom weren’t close. You two never did reconcile after you left for school. And I know it got worse when you transferred from UIC to UCLA instead of coming home when she got sick. And I know it’s a lot to spring on you right now with the end of the semester and everything. I just wanted to tell you. LA is so far away from New Orleans, and I know that’s mostly by choice on your part, but…” she stopped abruptly, catching herself in the ever-repeating cycle of “I know.” A nervous tick developed by a slightly psychic witch with high levels of empathy. A deep breath, and then Sylvie started again from a new angle:

“Listen, Thalia, it’s late there, and it’s really too soon after hearing about all of this for you to be trying to sort out plans, but I don’t want you to tailspin with over-thinking. So, I just want to say that Christie, Stella, and I have already agreed: we’re all going to pitch in to help you with any moving costs you need covered to get back to Louisiana.”

Thalia frowned, blinked, and frowned harder. She pulled her phone away from her ear to look at it, unsure if she was hearing things, or if her sister had lost her marbles. Or both. Both seemed likely.

“Huh?”

Sylvie sighed. “You’re not going to like it, Thalia, but half way across the country or not, family tradition says that everything belongs to you, now. Mom’s will is going to be read out officially sometime next week, but we’ve all seen copies already. It’s the same old thing: The seventh daughter gets all the assets. Older daughters get some jewelry and some other bits, but you get the house, the property, its contents—”

“Syl, stop.” Thalia stood and picked her way across her bedroom, using her phone as a make-shift flashlight until she could get to the light switch. She needed to move and feel like she was getting away from what her sister was trying to explain: a destiny that had loomed over Thalia her entire damned life.

“Just stop, Sylvie. I know what the family tradition is. I was brought up with it, the same as you. And the will. I’ve seen that, too. Mom showed it to me in a last ditch effort to keep me from moving to California. But I’m coming up to my last term before I graduate. I’m in a really good position to get some entry-level work here right out of college. Good paying work, Sylvie. And no one in California has any weird expectations about me getting married or having kids. I mean, damn, Sylvie, I could tell people that I’m never going to have kids and half of the population here will commend me for living an eco-friendly life.”

“I know that you like it there, Thalia, and I’m really sorry that things are the way they are, but we’re creatures of magic, honey, and we’re bound by traditions like these.”

Thalia looked around her small room of her small rented house, knowing that for as dingy as it might be to some of her peers at the university, it was worlds better than the swampy, out-dated traditions that made up the Lanoue Manor and the destinies of its occupants.

“It’s really easy for you to say that when you’re not the one being unwillingly wrangled, Sylvie. You’re sister number three. Mom never stopped you when you said you wanted to go out of state for school. She never tried to sit down with you to pick out your future husband from the high school yearbook. I know that mom was always rambling on about how the tradition extended so much further than the house, but one falling down building is not enough incentive to throw away every other opportunity of my life.”

Thalia took a breath. Years of resentment and anxiety felt suddenly purged from her body, and she felt lighter, and more free. “I’m not moving back to Louisiana, Sylvie. I know it’s expected, and I know the others are going to be mad, but I just can’t bring myself to do it. I’m sorry.”

There was silence on the other end of the line.

“I’ll come for the funeral, if you guys really want me there, but I’m not going to stay.”

More silence. Thalia was almost tempted to check the screen to see if she was still connected. “Did I lose you?”

“No, no. Just,” Sylvia drew a long breath. “Look, I get you’re not keen on the destiny component of our family, and I understand why. I really, really do, even if you don’t think I do. But flat out refusal just feels like it’s bad juju waiting to happen.”

Thalia considered this. Sylvia’s craft was linked to divination and prophecy. If anyone in the family saw and understood the kind of life that Thalia was being asked to give up in exchange for becoming the Lanoue witch, it would be Sylvie. On the same token, Sylvie’s craft meant she saw bad juju the way other people saw their own reflections in gas station windows.

Unfortunately, family curses were covered in bad juju, and the inheritance of Lanoue Manor was nothing short of a curse.

Sure, a timeless colonial manor on a large sweeping property in the middle of nowhere Louisiana might seem like a girl’s dream come true, at first. But a look at the fine print showed that the two hundred year old house existed two hundred years in the past with no electricity, no indoor plumbing, and no air conditioning. The land was cursed by an ancestor to be impossible to build on, the house impossible to renovate, and the entire damned thing hinged on being passed down to the seventh daughter of the current owner. Inheriting Lanoue Manor was far from the opportunity of your dreams. It was a contract for your body, mind and soul to fulfill with a faceless ancestor of generations long dead.

If Thalia agreed to go back home, she’d be the fourth generation of woman in her family to be chained to the impossibly abysmal Lanoue Manor, but she’d be the seventh generation stupid enough to commit herself to a lifetime of childbirth and childrearing just to carry on the prestige of being a crafting family that carried the traditions of seven-of-seven.

“Bad juju or no, Sylvie, I’m twenty-three years old. I’ve got way too much of my life ahead of me just to go back to Louisiana and have seven kids.”

“Okay, well,” Sylvia seemed to be thinking hard about that, and her voice was far away. Thalia wondered if she was tired, upset, or seeing something beyond that which the physical eyes could comprehend. Her sister continued, “When you change your mind, we’ve got you covered, okay?”

“Thanks Sylvie,” Thalia ignored the idea of when in favour of ending the conversation. “Look, I’m sorry that I can’t offer more in the way of sympathy for mom, but are you okay? Are the others okay?”

“Christie and Stella are pretty heartbroken. I guess I’m not far behind. But then, mom liked the three of us best, so we all had a good relationship with her. Ivy’s… well, she’s Ivy. She’s trying to cheer everyone up by bringing us beignets and cupcakes. Penny’s taking things in her stride and Daniella’s taken mom beyond the veil.”

“Should she be doing that with her own family? Isn’t she always going on about there being rules about that?”

“There’s a lot of stuff that Elle does, regardless of whether she should be doing it. You know that.” Sylvie’s voice faded out again. Premonition and insight lingered on the frayed edges of the tapestry of the woman’s words. Ultimately, however, Thalia’s big sister just sounded tired and worn out. “I should let you go back to sleep. Please change your mind, Thalia. Please come home.”

Come back to me. Help me. Save me. The voice of the man slipped into the fore of her mind, and, for a moment, Thalia could have sworn that she felt his hand on her back. Even awake. Even in the yellow light of her bedroom.

“Good bye, Sylvie.”

She hung up, put the phone on the dresser, and pressed her back to her bedroom door.

Things are changing now, Thalia. It’s time.

That most precious voice lingered in the back of her mind in a way that it never had before. God, what if he was connected to the house? What if her mind was trying to tell her that a refusal to go home would cause complete destruction of the man?

He’s a dream, Thalia. A weird, erotic dream. He’s not going to be destroyed because he’s not real. He’s a stress response.

And yet Sylvia was a child of prophecy. Ivy ran a bakery that sold cookies to make your dreams come true, and Daniella literally raised the dead for cash.

Can you say so little of your own power?

“That is not a question that I want to answer,” the witch told herself. “Right now, I want to shower, and I want to sleep. And I want to never think about the house or the curse, or sexy dream men of destiny, ever again.”

Thalia showered with the intention of scrubbing away her bad dreams and her bad news.

It wasn’t that she was dismissing the situation, she argued with herself as she ran conditioner through her hair and pinned it to the top of her head to let it sit. It had nothing to do with dismissing the situation and everything to do with understanding that the situation would kill her.

The Lanoue Witch had the life expectancy of an octopus. Her entire function seemed to be to guard Lanoue Manor, for reasons best known to the first witch who lived there, and to ensure that there would be a future witch to take her place. Seven daughters. It had to be seven, and it had to be daughters—at least for the Lanoues.

The number seven was pretty standard. Daniella had explained it to her once: something about seven being the number of magic because it was analytical and divine, but Thalia hadn’t understood half of what her sister had said. The point was that magic had to be harnessed with some kind of craft. Greencraft, hedgecraft, hearthcraft, cosmiccraft, there were dozens of types of craft that one could harness and utilize to manipulate magic into doing one’s bidding. The problem was that breeding humans who had crafting abilities was as hard as learning how to use your abilities to manipulate magic. A lot of older families did it by harnessing the power of seven. So, six children, all with an increasing ability to put their hands to a craft, and then the seventh, in theory, would have the power necessary to be fluent and proficient in the craft of their choosing.

Some crafting families that carried the tradition chose to have sons. Thalia expected it was whatever number they ended up having seven of first. But it was the repeated act of bringing seven children of the same sex into the world and raising them accordingly, that created a human being that had access to magic.

And that was the crux. Lanoue Manor needed a seventh daughter in order for the keeper to possess magic strong enough to maintain the Manor and hold in check whatever cursed powers resided within its walls. But each of the seven children born sheered years off of the life of the witch who bore them.

The fact that Thalia’s mother had survived beyond Thalia’s eighteenth birthday had been a shock to most of the family. Stella, her second oldest sister, had suggested it was because Thalia immediately left Louisiana to go to university, and therefore hadn’t really stopped being dependent on their mother. Thalia might have begged to differ, except that their mother had continued to send Thalia money every month during her first two years at The University of Illinois Chicago. It wasn’t until Thalia had chased a program in California that promised a paid internship as part of the curriculum that their mother’s health had taken a decline.

So, maybe Stella was right. Maybe the spellcraft of the curse had determined that she was independent enough to handle her own shit, and had begun to pick and pull at Thalia’s mother, devouring her life and her craft to make way for the newer, younger witch.

Whatever the case, like the octopus, Lani Lanoue had wasted away in the pursuit of raising her children. Her mental health had deteriorated, her physical health had left her trapped in the body of a woman thirty years older than she’d been.

Call her selfish, but Thalia didn’t want to die at fifty-six. Not when there were women climbing mountains and sailing around the world, and doing headstands in yoga class well into their sixties. Life was too short even when you could expect to live ninety years. The thought of dying at fifty-six seemed like leaving half of her life unlived.

But that’s what would happen if she went back. The curse would take hold, and the house and her children would suck the life from her body.

No, thank you.

She rinsed her hair, turned off the water and wrapped in a towel. The bathroom had steamed tremendously, and the mirror had fogged over. Thalia wiped it down, revealing her reflection. A dusky, freckled face regarded her from behind the condensation that lingered on the glass.

“I am a witch of the craft,” she told her reflection. “I am the seventh generation of seven daughters. I have the magic of chaos and the void at my fingertips and I am not a slave to destiny and fate. I am not a mindless cog in a clockwork puzzle. I am the end of the frickin’ cycle, and I am not going back to that old, awful house.”

Her reflection stared back at her, challenging her, with hazel eyes like forests of pine and the red clay of the earth. She leaned forward and glared at herself. “Let it rot, Thalia. Let the old house rot.”

She returned to bed, shutting off the light and stumbling back through the dark to collapse onto the top of sheets and blankets that carried the scent of her own body and something else. Familiar and yet foreign. She pressed her face into the pillow and breathed in the scent of cedarwood and smoke, of magic and male. Of lust and desire.

Despite the news, despite the hundreds of thoughts, of feelings, of denials that ran through Thalia’s mind, the scent drew her in, drew her down, and drew her under. In the dark, he met her with a gentle mouth and demanding hands.

“You left,” his voice was confusion, echoing through the vast emptiness of her dream. Then understanding, and he took her in his arms and held her, a hand stroked down her back, comforting her in a way that she hadn’t realized she’d needed. “And now you know.”

“Now I know,” she agreed, because she didn’t know what else to say. She agreed, because even if she did know, he had brought his lips down on hers and kissed her with a deep and burning hope. She fell into the kiss, as she had a thousand times before, the magic in her soul clinging to the magic that had created her faceless love. And she did find comfort, and warmth, and a temporary reprieve.

He broke the kiss. His lips smiled against her cheek. “Everything is changing, ma petite sorcière. It’s time for you to come home.”

The statement ruined the calm that she had settled into, and Thalia’s waking mind rebelled against the notion.

“I’m not going,” she insisted, pulling away from the man that she could not see in the darkness. She let the void grow between them in an eternal, starless night.

“You have to, chère. If you don’t...” But his voice trailed away. Whatever it was that would happen if she didn’t return seemed as lost to him as it was to everyone short of the person who had made up the rules of her fate. “Thalia, please. You have you. You can’t leave me...”

She shook her head and slipped her hands out of the grasp of those that reached for her in the dark. His desperation would not sway her. Not today. Not when she was quickly learning that her dreams of the man were like a flytrap trying to draw her back to everything that she had spent the last five and a half years running away from.

“I refuse,” Her words seemed to ricochet in the darkness, causing her dream to fracture. The threads of magic and woven craft that created its foundation seemed to fray in response to her anger. “My life is worth more than seven children and a dying house. My happiness is worth more than whatever power I have been born with.”

Now she approached him, feeling out his presence in the dark as he must have done a thousand times before, in every other dream she’d had of him. In every magical lie laid down by her ancestors to trap her into a fate that would devour her soul. She took his face between her hands, found his ear with her lips, and as the framework of her dream shattered, Thalia bared her teeth and hissed:

"Whatever kind of dream you are, you’re not worth what I would have to give up to have you. I would rather set the entire place on fire than go back there and live.”

Shock, followed by anger and bitterness. For one single moment, his grip tightened painfully on her arms and he held her in place, even as the dream tried to end and pull them apart.

When he spoke, his words were low and firm. His voice was guttural and carrying a magic in it that seemed almost counter to her own. “You’ll come back.”

His assurance sounded as much like a threat as it did a promise. “You have to come back, Thalia Lanoue, because if you don’t, every dream you’ve ever had for yourself will shatter in the dawning of a terrible new age. You’ll come back, because fate won’t let you go. It will sink its claws into you, just like it has done to me, and it drink of your life and your magic, regardless of what you choose.”

Now, Thalia used all of her strength to pull away from him entirely. There was too much implication in what he was saying, and all she could think was that he was dragging her into a life that she did not want to lead. “Enough. I don’t want to hear anymore.”

Even as the space between them grew, the voice of the man she didn’t know, but so desperately loved, filtered back to her one last time. “You’ll come back, Thalia, because I need you the way that you need me. And you still have to find my name.”

But even as he spoke, his voice faded, and Thalia closed off her mind to the visions of magic and destiny that lay waiting in the void before drifting into the quiet comfort of a mundane and ordinary sleep.