They stood outside the theater, seeking reasons not to part. "Tell me a fairy tale," Noireau said.

"A goth girl's fairy tale?" Blanchefleur asked, with mischief in her voice. But she blushed and glanced quickly at the ground. Black bangs hung across her eyes. From here she could catch a glimpse of Noireau: that white face with its heavy black eye-shadow had haunted her peripheral vision all night, like a ghost with wells for eyes.

Blanchefleur continued, "I'm not sure you'd want to hear the stories I know. Murdered cats. Dead mothers imprisoned in trees." Blanchefleur lowered her voice dramatically. "Flesh-eating ghosts."

Noireau laughed. Blanchefleur loved that sound--so light, fearless, and free. "And I thought any girl who grew up in a haunted house would think ghost stories passé," she teased.

Blanchefleur smiled modestly and said, "The ghosts whisper them to me through the walls."

"So tell me, am I ever going to get a tour of this house of yours?" Noireau asked.

"Papa doesn't like visitors. . . ." In fact, Papa didn’t even like to venture beyond the house. As far as she could remember, he had not driven the old black car since her mother died. Yesterday, he had not even glanced up when she'd told him she'd be going to the movies after school. He'd sat at his workbench, his hand paused over the wood as he waited for her to duck back out the door. She'd come to the theater tonight on the back of Noireau's motorbike--terrifying and thrilling, to cling to Noireau's back, neither of them wearing helmets.

"Don't say no," Noireau hurried on. "It's your seventeenth birthday. We have to do something special. From what you've told me about your dad, he won't."

"We've never celebrated birthdays," Blanchefleur said. The thought of Noireau at her house, in her room, made her stomach flutter. She hitched up her backpack and tugged at the lacy black shirt over her dress. Patterned with black roses, it had belonged to an older dress she'd outgrown.

"The only good thing about birthdays," Noireau said, pulling out a cigarette, "is that you're one year closer to death." Beneath the sodium light beside the road, Noireau's pale face took on an orange cast; her spiked blond hair glowed white. A black trench coat made it hard to see her edges against the night.

Blanchefleur dug into her threadbare black bag, whose embroidered rose she'd retouched. Noireau chuckled as Blanchefleur handed her a lighter.

"You don't even smoke, Blanchefleur."

"I light candles. Incense."

"I'll bet you sit up late at night, writing poems and stories you couldn't bear to let anyone read, in purple ink." Noireau laughed again. "Don't be upset. I do the same thing, don't I?" In her long coat, she patted the telltale shape of a journal.

Cigarette cocked between her teeth, Noireau straddled the motorbike. "Ready?"

Blanchefleur knew how angry her father would be. But it would be an hour's walk back home, and she wanted so badly to be with Noireau.

Noireau said, "Come on, you don't want to be alone on your birthday. We can read our favorite poems and try to scare each other in the dark." Noireau grinned; fine white teeth contrasted with black lipstick. Her kohl-ringed eyes crinkled in amusement. "I brought red wine, you know." She patted her satchel. "You can show me that old house by candlelight. We can celebrate our impending deaths!" Noireau blew her a kiss merrily, then revved the engine, waiting.

Blanchefleur's heart beat hard. Maybe tonight she would tell Noireau how she felt.

The motorbike roared among the quiet New England hills, the sound echoing against woods from everywhere around. Blanchefleur pressed her cheek to the warm curve of Noireau's back as the moon rode low over the trees. The freedom of flying through the cold air loosened her tongue, and she gave Noireau what she'd asked for--wild tales about monsters in the house, lurking in the cracks in the walls. Noireau chuckled as Blanchefleur described the antics of ghosts who wrote frosty lines in night-blacked windows. She told Noireau about the house itself, older than anyone could remember, hidden on wooded acres that had been in her mother's family for generations. She told her about the tiny crumbling monastery in the woods behind. Family legend warned that the Carthusian monks, secret refugees, had all been slaughtered long ago; that something terrible had distracted the guardian cats. The trees crept closer to the monastery graveyard every year, their smooth bark pale as bones. Blanchefleur often haunted those graves, a peaceful place. Sometimes, in the sunlight, it seemed that little blue pools of shadow sat upon the graves, soft as kittens. She loved to sit and watch these shadows play, while her own Chartreaux, Pruet, perched upon her shoulders.

The driveway was little more than a dirt track suggested by the moon. The house stood tall, blocking the dark trees against the sky. From gabled peaks and slanted roofs, black windows reflected glimmers of stars.

They dismounted and stood looking up.

"What a wicked house you live in."

"Thanks. We have to go around back."

"Oh, I think I like the front better." Noireau craned to see the upper windows, and then gave a crooked smile. "Lead on, Blanchefleur. The night grows old."

She could deny Noireau nothing. She inserted the old key, wiggling the long tooth. The door's creak made her jump. But her father did not emerge from the workroom beside the house.

Blocks of milky light patched the floor. She stepped through pools of shadow to reach the switch. It had been so long that one light popped dead. Noireau gave a delighted laugh. "You didn't tell me there'd be fireworks!"

The harsh yellow light caught cracks in bold black lines thick as a finger, with the chill air slipping through. The cracks let them whisper to her, the things inside the walls--the things that slid out at night, to puddle cold upon the floor.

The place was gray with dust. Blanchefleur did not have time to clean the whole three-story house. She had to see to her own shopping, from the money her father left in the cookie jar: just enough for food and a few clothes from the secondhand shops to augment what she found in the attic. He left only enough money to keep her--not a penny to waste on luxuries--so when she wanted a notebook, she went without milk. She realized with shame that she could only offer Noireau bread and plums.

There were cobwebs on the ceiling, draped over the family portraits. For the most part, Blanchefleur did not set foot in the parlor, except to brush the dust from the old piano, experimenting with tunes her mother had played. The piano hadn't been tuned in ages, and it rang with a deep clashing like the tolling of ancient bells.

Blanchefleur drew her up the stairs, wincing when Noireau's steps called up their symphony.

Her own little room at the top of the house was better. There, the peeling tatters of wallpaper, soiled by many hands, had been replaced by deep purple paint. When Blanchefleur was four, she'd woken the house shrieking every night, crying about the whispering of the walls. Finally, her mother had spent an entire summer scraping back layer after layer of paint: yellow, pink, blue, and brown; paper striped like a barber's pole; hideous floral motifs that made Blanchefleur feel dizzy and sick. She remembered the way her mother had broken down and cried when they finally exposed the wall.

The day they picked out new paint, Ophelie put a sleek blue-gray kitten into Blanchefleur's arms. "He's a Chartreaux. His kind used to protect monks. He'll protect you, baby."

"The monks in the forest?"

Ophelie got a strange look on her face. "In the forest?"

"The ones I hear singing. Their bells call me at night."

Ophelie put her hand lightly over Blanchefleur's mouth. "Hush. You must never speak of this. There are no monks."

"They have cats," Blanchefleur insisted. The kitten in her arms purred and nestled close.

"Baby, you let those cats be."

"Why, Mama?"

"Those are the cats of the dead. It's dangerous to interfere with them. You don't belong there. Stick with little Pruet. He'll guide you if anything ever happens to me, just as if you were his own kitten." Ophelie stroked the cat in Blanchefleur's arms. "You know best how to protect her now, little one," she murmured.

Then, while Pruet watched approvingly, they painted her room. First, they sealed up all the cracks. Ophelie covered them with great looping symbols that she insisted on drawing herself before the paint went on.

Not long afterward, her mother disappeared. Blanchefleur didn't stop crying until Papa took her down to the woods to show her the willow tree. He put her hand on the bark where someone had carved a rough heart and her mother's name. "You can still talk to her to your heart's content, Blanchefleur."

He left her there to puzzle out the message of the bark, the weeping branches, the fresh earth turned up about the roots. When the wind blew through the fronds, she thought she heard her mother's voice, the faint melody of songs she'd hummed. Blanchefleur led Noireau into her room. Moonlight covered her bed with silver. She gathered the little blue pool at the foot, pressing her lips to his fur. The mute cat purred. Silently, she told him about Noireau, then asked him in their secret language, Do you think Mama would hate me?

He nosed her hand. She'd want you to be happy, mon chaton.

Noireau stood watching with interest. "Lovely cat," she said. She walked about the room, examining the decorations--festoons of old ribbons, antique lace stitched to veil the room, the cracked vanity in the corner with her mother's set of combs and mirrors. Halloween decorations that Blanchefleur had made at school since she was small were pinned up where her mother's ghost might see them. Propped along the bookshelves were photos from the trunks in the attic--images of the long dead, whose poses were so characteristic that Blanchefleur could not think of them as strangers. Some pictures were thanatographs--mortuary portraits, old photographs of corpses arranged as they had looked in life. "You're a spooky girl," said Noireau, with admiration.

Blanchefleur lit the candles. Noireau sat on the bed, legs tucked comfortably. She reached into her satchel for the bottle of wine and a tiny portable audio box. Soon strange and lovely sounds emerged. "Those candles smell heavenly. Where'd you get them?"

"Down by the graveyard."

"You're kidding. The tallow of the dead?"

Blanchefleur smiled. "Pruet knows all the hiding places."

Noireau dipped her golden head and retrieved two glasses, wrapped in a silver cloth. "You're not joking, are you?"

"Pruet's breed were their temple cats. It feels like home. No one else is using the candles--"

"It's all right. You think I care about that? Come here. I brought a present for you."

Noireau handed her a small package wrapped in silver.

"Go on, tear it."

Blanchefleur carefully slid her nail beneath the tape. The black bottle was a delicate shape; flowers wreathed the cap, while translucent sides showed lavender perfume.

"Try it," Noireau said softly. Then, because Blanchefleur's hands were trembling, she gently opened the cap and daubed the insides of Blanchefleur's wrists, behind her ears, along her throat. She held her own fingers for Blanchefleur to smell.

Blanchefleur kissed those fingers lightly. Noireau reached up with her other hand and traced Blanchefleur's lips, sliding glistening red drops of wine with the ghost of a smile. She was so close that Blanchefleur was already holding her breath when their lips touched.

Noireau tasted like roses.

Blanchefleur felt as though she were on her way to heaven.

Under the sure touch of Noireau's fingers, everything that was in her opened up, blossoming. Her heart pushed free with wild impatience, breaking through all the cracks and locks in the old house. The whole house burst wide.

She could feel the shudder down to her bones.

Blanchefleur worried that her father might find them, but Noireau reassured her. "It's just a girls' sleepover. Perfectly innocent," Noireau chuckled, as they snuggled down.

Between their feet, Pruet purred, his warm rhythm lulling her. Do not fear, mon chaton. I will sleep with one eye open, and guard you from any threat. With that reassurance, she slept.

Deep in the heart of the night, Blanchefleur felt a cold wind blowing through a crack, like the cold walls down below. The bedroom door stood open, a line of jet.

Blanchefleur sat up, shivering. "Pruet?" she called. No answer: she could only hear the silent cat speak when he was very near.

She reached out in bed, found Noireau, bent to kiss the forehead above that sharp nose. Noireau did not stir.

Blanchefleur slid out of bed, edging toward the door. That black hinge of darkness yawned wider. Her back crawled.

Nerving herself, she walked toward it.

As she stood in the chill air, feeling stupid with weariness, she heard a scuffling down the hall. She started. A tapping, then a scratching that made her hair stand on end. In a spasm of fear, she pushed the door, turned the lock.

She ran back to bed and shook Noireau. The girl slept heavily, and woke startled, gasping, as if she'd been raised from the dead. "Wha'--what's that?" she groaned in quick terror. Blanchefleur hastily silenced her with a kiss. After a moment, Noireau's arms came up around her.

But Blanchefleur broke away. "Quick. Get dressed. We have to leave." While Noireau pulled on her clothes, Blanchefleur turned to the closet.

A long mirror hung on the door, cracked and faded, its silver backing chipped so that the mirror went dead in patches. Behind it was the layered blackness of her clothes, with the occasional pearly gleam of buttons.

She pulled out the clothes she'd saved for tomorrow, first day at seventeen: an old silk party dress, sheer black, that she'd found in the attic and cut down where the edges had rotted, a filmy silver shawl, and fishnets she'd repaired with spiderweb stitchery.

Something scratched again.

Her heart turned to ice.

She grabbed Noireau's arm. "In the closet, quick!" She propelled Noireau toward the closet door. Noireau crouched in the back, her spiked hair leaping up in cowlicks, her thin face peering anxiously at Blanchefleur.

As Blanchefleur closed the door, the closet's faceted glass knob glittered as if it possessed an inner fire. Somehow, everything in the house had changed--as she had changed.

Blanchefleur stood straighter. A heavy thump sounded in the hall: she jumped, but held her ground. The door rattled with the snick of a key in an antique lock, like the click of teeth.

Her father stood in the open door.

"Keep your cat to yourself! If he comes near me again, I'll break his neck!"

He hurled Pruet into the room. He followed, shoving her back against the bed.

"You're seventeen now," he growled. "A woman grown. I can't keep protecting you, Blanchefleur!"

Blanchefleur heard an echo, painfully drawn, like the rasping of grooves at the end of a phonograph record. It rode low from the hall, a throaty growl, "Blanchefleur. Seventeen. Your mother promised."v She hugged Pruet. What's happening?

I heard a threat, mon chaton. It came from him.

She felt that gate swinging open in herself again, the way it had under Noireau's touch. A chill wind blew out of her soul. Things she remembered, things she had buried--

She had come home from playing in the woods one afternoon to find her mother sprawled in the kitchen, red welts around her neck like the marks of incredible teeth. Her father stood staring at a bloody handprint on the wall. He looked frightened. "I didn't," he blurted.

Then he shook himself, an odd, violent wriggling all down his length. He calmly told her to go to her room, "While I take care of Mama."

That night, when she crept down for a glass of water, a figure like her father sat at the table in stripes of moonlight. She thought the gristle caught between his teeth looked odd, the juice on his plate exceptionally dark and meaty.

That had been her first sight of the monster. Papa said his name was Marmion.

Her own Papa had still been sleeping the next morning. When she woke him, he took her out to the tree. She knew that as long as she was a good girl, he would protect her. He was still quiet; but now his silence scared her, though he never harmed her. He'd never seemed to notice her, in fact. He would turn away quickly, as if to avoid recognizing something in her face.

Now he looked anxiously for her with his washed-out blue eyes.

Blanchefleur shrank back. Within them, she could see the eyes of the monster still--dark, striped by moon as he ate calmly of his midnight meal.

Around her father's form, darkness bulged, like a thundercloud shot with flashes of teeth. The cloud swirled into a pillar, condensed to form a man. The double image hurt. Her eyes watered.

"Hello, my darling," the pillar said, grinning. Disembodied teeth hovered over her father's head, a balding shadow, hanging low. "I've come to wish you a happy birthday. Time to repay your mother's debt."

"Marmion," she whispered. She could feel the prickling of Pruet's bristled fur in her arms. "Get away from my Papa."

The monster laughed. Amusement curled the fangs. She could not get that darkness properly in her head, bald man and black cloud, both linked by beady eyes. "It's not that easy, darling. Not after what your mother did."

Blanchefleur could hardly breathe. The black cloud pushed into her lungs with the stench of wet ash and rotting things. "What my mother did?"

"Your mother tried to run away, or don't you remember? She was born to stay here forever. Just like you."

She begged Pruet silently for help. He climbed to her shoulder, prepared to spring.

"You belong to me. You are the body of the house, as I am the spirit. And he wants you. More than he can bear." The monster chuckled. "You look so much like Ophelie, and you smell like a woman now. You must thank your lover for me. How much we enjoyed that little scene!"

Blanchefleur's cheeks flamed. For one moment, she wanted to die, for the floor to break open. Pruet sunk his claws possessively, and she forced herself to swallow that thought as unworthy of Noireau.

"Get out of my Papa!" she cried, advancing toward the monster. Her heart rose to her lips. "Papa, help me! You can't give in to Marmion now! Papa, I love you!"

Marmion thickened in the air. He gnashed his teeth with a sound like bones grinding. "You cannot escape me. I am in the air you breathe, the whispers you hear at night, the rustlings in the shadows. If you renounce me, I shall pluck away those you love!"

The darkness swirled and flashed. Her father's face strained through the cloud, flushing dark with struggle, his features screwed in a terrible grimace. His eyes--his eyes were the ones she recognized from childhood. She reached for him, plunging her arm into the cloud, cold and damp as swamp water--

Pruet leaped out and knocked her arm away. She cried out; her arm stung with wide, dark gashes. Pruet jumped back to her shoulder. Get out, mon chaton! Now!

For one moment, she had touched her father's hand. He had clutched convulsively for hers.

The stench numbed her mind. Blanchefleur strove to remember the smell of perfume, the taste of Noireau's rose-flavored kiss. Holding her breath, she dodged past the smoke.

Her father moaned, a deep-gut groan, as though he were lifting something heavy.

She clasped Noireau's hand.

Blanchefleur pulled her wide-eyed love into the night. As they ran, she heard mocking laughter, the echoing voice rumbling deep as the roots of the house. "I know you will return, my darling. You can't resist me. You won't leave this house any more than your mother did."

Noireau kept her mouth closed as Blanchefleur led the way. Pruet crouched warm against her neck.

Noireau stopped beside the bike, looking small and crushed. Her head kept jerking toward forest sounds. She shrieked and clapped both hands to her mouth. Despite the tough black clothes with all their zippers, she looked like as a frightened child.

Abruptly, reclaiming her anger, Noireau cursed. She said furiously, "He's a madman! If he harms a hair on your head, I'll kill him, Blanchefleur! I'm calling the police. Do you hear me?" she howled at the house that rose jagged against the sky.

"Please, Noireau--he'll hear you!"

"I want him to hear," Noireau said darkly.

Blanchefleur felt the pull of the house, sharp as a fang. Her father--she couldn't abandon him, not after seeing that flash of the gentle soul she'd known as a child. "I can't leave my father like this--we only have each other!"

Blood rose in Noireau's cheeks. "I know that, sweetie, but he's an evil man!"

"He's not evil!" Blanchefleur stopped in confusion, for Noireau looked at once vulnerable and sharp, fox-faced creature with spikes of bone-white hair.

Noireau straddled the bike, then turned and held Blanchefleur's hands so hard the bones seemed to grind together. Blanchefleur wanted to cry out, but her pain caught in the bottleneck of all her other sorrow. Fiercely, she pressed close, not caring that the bike's cold metal hurt her shin. Noireau peered so intently into Blanchefleur's eyes.

Blanchefleur relented. "I'll come. I couldn't bear to be parted from you!"

Before she climbed on, Blanchefleur leaned in for one last kiss. Noireau said, with her sad-sweet smile, "Now remember, sweetie. We'll never let anything come between us."

"I love you," Blanchefleur murmured. She held her face up to the wind to dry her cheeks.

For those first moments, the road was heaven; they flew swift as the wind, leaning for sharp turns on the country lane, woods thick on either side. Blanchefleur clung to Noireau's waist, Pruet wedged safe between. Laughter whipped past: their own. The light of the moon, the stars, a single headlight--

With a roar like thunder, a piece of night lumbered down.

Blanchefleur felt herself rolling, striking. She screamed as long arms scratched her in the darkness, until her tumbling stopped at last in a slippery mass of wet leaves. After staring in amazement at the black sky spinning above in a blur of stars and trees, she pushed herself to her feet, hands slipping on the sodden forest floor.

"Noireau! Pruet!" she called, staggering. She stumbled over a small black log--Noireau's leg.

She fell to her knees beside Noireau, crying out in fear. Noireau lay so still, with blood all over one side of her head, matting the blond spikes. Blanchefleur tore off her shawl and wrapped it about her lover's head, but Noireau's breath was so painful, so loud, as though she were scraping at the bottom of her lungs and finding no air.

Blanchefleur bent over her helplessly, calling her name, weeping as she pressed at the wound. After a time, the blood slowed, then stopped.

"Noireau?" she whispered. She sat back, holding her breath. The sound of Noireau's terrible wheezing had stopped. "Noireau? Love? You said nothing would separate us," Blanchefleur moaned.

Noireau gave a shuddering gasp and sat up. Blanchefleur nearly knocked her over again with tears and kisses. Noireau held her and coughed, "I'm fine, sweetie."

Choking back tears, Blanchefleur said, "We've got to find the bike and get you to a doctor."

"No, sweetie. Didn't you see what hit us? We've got to hide."

Blanchefleur stared at her in disbelief. She protested, but Noireau cut in. "I'm fine," she repeated, "trust me. I don't need a doctor." Noireau was frowning now. "We have to get you somewhere safe. Don't you understand?"

Involuntarily, Blanchefleur saw it again: that long black car. She shoved it down. She tried to use what was left of the shawl to clean Noireau's head, but Noireau ducked away.

"Really, Blanchefleur. Don't worry about that now."

Blanchefleur found Pruet curled under a nearby tree, licking one paw. His copper eyes winked as she scooped him up.

"You're hurt," she whispered. He held his paw out stiffly.

It is but a small hurt, mon chaton. Are you all right?

She buried her face in his fur. The soothing rumble calmed her. He stretched up along her neck, feet perched on her shoulder, whiskers brushing her cheek. She stroked him while her thoughts skittered in panic, each too terrible to dwell upon.

Noireau came up and held her. She felt so cold. Blanchefleur shivered in her short, sleeveless dress. Gown and stockings were torn and muddy from the fall; her knees and arms were scraped. But that seemed so little compared to--

Blanchefleur's knees shook.

She walked with Noireau's arm around her waist, carrying Pruet. By the light of the moon, they trudged past hollow trees and saplings. Blanchefleur's legs stung, but soon the cold numbed everything.

There was one place where she might be safe. With some guidance from Pruet, Blanchefleur led them toward the monastery.

The tumbled stones rose in a small clearing, woods on every side. The outer walls still stood in places, sheltering the austere beauty of the graveyard, with its sorrowing angels and angular, chiseled stones.

The moon shone bright upon the graves. They lay together in the grass. The kisses Noireau gave her were as full and tender as before; but now a brackish taste mingled with the rose.

They huddled together in the shelter of the graveyard walls, but Noireau was so cold that Blanchefleur felt the chill reaching down into her soul. She shivered so hard her teeth rattled; being embraced by Noireau was like being blanketed by snow.

"You know, there's one thing we could do to get warm," Noireau said with a toothy grin.

Blanchefleur laughed breathlessly.

Noireau's earthy smell enticed her--rich and loamy, wet leaves, damp wood. She tasted of blood. At last, exhausted, they curled together like kittens, Noireau's head in the curve of Blanchefleur's hip, folded close in one another's hollows.

Sleep did not come easily. Blanchefleur kept catching sight of Noireau's eyes, so mournful, rimmed with hurt. Her heart ached. There had always been something hungry in the fox-like face, something full of loneliness and need.

Sleeping or waking, drifting between, Blanchefleur saw blue-gray shadows padding between the graves, while Pruet perched on the wall, keeping watch under the moon.

She woke sharply to a concerted hiss, like a hundred snakes. She shook Noireau, who dragged herself up as if every limb were unbearably heavy.

"What's wrong?" Noireau asked groggily. Her voice sounded muffled, miles below the earth. In the bright moonlight, her black lipstick and nail polish flaked like skin.

Blanchefleur stood. "The monastery cats. Something's scaring them." She gathered Pruet.

A cloud of solid darkness whipped up, whirling to block the moon. Within the darkness shone Marmion's claws and teeth.

Marmion thundered, "Have you had enough, Blanchefleur? Give yourself to me as promised, and we will have an end!"

Something in the threat called up that sight again--that big black shape thundering down on them--her father's car.

As Blanchefleur watched, the cloud condensed, funneling itself into the shadowy image of a man.

Blanchefleur reached for Noireau's hand. The tattered edges of the black cloud swirled beyond the blue-gray circle of ghostly cats. Her frightened breath mixed with their hissing. "Papa?"

Squeezing her hand, Noireau said, "You must see what he is! Your real father is dead! He eroded long ago. If only you could admit the evil in him--"

Blanchefleur did not answer. She could still see the shadow of the man inside the monster.

Her false father walked toward her. Through his eyes, she could see the monster roiling, shifting, like worms beneath his face. His eyes held no trace of blue at all--nothing but the cloud, a dirty color like slush and brackish water. Yet Papa had to be in there somewhere . . . even though his shuffling feet did not quite touch the ground.

"Papa? Talk to me," she pleaded.

Noireau held her back, a grip that hurt her wrist and arm.

Marmion advanced. She could not take her eyes off him--the multiple forms, the nightmare fangs and glints of eyes, the thickening cloud with the intolerable resemblance to her father. But the skin did not hang so slack upon Papa's bones; surely, his face and arms could not twist into such terrible contortions. The cloud hung over him, poured from his eyes, coated him like a sickly slime.

He strode nearer, and she moaned and closed her eyes, trying to shake off the cloud that blurred her vision, the brackish smell. She struggled to see only the spiked golden halo of her lover, not the sad, shapeless bag of flesh that might have been her father.

She felt his fetid breath, humid on her cheek. The demon murmured in her ear. She shook her head hard, trying to dislodge the intimate brush of fuzzy black mold.

The demon lashed out, dagger-sharp. It brushed her face almost kindly, and she cried out as she felt the darkness enter her cheek like ink, worming its way toward her heart.

"Stop!"

Blanchefleur heard the command as if from a great distance. Her eyes were filled with darkness; her head was wooly with it. The voice . . . someone familiar . . . someone she loved . . . someone who loved her.

"You cannot have her."

The world brightened with glimmers of silver that caught in the tips of spiky hair, the sharp edges of an ankh, the glimmering of a pale face with kohl-ringed eyes.

The hissing grew as Noireau faced the demon. The ghostly cats circled tight against the darkness, combing it back with claws and teeth and prickly fur on end.

"Noireau, Noireau, I love you--"

"I love you, too, sweetie. Be quiet now. I have work to do."

From atop her shoulders, Pruet told Blanchefleur, The temple cats need someone to protect, to make up for their past sin. They can't help you. You're not of their world. But she is.

Noireau said, "I'm so sorry, Blanchefleur. Now go, while you can!"

That was the pit, yawning ahead of her. The chasm threatened to close over her head. Grief yawned like a grave.

"I'm not leaving you!"

The monster roared down upon them like a fiery furnace, smothering her with sulfur, ramming down her throat.

The cats leapt up in a gray swirl, a dust storm, a cloud of fur like a gray stone wall. They danced around her while her heart stood still.

"Go, Blanchefleur!" Noireau commanded, her voice echoing among the stones. How Blanchefleur had loved to hear that voice ring down the halls. "Let my death mean something!"

Blanchefleur risked one thing--to get between the monster and Noireau long enough to kiss her.

Then love shoved her out of the circle into the woods. Noireau led the ghost cats against the monster, while Blanchefleur ran through the forest with the taste of swamp water in her mouth.

She could hardly see, through her tears, through the branches across the moon. Pruet whispered directions--when to duck, when to swerve.

All she could see, as she ran, was Noireau's face, pale and dwindling and hurt, despite the love that blazed fierce as the coals in the demon's eyes.

Blanchefleur felt she had known all along where they must go--her mother's tree, the one place where she'd always been certain Mama could hear her.

Blanchefleur ran through the dark wood. She was so cold, so tired. The wind slid through the holes in her dress. Mist wound among the trees. Leaves rustled; a branch snapped. Everything sounded so loud in the darkness.

"This isn't right. We have to go back and save her!"

Pruet dug in his claws. No, mon chaton. You must go on. Do not waste her sacrifice.

Blanchefleur sank down below her mother's tree on the cold ground. She could still taste that last kiss mingling with the first, roses and dark water.

Pruet licked his lips, his injured paw. Ma chérie, he began, and paused. Ma petite Blanchefleur, there are things you must know, things your mother hoped you'd never have to learn, lest you fall prey to the curse. Now it is too late, and I love you more than my solemn oath to your dear mother. Why do you think this house has always passed through the female line? How does it hold so many ghosts? This house has so much power that it remained untouched even when the monastery fell.

He told her the story, then--all the pieces that fit between the cracks. Her mother and her mother's mother and the long line before them had practiced magic, herbs and candles and incense and whispered prayers--they had become the good ghosts, whispering calm for those who walked from one threshold to the next. She had felt their presence in all the portraits.

Yet through it all, the demons had grown as well, springing up like weeds in the cracks. They had been held in check by the candles and rituals, a perfect balance, dark and light--until over time the family line began to dwindle, leaving more ghosts than girls, until only Ophelie and Blanchefleur were left. The spirit of the house grew darker, until that darkness solidified into one greedy chance--the culmination, the devil king.

When her mother died, Blanchefleur knew none of it, drawn only to parts that echoed in her deepest memories--candles, incense, and an altar. In her loneliness, she'd cultivated an affinity for death and darkness. The monsters had grown wild in this neglect, thriving in their chains, perfecting their lies.

She herself had allowed their king to slip completely free, through the power of her first time with Noireau.

"Mama?" Blanchefleur sobbed. "What happened to Mama?"

You already know, Pruet said gently.

"Papa loved her, he couldn't--"

Pruet said grimly, She was leaving the house, to escape the curse. She thought you would be safe. You were his only daughter, and he loved you. Now her bones lie in the walls. They are part of what gives Marmion such power.

"Then what's buried under this tree?"

Your heritage. You must dig. Pruet scored the earth with his claws, shifting awkwardly as he limped. Blanchefleur forced herself to join him.

Sometimes she struck roots, the wood rough under her fingers, tiny splinters digging beneath her nails. She dug down through the loam, her fingers cracked and bleeding. At last she struck something that felt like stone. She brushed it free, the tracery of symbols carved in the lid inscribing themselves in her raw fingers.

The stone looked like a tiny coffin for a secret babe. She lifted the lid. Inside, there were no bones, only books. On old texts and papers, words glowed with their own light, blue and gold. Buried here, in what her bewildered father had convinced himself was Ophelie's grave, was the last powerful magic she had done, protecting their heritage before she tried to flee. Marmion would never have the strength to break the guardian spells on his own; and her husband could not have tried to dig here without shredding what remained of his mind.

Yet the manuscripts were incomplete. Protected from evil, they had not been protected well enough from the damp. They had lain for thirteen years moldering in the grave, while Ophelie's voice grew weaker. Mold had eaten the edges of whole books right down to the core, as if they'd been dipped in fire. Pages crumbled as Blanchefleur tried to separate what mildew had melded together. Texts shone with the glory of a single paragraph or trio of words, where worms had eaten away the edges.

Blanchefleur cried out in despair. She heard an echo high above, the wind moaning through the branches of the willow tree.

Slowly, she sank down, clutching Pruet to her chest. "What am I going to do?" Her frantic fingers bit deep into his fur, while tears cut frozen cheeks. "Why didn't you tell me the truth, Mama? Why won't you break the spell? Tell me how to stop the monster and set Papa free!"

It came to her softly, through the trees: her mother's voice, so weary, so high--so old. Blanchefleur had almost forgotten those notes, that gentle crooning, Mon bébé, mon bébé, just a snippet of song on the wind as the willow fronds sighed, It is too late now, Blanchefleur.

Blanchefleur pressed her head to the soil, burying her tears in the dirt. "Tell me the truth!" she demanded. "There must be something! We let it out--"

Blood to blood, her mother sighed, through the branches. Blood sacrifice, from time immemorial--blood from one you love, spilled here on my soil.

"What? No!"

It is coming, the tree whispered sadly.

Pruet squirmed free and jumped into the small casket, sending up fluttering shreds of stained parchment. Her athame. Come, you must take it. Protect yourself. He struggled up with a small knife gripped in his teeth, dull silver as the sliver of moon cutting through the clouds.

Blanchefleur reached in, took the knife, and held him close. She set the knife beside her, where it gleamed amid the dirt like the sickle-shape of a child's bone.

A crash, up ahead--footsteps shuffling through the leaves.

A silver ankh swung in a glistening arc.

"Hello, sweetie," Noireau said. Her dark eyes no longer reflected light; flat as absence, they sucked her in like a hole at the center of the world.

"Noireau!" Blanchefleur jumped up. Then, as Noireau stepped into the light, terror cramped Blanchefleur's throat. The side of Noireau's head was still black with dried blood, her hair crusted. Now it looked as though half her skull had been crushed. Her left eye sagged toward what had become the side of her head. Noireau seemed not to notice.

"I came looking for you," Noireau said conversationally, leaning against a tree. That quirky grin was missing half its teeth. The lips pulled back unnaturally into the ruin of her face. That bruised look about her eyes told Blanchefleur more. "I missed you, Blanchefleur. You can't understand how much. The world fills up with darkness when you're gone."

Noireau pushed off the tree and walked toward her unsteadily, then crouched in front of her.

"What's this?" she asked. Her hand rested on the knife.

"Nothing," Blanchefleur faltered. She stood still, watching the one she'd loved from the first--a stranger back then, who had jumped to her defense so eloquently when others mocked her poems.

"You know, Blanchefleur," Noireau said slowly, "I really have no one but you. Foster homes, now on my own--you're the only one who's ever gotten close. I had to act tough, like I didn't care. You don't know how alone I've been."

"I do know," Blanchefleur said.

"So you see, we're more alike than you think."

Blanchefleur whispered, "I've always thought so."

Noireau stood. The knife had disappeared. Pruet had as well, when Blanchefleur stood so fast.

"Do you know, sweet one, how hungry I've been for you?" Noireau reached out to trace Blanchefleur's cheek. Blanchefleur struggled not to gag at the chewed-down fingers.

"Without you, dearest, I began to starve. Heartless," Noireau remarked. As Noireau kissed her wetly, Blanchefleur closed her eyes desperately, willing up the image of her fox-faced love with her pointed nose intact. This Noireau smelled like the ruins of a dead thing on the road.

Feeling sick, Blanchefleur muttered, "You killed the monster?" She felt she would choke on Noireau's carrion smell.

"What do you think?"

Blanchefleur opened her eyes in time to see that parody of Noireau's crooked smile. She felt queasy. "And my Papa?"

"Oh, I'd say he got what he deserved."

"Noireau--" Blanchefleur hesitated. She could not think of a way to phrase the question. She stood with her hands covered with grave dirt, afraid to touch the one she'd longed for most in the world.

"Don't you love me?" Noireau asked.

"Yes, dearest, with all my heart--"

"And we'll never be separated? You swore that, too--"

"Yes--but I can't command fate or time--or death--"

"Why not, sweetie? I'd fight them all for you. What am I saying? I already have!" Noireau laughed. It turned horribly bitter. Black blood had replaced the lipstick.

From her mother's tree, Pruet hissed. The willow moaned.

"Don't you want to be together, Blanchefleur? You shouldn't have left me, sweet. We should always be united."

Those dark eyes, always so round, so large, so lustrous--now, nothing more than black pits, hungry for a soul.

"You're cold, sweetie. I can see you shivering. Why, you're all wet, and dirty, too," Noireau crooned.

"Marmion," Blanchefleur growled, backing away. "Leave her alone, or I swear by all that's holy--"

Noireau's peals of delighted laughter rang pixie-like and genuine. "Oh, my dear," she gasped, "you don't understand at all. So what if a little corner of the night has brushed me? I'm a hungry ghost, after all."

She held up the little knife, smiling coyly. It looked like a horrible rictus. Blanchefleur could not keep the horror and pity from her face. Noireau flinched and turned her head so Blanchefleur could only see her good side. "So there are some things that can't be borne, even by you," she said bitterly.

"That's not true. You know I love you. But you're--"

"Say it."

"I don't want to hurt you, Noireau!"

It was a cry lost in the night.

Gentle as a lover, Noireau leaned forward with the knife.

A blue-gray streak shot through the trees. Blanchefleur opened her arms instinctively--toward her love or Pruet, she never knew. She caught both at once, as the knife sank into Pruet. She stood holding him, frozen in horror.

Noireau stared back at her across the void with haunted eyes, love wiping the mockery from her face. For a moment, in the dappling of shadow, she seemed not hurt, but whole.

Then Pruet's blood began to drip upon the soil.

Noireau stared at her with those haunted eyes. She shook her head sharply in negation. Blanchefleur opened her mouth in anguish, wanting to call her close, but having no words for what lay now between them.

For that moment, Noireau's eyes shone again, their darkness glistening with slivers of moon. Love and self-denial. Without another word, without a smile, Noireau faded more at every moment as the blood rained fast to earth, pieces of her falling likewise to melt into the darkness.

Blanchefleur sank to her knees as Pruet's blood spilled out over the ruined spells. She bowed over him, feeling as if the blade pierced her own heart.

"My brave cat. My beautiful Pruet," she wept.

Distantly, she heard his voice, already fading: I promise I will always guard you in the spirit world. Everything will be all right, mon chaton. She could see him there in her mind as he spoke, standing bold and whole, furry and furious, his white fangs bared to guard her with the growl that said she would always be his kitten.

She kissed his limp body, stroked his wet fur, and held him close while he shuddered. She buried her face in his rich blue pelt.

The forest shook with a furious roar.

As the last blood touched the earth, a flash split the sky. Lightning speared from the clouds, night to day. Storm shook the house to its foundations, rattling doors, breaking windows. In the repeated strikes, the house caught fire, blazing to charred bones that groaned and muttered with the collapse of blackened beams in the rising dawn.

Blanchefleur woke, sodden and stiff with cold. In her arms, she cradled her dead cat, blue fur matted black with his own blood. She had spent the night beneath her mother's tree, but the leaves did not whisper anymore. During the night, the lullabies of her mother's dying breath had sounded elated but weary as the house burned to the ground.

Blanchefleur buried Pruet in the little casket with the carved lid, among the other remnants of her mother's magic. She prayed that it would guard him from evil as his body seeped back to the soil. She was so tired, so wrung out. She felt flat, lifeless. Hollow. Pruet had saved her; and his sacrifice had driven out the demon. What kind of world was it in which one evil could only be conquered by another?

She crossed the open space to the garden shed, flinching under the gray sky, avoiding the charred place on the lawn. The storm had whipped up rain to follow lightning, soaking the timbers until the house smelled like wet ash.

She grabbed a shovel. Then she staggered back through the woods to the place where Noireau had fallen beside the road. She had no hope left. Only this thought: that Noireau deserved to rest, not lie exposed under the sky.

When she got there, the black car hung precariously in the ditch, two wheels on the narrow road. The rain had not removed the skid marks.

Down the steep slope, among the trees, Blanchefleur found her father crouched in a black suit, weeping over the body of Noireau.

She paused, hidden by a tree. She watched him rocking, his head in his hands. Those clumsy human movements--that was her father. His thinning hair clumped in moist strands; his collar and cuffs were soaked, and there was blood smeared on one sleeve. He must have been here all night.

She stepped out from between the trees. His head jerked up at the crunch of sticks, eyes searching frantically for danger. He crouched over Noireau as if guarding his prey.

Blanchefleur strode quicker through the gray light, her feet slipping in the wet leaves. After everything, her bruised heart swelled with the pain of sudden hope: that she might get her father back, at least.

She put her arms around him. He reached up to cling to her, sobbing like a child. He could not look at her. The suit stank of mothballs and wet leaves. As he turned his head, she saw the hopeless remorse in those washed-out blue eyes. He had not meant to do it, any more than he had meant to kill Mama. Though no jury would believe him, she knew he was not to blame.

So Blanchefleur helped her father bury her love. She turned the earth, heart breaking with each shattered clod of soil. She tidied Noireau's hair and face as best she could, then kissed that cold cheek, those stiff lips. At last, Blanchefleur rolled her back into the earth. Her father watched with wide eyes, but no condemnation.

As Blanchefleur whispered, "Rest in peace," her Papa echoed, "Amen." Rain dripped on her face from the leaves above as she looked toward that barren sky.

They found the bike, front crumpled against a tree. Blanchefleur stared, thinking with guilt how she'd been thrown clear. She had held Pruet in her arms until she struck the ground and began to roll. She had not held Noireau.

Her eyes filled with tears. Papa came and put his arm around her, murmuring nonsense as if she were still a child: "Don't mind it too much, little chick. We can't help it now."

They stowed the bike in the back of the wide old car.

Then they sat on the crooked fender, Blanchefleur perched on her Papa's knee. The solid old car shuddered, then settled itself more firmly in the mud.

Blanchefleur was too exhausted now for anything but relief. Her Papa had been restored.

She hugged him. His arms rose slowly toward her, his hands touching her lightly on the shoulder blades, as if unsure what to do.

He was so cold. And his scent was so strong.