Read Chapter 11: The Séance

Odette arrived at the mansion as the last of the daylight bled from the sky. She carried a worn carpetbag and moved with the unhurried certainty of a woman who had buried three husbands and outlived every enemy she'd ever made. Elodie met her at the front door, and the old woman paused, tilting her head as if listening to something beyond the creaking floorboards.

"This house is older than its bones," Odette said. "And it's been waiting for you to ask the right question."

The piano had fallen silent an hour ago, but the air still hummed with the residue of its playing—a vibration that settled in Elodie's teeth. Julien hovered at the base of the stairs, arms crossed, jaw tight. He hadn't spoken more than three words since they'd pried the paneling off the attic wall and found Bastien's note.

"You're sure about this?" Julien asked, not for the first time.

"I'm sure we're out of options," Elodie said. "The deed's incomplete. The music keeps getting louder. And your brother—" She stopped herself. Bastien's name hung in the air between them, a wound that hadn't closed.

Odette climbed the stairs without waiting for an invitation. Her skirts brushed the risers, and the sound was like whispered syllables. Elodie followed, then Julien, his footsteps heavier than either of theirs, as if he were being dragged toward something he'd spent twenty years running from.

The attic was hot and close. The child's piano sat in the corner of the newly revealed room, its keys yellowed as old teeth. The music box lay open beside it, the tiny cylinder glinting dully in the light of Odette's hurricane lamp. She set the lamp in the center of the floor and began pulling items from her carpetbag: a bundle of herbs, a small clay bowl, a length of red ribbon, and a photograph—the one from the locket. Marie Leveau stared up from the dusty floorboards, her scarred cheek catching the lamplight at an angle that made it look like a fresh wound.

Odette knelt, arranging the objects in a circle around the lamp. "You found her picture inside the walls of this house," she said. It wasn't a question. "That's important. She's part of this—maybe the most important part."

"The curse was hers," Elodie said. "She cursed Émile Fontenot."

Odette shook her head slowly, and something in her expression shifted—a flicker of old grief, or old knowledge. "Curses are rarely the beginning of a story. They're usually the middle." She gestured to the floor. "Sit. Both of you. Cross your legs. Rest your hands on your knees, palms up."

Elodie sat. Julien hesitated, then lowered himself beside her, close enough that she could feel the heat radiating off his arm. Odette placed a cluster of dried herbs in each of their palms and stepped back.

"There are three kinds of visiting," Odette said. "The kind where you go to them. The kind where they come to you. And the kind where you make a space and invite something through. This is the third kind." She struck a match and touched it to the herbs. Smoke curled upward, acrid and sweet at once. "What I'm going to do is simple, but it is not safe. Whatever is in this house will know we're listening. It may not like it."

Elodie gripped her herbs tighter. The gris-gris bag pressed against her chest beneath her shirt, a small weight she'd almost forgotten. She'd worn it every day since Odette had given it to her. Now, for the first time, she felt it thrum with something like warmth.

Odette blew out the hurricane lamp.

Darkness swallowed the attic. The only light was the orange point of each herb bundle, smoldering in their palms. The smoke curled lazily, and the silence stretched until it became a physical pressure.

Odette began to hum. It was a low, keening sound, not quite a melody, not quite a language. The pitch wavered and dropped, and the shadows in the corners of the room seemed to lean toward her, drawn by the sound. Elodie's heart hammered against her ribs. Beside her, Julien's breathing had gone shallow.

The air changed. It grew cool—unnaturally cool, as if a window had been opened to a winter night. Elodie's skin prickled. The smoke from her herbs stopped rising and began to spiral, twisting into a column that spun in place like a small cyclone.

Odette's humming stopped.

A voice filled the room—not from any direction, but from everywhere at once, from inside the walls, inside the floorboards, inside Elodie's own skull. It was a woman's voice, cracked with age and disuse, trembling at the edges.

*You have come.*

The herbs in Elodie's palm crumbled to ash. The gris-gris bag grew heavy and hot against her chest.

"I am Odette," the old woman said. "I speak for the living who seek answers."

*The living.* A bitter laugh, sharp as broken glass. *The living have taken enough from me.*

Julien moved, half-rising. Elodie grabbed his arm, holding him still. "Who are you?" she asked, her voice steadier than she felt.

The column of smoke shifted, coalescing. It took the shape of a woman—not solid, not clear, but unmistakable. A wide skirt. A lace collar. A face that resolved gradually from the haze, and Elodie's breath caught.

It was the face from the locket.

But not Marie Leveau.

The woman in the smoke was younger, paler, with dark hair pinned high and a gown that looked like a wedding dress gone grey with age. Around her neck hung a locket identical to the one they'd found—except this one glowed with a faint, sickly light.

"Clarisse," Elodie breathed.

The spirit's eyes snapped to her. They were empty. Not hollow—empty, as if something had scooped out whatever had once lived behind them and left nothing but the shell.

*You know my name. Do you know what they did to me?*

Odette stepped forward, her voice harsh. "Speak your purpose. The night is short, and the dead should not linger among the living without cause."

The spirit's head tilted at an unnatural angle, and a sound came from her—a sound that might have been weeping, might have been laughter. It crawled down Elodie's spine.

*Find the child.* The voice cracked, desperate. *The music is for the child. They buried her beneath the roots, and she sings for the dead who will not hear.*

Elodie's blood ran cold. "Who is the child? Clarisse, who was the child?"

The spirit's mouth opened. For a moment, the empty eyes flickered with something like recognition—and then her face contorted, and the temperature plummeted. The candle flames Elodie hadn't relit flared to life all at once, then died. A violent gust tore through the attic, extinguishing every ember, whipping loose papers into the darkness.

The spirit screamed—a sound that was not quite human, a sound that came from somewhere deeper than grief. It wailed through the attic, rattling the child's piano, shaking the walls.

And then it stopped.

The silence that followed was absolute. The piano did not play. The hum in the air was gone. The attic felt like an ordinary attic, dusty and still and empty.

Elodie's ears rang. Her hands shook. She realized she was gripping Julien's arm hard enough to leave bruises.

Odette was already moving, lighting the hurricane lamp with hands that were not quite steady. When the flame caught, her face was pale above the glow.

"What was that?" Julien demanded. "What just happened?"

Odette didn't answer. She was looking at the center of the room, where the column of smoke had once been. On the floorboards, scorched into the wood, was a single word:

*READ.*

Elodie leaned closer. The letters were uneven, burned as if by a hot iron. The word repeated itself—three times, in a ragged circle, as if the spirit had been trying to spell something, to force something through.

Odette finally spoke, her voice low and grim.

"You asked her who she was. Now she's asking you." Odette knelt, tracing the burned word with a fingertip. "The child. Marie Leveau's child." She looked up, meeting Elodie's eyes. "You've awakened the account. There's no closing it now. It will keep asking until someone reads what's buried beneath that oak."