But I wasn’t her daughter. I never had been. Because she’d never treated me like one. Her decision to let me go was unfathomable. She could see the fear in me. The desperation. Something had caused her to change her mind and I needed to know what it was.
Turning, shifting to face the other way against the sway of the crowd, I looked for Cassius in the swarm of bodies—he, too, was gone.
The freedom I’d craved now felt like a chokehold at my throat. Indecision flooded through me, causing a chill to surge into my veins, despite the crushing humidity.
“Cassius!” I yelled.
Desperate for him, terrified I’d lost him. Lost the one person with whom I’d ever felt a true connection. This didn’t make any sense. Shouldn’t I rush for freedom? Run toward Camp Street and onward past Lafayette Square; in forty minutes or less, I would make it all the way home to the Garden District.
Instead, I found myself shoving my way through the crowd, until I finally saw the corner of Bourbon Street. I ran to a storefront and shoved open the door.
It was empty.
Once inside, I took in the walls covered in tribal masks and gothic paintings, trinkets, and feathers, and voodoo dolls of all shapes and sizes. Religious statues were standing side by side with miniature skeletons.
And then I saw a person, but he didn’t move—it was a lifelike mannequin wearing a demonic mask. It had looked so real, elicited such a visceral feeling, as though familiar.
I saw the image of my father behind that mask. The truth spilling like a million shards of glass cutting into my heart. All this time I’d feared the wrong man. The reason Cassius hated my father was now glaringly obvious—my father had killed someone he loved—that had to be it. A chill washed over me, the hair prickling on my forearms. He’d tried to tell me, but I didn’t want to hear it. More importantly, I didn’t want to believe it.
Tonight, with my mother’s rejection, the veil finally lifted, and I saw everything differently, a sudden clarity. Deceit within my family home that begged to be known. Surviving it felt vital.
And poor Archie was still there.
Unable to catch my breath, unable to endure these profound representations of good and evil all around me—the power of darkness and light, I spun and yanked open the door, the jingling of a bell breaking the silence as I fled.
Out into the night.
Lifting my hem and sprinting onto Ann Street. With no money, I’d have to walk back to the Garden District. But that was the last place I wanted to go. I didn’t trust what might happen to me when I got there. Trying to persuade Archie to run away with me last time had failed, and no doubt, it would fail again. I’d need time to find a way to free him from their clutches.
Turning around and around, I prayed I’d not lost Cassius forever. I’d never find my way back to him. His home was tucked away on the outskirts of the city, far from anywhere, and would be impossible to find.
And then I saw him . . .
Standing in the distance alone in the street. His silhouette was next to his parked BMW. Dressed in that familiar costume and eerily still wearing that masquerade mask. He remained like that, watching and waiting as though gauging what my decision might be—to come with him or to flee. There was too much space between him and me not to take a significant chance to lose him.
Home had never felt so far away. Not the French-style 1850s mansion on Third Street that had felt more like a prison than home, but the sprawling manor tucked away in the thickest woodland in a secret location. The home that belonged to Cassius. To find it again, I would need him.
I’d always needed him.
Cassius strolled toward the car and opened the door to the passenger seat. He strolled around the front and climbed in, leaving the passenger door open. He pulled off his masquerade mask, letting it hang on his chest by the ribbon, revealing his devastatingly handsome face, his tortured eyes full of conflict.
In that one gesture, he was giving me the space to decide whether to let him go or return home with him.
Was he really offering my freedom?
Looking back toward Bourbon Street, I felt my past slipping away. A dizzying chaos of the parade weaving in the opposite direction. Turning back toward the sports car, I felt the true gravity of him. The man who’d captured me entirely, and I didn’t want to let this chance of chasing after something remarkable slip away.
My chest tightened with dread.
Like a slow gliding shark in still waters, a silver Lexus drove toward Cassius’s BMW and pulled up beside it—my father’s car.