Tanglewood Legacy (The Three Sisters Book 3)

  Tanglewood Legacy: The Three Sisters, Book 3

  Copyright © Genevieve Jack 2022

  Published by Carpe Luna Ltd, Bloomington, IL 61704

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author or publisher.

  First Edition: March 2021

  Cover art by Deranged Doctor Designs

  eISBN: 978-1-940675-80-0

  Paperback: 978-1-940675-81-7

  v 3.0

  Contents

  About this Book

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Epilogue

  Meet Genevieve Jack

  More From Genevieve Jack!

  About this Book

  She’s his greatest discovery and about to become his greatest challenge.

  En route to New Orleans with her sisters, Isis Tanglewood wakes in the middle of the night to memories of a demon. Nothing surprises her more than to find shipmate Delphine has also dreamed of the same monster. After their brief encounter, Delphine begs Isis to help her and her sisters avoid forced marriages in New Orleans. Isis empathizes but refuses her for fear of drawing attention to her family’s witchy secret.

  Scientist and philosopher Pierre Baron lives to map the stars from his observatory and to research the natural history of the burgeoning colony in Louisiana he calls home. But when he meets Isis, his curiosity is piqued like never before. Magic happens when he makes it his mission to learn more about her, and he soon determines she’s just as curious about him.

  When a man is found dead on the banks of the Mississippi, drained of all his blood, Isis believes a vampire has come to New Orleans. With Pierre’s help, she soon comes to suspect Delphine. Isis is a powerful witch and a resourceful woman, but she becomes vulnerable in ways she never expected. Pierre’s greatest discovery is his love for Isis, but can he, an ordinary human man, protect her from mystic forces hell-bent on revenge?

  Chapter

  One

  Isis Tanglewood jackknifed off the bed as two glowing red eyes faded from her memory. The nightmare again. She held her head, wiping tears she couldn’t remember shedding from under her eyes. She’d been crying in her sleep again. Ever since she’d raised Medea from the dead, she’d suffered dreams that left her heart pounding and her breath short. Dreams that were more than dreams if she was honest with herself. The worst part was, she couldn’t even seek out the comfort of her sisters. How could she tell Medea that when she’d descended into Hades to resurrect her, accidentally leaving her unborn son behind, that something else, something evil, had taken notice of her and now haunted her at night?

  She had enough trouble looking Medea in the eye. Could she ever forgive herself for that terrible mistake? Phineas. Oh goddess, Medea had planned to name the boy Phineas.

  Throwing back the covers, she leaped from her bed and rushed to the chamber pot. Her heart beat a mad tattoo within her chest, her stomach somersaulting in the wavering room. Wait, that wasn’t in her head. Isis remembered she was on a ship bound for La Nouvelle-Orléans, or as the English called it, New Orleans. The sickness she was feeling wasn’t from her nightmares at all, but from the roiling of the wooden vessel on the mighty sea.

  She grabbed her robe and slipped it on over her nightgown, then flung open the door to her quarters and headed for the upper deck. She needed air. Needed to see the stars, feel the comforting witness of the moon, and connect with the magic that night breathed into her.

  Shadows gathered around her ankles. The darkness was trying to comfort her as it always did when she was anxious. Only, for the first time in her life, their presence wasn’t entirely welcome. The darkness in her nightmare—the demon with the red eyes—also commanded shadows, and with the memory of his presence fresh in her mind, the tendrils that snaked around her calves felt too much like his touch.

  As her bare feet fell on the wooden deck and the warm sea air blew back her dark hair, Isis tried to put the demon out of her mind. The dream was always the same. He wanted her. Wanted to be with her. And the worst part was, as horrifying a visage as the demon possessed, the dream filled her with lust as certainly as it filled her with fear. This particular demon knew how to turn on the charm.

  She looked out over the railing toward the singular moon, so different from the night sky of Ouros, and wondered if there was a spell to protect her from her own mind. Her own guilt.

  “You too? Bad dreams?” A woman’s voice came from behind her, and Isis whirled. She understood the woman’s French clearly enough, but her accent was different from what she’d picked up in Provence. Paris, she guessed. The woman had the dark curly hair and gray eyes of many she’d met from that region.

  “Yes. Is it obvious?” Isis asked.

  The woman pulled her robe tighter around her slight frame. She was too thin and too pale, hair dull. Isis had seen it before in other travelers. The sickness took hold, extinguishing the spark in their eyes before slowly draining them of life. “I only assumed as that is why I came up. I think it’s the sea. The roiling of the boat does something to my mind. I’ve never slept well, not one night since we’ve been on this bloody boat.” She arched an eyebrow. “I’m Delphine, by the way. Delphine Devereaux.”

  “Enchante, Delphine. How is it we haven’t met before? Have you been in Haiti long?”

  “Only long enough to switch vessels. Our original ship is returning to France,” Delphine said.

  When Isis had set off from Provence with her sisters and Rhys, they’d intended to travel straight to America, but a storm had blown their ship off course, and they’d initially ended up in Haiti. They’d stayed for several months, until once again, their subtle use of magic started to call attention to them. They took no precautions but were never ill. They had no servants, yet their home was always well tended. Food appeared on their table although they employed no cook. Eventually people started to notice, and the whispers became more heated.

  Suspicion alone, though, wasn’t enough to drive them on. It was the baby. Circe’s pregnancy had advanced. Among their kind, babies were notorious for unexpected magic. They needed a place far away from the bustling crowd, a place where they could be safe from human interference.

  “You didn’t mention your name,” Delphine said, shaking her from her thoughts.

  “Oh, excuse me. I’m Isis Tanglewood.” She gave the woman a shallow curtsy.

  “What an unusual name for a French woman,” Delphine said. “You are French, are you not?”

  “From Provence.” Isis shifted uncomfortably. The secret to a good lie was a partial truth. “My mother heard the name while traveling.”

  Delphine studied her. “And your destination is la Nouvelle-Orléans?” She scoffed, scanning Isis from head t
o toe. “Did they find you in a brothel or a convent? With skin like yours, I assume a convent.”

  Isis attempted to tamp down her offense. She was aware that most of the women on this ship were, in fact, taken from brothels, convents, and prisons and offered new lives as wives to hardened colonists of the territory of Louisiana. This Delphine meant no harm in her inquiry. While men might have many reasons for traveling to the Americas, the women here did not share the social freedoms she’d enjoyed in Darnuith before they’d fled her home world. Still, she couldn’t bring herself to lie about this.

  “Neither,” she said honestly. “My sisters and I wanted to settle somewhere new.” When Delphine gave her a strange look, she added. “We travel with my sister’s husband, Rhys.”

  Delphine’s mouth opened, and she nodded her understanding. A man explained everything. Isis had to keep herself from rolling her eyes. The culture in this dimension was strange, indeed.

  “I too travel with my sisters, Lucienne and Antoinette,” Delphine said, smiling bitterly. “No husbands, though. I am told we will stay in a convent under the watch of the Ursuline nuns until a suitable match can be made for us. By suitable match, I presume they mean the highest bidder. Whoever is willing to pay for a wife to cook, clean, and warm their bed. After living in the wilds these years, I bet it’s the bed-warming they’re most in need of, or they wouldn’t have sought us out.”

  Isis frowned. Three sisters, just like them, sold like chattel. The thought upset her, but this was how this realm worked, and there was nothing she could do about the women’s fate. “I wish you the best possible outcome.”

  Delphine opened her mouth to speak but was silenced by a fit of coughing, her face growing paler with her breathlessness until it rivaled the glow of the moon. When she finally stopped, her bottom lip was stained bright red from fresh blood.

  The woman was dying. Isis recognized the signs of the illness the people here called consumption. Rhys had the herbs and magic to cure it, but asking him to do so was out of the question. They’d left Provence and then Saint-Domingue to escape scrutiny. What would be the point if they made the same mistakes here and garnered more accusations of witchcraft?

  Still, her heart grew heavy, thinking of the woman’s plight. By the way she spoke so freely of warming a man’s bed, Isis did not doubt that she likely came from a brothel. She feared Delphine’s life had been hard and was about to get harder.

  Delphine examined her in the moonlight, coughing again into her hand. Her eyes narrowed. “How is it that after weeks of travel, your skin still glows as if it’s lit from within? Your figure hasn’t suffered a bit from the gruel they serve us. Your hair shines like a raven’s wing.”

  Isis thought quickly. It would not benefit her or her sisters for their relative health to be questioned. “My sisters and I spent several months with friends on a plantation in Saint-Domingue, regaining our strength after the long journey from France.” Isis raised her chin.

  “Ah.” She scoffed, and Isis saw her eyes turn hard. “A proper lady with friends in high places. Perhaps I shouldn’t be speaking so openly above my class.” The harsh sting of her tone told her that Delphine didn’t think highly of proper ladies.

  “I’m quite certain a proper lady wouldn’t be on a ship to the wilds of America.” Isis heaved a beleaguered sigh. “I hope we can be friends once you’ve made your new home, Delphine.”

  The sickly woman made a guttural sound. “Of course. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I find I’ve grown tired again. Sleep well, Isis.” She gave a shallow curtsy and headed for the stairs.

  “Delphine?” Isis called, suddenly curious at the talk of sleep. The woman paused her descent and looked at her expectantly. “What was your nightmare about?”

  The woman smiled a mouth of yellowing teeth. “I dreamed of a red-eyed demon,” she said, then grinned wider. “I just hope it wasn’t my future husband.”

  Isis hugged herself against an unexpected chill as Delphine disappeared below deck.

  Chapter

  Two

  “The air feels like a damp wool blanket fresh from the boiling cauldron,” Isis said, whispering an incantation to cool herself. “No wonder they need to ship wives in for the men here. La Nouvelle-Orléans has the same climate as the threshold of Hades.”

  Circe laughed, rubbing her protruding belly. “Try it pregnant. I feel like I’m burning up from the inside out. Still, it’s no worse than Saint-Domingue. This is where we belong. I’ve seen it.”

  “I’ve seen it too,” Isis agreed.

  “Careful, sisters,” Medea said in hushed tones, glancing at the crowd disembarking from the ship and gathering on the wooden plank walkway. “Magic is rolling off you like perfume. Let’s not announce ourselves as witches quite so soon. This parish is far less settled than France, but we can assume their stakes and their witches burn just as well.”

  Rhys adjusted the Tanglewood tree in his arms. “The land grant I procured in Haiti is for a plot several miles north, along the Mississippi. We’ll need horses, and I am to visit with a man in the Vieux Carré to finalize the arrangement.”

  “What about the trunks?” Isis asked, glancing back toward the ship.

  Medea flourished a hand toward the large leather satchel on her shoulder. “Minimization spell. Wholly reversible.”

  “Genius.” Isis noticed the crowd was moving in a common direction. “I’d guess the old square is that way. I’m sure everything we need is there.”

  “What are they doing with those women?” Circe asked. She pointed at a group of austere-looking nuns not far from them, dressed in long black dresses with stiff white panels at their necks and heads topped in black veils. The outfits looked miserable in the heat but made it impossible to miss the religious order. They stood out and commanded attention. Between them was a small group of haggard-looking ladies, each carrying chests that Isis assumed contained their personal belongings. Although they must not have much if that was their only luggage.

  “Wives for the colonists. The men are already gathering.” Medea pointed to a crowd of rowdy men beyond the nuns. Isis’s heart filled with pity for the women. With leathery skin and sweaty shirts, the men looked uncivilized and disorderly, pushing and shoving one another to take long and lascivious looks at the women, whistling and shouting obscenities. Their raucous laughter and bawdy humor were cause for chastisement by the nuns, but the men seemed to take no mind of them.

  One especially brutish man with wild brown hair pulled a knife and held it to another man’s throat for some unheard provocation. After a brief scuffle that thankfully didn’t draw blood, the knife-wielding man prevailed, sending the other running.

  “Is that a fleur-de-lis on his forearm?” Circe asked, indicating the man with the knife.

  Isis narrowed her eyes, trying to make out the mark from a distance, and finally employed a bit of magic to see better. “He’s been branded.”

  Medea nodded. “The fleur-de-lis? A former prisoner, then. I’d heard many were sent here to help settle the land for France.”

  “Positively vile.” Isis smoothed her skirts. “Fine neighbors I’m sure they will be.”

  The smile Medea gave her was filled with mirth. “Come now, Isis, we are the wickedest thing that could possibly walk these streets.”

  Isis couldn’t help but grin back. “Inarguably.”

  A hand landed on her arm, and Isis turned to find Delphine, ghost-white and panicked, behind her. “Mademoiselle Tanglewood, might you need a maid or someone to cook for you? My sister would make a talented servant. She has experience—”

  Medea removed Delphine’s hand from her elbow before Isis could say a word. “We have no need, but thank you for your offer.”

  Delphine’s eyes grew wider, more flustered as she took in the men gathered on shore. “Please…” Two women came up behind her, their trunks in tow. Isis pressed a hand into her stomach. These must be her sisters, Lucienne and Antoinette. All three women looked terrified, but the youngest one
, a petite blonde with large blue eyes, seemed particularly horrified by the pick of husband material. Or perhaps it was her age. She was barely more than a child. Too young to be married.

  “Please, Isis. I beg of you,” Delphine said, bowing her head slightly. “I do not ask for myself. My sister Antoinette is not suited for this type of… arrangement.” She gestured to the men, who, even to Isis, seemed exceptionally depraved, some touching themselves as they gawked.

  The desperation in the woman’s tone broke her heart, and Isis sent a questioning glance in the direction of Medea, Circe, and Rhys. But it went without saying that having the non-magical living and working among them was counterproductive to what they hoped to achieve here. Rhys flashed her a pitying look but raised an eyebrow as if to say he was behind his wife and Medea completely on the matter. All three shook their heads almost immediately. It was simply impossible, especially considering the baby would be coming soon.

  Reaching into her purse, Isis pulled out a few coins, enough to feed a family for a week, and pressed them into Delphine’s palm. “I’m sorry. I have no work for you, but please take this. I hope it helps you get your start here.”

  A nun arrived then and gripped Delphine’s arm in one knotted hand. “Come, my children. It will be all right. Come now.”

  Delphine and her sisters were whisked away toward the other females, but there was no gratitude in her expression for the coins. Delphine looked at Isis with the betrayed and dangerous expression of a wolf whose leg was caught in a trap.