Chapter Text
"Darcy Maria! Where are you at?"
Darcy didn't duck behind the counter like she wanted to, she didn't make a run for the front door (it was like five hundred degrees outside and 9 million percent humidity), she stood, frozen like a rabbit really hoping the hawk doesn't notice it. No such luck.
Madame Odette bustled through the door to the back of the shop and pinned Darcy with a look. She was a small woman, almost shockingly thin, a stiff breeze might carry her off, but she had a personality that filled every room she was in, and an aura of authority that nobody ignored.
"What is this?" The woman waved a paper in Darcy's face.
Darcy bent her head to try and read the waving page. "Your invoice."
"This is not what we agreed." Odette narrowed her eyes and shook the paper once more, emphatically, before slapping it down on the aged wood counter.
Darcy squinted at her, uncertain. "Right. It's less than we agreed. So … yay?"
"Are you sassing me?"
"No," Darcy said as quickly and sincerely as she could.
"Umhmm."
Darcy flinched at the skeptical hum and pointed at the computer she was working on. "Your computers were only a few months old. My initial quote included new equipment. And most of it I didn't end up having to buy. And I know a guy who got me a friends and family discount on the other pieces I needed. So …"
"Have you ever heard the saying 'truth, like light, travels only in straight lines'?"
Darcy blinked. "No."
"Umhmm." Odette nodded and stared at Darcy long enough that she shifted, shuffling her feet under the weight of the gaze. "How about 'truth needs no color'?"
Darcy snapped her fingers. "Shakespeare."
"There you go." The older woman nodded and absently tapped at the invoice on the counter. Then she turned to face the door to the back room and called out, "Nicolas, come shut up the front."
Nicolas stuck his head out of the back, a puzzled frown creasing his forehead. "But, maman, it's only one-thirty."
"And it's a hundred degrees out there. Only fools are walking around. We're gonna shut up for a couple hours. I've got something to take care of. Go on then." She turned to Darcy and pointed a finger. "You are coming with me."
Madame Odette strode out of the room to the back, and Darcy gave Nicolas a pleading look, but he only shrugged, winced, and flipped the sign on the shop window to 'closed'.
"You are no help," she hissed at him as he passed her, walked around the counter.
"Go with God," he whispered back, shaking his head and picking up the tablet Darcy'd set up for inventory purposes, and turned his attention to the jars of herbs and powders on the tall, wooden shelf.
"Darcy Maria!"
Darcy took in a deep breath, letting her shoulders rise to her ears, and then she let it out, until she slumped forward and shuffled into the back after Odette.
Darcy'd needed a break from life over the summer. Between the stress of school, the building expectations of her academic choices, the almost smothering uncertainty about her future, and her insane super hero father, she had a powerful need to slip away for a few weeks. Nothing dramatic, just a little traveling. She didn't run, everybody knew where she was, but she pled breathing room, and took it while she could grab it.
Using the time honored method of blindly poking at a map, randomness directed her to Hattiesburg, MS. Unfortunately, and no offense Mississippi, that didn't sound super exciting. However, her wandering eye picked out a more likely spot just to the south — New Orleans, Louisiana.
She'd never been to New Orleans, but it always sounded like one of those places you had to check out at least once. So, she bought a ticket, booked a hotel room, and took off before anybody could get too clingy (Tony). Mostly New Orleans was pretty great, and she'd taken the time to do all the cliched New Orleans things like go to Jazz clubs and eat gumbo and stare out at the Mississippi.
Except she'd calculated poorly, and within half a day of arriving, she felt the truest hell of a deep South summer. A summer the likes of which she, as a Southern California desert girl, had never known. Stepping outside, even early in the morning pre-dawn, was like trying to force her way through a hot, wet, sponge.
On her second day in town, she'd attempted to flee the heat by ducking into a psychic herbalist shop a few blocks from her hotel. The pungent scent of herbs almost knocked her back out into the heat, but the alluringly cool air swirling through the heavy aroma had her taking a step forward.
Her first sight of Madame Odette and her son Nicolas came a couple seconds later, as her attention was pulled from the overwhelming array of crystals, glass jars, tins, curiously carved candles, and cabinets full of mystical doodads Darcy couldn't even begin to identify. They were arguing over their computer and Nicolas even went so far as to whack it with the flat of his palm a couple times. Darcy winced at the tech abuse.
At the blast of heat from the outside, Odette broke off from the argument, waved her son away, and stepped around the counter towards Darcy, grinning. Her first words were a cryptic, "The ways of the gods are full of providence". Twenty minutes later Darcy had a job fixing and updating the shop's computer and inventory systems, and by the end of the day, a small apartment above the store. It was really hard to say 'no' to Madame Odette.
Three weeks later, Darcy'd finished her work, submitted her invoice to Odette, and was just running through everything one last time. She had to go home soon, she'd run away long enough. But not, apparently, before a lecture from the colorful proprietress.
She followed Madame Odette through the back hallway and into the room the woman used for the customers who came for a little psychic guidance.
"Sit yourself down," Odette waved to a chair and sat herself down on the other side of the small, brocade cloth-covered table. Darcy sat warily.
"Now, about this invoice—"
"It's fair," Darcy protested. "The work wasn't much, mostly it was just data entry. And the rest really was for equipment you didn't end up needing."
"I don't take charity," Odette warned.
"It's not charity. It's the truth. Plus, you let me stay in the apartment."
"Well, with my little girl off up north, she hardly needs it right now." Odette waved off her comment. "No good it sitting empty."
"So, I took off for the rent, too," Darcy explained. "It's still cheaper than the hotel. I mean, I could take off more—"
"Don't you dare."
Darcy held her hands up, yielding to Odette. "Okay, okay."
Odette watched her for a time, then turned in her seat and reached over to the sideboard, picking up a small, velvet box. "I've got something for you."
"You don't have to—"
"Shht," she put a finger to her lips, stilling Darcy. "But, first, let me ask you — what have I taught you?"
Darcy sat back and thought for a moment. "That none of the things I wanted to put into that gris-gris for my dad are things that ought to go in a gris-gris? But, seriously, you don't know him. Lug nuts are 100% appropriate."
Odette gave her a fond, slightly exasperated smile. "Oh, darling, I'll be sad to see you go. So will Nicolas. I don't suppose you'd stay on and marry that boy?"
"Uh, he has a girlfriend?"
Odette sighed and waved her hand. "She's a sweet girl, but lord is she dull."
Darcy pursed her lips together, but had to agree. Vivianne was sweet and kind, and the single most boring person Darcy had ever met. She kind of suspected Nicolas liked her because she was the polar opposite of his bold and extremely vivid mother.
"Never mind that," Odette said. "What else?"
"Um, you can tell a person's whole life from their body language?"
"That's right." She nodded her approval. "You'd be a decent psychic yourself, you know. You read people well. You might not have the 'sight', but you see deep anyway.
"I know you're not a believer, and that's okay. Your head is full of numbers and logic. You make the connections in life the way you make them, and that's how it ought to be. The only eyes we can see out of are our own. But, skeptical as you are, I appreciate how you let yourself have questions, how you were respectful, how you never scoffed. You're a good girl."
Darcy nodded. "It's been fun. Really. And fascinating. And, okay, sure, so I don't really believe, but that doesn't mean it's not interesting, how you do what you do."
Odette nodded and crossed her hands on the table. "People come in here for a lot of reasons, you've seen this enough now. Sometimes they come in just for fun, a taste of mystical ol' New Orleans. And that's okay. I'll give them a little show, but tell them the truth, same as I tell anybody. Some people come for guidance; they know what they need to do, but they need an extra nudge.
"And some people come to Madame Odette because they're lost, they feel adrift, cut off from their family or friends or God or whathaveyou, like they're floating alone in the world. They want to know that that's not true, that they're still connected to the pulse of life. And I've never once met somebody who wasn't. Sometimes, people just get lost."
Odette, having made her speech, sat back and looked at Darcy. Darcy wasn't quite sure what to say to that. But, Odette waited. And eventually she got an inkling of what the older woman was after.
"So," Darcy said, dragging the word out, reluctant to hear what Madame Odette had to say, but unable to avoid the question. "Why did I come here?"
"You were as lost as any." Darcy made a face and snorted. "Oh, no, don't laugh. I could see it and I could 'see' it." She touched a hand to her forehead. "See it in the line of your body, and see it in the ache in your heart."
Odette leaned forward and grabbed one of Darcy's hands in her cool, smooth one. "I never pressed, wasn't my never mind, you keep your secrets. But somebody did you a great harm. I saw it when you walked in. And you're still bleeding from it. I'm sorry to say, I think you will be for a while yet." Darcy winced and looked away. Obadiah. A raw, clawing wound of fear and rage.
Giving her hand a comforting squeeze, Odette let go and picked up the box, opening it to reveal a pice of finely polished malachite. "You're gonna take this. Now, some say it's good for healing the spirit and the mind. But others say it's a pretty rock. I don't much care which way you go, but whatever else, let it be a memory of your time here. Hopefully a happy one."
Darcy plucked the stone out of the box and held it in her hand, running a thumb over the smooth surface, tracing the swirling green. Spirit mind healing, meh, but it was beautiful and the depth in the lines of green certainly had a soothing quality to them. "Thank you."
"Umhmm." Madame Odette watched her thumb working over the stone for a long minute. "It occurred to me the other night that you never asked for a reading. Not even for fun. And as curious as you are, I'd have thought you'd want to have your own experience."
Darcy shrugged. "Well, not really a believer."
"Suppose that's true. Well, you've been here nearly a month, I can't say I haven't seen you. You're an interesting girl, and I'll admit, some of what I've seen, I can't make heads or tails of."
Darcy smirked. The larger, skeptic part of her was amused at the challenge Madame Odette set for herself, there was even an edge of cocksure arrogance to it — like a dare, 'sure, try to read me'. But there was a tiny maybe not so skeptical part of her that was just waiting for the woman to toss her biggest secret right on the table. The large part, with a dash of curiosity, won. "Lay it on me."
Odette accepted the challenge with a raised eyebrow and a smirk of her own. "You're gonna touch the stars. But, you won't be among them; no, they're gonna fall right down out of the heavens at your feet, and your whole world will change like that," she snapped her fingers sharply.
"If a star falls down at my feet, I think the whole world's going to turn to ash. I mean, stars being burny and fiery and all."
"Tsk, tsk, no scoffing." Odette waved a finger at her. "Sometimes connections are direct, and sometimes they're more symbolic. The bigger things are too big to see the whole wide scope of, so they come around in more metaphorical shapes. Placeholders, if you like. So, I don't mean a literal star, and you know that."
"Sorry," Darcy muttered, but she was still smiling.
"I know you're a lot more than you seem. And I know that you've spent your whole life hiding that. You tell the truth, but you strip it bare, like a branch. You've pulled off all the fresh new buds, the sweet flowers, the green leaves that turn with the seasons. The truth you offer is gray and winter-brittle." Darcy stiffened at that assessment. It didn't sound particularly complimentary.
Madame Odette reached forward and gave her hand another pat. "You have your reasons. A secret you keep locked up tight and that hurt you try so hard to hide." She frowned and pursed her lips, concerned. "Now, that worries me. Do me a favor, don't let that fester in you. Your heart's too good to let in somebody else's rot."
"Yes, ma'am," Darcy muttered.
"The most confusing thing to me is time," Odette murmured, studying Darcy closely. "There are people you've known your whole life, but you haven't met them yet, but you will."
"Clive Owen?" Darcy guessed with a laugh.
"Don't sass," Odette chided absently. "And somebody you met for the first time when you were young, and they'll meet you for the first time when you're older. You'll be backwards to each other."
"That doesn't make any sense."
"That's what I'm saying." Odette shook her head and puzzled over it for a moment. "Never mind. You're smart enough to figure it out."
"Am I Merlin?"
Odette's dark eyes narrowed. "What did I say about sassing me?"
"Not to do it," Darcy repeated obediently.
"Umhmm," Odette agreed with a sharp look. "Truth can be a prickly thing and a heavy burden. But it can also be joy and beauty. You will be one of truth's keepers. I know you're not afraid of the burden, but I think you're afraid of the joy."
"Why would I be afraid of joy?" Darcy asked with a little laugh and a skeptical twist to her lips. "I like joy. Joy's awesome."
"You're afraid it won't be there." Odette pointed a finger at her. "And that's the thing you want to know most but are most afraid to ask. The secret you keep, the wound you hide, the thin truth you offer — you hold people back. You were betrayed. Now that I don't have to see, I can see it in your face with my body's eyes. But, darling, there will come a day, when you will let the secret free, your wound will heal, you'll let the truth live, and you won't be floating all alone."
"Okay."
"You've got such a big heart, it wants to love and trust and be open. It will be. I promise you. You're not adrift, you're waiting."
"For what?"
Odette laughed, warm and rich. "For the stars to fall."
Darcy gave her a flat look and rolled her eyes. "Sure. I hope you don't mind if I don't hold my breath."
"Doesn't matter one way or the other." She waved her hand. "Truth is truth to the end of reckoning."
Darcy shook her head and muttered, "You really do like Shakespeare."
"Second only to the good book. I got one more for you, 'be just and fear not'. You'll need that most of all."
Forcing a half grin, half grimace, Darcy rolled her eyes and said, "Wonderful. Can't wait."