My Immortal

Seven Deadly Sins- Ongoing series

First Published 2007-09-01 in Trade Paperback

Publisher: Berkley Sensation

In the late 18th century, a spoiled, selfish plantation owner struck an unholy bargain with a fallen angel: an eternity of servitude for the gift of immortality. For over two hundred years, Damien du Bourg has held up his end of the bargain,by inspiring lust in everyone around him!

Stumbling upon Damien’s plantation on the outskirts of New Orleans while searching for her missing sister, Marley Turner enters a world of shocking decadence. Drawn to the tortured man at the center of it all, Marley feels a powerful sensuality stirring inside her. For the first time, it’s Damien who can’t resist the lure of a woman. But his past sins aren’t ready to be forgotten,or forgiven!

Marley watched out the window as the taxi turned into a deeply rutted drive, nearly consumed by low hanging branches and lush foliage.

“Are you sure this is it?” It looked abandoned, and there was no sign, no address marker. Just thick oppressive trees that formed a heavy canopy, blocking out the relentless sun.

“Sure it is,” the driver told her, dark eyes glancing at her in the rear view mirror. “Everyone here ‘bouts knows Rosa de Montana. Lots of people coming and going all the time.”

“Why?” This didn’t look the kind of place anyone would be eager to just dash off to on a regular basis. They were miles from anything resembling civilization, and Marley thought most funeral homes were cheerier than this isolated entryway. The two dilapidated posts on either side of the drive screamed Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Amityville Horror, The Seventh Sign.

“Parties.”

“Parties? Like cocktail parties?” Maybe Damien du Bourg was the Jay Gastby of the bayou.

Her driver gave a little laugh and smiled at her over her shoulder. He was in his fifties, his hair a bristly gray, and he wore an ear bud for his cell phone. “Not exactly. Word is they’re more like sex parties.”

“Sex parties?” Marley adjusted her canvas summer purse on her lap and contemplated the concept. “What do people do at sex parties?”

Okay, so that came out wrong. Of course she knew that sex had to be involved, somehow, but she was having a little trouble visualizing exactly how these things played out in a crowd. It seemed to defy logic that a large gathering could dissolve into intimate hedonistic sexual gratification. Were there hor d’ouerves? Alcohol? Did they start off mingling over dinner, cocktails… and then what? Someone rang a bell? Were there rules? Who did you hook up with? Was it in front of other people?

Yeah. She had a hard time visualizing it.

The driver gave a real hearty belly laugh, the guffaws cutting in and out each time the taxi hit a rut in the pitted driveway. “Sweetie, you sure you want to go on up there?”

“I have to. My sister is there.” She hoped, anyway. No one knew where Lizzie was, and Marley was more than a little worried, fear starting to replace her earlier irritation.

So Lizzie was unreliable. So she had run off before and always resurfaced. But never had she cut herself off from her family for over eight weeks. It was too long, and the only place Marley could think to look for Lizzie was here, at the plantation house she had mentioned in her last email.

“She know you’re going to visit?”

“No.” But Lizzie would be glad to see her. Her sister was always glad to see her even when she pouted and told Marley she was a fun-sucker, ruining all Lizzie’s good times.

It was true. She was a fun-sucker. She couldn’t help it. Someone had to be rational, even if it was boring.

They slowed to a crawl, the taxi turning into the circular drive that abutted the impressive mansion. It had definitely seen better days. The once white paint had softened to a dirty gray and flaked aggressively in all directions. The shutters clung to the house precariously, like novice mountain climbers with white knuckles, knowing if they relaxed just a little, they’d be down on the ground.

“She ain’t much to look at,” the driver said.

“No. But it’s still gorgeous.” It was massive, its long galleries sweeping left and right from the front door, a grand reminder of the days when conversation was an art, when the French owned New Orleans, and sugar was the road to riches.

In the closed chill of the car, the air conditioning blasting next to her shoulder, Marley was puzzled. This type of crumbling house, with the past struggling to remain in the present, the musty whispers of history wafting out from it, was Marley’s brand of pleasure, not Lizzie’s.

Marley loved history, the past, anything vintage or antique. A progressive Jesuit priest in college had told Marley that history and religion were the most effective means to avoid the present and she suspected that was true. She had certainly used both as a means to that end from time to time, though she felt no guilt for it. Every day she was firmly grounded in reality as an urban teacher and designated Sane Person in her dysfunctional family and was entitled to an occasional respite. She found that in antiques, and in old houses, with the stories they breathed, and how they sparked her normally dormant imagination.

On the opposite end of the spectrum sat her sister. Old made Lizzie itch. She wanted new, shiny, clean, the next big excitement, the latest and the coolest. This wasn’t the kind of place her sister would enjoy staying in, yet Lizzie had claimed she was here.

Marley had spent the last three days trying to track down her sister with no luck. None of her friends knew where she was, her cell had been disconnected, and her last landlord had evicted her in June. Doing Internet research on this plantation and Damien du Bourg had revealed only that he did in fact own the property and that it was a Louisiana historic landmark, but closed to the public since it was privately owned. The house had been in the du Bourg family since it’s construction in the late eighteenth century, and that was the extent of what she’d been able to determine.

There had been no way to know if Lizzie was here so Marley had hopped on a plane to find out for herself.

She handed the driver fifty dollars. “Can you wait for twenty minutes or so? I just want to make sure someone is here before you leave.”

It didn’t look teeming with activity. The whole house gave the feeling of abandonment.

“Sure. You okay going up there by yourself? I can park and walk you up.” The driver suddenly looked worried, his head leaning towards her paternally.

“No, thanks. I’m fine.” Maybe. She forced a smile. “I’m the well-adjusted sister. I’m just going to go in there and haul her out.” She’d done it before. Marley had never had Lizzie’s looks or her confidence, but when it came to protecting her sister, she would do whatever it took, and she doubted anything Lizzie did could shock her.

“You do that then.” He nodded in approval. “This isn’t the place for a nice girl like you, you know what I’m saying?”

What bothered her was knowing that Lizzie wasn’t a nice girl, hadn’t been one in a long time, and she couldn’t fix her sister anymore than she had been able to fix her mother. So she just smiled at the well-meaning driver. “I know, thanks.”

Marley opened the door and felt the heat hit her, heavy and invasive, filling her lungs and pricking her skin. The porch gave low moans of protest as she climbed the steep steps, her sandals making slap, slap sounds as the rubber hit the wood. Worried but optimistic, she knocked and waited. Knocked again. Waited some more. Peeped in the window and saw nothing but shadowy hulks of furniture.

Walking to the end of the porch, she leaned over, trying to see more of the property. How the heck her sister had ended up in such an obscure corner of Louisiana was a total mystery to her, and she would actually doubt it was even true, if it hadn’t been for the letter Lizzie had attached to her email. It had been a letter, from one Marie du Bourg, a resident of Rosa de Montana, and a confession to her priest two hundred years earlier.

Whether it was real or fiction was almost irrelevant. Why had Lizzie attached it to her email, with no explanation? And the plaintive yet polite tone of the letter had disturbed Marley, had her rereading the words several times. She sensed Marie’s agitation, but she didn’t know why Lizzie would have wanted her to read it. Bottom line—why had Lizzie been here and how had she gotten that letter in the first place?

“Hey,” the driver called to her, the passenger window down as he looked up at her.

“Yeah?” She didn’t want to leave, but she couldn’t see anything but weeds, and a row of tiny wooden buildings slowly deflating with age, soldiered behind the trees.

“There’s a man coming round the other side of the house. He came out of the pigeonnier.”

Marley didn’t really know what a pigeonnier was, but she was relieved that at least there was someone on the property. She started back across the porch, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand. She was sweating from the heat and nerves, and she was sorry she’d worn jeans. A loose skirt or shorts would have been a better choice in this climate.

When she reached the top of the stairs, she spotted him. The man coming from the other side of the property walked with strong, graceful strides, his MP3 player dangling around his neck, like he’d just pulled it off his ears. He was tall, he was broad-shouldered, he was gorgeous. Even from a distance it was easy to tell he was a complete hottie, which was irritating. Marley didn’t do well around hotties. Normally articulate, in the presence of male physical perfection she tended to make strange gurgling sounds and blush like a Victorian virgin.

Six year olds she worked wonders with. Men baffled her.

“Damn,” Marley muttered. He was almost at the bottom of the steps and there was no way for her to run down them quickly and meet him before he noticed her. Acutely aware that this was not her best angle, she started down the stairs anyway, walking slowly so nothing on her body would jiggle. It was a futile attempt. She was a bit—okay, a lot—curvier than Hollywood standards dictated, and from down there, her thighs probably rivaled the porch columns for width.

“Hi,” he said as he stopped and smiled up at her, hands going into the pockets of his jeans. “Can I help you?”