To Conquer Death
by Rainne
Part Four
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The next morning, Janna met the Boudreaux at their room again for breakfast and to get on the road. Victoria Boudreaux frowned at her. "Ragamuffin!" she pronounced. Then she swept away toward the in-hotel restaurant. Janna looked at Alexandre, who smiled and shrugged, saying something to the effect that Victoria would be on the warpath about Janna's appearance. The girl sighed, debated explaining that she had no other clothing, and let it go, following Alexandre in his wife's wake.
Breakfast being finished, Janna discovered what Alexandre had meant. Victoria took over driving the Crown Victoria after they checked out of the hotel and drove them immediately to the nearest shopping mall. She rode over Janna's protests that she really couldn't accept these things, she didn't need them, and she'd be fine by saying, "Casey, I have no grandchildren to spoil. You will indulge me."
Alexandre good-humoredly followed them all about the mall, carrying packages, as Victoria led them from store to store, ordering Janna to pick out clothing she liked in some stores and picking thins out for her in others. Janna cringed every time the platinum card was swiped, ringing up obscene amounts of money. She tried in the first couple of stores to pick out inexpensive items, but Victoria would not have it and, when the whirlwind three-hour excursion was over, Janna had enough new clothing to fill three closets, several new pairs of shoes from sneakers to Doc Martens, a huge wheeled suitcase and two new backpacks to carry her things in and, from the last store, where Victoria insisted on indulgence over Janna's voluble protests, a portable CD player and five new CDs.
They sat, purchases complete, in the mall's food court, eating ice cream cones, when Janna looked at Victoria. "Tell me the truth, please. Why?"
Victoria looked at Janna as though calculating, and sighed. "You have to understand the grandmotherly impulse," she began explaining, and over the next twenty minutes told Janna about her daughter Claudia and her granddaughter Marie, who would have been eight if they hadn't both died in a house fire which had been set by Claudia's psychotic ex-husband Rafael. As she finished her story, she stated baldly, "You look nearly exactly as Claudia did when she was your age. Fresh, young, vibrant, healthy, all these things. Claudia was a bit smaller than you, though — she was quite frail. And she was blonde. But other than those two things, you could be her. This was, you understand, fifty years ago. She would have been sixty-one this year, her daughter Marie would have been forty-nine. I am eighty years old, I have more money than I will ever be able to spend, and I have no grandchildren to whom I should give it. Claudia was our only child, Marie was hers. And so I should do what I can to feed the grandmother in me by pretending, for a brief time, that you are the child of my own little Marie, that I am truly your Maman, and I may spoil you as I would have spoiled her, had she been born. For me, it eases some of the pain." She sighed. "You will understand of course that you are not the only child for whom I have done this."
Janna felt tears gather in her eyes. "Thank you, Maman," she whispered. "You are truly an angel."
Victoria stood then, briskly, throwing off her grief and touching Janna on the head gently. "Casey, dear, I think sometimes it is the other way around. Come, now. We go to Texas."
As they pulled out of Little Rock, heading southwest, Victoria asked about the phone call of the previous night. "Did you speak with your sister?"
Janna nodded as she went about unwrapping the cellophane from one of her new CDs, by a band new to the national scene called Dingoes Ate My Baby. "Yeah. A friend of hers is going to pick me up tonight in Fort Worth."
"Very good. I shouldn't have let you go on by yourself, you know; we'd have taken you to California," Victoria stated. Alexandre concurred wholeheartedly in Creole.
Janna smiled. "Thank you. But it's so far out of your way. I know you said you were going back to Houma tomorrow and I didn't want to inconvenience you any more."
"You are hardly an inconvenience, cherie. And you will keep in touch with us after you have arrived at your sister's, oui?" Victoria smiled. "We should like to know that you are safe."
"I will," Janna promised. Then she smiled widely, inserted the earbuds into her ears, and cranked up her new CD player. The miles rolled beneath them as they passed through Arkansas and into Texas.
Janna was asleep when they arrived in Fort Worth. Alexandre woke her up gently. "Ah, we at de hotel naw," he told her. "You gotta fine you sistah."
Janna blinked sleepily and then snapped awake. "Are we in Fort Worth?"
"Oui," he replied. "How you goan fine you sistah?"
She scrambled out of the car and dug into the pocket of her new jeans. There she found the slip of paper with Dakota's cell number written on it. "I have her cell phone number."
"Ah, den you go an call, oui? I gonna have dis bellhop, he take de bags in. You gonna stay here wit us tonight?"
Janna shook her head. "I really can't. I have to get to my sister. It's very important."
"Okay den," he replied, and suddenly his eyes filled with tears. He gathered her into a sudden bear hug, saying something to her in completely incoherent Creole, and then he turned to the bellhop and began barking orders. Janna went into the lobby and asked to use the clerk's telephone. She was let behind the counter and sat at a desk, where she dialed the number on the slip of paper. The phone was answered on the first ring.
"Yo."
"Dakota?"
"Janna?"
"Yes."
"Okay, kiddo, where are you?"
Janna looked around and found the hotel name and address on a piece of stationery. She gave the information to Dakota, who promised that she was barely thirty minutes away from Janna. "I'll meet you in the hotel lobby," Janna said.
"Fine," Dakota replied. "I'll see you soon." They disconnected, and Janna went back out into the lobby to find Victoria waiting for her next to her bags.
"Alexandre tells me your sister is on her way."
Janna nodded. "Actually, it's her friend Dakota. She said she'll be here in about half an hour."
"Very good. I will wait with you." Victoria looked up at her. "You grew up in England."
Janna sat down. "You can tell?"
Victoria nodded. "I have worked very hard to rid myself of the Creole accent; therefore, I am extremely sensitive to those who have accents themselves. You grew up in London, in an upper-class home."
Janna nodded again. "My... er... guardian was an Oxford-educated gentleman."
Victoria nodded. "I was sent to a finishing school in Baton Rouge as a teenager. This is where I was taught by a New York woman to speak with very little accent. Before I went, I spoke exactly as my Alexandre does. My Claudia also went to finishing school. This is where she met Rafael. He was master of horse at the school. And my beautiful Marie, she would have gone as well if she had lived. She would have done so many, many things." Victoria sighed. "And her memory is alive in you, now. And I think your sister's friend is now here."
Janna turned toward the revolving door, which was just now disgorging two young women. The first to exit was a lovely redhead, but the second, the brunette, was the one to whom Janna's eyes immediately went. With a sense innate to her, she felt a tingle at the back of her spine. She had come to associate this tingle with being in the same room with another Slayer potential; and here was Dakota. Janna stood and met the two women halfway across the floor. "Dakota?" she asked, looking up at the brunette.
The woman nodded. "And Willow."
"Thank God." Janna turned. "Let me get my things."
She went back to Victoria. "It's her. I need to go."
Victoria stood and hugged her. "I have put our address and telephone number in your bag. You will write when you have settled in, oui?"
Janna nodded. "Oui, Maman," she replied, smiling. She waited until Victoria had made her stately way to the elevator banks and gone upstairs before grabbing her bags and turning back toward Willow and Dakota. "Let's get the hell out of here."