Gathering Deep, Page 2

  Piers was on the phone, too busy talking with Lucy first and then Mama Legba to notice me worrying. He was making plans to meet them both back in the Quarter, and he was making those plans without even asking my opinion.

  “We’re going to meet at the shop,” he told me when he finished the second call. It wasn’t a question so much as a command.

  “I don’t see why we need to bother Mama Legba with this,” I said, bristling at his tone, but also at the idea of having to rehash everything with the old Voodoo Queen before I’d had a chance to figure out anything for myself.

  “You don’t see why we would need to tell the one person who might be able to help us?” Piers glanced over at me, his face grim. “That rooster wasn’t there when I stopped to get you some clothes a week ago, Chloe. You know as well as I do that means Thisbe’s back.”

  Thisbe’s back. The words sent a little jolt through me.

  His words meant that my momma hadn’t crawled off somewhere to die after they took away the source of her power that night. Until now, none of us had been sure how long she could last without the dark magic that had kept her alive for so long. An hour ago, I would have been relieved—maybe even excited—to hear that she wasn’t gone forever. But now? I wasn’t so sure.

  It was painfully clear that whoever set the charm on my house didn’t want me anywhere near it. A charm like that took powers my momma had never revealed to me. So maybe Piers was right. Maybe this Thisbe person was back and the mother I’d known my whole life really was gone for good.

  “Besides,” Piers added in a sour tone, “I thought you wanted to move back into your own house.”

  “I told you, it’s not like that,” I said, touching his arm. I felt the muscles twitch beneath my hand. Piers didn’t pull away, but I could tell he was fighting not to, so I dropped my hand back into my own lap and let him off easy.

  He kept his eyes level on the road. “I get it.” But his voice told me he didn’t.

  “It isn’t because I don’t want to be with you,” I told him, trying once again to figure out how to make him understand.

  “You just don’t want to stay with me anymore,” he said.

  I let out a frustrated breath. We’d been over this who-knows-how-many times. “I need to feel like I can make it on my own,” I explained, searching for words to use that wouldn’t bruise his ego any further. “I can’t keep feeling like I’m a problem for you to solve.”

  “You’re not a problem, Chloe. I want to help you get through this,” he said, glancing over at me. He took a hand off the wheel and laced our fingers together.

  “I know you do,” I said softly.

  But sometimes wanting a thing wasn’t enough. How was I supposed to explain to him that his hovering was driving me mad? I needed him to look at me like he used to—like we were partners, equals. Like he still wanted me.

  “As much as that means to me—and it does,” I assured him, “I have to know I don’t need to rely on you to get through this.”

  He frowned, his brow creasing in irritation. “I don’t see why you’re afraid to let me help you.”

  “I’m not afraid.” I pulled my hand away. It was almost the truth. “But you can’t spend your life babysitting me. You’re going to have to go back to Nashville soon, when the term starts. And then what? I need to be okay with myself and by myself before that happens, or your leaving is going to be that much harder.”

  “You think I would leave with Thisbe on the loose?”

  “She’s always been on the loose. We just didn’t know it,” I told him. “If anything happens, you’ll come back, but you can’t just sit around here waiting for her to make another move. You have work to do, work that’s important to who you are.”

  “You’re important to who I am, Chloe.”

  His words eased something inside of me. I’d been wondering how we’d weather this particular storm, if we’d ever get back to how it had been before. “You’re important to me, too,” I said softly. “Which is why I won’t let you miss even one day of the term without a real reason—Thisbe or no. That’s why I need to be okay on my own.”

  He took his eyes from the road long enough to glance over at me. The frown was still in place, but the tension had eased a bit.

  “We have time to figure it all out,” he said. Stubborn as always.

  But I wasn’t going to give in, because there was something else that worried me.

  Lucy had told me a little of what happened that night in the cemetery. That night, she said, Piers had been forced to choose between me and Thisbe. For a moment, he’d thought he would have to kill me to stop Thisbe from taking my body over for good. After what had happened at the house—the invisible wind, the shattered bottles—I wasn’t so sure she wouldn’t, or couldn’t, take me over again, and if I could keep from putting Piers in that position again, I would.

  Still, I wasn’t in any hurry to see Mama Legba. I’d had enough magic for one day. And one thing is for sure—Mama Legba has her finger on some powerful magic.

  Piers had introduced me to the old Voodoo woman a while back, when he’d been doing some interviews of people who still practiced for one of his classes at Vanderbilt. Someone had told him Mama Legba was the best of the Voodoo Queens left in the city, and they’d been right. He’d enjoyed talking with her so much that he kept going back until they were friends. One day, he took me along, too.

  From the first minute I glimpsed the pink-as-coral door standing out from the grime of the Quarter, I had a feeling about her shop. It’s all Caribbean-bright colors and windows streaming in light—not at all what I thought a Voodoo lady’s place would be like. But her shop had felt like a homecoming I hadn’t even known I was looking for.

  A year ago, I wanted to learn everything I could about the beliefs that structured Mama Legba’s practice. I wanted her to teach me, because I thought I felt some connection to the things she was saying. I felt a pull toward her explanations of the spirits that move in this world, and I wanted to believe in the powers she talked about.

  But with everything that had happened, and everything they told me my momma was, that pull had started to worry me. It was still there, and maybe even stronger than ever.

  Piers and Lucy had been trying to get me back to her shop ever since that night, but Mama Legba reads auras, and I wasn’t sure I wanted her to see mine. Even after cutting off all my hair, I still worried about what she might see in me.

  There was a part of me, though, that did want to go back. A part of me that craved the afternoons I’d spent in the shop’s sunny brightness, sorting herbs and learning everything I could about Voodoo and the way energy moves through the world. But I didn’t trust that craving anymore, especially not after the brush with magic I’d had that afternoon.

  Not that Piers was giving me much choice.

  By the time we made it to the narrow alley behind the cathedral in Jackson Square, it was late afternoon. Once we stepped through the door of her shop, the dusty scent of sage and other herbs washed over me. I picked out the sharp bite of ginger root, the dry warmth of balmony, and a bit of citrusy lemon verbena to cut through the rest. There were so many I still couldn’t name, but there were a lot that I could. I was learning.

  Or I had been.

  Lucy was already waiting for us. She was as disheveled as usual and looking every bit the artist I knew she was, with her always-present camera hanging from her neck. Girl never wears anything that doesn’t slouch or slump, and somehow it fits her. Somehow it mutes that crazy red hair of hers just enough to make her look like someone you might want to know.

  She looked so comfortable leaning against the counter where she’d propped herself to talk with Mama Legba, not at all like the skittish Yankee I’d met a few months before. Then, she’d been the one who was unsure about visiting the old Voodoo Queen’s shop, but now I was the one looking in from the outside.

  “Come on now, Chloe-girl,” Mama Legba said gently, and I realized I’d stopped right in the
middle of the doorway. There wasn’t any kind of magic holding me back this time, though—just my own nervousness and fear.

  But Mama Legba had a gentle smile curving at the corners of her mouth, and her eyes were steady and calm, not full of the dark worry and pity everyone else seemed to look at me with. If she saw anything in my aura to warn her off, she sure didn’t show it. In the end, it was that small kindness that had my feet moving, one in front of the other, until I was all the way into the cool welcome of her shop.

  Piers closed the door behind me and shut out the noise of the Quarter. It was just the four of us there—me and Piers, Lucy and Mama Legba. We were the only ones who knew what happened to me or what my mother had done, and still, not one of them seemed to be turning away.

  Mama Legba held out her hand. “Come on, Chloe-girl. You come on over here and let me read your cards. You more than ready now.” She glanced up at Piers. “Turn the sign? I think we need a bit of privacy for what needs doing.”

  “We need to talk about the spell Thisbe put on Chloe’s house,” Piers said as he flipped the sign and latched the door.

  “Be time enough for that,” Mama Legba said dismissively. “Evil never does go nowhere fast.” Without another word, she turned with a little wave to indicate we should follow her back through the hall that led to the private area of the building where she lived.

  The back rooms were washed in the same bright colors as the shop itself. To the left, a low couch and a couple of older, worn chairs were heavy with brightly colored pillows. On the other side, a white cast-iron sink and a range that looked to be as old as the Quarter itself anchored a small kitchen.

  Mama Legba settled herself on one of the low, comfortable chairs and motioned for me to sit in the other. Lucy and Piers took their places on the couch without needing an invitation.

  The deck of cards was already waiting on the low coffee table. Printed in the color of old blood, the backs of the oversized cards were covered with an angular design that reminded me of doors opening and closing. They looked so old with their yellowed and tattered edges, but I knew the cards’ faces would reveal impossibly rich, iridescent colors as bright as the day they were made.

  With deft hands, Mama Legba shuffled the deck and set it in front of me. “Go on, Chloe-girl. You know how this works.”

  I should have refused, but I did know how it worked, and I’d wanted Mama Legba to read my cards ever since I learned how good she was at it. So I pushed aside any reservations I might have had and cut the deck like I was supposed to.

  With another deft flick of her wrist, she fanned the cards out on the table.

  “How many?” I asked.

  “I think three should do well enough for now—past, present, and future.”

  I took a breath and seriously thought about changing my mind. I wasn’t sure I was ready to find out what any of those cards would tell me, because I knew that whatever she told me the cards said would sure enough be the truth.

  But I’ve never yet been the kind of person who lets a little bit of fear stop me, so I took three cards and laid them facedown on the table. Then I balled my hands in my lap and hoped for the best.

  Mama Legba tapped the back of each card before she found the first one she wanted to turn over. “This here card is your past,” she said, flipping it to reveal the Two of Pentacles.

  A woman with dark, waist-length hair swiveled seductively on the card as she held two orbs in her outstretched hands. Her long, flowing skirt hid her legs, but nothing except some heavy necklaces covered her breasts. When the light hit the surface of the card, the colors shimmered brilliantly and almost made the picture look like it was moving. The woman’s hair flowed into the night around her like it was a part of it, and the orbs shifted as though about to reveal dark shapes that never quite came to the surface.

  “This here card is all about duality,” Mama Legba told me. “But you probably know that well enough. It speaks of living a life on the edge of chaos—that moment before everything is about to be changing. Clear enough, if you ask me, seeing what we know now.”

  She didn’t seem to pay any attention to the way my cheeks flamed. A life on the edge of chaos. That didn’t sound like my past, not as I’d lived it or experienced it. My life had always seemed so steady. Boring even. But Mama Legba wasn’t wrong—I just hadn’t understood what a lie the surface of my life had been.

  “Let’s see … ” She flipped over the next card. “Your present.”

  My stomach went tight. “The Devil?” The card was painted in monotone shades of crimson and black. A monstrous horned beast stood over two naked lovers. Around their necks, each wore collars attached to chains held by the beast’s claw-tipped hands.

  Mama Legba made an impatient noise in her throat. “You know better than seeing the surface of these cards for the truth.” She tapped the card. “These ain’t meant to be taken as gospel, else anyone at all could do a reading. No, Chloe-girl, this here card ain’t no more evil than you are.”

  That bit of information didn’t exactly make me feel any better. Not after the bottles had shattered the last of my illusions about what my mother was. About what I might be.

  “We all got some darkness inside us, child,” Mama Legba said gently, “but we each gets to decide what to do with it. You try to deny that natural part of what’s in you, it means you giving it too much power. Look here, these shackles ain’t no real bindings,” she said, pointing to the chains that the creature was holding in the card. “These two lovers could throw off they chains any old time. They don’t because they is blind to the truth. This card is about freeing yourself—about making that choice to see past the things that most weigh you down and choosing otherwise. This card is about accepting the truth of our own selves. After all, ain’t no shadow without the light, and ain’t no devil but the one you create and let rule you.”

  I glanced at Piers, but his face was solemn and still, not giving away even a hint of what he was thinking. I hated that mask-like expression he’d taken to wearing in the last couple of weeks. I hated that I couldn’t read him like I used to. He glanced up, meeting my eyes for a moment, but then he went back to studying the three cards.

  Mama Legba turned the final card face up, and I couldn’t stop the strangled gasp that escaped me. If the Devil wasn’t bad enough, a man hanging from a tree like some sort of inverted lynching was the card I’d drawn for my future.

  “Hmmm,” Mama Legba murmured, her brows bunched as she considered the card. “You drew some mighty interesting cards, Chloe-girl.” She tapped a finger against the man’s body. “This here card is powerful enough on its own, but along with the Devil? Might could be something dangerous.”

  “Dangerous?” I whispered, thinking of the broken bottles. Because wasn’t that exactly what I was afraid of—that I was something dangerous? That I was my mother’s—Thisbe’s—daughter in every sense of the word?

  “Now don’t be misunderstanding me, child.” Mama Legba studied the card, frowning. “Look closer.”

  On the surface of the card, a man hung completely naked from a tree by one foot. A thorny vine anchored him to the branch above, and his arms were outspread at his sides. His face wasn’t the face of a condemned man, though. Rather than agony or even the lifeless expression of the dead, the hanged man’s eyes were clear and steady, his expression alert and almost hopeful. As I looked at the card, the vine seemed to twist farther down his leg and the sky seemed to undulate in blues and golds.

  “This card is all about giving up your control to get something more, Chloe-girl. See here how this little man is? He ain’t been hanged. He put his own self up on that there tree. His hanging there is a quest for knowledge.” She frowned again. “But this here card is also about sacrifice. For what you seeking, you got to be ready to give something else up. We can’t carry everything from our past into our future, child. That’s what this card is telling you.”

  “You mean I need to give up on my momma,” I said, not taking
my eyes from the card in front of me.

  “Maybe so,” Mama Legba agreed. “But I don’t know that life’s ever so easy to understand as that. Might could be some other sacrifice you’ll need to be making before you can move on into your future. But that sacrifice will bring you something better. Something greater than what you was.”

  I twisted my hands in my lap, afraid to meet Mama Legba’s eyes. I could feel them all watching me. Waiting for something.

  “Chloe-girl,” Mama Legba said gently. When I didn’t look up, she tipped my chin up so I had to meet her eyes. “Ain’t nothing wrong with you. These cards sure enough look like trouble, but I promise they don’t have to be. You got choices to be making, but what these cards tell me is that those choices is gonna be yours. That’s a good thing. A powerful thing.”

  “I’ll get to choose?” I asked, barely able to form the words.

  “Ain’t that what you been worrying about all along, child? You think that because your momma done took you over once that she could do it again. But we took care of that for you, didn’t we? You already made one sacrifice. You already on your path.” When she saw my look of confusion, she gave my chin a gentle nudge. “Most women would have needed to be tied down to have they hair taken from them like that, but you didn’t so much as shed a tear. You did what needed to be done. You made a sacrifice, and in return you gained your freedom. Now you got to decide what to do with that freedom.”

  She took my hand and slid the card into it. “You need to start learning again, Chloe-girl. We’ve given you some space to grieve, but the rooster on your door should be telling you time is up. You need to be ready for what’s coming.”

  I tried not to think about the way my heart had squeezed like it would stop when I went to my own house. “I think I’ve had enough of magic to last a lifetime,” I said, pushing the card back toward her. “I’m surprised you’d even want me to get wrapped up with the spirits after everything that happened.”