Gathering Deep, Page 3

  Mama Legba frowned down at the card. “None of that was your fault, Chloe-girl. And don’t you be worrying that the cards on this here table mean a dark future for you. We gonna stand by you until this is done. But you is going to have to stand for yourself, as well.” Mama Legba glanced up at Piers. “By the sounds of things, though, nothing sounds near to being done. Sounds to me like it’s only getting started. Thisbe ain’t gone after all, is she?”

  Piers shook his head and begin filling in Mama Legba on the details of what happened at my house.

  “Did you feel anything?” Lucy asked. “Or was it just Chloe that couldn’t go in?”

  “I didn’t feel much but a general sense of unease, but Chloe couldn’t even move. The color drained from her face, and she looked like she was about to fall over until she took a step back,” Piers explained.

  “Would take a mighty powerful bit of magic to do that,” Mama Legba agreed. “Most warding charms I know of would only turn a body around. You might not even know why you decided to leave a place you meant to go, but you certainly wouldn’t feel pain or harm. That’s magic darker than any I know. But that don’t necessarily mean it’s Thisbe’s doing.”

  “I can’t imagine why anyone but Thisbe would want to keep Chloe out of her own house,” Piers said.

  “Is there anyone else around that even could ?” Lucy asked.

  Mama Legba considered the question. “Not many, and of those who could, I don’t know why they would.”

  “Then we need to assume it is Thisbe’s doing,” Piers confirmed. “And if we assume that, we should be prepared. She’s going to be getting more and more desperate, so we need to be ready for anything … ”

  They kept on talking while I stared at the cards laid out on the scarred table before me—the Two of Pentacles, the Devil, and the Hanged Man. Nothing about them looked safe or peaceful. They were cards filled with energy—mostly violent energy that spoke of changes I didn’t feel ready for.

  “It’s a starting place,” Piers was saying, when a loud thumping sounded from the front part of the building—out by the shop.

  Mama Legba glanced up but didn’t pay it no mind. “Probably some tourists too drunk to read. They’ll get the message soon enough.”

  But they didn’t. After a moment, the thumps came again, louder this time, and Mama Legba made a disgusted sound and lifted herself from the chair. “Let me get rid of them.”

  “Are you okay?” Lucy asked me after Mama Legba disappeared down the hall that led back to the store. She was watching me with dark eyes that glinted with gold when the light hit them. Cat’s eyes. Old-soul eyes.

  There was still something different in them, though. Some new sort of knowledge. I’d been so consumed with my own losses that I hadn’t noticed it until now, but I knew it must have been because of what had happened.

  From what Piers had told me, Lucy had lost someone. To keep herself alive, Thisbe had been drawing energy and youth from the body and soul of a French boy named Alex, a boy Lucy had known and loved in another life. When Lucy’s family had moved to the area earlier this summer, she’d found Alex again—or what was left of him. For more than a century, his soul had been stuck on the plantation where Lucy’s daddy now worked as the museum director, and when she’d finally freed him, body and soul, from Thisbe’s hold, she’d been forced to let him go.

  Lucy’s Alex wasn’t coming back. Not in this lifetime at least.

  I had to admit, skinny as she was, she had a sort of strength I hadn’t noticed in her before. To lose a love like that? To know you have to set someone free to let them be whole? That’s a hard thing, a brave thing. But Lucy had survived it, just like she’d survived everything else, and she’d survived it with a sort of grace I wouldn’t necessarily have predicted.

  She could have hated me or curled up away from the world, but she’d somehow managed to make herself go on. And for the last two weeks, she’d been right there, trying to bring me back to the world. She’d acted as though none of what happened had been my fault—not losing her Alex, not me almost killing her brother. Not even me threatening her life.

  Even now, her face was open and expectant. Like maybe she still wanted to be friends after all. The thought made me feel a little better, even though my own guilt still pressed on me.

  “I don’t know that ‘okay’ is how I’d describe things,” I told her honestly. “But I’m here.”

  “Yes, you are.” Lucy gave me a small, almost relieved smile. “I’m glad. I’ve missed you.”

  In that moment, something shifted a bit between us, like some of my guilt lifted its heavy bottom and scooted itself over enough to give something else a little bit of room.

  Mama Legba’s footsteps sounded in the hallway, and when she appeared in the doorway, her face was pinched with worry and anger. She held up her hand before any of us could talk and shook her head, and then lowered her voice to a near whisper. “Stay here till I’m gone, then get yourselves home and stay there.”

  Piers stood up, ready to act on whatever threat had been pounding on Mama Legba’s door. “What is it?”

  She raised her fingers to her lips. “Police,” she said. “They want me to come take a look at some crime scene—a body in one of the cemeteries. I don’t need them finding you here and asking questions.” Her dark eyes rested on me.

  Because if they asked who I was, they might follow up and figure out that my mom was missing. And if that happened, there might be questions we wouldn’t want to answer.

  “We can wait,” Piers said.

  “Go on home before it’s full-on dark. We’ll talk tomorrow, when I know more.”

  Piers frowned, but he gave her a tense nod and didn’t argue any further as Mama Legba grabbed a patchwork bag and her keys before hurrying back to the front of the shop and the waiting police.

  None of us said anything until we heard the chimes on the front door go silent, but the quiet between us was filled with an unsettled energy. Like all the questions we wanted to ask and things we wanted to say were already there, waiting for us to call them to life by naming them.

  Piers spoke first. “Well, if there was any doubt … ” He looked at me. “There’s no way you’re going back to that house again,” he finished.

  “Excuse me?” It wasn’t what I’d expected to come out of his mouth, and my hackles rose at the unexpected bluntness in his tone. I knew Piers meant well and all. I knew he was just worried, but the declaration of what I would or wouldn’t be doing—on top of everything else that had happened that day—had my temper getting away from me.

  “You heard what Mama Legba said, Chloe. Someone is found murdered in a cemetery after we find that spell on your house? This has Thisbe written all over it.” He ran a broad hand over his smooth head, frustrated. “Even if we do figure out a way to break the charm on your house, I’m not going to let you stay out there by yourself if that witch is on the loose.”

  “You’re not going to let me?” I asked, my voice rising right along with the fear. But fear felt too dangerous, and the anger was easier to hold on to.

  “He has a point,” Lucy admitted.

  I turned on her. “It don’t matter if he has a point. He doesn’t get to say. Not without at least asking me.”

  “I don’t get to say?” Piers snapped.

  “No. You don’t get to decide what happens to me. I do. You’re not my mother,” I snapped, the words lashing out before I could think better of them.

  “Thank god for that,” Piers said, his temper finally getting the better of him, too.

  His tone silenced me, and we kind of glared at each other in the uneasy stillness. Lucy shuffled uncomfortably, like she didn’t know whether to jump in or leave and give us some privacy.

  I knew he had a point, but Mama Legba had been right too. Eventually, I was going to have to stand on my own. I couldn’t keep letting people decide for me. Whatever happened, I needed to be the one to choose, or it wouldn’t be any better than having my body tak
en over again.

  “We just want you to be safe,” Lucy said softly, twisting at one of the knobs on her camera.

  “So do I, but I won’t be told what to do. I don’t need to be protected like that or kept like I’m some kind of child, Piers.” I looked at him then, willing him to understand. “That ain’t me, and you know it.”

  His mouth went tight. “You think that’s how I’m treating you?”

  He looked so downright miserable and guilty that I couldn’t help but feel a bit of my anger fading. “I think you mean well, but you’ve been hovering over me for weeks now, acting like I might break at any moment. Or worse. You haven’t done more than kiss me on the forehead since everything happened.”

  Piers glanced at Lucy, and I swear his ears went red at the tips. “I’ve been worried … ”

  “And I ’preciate that. But I need you to feel something more for me than worry. I can’t keep living at your place and feeling like you don’t see me anymore.”

  “I see you fine,” he muttered.

  I shook my head. “You see the broken pieces that you took out of that cemetery. I need you to believe I’m putting myself back together, that I can put myself back.” I hesitated. “As long as I’m living under your roof, I’m not sure that you can see me any other way but broken.”

  “Where else do you think you’re going to go?” Piers asked, and I could tell his frustration was mounting. “You can’t go back to your home. Thisbe made sure of that.”

  The barb stung, but I kept myself from flinching. He was right again. I couldn’t go home. And no way was any hotel going to let me rent a room on my own.

  “She could stay at our place,” Lucy volunteered.

  Piers snapped his head around to look at her.

  Lucy shrunk back in her seat a little. “I mean, if you want,” she added weakly, chancing a glance in my direction.

  “You don’t think your parents would care?” I asked, ignoring the way Piers huffed his irritation. “After everything that happened … ”

  “They don’t know what happened,” Lucy said with a shrug. “As far as they’re concerned, T.J. had some kind of mysterious illness that the doctors couldn’t figure out and is totally fine now. They don’t know your mom had anything to do with shooting at me, and I think it’s probably better for everyone’s peace of mind if they never find out about any of the rest. They already think your mom’s helping a sick relative in Mobile, so it’s not like we need a new story to cover for you.”

  I looked at Piers, really looked at him. He wasn’t saying anything, but I had the feeling that whatever happened at this point would matter to him—to us. I could go back to his apartment and stay like I’d been staying. I didn’t doubt that Piers would do anything he could to keep me safe. But I also knew that all his protection might smother whatever was left between us.

  Or I could go stay out at Le Ciel Doux, at Lucy’s place. Her parents were nice enough people, but I didn’t know how I was supposed to live under their roof knowing what I’d done—or helped to do—to their family. Even if they didn’t know a thing about it.

  If I went to live with Lucy’s family, the distance might make Piers look at me less like some fragile doll and more like the person he once loved.

  “Well?” he said, his face settling into the mask I’d come to hate. There was a part of me—an uncomfortably large part of me—that wanted nothing more than to smash it from his face.

  I shook myself at the abrupt violence of that thought. It had to be the stress and pressure I’d been under. Or maybe it was the frustration and fear that had been haunting my every footstep these past two weeks. I thought about the shattered bottles and I prayed it wasn’t anything more.

  I took a breath and looked at Lucy. “I think I’d like to come stay with you for a bit, if you really think your parents wouldn’t mind.”

  I didn’t even need to look to know Piers wasn’t happy.

  Three

  After stopping by Piers’s apartment to get my things, the two of us made our way from the Quarter out toward the River Road, where Lucy’s family lived in the shadow of the antebellum mansion named Le Ciel Doux. Piers still wasn’t really talking to me, but I figured that was better than arguing for the time being. As we drove, the land we passed was quiet and unaware of the frustrated energy thrumming between us in the car. The sun was settling into the lower part of the sky, creeping its way steadily toward evening, and the whole world seemed to be going on its way like nothing was amiss.

  Once, sugar plantations around New Orleans held a large part of the entire country’s wealth, but not anymore. Now the River Road is just a stretch of half-dead towns and the refineries that kept those towns breathing. Most of the fields that once grew sugar stood unplanted, and the only things that grow out there anymore are the throats of smokestacks retching their bile out into the world. On a good day, you can barely smell the stink of them. But the beginning of August is always too hot for it to be a good day, and that day, the stink was already coming in through the open windows and filling the car with its thick, chemical smell.

  As we drove, patches of green interrupted the fields of concrete and piles of coal every here and there. Some of those patches had trailer parks planted on them, but others held stately homes—pretty little pictures of the past, all brought back to life by one committee or another. All of them were a testament to the glory that had been the South, once upon a time. Busloads of tourists liked to follow the winding roads, like ants drawn to the sugar that once made the area rich.

  Le Ciel Doux is maybe the biggest and prettiest piece of green. It sits back from Route 18, popping up like a surprise. My momma had worked at Le Ciel since I was little, so I basically grew up on the grounds. But it didn’t matter how many times I drove through the ornate wrought-iron gates that separated the plantation from the rest of the region—seeing that big house sitting at the end of the row of ancient oaks, all shadows and bone-white stone, always gave me a creeping feeling right up the back of my neck.

  I don’t think anyone was more surprised than me when I applied to work as a tour guide there, but I decided I’d rather wear a hoop skirt than work the night shift at one of the refineries like a lot of folks do. And if I wanted any pocket money, I had to work for it—one of Momma’s many rules.

  Or, it had been.

  I turned up the gravel road toward the big house and that creeping feeling came back, like cold fingers tickling at the short hairs on the nape of my neck. Like someone warning me to stay away. I was so used to it that I didn’t even shudder anymore. Guiding the car left at the fork in the drive, I brought it up next to an old Volvo wagon parked in front of a pretty-as-a-postcard cottage.

  “You’re sure about this?” Piers asked, and I knew he meant more than what he was saying. I wasn’t sure, but I had a feeling that giving us some space was the only way our relationship would survive.

  I didn’t even have my bags out of the trunk when the front door of the cottage opened and Lucy came out. Piers took the bag from me and took my hand as she came down the front porch steps to greet us, a tentative smile on her face.

  She glanced at Piers as though to read his mood before she said anything. “Everybody’s excited you’re here,” she told me. “Come on in, and I’ll show you your room.”

  I wasn’t even to the porch when Lucy’s little brother T.J. popped his dark head out the door. Even my forgot-how-to-smile mouth couldn’t help but turn up a bit at the sight of his impish face.

  This was a bad idea, I realized. I’d put T.J. in danger once before. My staying at Lucy’s could put her whole family in danger again.

  Piers squeezed my hand, and I realized that I’d stopped moving. I knew Lucy was watching me, too.

  “It’s okay,” she said softly. Like she knew exactly where my thoughts had gone. “Mama Legba did some protective wards on my house after everything happened. You’ll be safe here.”

  I didn’t know how she could sound so sure, because I sure
wasn’t.

  “She doesn’t have a hold on you anymore,” Lucy added gently.

  “You could still come back to my place,” Piers suggested. I could tell by the tone of his voice that he was still frustrated he hadn’t been able to change my mind about staying with Lucy’s family.

  “Why don’t you stay for tonight and see how you feel?” Lucy offered. “If you decide to go back to Piers’s place in the morning, you can. No hard feelings. But you’re here now and they’re already expecting you. If you leave, we’re going to need an excuse for why you changed your mind. We don’t need anyone trying to call your mom.”

  I glanced over at Piers. He still didn’t look happy, probably because he knew that Lucy was right.

  “Okay,” I said with a sigh. “I’ll stay for tonight.” But I wasn’t going back to Piers’s place. I’d figure something else out, if it came to that.

  When we got inside, both of Lucy’s parents were there to greet me. Dr. and Mrs. Aimes look exactly like parents should—late forties with bodies that have started to go soft, clothes that have long since gone square, and lines etching themselves into their faces. You can tell they’re good people, though, because their lines are a map of all the smiling they’ve done through the years. A lot of people’s lines map out a different kind of story.

  I wondered for a moment about the lines my face might show someday. Then I thought about the lines my momma’s face had never shown, and I felt that much worse.

  “I’ll show you to the guest room,” Lucy said, rescuing me from their fussing.

  By the time I’d finished settling my stuff, Lucy, her dad, Piers, and T.J. had gathered in the front parlor to look at some old crate that Byron, the preservation manager at the plantation, had brought over to show Dr. Aimes.

  Byron was in his mid-forties, and he had that kind of nondescript, doughy look to him that some men start to get at that age when they sit too long and eat too much. Lucy had hated working for him earlier that summer. Her dad had promised that working at Le Ciel would mean an opportunity for her to take pictures for a new book the university was putting together, but Byron never let her do anything but fetch coffee or hold his equipment. I hadn’t had much experience with him myself, but every time I’d seen him around the property, he always seemed to be sweating.