Midlife spirits comple.., p.114
midlife spirits - complete series, page 114
When I stood in the doorway, the woman thumped her cane against the floor and glared up at me.
“Sit down, Peyton Clark.”
The fine hair on my arms prickled, goose bumps running over my skin. “How do you know my name?”
“Been waiting for you.” She sniffed, her jaw tilting up at a mulish angle. “You’re late.”
“How can I be late for an appointment I didn’t know I had?” I threw my hands on my hips and glared at her in frustration. “I didn’t even know I was coming here until a half an hour ago!”
The woman gave me an unsympathetic look. “You want help? Sit down. You want to keep whining? Do it somewhere else.”
She pulled a deck of oversized cards out of her skirts and started shuffling, not paying me any more attention—as if whatever option I chose, it was all the same to her.
For lack of any better options, I sat. Yes, I was frustrated and had no idea what was going on, but if this woman was actually willing to help me, I would take what I could get, even if I had no idea what was going on. And, somehow, she did know my name…
Sitting down at the table got me a brief look that was almost approving. At least it was approval adjacent, so to speak. Also, there was the hint of a smile on the old woman’s face, but that could have been a trick of the light.
“So,” I said tentatively, after a few moments of silent shuffling. “You know my name…”
She grunted. “Yvonne.”
“Nice to meet you, Yvonne.”
I didn’t get a response, so for lack of anything better to say or do, I picked up the glass in front of me and took a sip. My taste buds braced for impact as I took a mouthful of the sweet tea that was ubiquitous in New Orleans. Emphasis on the ‘sweet’. Normally at home, I mixed mine with unsweetened tea to keep it from making my teeth ache. But now that wasn’t an option, so I took a sip, ready to hide a wince, but was pleasantly surprised. The tea had only a hint of sweetness, and a little twist of lemon, and I was more than sure that had everything to do with the fact that such was exactly how I liked it.
Somehow, this less than toothachingly sweet tea was the most unsettling thing that had happened since I’d arrived in the city—ghosts trying to murder me, time traveling through the spirit world, dead men coming to life again. Sure, okay, I could deal with all that. And a stranger knowing my name? Creepy, but I could roll with it. But, someone I’d never met knowing my tea preference? That was where I drew the line.
The glass made a click when I set it down on the table. “Who are you?” My voice shook a little on the way out, but my words were still closer to a demand than a question.
Yvonne paused in her shuffling to look at me over the rim of her glasses. “Someone who’s doing you a favor.”
“I didn’t ask you to.”
“No,” she agreed. “You didn’t.”
There was a subtle emphasis on the ‘you’ in her sentence.
“Who asked you to do me a favor?” This conversation was easily one of the weirdest I’d ever had, and I regularly talked about ghosts and time travel, so that was really saying something.
Yvonne started shuffling again, the cards moving easily through her old fingers even though she kept her eyes trained on me. “That’s between me and them.”
Frustration boiled in my gut. By all rights, steam should have been shooting out of my ears. “It’s my business if it’s about me.”
Completely unimpressed by my anger, Yvonne blinked slowly. “You ever hear the phrase ‘don’t look a gift horse in the mouth’?”
“Of course, but—”
“Good, then you know what to do,” she said, drawing the first card.
I’d assumed she was using tarot cards, but the colorful images laid out in the spread before me were totally foreign to me. I’d never seen anything like them before. They were pictures of silhouettes, more shadows than people, flowing symbols that almost looked like letters in an unfamiliar language. Or maybe it was more à propos to describe them as colorful patterns that looked more like Rorschach tests than actual pictures. A few animals appeared. The one most easily identified was a snake with rainbow patterned scales… of course. It seemed I couldn’t escape anything having to do with snakes recently.
Yvonne looked down at the spread covering a good portion of the table, and her gray brows crept up her forehead until they almost brushed the cloth of her head scarf.
“Girl, you got all kinds of trouble.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it and the laugh came out as more of a wheeze, but some of the tension leaked out of my spine. “Tell me about it.”
The joking statement fell a bit flat. Yvonne’s lips pursed, and she tilted her head to one side, eyes on the cards, as if she’d taken me seriously.
“You don’t need a review. You need clarity.”
My breath caught in my throat, the muscles squeezing tight. “Yeah.” My voice came out a little thick, but it didn’t waver.
Yvonne looked over the cards again, thumping her cane against the ground almost meditatively. “The stranger. The one with the snakes…”
“Yes?” I asked, leaning forward because I was suddenly more than interested.
Yvonne nodded. “The answers you seek lie in the relics taken.” She looked up at me then. “Look to them for what you need to know.”
Of all the things I’d expected when I followed an old lady into a glorified coat closet, actual answers hadn’t been on my list. But, I was both inordinately relieved and excited to learn answers were exactly what I was getting.
“You can see that?” I leaned forward, straining to see and understand the cards better.
Yvonne thumped her cane against the ground more firmly. “Yes,” she said, voice tart. “Now let me work.”
Duly chastised, I leaned back into my chair until I worked up the courage to tell her what was on my mind. “With all due respect, I’ve looked to the relics and they haven’t answered any of my questions about… anything,” I said.
With another glare, she turned back to the cards. “Speak to the Frenchman. He can point you in the right direction.”
The Frenchman? Drake? Well, he was the only ‘Frenchman’ I knew, but talking to Drake didn’t make much sense, because if he’d known anything about all of this, he would have already told me.
But maybe he didn’t have all the facts, I thought guiltily. The Ouroboros pendant pressed against my leg, as if burning me through my pocket. I’d taken it off from around my neck because it made me nervous and I’d figured it would be better kept in my pocket—close but not too close. Speaking of the necklace, I still hadn’t told anyone about it yet, mainly because I couldn’t.
I opened my mouth to ask why I appeared to be blocked in connection with the necklace, but Yvonne tapped a few of the cards to the right of the spread. They were covered in shadows and little fires, the silhouettes of people twisting and writhing on the glossy cardstock.
She fixed me with an intense look.
“You know you’re under the influence of dark and powerful magic.”
It wasn’t a question, but I nodded anyway. My throat was so dry, it hurt to swallow.
Yvonne sucked her teeth, the sound unnaturally loud in the small space. “You need to reverse the curse before you find yourself coming to a bad end. Time will run out, faster than you can imagine.”
My heartbeat kicked up, slamming in the side of my throat. My pulse was so heavy it almost hurt. I ran my tongue over my suddenly dry lips. “What can I—”
“Hey!” someone shouted from the room outside, loud enough to be heard clearly through the door. “Get back here!”
I glanced at Yvonne, startled.
She gave me a look heavy with significance before rolling her eyes toward the door.
Reluctantly, I rose from my chair and headed for the door. She clearly wanted me to investigate, but I had a million more questions I was dying to ask her—namely, how in the hell I was supposed to remove the zombie curse which was obviously going to do me in. But, the expression in Yvonne’s eyes told me she wouldn’t tell me anything more if I didn’t do as she asked. So, I took the three steps necessary to get to the door and stepped back into the main room.
A hand latched onto my upper arm, tight enough that it hurt.
“Ma minette!” Drake glared down at me. “Where have you been?”
“I was just talking to someone.” I pried my arm out of his hold, glaring at him because he was keeping me from something important! “I tried to tell you before, but you and Maggie were busy.”
I glanced around. David was on the phone, his free hand buried in his hair, a frown on his handsome face. A bunch of patrons, including Maggie, were all clustered around the doorway, staring out into the street.
“What’s going on?” I demanded, returning my gaze to Drake’s concerned expression. “I heard shouting.”
Drake rubbed a hand over his face, his dark hair falling over his brow. “There was a theft, mon chaton.”
I gaped at him. “A theft?” I felt my heart drop down to my toes. “What did they steal?”
He nodded to an empty display case, the one that had held the gris-gris that Marie Laveau herself had supposedly made. The bag was gone, along with the objects that had been positioned around it, including the snake shed.
“A young girl, a child, came in,” Drake explained. “I thought her to be with a group that visited after us. She was looking at the displays, and I did not pay much attention to her, as I had noticed you were missing, ma minette.” He gave me an impatient look. “Just what were you doing in the closet?”
I waved him on. “There was this woman, who… I’ll tell you later. Tell me about the theft... please. The girl grabbed the gris-gris?” He nodded as I shook my head. “Why would a kid want a talisman bag?”
Drake pursed his lips, drawing my attention to them. I deliberately dragged my gaze back up, swallowing. It was so not the time for a forcible reminder of just how handsome Drake was.
“The question is not why would the child want it, but how the child stole it, ma minette.”
My eyes narrowed, and I glanced back over at the display case. The closed, locked, hermetically sealed, unbroken glass case. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I am not, mon chaton. According to witnesses, the child simply reached through the glass and scooped up the objects before running out the door. A few gave chase, including young David there, but the girl vanished into the crowd without a trace. And she was not known to any of the other patrons who came in with her.”
I figured it made sense that Drake, a former police officer, would have all the facts of the case. Apparently, some things never changed.
“Now,” Drake said, drawing my attention back to him. “Who is this woman you were speaking to?”
“Oh, right. Yvonne. She asked me into the back room and was in the process of reading fortune cards for me...”
Which reminded me, I had about a hundred more questions I wanted to ask her. Maybe she or the cards or whoever asked her to read the cards for me would know how to break the zombie curse before I became a puppet to Guarda’s will.
Whatever Band-Aid Lovie’s friend, Poppy, had provided me in the form of the Uncrossing Oil, had worked wonders because I no longer felt like I was becoming a walking corpse, but that didn’t mean the walking corpse bit wasn’t still happening. I needed a more permanent solution.
The door to the backroom was less than five steps away, but when I pushed it open, a question on my lips, I found both the chairs empty, and no sign of Yvonne. Even the glasses of sweet tea had vanished as if they’d never been.
Chapter Ten
It was dark.
I could hear whispers surrounding me in the shadows… fearful voices, soft weeping. A baby gave a sad little wail, and someone shushed it quietly. I blinked once, and then again, and the dark receded just a bit.
It took me a second or so to realize my face was smushed against rough wood, and my hair clung to the bark as I sat up. Somehow, I’d been slumped against a wall made out of what appeared to be logs. A pair of glass domed, oil burning lanterns broke up the absolute pitch darkness of the building I was sitting inside. The lanterns were enough to give a tiny bit of light, but not enough to illuminate the corners of the room.
I became conscious of other people beside me—too many people huddled in too small a space. I was pressed between a middle-aged woman who was knitting solely by touch, and an older woman who was consoling a little boy. Neither of them seemed concerned that I was there, or had apparently been sleeping between them. Still, I kept quiet, trying to reposition myself to better see the room at large.
There were no men, that was what struck me first. No boys over thirteen or so, either. All those who were huddled together were women and girls ranging from toddler to gray-haired, with a few little boys clinging closely to those I assumed were their mothers.
Long skirts rustled as I shifted my position to take a look around myself, and I glanced down to see I was wearing a dark colored dress with stark white cuffs. The others were dressed similarly.
A gunshot tore through the silence, and I wasn’t the only one who jumped. One woman cried out, muffling the sound behind her hand. The baby wailed again, and two women converged to help the mother soothe the baby’s volume back to fretful whimpers.
There was another shot, and then two more rang out in rapid succession. It sounded like the shots were getting closer. Somewhere outside, a man swore.
“What will we do?” One woman whispered once silence fell back around us like a shroud.
“These devils cannot be killed,” another answered.
“What are we to do?”
“Take heart,” a younger woman said, leaning forward to take the first’s hand. “My Benjamin and his brother have gone to Ipswich for aid. They will return with enough men to send the devils back to hell.”
The knitting woman crossed herself, mumbling a prayer under her breath as I tried to puzzle out where Ipswich was—I was fairly sure it was on the East Coast, near Salem, Massachusetts, if memory served.
Please let me not be in Salem, I prayed to myself. The last thing I needed was to be hanged for being found guilty of witchcraft.
My eyes finally adjusted to the dark, and I realized with some amazement that we were inside a garrison. I’d seen reproductions in text books and, looking at this one now, felt like I was on a movie scene. But, this was no movie. Neither was it real, per se, but the smell of wood, of hay and metal was all so real, I had a hard time believing otherwise.
The truth was that I must have slipped through the spirit world again, into the past. This behavior was becoming a habit, and not one I wanted to embrace.
The older woman beside me spoke up for the first time, but quietly, as though the words weren’t meant for anyone but me.
“The men of Ipswich will be of no help. They cannot fight what comes for us with bullets and blades. And the aggressors will not go until they find that which they seek.”
I jumped and realized the woman sitting beside me on the bench was Beatrice Litten. “You!” I struggled to keep my voice down, but didn’t want anyone else to overhear. “Did you bring me here again?”
Beatrice tucked the little boy on her lap more firmly to her chest when he mumbled in his sleep before turning her head to face me.
“Is it safe?”
“What?” I realized what she was referring to a second after I spoke. “You mean the—”
“Do not speak of it here!” She whisper-hissed the words, blue eyes fierce in the dark. “Is it safe?”
A quick glance around told me that all the others who were hunkered down in the garrison were too preoccupied with whatever was going on outside to bother eavesdropping on us.
I swallowed, my mouth suddenly bone dry.
“Yeah,” I croaked. “It’s safe.”
Or the Ouroboros had been when I’d gone to sleep, at least. The outfit I was currently wearing didn’t seem to come with any pockets, and I wasn’t wearing the Ouroboros around my neck, so it didn’t seem to have made the trip with me.
Beatrice Litten nodded and appeared very serious and satisfied, her jaw squared. “Good. She cannot find it then. And it is only a matter of time before they catch up with her, as all past sins come due in the fullness of time.”
Fear and frustration simmered together in my belly, bubbling uncomfortably. “What does that mean?”
Beatrice gave me a look like I was the dumbest person she’d ever had the misfortune to encounter, which might have been true, but owing to the fact that she was asking me for a favor, it was frankly uncalled for.
“It means the witch,” she said so quietly it was barely a breath of air between us. “The one who would set herself against God’s will, and battle against the sanctity of life, is after it.”
“That’s what you said before, but I still don’t know what it means!” And that reminded me of another handy, little subject. “And… why is it that whenever I try to discuss it with anyone, I can’t!”
Beatrice narrowed her eyes at me. “Because you should not be discussing it with anyone!”
“Regardless, have you put a spell or something on it that disallows the wearer to discuss it?”
She nodded then. “I have done everything I can to protect it.”
Well, that was one mystery put to bed. Now to face the million others.
Beatrice Litten looked almost as frustrated as I must have, which seemed pretty unfair to me given the fact that she was in the know and I… wasn’t.
“Please tell me more about this witch who wants… it,” I said.
“She would sacrifice her immortal soul in the search for earthly eternity.”
I still wasn’t one hundred percent positive I understood what she was talking about but, I now figured it had something to do with eternal life. Was that what the Ouroboros promised? At least, according to what Beatrice just said… “Does this witch have a name?”
