Gathering Deep (10 page)

Eight

That night, I avoided everything and everyone. I went straight back to that sterile little guest room and sat with myself until I couldn't stand my own thoughts anymore. Eventually, I sent Piers a text telling him that I was sorry for how we'd left things and asking him if he got in okay, but I didn't get a reply before I finally drifted off to sleep.

I woke in the thick grove of pines again. The night was
as cool and dark as it had been before, and through the
thick canopy of trees, the sky was clear and the stars looked like salt spilled on a dark table.

The world felt like an empty place, and that emptiness
crept along my skin, up my spine, and made the nape of
my neck go tight. I could feel that emptiness more than anything else—more than the air around me, more than the rhythm of my own breath, more even than the cold that had my muscles shivering for warmth.

I needed to be free of that silence and that cold and the stars that were looking down like they were laughing at my foolishness, so I started walking. But like before, the grove of pines never ended. No matter how far or long I walked, I never reached the end of them. Still, I felt boxed in. Trapped, like there was no way out.

Exhausted and still cold despite the good sweat I'd worked up, I stopped and waited. I didn't know what I was waiting for, exactly, but the longer I waited, the more I felt like I was there in that endless place for a reason.

Then, just as I couldn't stand it no more, right about the time I felt like I would scream from the frustration and the fear, a figure appeared in the darkness a ways off. He was cloaked in the shadows and moving slowly and carefully through the trees, creeping his way closer to me with every step he took.

My every instinct screamed for me to run, but I'd done that already and hadn't gotten anywhere. So I forced myself to be still and wait until the figure got close enough that I could see it was only a man.

He was tall and broad, and he had a way of walking that marked him as a man who knew what he was, who knew what he
always
would be. When he stepped into a shaft of moonlight, my heart leaped straight up into my throat, because for a moment, I thought it was Piers.

Before I could stop myself, I stepped forward, too. Because even with all we'd said to each other, I missed him and regretted the distance that had grown between us. Because relief shot through me to know he'd come back, even with everything that was keeping us apart. Now that he was there, we had a chance to make everything right between us again.

But when the figure turned to me, the glow of the moonlight lit up the planes of his face and I realized my mistake.

Not Piers
. Not Piers at all.

It was the man I'd seen in the vision—the sleeping man that Thisbe had kissed after she'd sliced open his hand. Just like in that vision, I felt a sense of rightness, or possessiveness, when I looked him. Even knowing it wasn't Piers, something about him pulled at me, made me want to move closer. But I forced myself to ignore that pull, and I held my ground.

After what felt like an endless moment, the man took a step toward me. His face was so steady and determined that I could barely think much less move. I was stuck, paralyzed with something that felt like a cross between fear and want.

He smiled then, a flash of straight, white teeth that had my heart thundering in my chest. His eyes glinted like
obsidian as he took another slow, steady step. And then
another. He was only two steps away by the time I could finally make myself move, and I stumbled back on the uneven ground as he reached for me.

But he didn't grab me.

He didn't even touch me.

One second he was in front of me, reaching with his broad, callused hands, and the next second, he was through me.

Through
me.

Like I wasn't even there.

Like I didn't even exist.

I felt the warmth of him as every cell in my body vibrated from the violation of being passed through, like I was nothing more than a ghost. I turned, and he was still there—still walking, but I saw then that it hadn't been me he'd been reaching for after all.

A girl stood in the clearing behind me with sharp cheekbones and hair that pillowed out around her face, settling about her shoulders like a dark cloud. Her broad mouth was curved up in a smile as welcoming as the warmth in her eyes as she lifted her arms to the man, and there was something in the curve of that smile that reminded me of my mother.

Augustine
, I heard a voice say in my head.

The world flashed warm, like the heat of the summer was washing over me when his lips settled onto hers, and I had to look away. But even looking away, I could still
feel
their kiss—the want, the need, the desperation and love all mixed up together.

I woke up, my skin cold to the touch and my body shaking from the fear and adrenaline. Flushed and uncomfortable from the intensity of the dream.

He hadn't been all that much more than a boy, I realized then. Tall, yes. Broad, most definitely, but now that I thought back on it, there had been something about him that seemed young and untouched despite his strength. He must have been a few years younger than he was in that other vision—he couldn't have been older than nineteen or twenty.

“It was just a dream,” I said out loud, needing to hear a human voice after the deafening silence of the pines. But hearing it didn't make it feel like the truth, and even though I could feel the warmth of the covers over me, I couldn't stop shaking.

Nine

Most of Lucy's family was still sleeping in their beds when I went into the kitchen to get something to eat and found Dr. Aimes already sitting at the table with a cup of coffee and the newspaper open wide in front of him.

“Morning, Chloe. Did you sleep well?” he asked, barely looking up over his paper.

“Well enough,” I said, skirting the truth.

I poured myself a glass of juice and made some toast before I sat down at the table with him. Wordlessly, he offered me a section of the paper, but I waved him off. I still couldn't shake the memory of the dream—I couldn't stop thinking about that cold place or the voice that called to the man named Augustine.

“Dr. Aimes?”

He looked up over the paper and raised his brows. “Yes?”

“You don't know if anyone who lived on the plantation was named Augustine, do you?”

Folding the paper, he frowned as he considered my question. “I don't know off the top of my head that I've heard that name before. It definitely didn't belong to any of Roman or Josephine's children. They only had two girls, and neither made it to adulthood.”

“What about a slave, maybe?”

“That I couldn't tell you offhand. Byron would know better.” He leveled a serious gaze at me. “Why do you ask?”

“Uh … ”

“Hey, Chloe.” We both turned to find Lucy coming through the door of the kitchen. “Morning, Dad,” she said, giving him a kiss on the top of his head.

“You're up early,” he said, smiling at her. Then he turned back to his paper, apparently forgetting all about the last question he'd asked me.

“Hey,” I said to Lucy, relieved that her appearance had provided a welcome distraction.

Her mess of hair was a fiery nest on top her head, and she looked barely awake as she walked over to the coffee pot and poured what was left into a mug. She started doctoring it up with cream and sugar, and then turned to me like she'd thought of something. “You already got some, right?”

“I'm fine,” I said, lifting my glass of juice in a small salute.

“Did you ever hear whether Piers got in okay last night?” she asked after she took a sip. Her voice was casual enough, but I knew she was really asking if I'd heard anything about Mama Legba and the charm.

I frowned, realizing suddenly that Piers hadn't called me. “Actually, I didn't hear from him,” I said. I pulled out my phone to check my messages and felt a little better when I saw a short text that had come in sometime early in the morning. “He must have gotten in pretty late.”

“He didn't say anything about the trip?” she asked, giving me a pointed expression over the top of her dad's head.

I shook my head, glancing at Dr. Aimes. I didn't think he was paying any attention to the silent conversation we were having, but it wasn't worth the chance. “Just that he got in and he'd talk to me later.” I shot him a quick
good morning
text, but I didn't get an immediate reply. “If he was driving late, he's probably still asleep. I'm sure he'll call later.” If he wasn't still mad about how we'd left things.

Lucy frowned as she sat down with her coffee. She gave her dad an impatient look as he took his good time reading his paper.

“I was thinking that I'd take a drive into town and see Mama Legba this morning,” she said in a too-casual voice. “I thought you might like to come. Especially if you didn't hear from Piers?”

“Sure,” I said. We needed to find out what they might have learned about the charm—and why no one had contacted us about it. “I want to stop by and talk to Byron first, if you don't mind?”

Lucy's brows shot up. I knew she didn't have much love for the guy, but I sent her a silent look, hoping that she'd understand that I would explain later.

The meeting with Byron was a total bust. He was in a doubly foul and less than helpful mood because he had to deal with all of the museum interns on his own for the next couple of days. Piers had been handling most of that for him, but Piers was in Nashville.

Byron had less than no interest in digging out the old plantation registers for us. He said we didn't have the right training in archival preservation to handle them without supervision and sent us away without even telling us where they were.

“So you really think this Augustine person could be linked to Le Ciel?” Lucy asked as we drove into the city.

“I don't know,” I told her. “But you see the past in your dreams, so maybe.” I shrugged.

“But I see my
own
past.”

I shrugged. “I guess I hoped there might be something in them that could help us.”

Lucy frowned, but she didn't say anything more.

It was early enough that it didn't take us long to find a parking spot near Mama Legba's shop. But when we got to the door, it was clear something was wrong—the sign hadn't been turned to
open
yet and the lights were all off.

“She's usually open by now,” I said as I peered through the windows at the empty shop.

Lucy turned the knob of the door, and I think we were both surprised when it clicked open. We glanced apprehensively at one another. “Do you think we should go in?” Lucy asked.

“I doubt she'd leave the door open if she wasn't in there,” I said, but I had an uneasy feeling about it.

We walked into the dark shop and waited as the bell fell silent behind us, but Mama Legba didn't come out to greet us like she usually did.

“What do you think's up?” Lucy whispered.

“I don't know. Something.” Then I called out, “Mama Legba? You here?”

There was a shuffling from the rooms beyond the hall
way that had us exchanging nervous looks, but then we
heard Mama Legba's voice call out for us to come on back.

When we got to her private rooms, Mama Legba was sitting on the low couch, her face in her hands. She looked to me like one of those ancient statues that lasts through wars and earthquakes and everything going wrong, but somehow survives.

All around her, the room was in chaos. Chairs were overturned, their stuffing spilling out of knife-slashed slits. Cupboards were torn open, their contents shattered on the floor like jagged-edged puzzles that wouldn't ever go back together. The back door's frame was splintered and busted, and it stood wide open, spilling light into room.

“Oh my god,” Lucy whispered.

“Mama Legba,” I said, taking a step toward her. “Are you hurt?”

Mama Legba raised her head then, like someone had just shaken her awake. I was relieved to see that the look in her eyes was as much anger as it was fear and uncertainty. “I ain't been harmed,” she said.

“Have you called the police?” Lucy asked, pulling out her phone.

“No, and don't you be calling the police into this now, neither. I've had about enough of them for today.” She stood and made her way through the mess toward the kitchen-side of the room. “That's where I was when all this happened.”

“You were with the police again?” I asked, still trying to take in the mess that someone had made of her home.

“Was it another body?” Lucy asked in a strangled-sounding whisper.

Mama Legba shook her head. “No, just more questions about the markings on that poor soul they found the other day. I told them before that I didn't have no clue about what those were. Those marks ain't nothing to do with Voodoo, but they didn't want to be hearing that then, and they wanted to hear it even less this morning. Somehow they got the idea in their heads now that I might have had something to do with the killings. Thank the spirits for customers giving me an alibi, or I doubt they'd have let me go at all. And then I come home to this mess?”

She crouched down to look under the sink. The piece of fabric that usually served as an apron beneath the basin had been torn away, exposing the ancient plumbing beneath. After rustling around for a moment, Mama Legba let out a muffled curse as she righted herself.

“I really think we should call the cops,” Lucy said again.

“Put your phone away,” Mama Legba told her with a voice that meant business. “Ain't nothing they can do about
this
. What are you girls doing here anyway?”

“We came to see if you found out anything from looking at the charm last night,” Lucy said.

“I didn't look at no charm last night.”

“Didn't Piers bring it over?”

Mama Legba frowned. “Was he supposed to?”

“I thought that's what he was going to do,” I told her. But I'd been so angry, I hadn't really asked him. Maybe I'd assumed wrong. “Maybe he meant to bring it by on his way back from Nashville instead.” I pulled out my phone and sent him a quick message to confirm.

“I don't know,” said Mama Legba. “But we got other things to worry about now.” She gestured to the room, and then she grabbed her large, patchwork bag and was out the door in a matter of seconds.

“Should we follow her?” Lucy asked, looking more than a little shell-shocked.

I frowned. “I don't think we should let her go off alone right now. Not with all this,” I said, gesturing to the mess all around us.

So we took off after Mama Legba, through the back alley that led to a larger street and then east through the Quarter. She didn't bother to pause at any intersections or pay any mind to the cars that almost ran her down. Marching on with her shoulders set and her arms swinging like a determined soldier, she crossed each street and let the traffic stop for her. Amazingly, it did.

Lucy and I were a little more careful as we tromped along, following the determined path Mama Legba cut through the heart of the Quarter.

The farther we got from Jackson Square, the quieter the streets became. Even with the humidity of the day pressing in on us, even with the worry clinging to my back, walking those lonely streets wasn't all bad. Walking through the Quarter never is.

Some places in this world might be well loved
despite
the grit and grime and age, but people come to the French Quarter because
of it. Like a worn-out madam who still has enough sparkle to keep the fellows knocking on her door, there's something beautiful about the way this part of the city has stood, steadfast and sure, over the centuries. Even with the usual smell of the puke and piss from the night before's carousing, it's a place people can't help but want to be.

But Mama Legba didn't stop, and the farther east you go, the more the neighborhoods change. On the other side
of Elysian Fields Avenue, things get a little more hit or
miss—there might be a cute little shotgun house next to a building covered in graffiti. Or there might only be a row of run-down shacks. Once you pass the quaint homes in the wedge of streets that make up Marigny, you're in Bywater, and then just beyond Bywater is the Lower Ninth Ward, which still hasn't come back all the way from Katrina.

They don't bother marking those parts of town on any of the fancy tourist maps, but those places are home for a lot of people, even if the streets there have their problems. Still, I was starting to worry that Mama Legba might not ever stop walking.

“Are you going to tell us where we're going?” I asked when we made it as far as Bywater.

She didn't bother to answer, just shot me an impatient look and kept on walking. But after a few more turns, she slowed to a stop in front of a cream-colored house on Desire Street.

It seemed like a nice enough place, but nothing fancy. It had an air conditioning unit drooping out the front window, the motor clicking away and dripping condensation on the ground, and one of the shutters was tilted off its top hinge, hanging like it was trying to decide if it wanted to fall down or to climb back up. In the window was a hand-lettered sign that said
READINGS
with a picture of something that might have been a cat beneath it and a phone number.

Mama Legba didn't hesitate. She marched straight up the steps and rapped a rapid-fire cadence on the door as she called, “Odeana! I need to talk with you!”

“Who's Odeana?” Lucy whispered.

“Hell if I know,” I told her.

Even though it sometimes felt like I'd known Mama Legba forever, I realized then that none of us had really known her long enough to have any idea who the other people in her life might be. She'd always seemed like this solitary figure to me, and I guess I'd sort of felt like Piers and I were adopting her rather than the other way around. But maybe I'd been wrong about that.

After a couple of seconds, the curtains rustled and then, a moment after that, the door opened.

“That you, Auntie Odette?” A boy who was a year or two older than me stepped out with a confused and then an almost pleased look on his face.

“Odette?” Lucy whispered, her voice kind of high and strangled. She was still staring at the guy.

I shrugged. I didn't know what was going on, but I couldn't blame Lucy for sounding the way she did—the boy was something to see. He knew it, too, if the swagger in his shoulders was any indication.

He stood at the top of the steps with his hands on his hips and grinned at Mama Legba before he noticed Lucy and me waiting on the sidewalk below. His smile barely faltered as he took his time looking us over. When he caught me looking right back, he winked. That wink was so unexpected that I had to remind myself to scowl at him. Which, of course, made the teasing glint in his eye all the worse.

I hated that he knew I'd been looking, but to be honest, it was kind of hard not to. The guy wasn't wearing much besides some low-slung basketball shorts and a necklace around the base of his throat made from smooth wooden beads and bits of sharp shell. A blind woman would've agreed that his chest looked it was designed by someone who knew what a man's chest should look like.