Gathering Deep (7 page)

But again, I felt the sensation of warm fingers stroking my neck.

My skin prickled, and the room felt suddenly too warm, like a fire was burning in the empty hearth. Every cell in my body said run, but I couldn't.

Didn't
want
to.

Because the truth was, part of me still wanted to find my mother before anyone else did. Even though I knew what she was, I wanted the chance to ask her, face-to-face, the one question that had been running through my mind for two weeks now—
why
?

A familiar chuckle rumbled through my brain, so deep and dark I felt like I was drowning in it. But familiar as that dark laugh was, as much as it sounded like the musical tones of my momma's voice, I didn't trust it.

“Momma?” I whispered, my voice barely breaking the uneasy silence that surrounded me.

You miss me, sweet girl?
The voice that sounded so much like my mother's echoed in my head. The fingers were still there, their ghostly rhythm soothing me. Rubbing away my doubts.

Of course
, I wanted to say. Because I did miss the momma I had known once. But I didn't say anything.

I might have wanted to believe the gentle hands stroking my neck belonged to her, but I was raised on enough tales of spirits and tricksters to know that not everything is what it appears to be.

“Give me a sign,” I whispered. “I miss my momma, sure enough, but you gotta show me that you are her before I'll believe a thing you say.”

The warm fingers were gone and a grip like ice stole my breath.

Do I now?
The dark chuckle echoed through my head again.
You say you miss your momma, but you're still running around with those who would end her. You don't trust the very person who gave life to you.

I struggled to take a breath, but it was impossible. My throat ached from the strength of the invisible grip squeezing it, and my lungs had seized up.

You listen, baby girl. You think about which side you want to be on. You think about who you owe your loyalty to. And when you're ready to be the dutiful child I raised you to be, you come on back to me and we'll be together. We'll be together always.

The icy fingers released me, and I gasped for air, but the lungful I got tasted heavy and dark.

Shaken, with my clothes stuck to me with sweat, I stood on unsteady legs. I loved my mother. I would always love the mother I had known, but I knew in that moment, my throat still aching from the pain of those invisible fingers, that I wouldn't take the side of a monster. No matter how much part of me might want to if it meant having my mother back.

My vision swam a bit as I made my way back to the front of the cabin, and I wasn't exactly sure on my feet as I walked toward the front door. I stumbled a bit and used the frame of the door to catch myself.

The man from that first vision—Augustine—looked up at me. He wouldn't come in and he wouldn't come any closer.

I'd give this all up, I told him. We could leave all this behind. I'd give it up now if you'd walk away with me.

But his eyes were dark with frustration and he wouldn't answer me. He only turned away …

I pulled my hands back, like the door was on fire. I needed to get out of there. Needed to be away from the closeness in the air and the voice that echoed through my mind with its dark laughter.

I stepped onto the porch and then kept walking until I was down the steps and safe on the ground. I drew a deep breath into my lungs, trying to erase the memory of the cabin and the unsettled feeling I had. Trying to make myself breathe steady and easy.

That's when I realized how late it was.

I'd come to the cabin right about the time the sun was
barely warming up the horizon. By the time I came out, it had already climbed high into the sky. It had to be well on into late morning, which wasn't possible. I hadn't been inside the cabin for more than ten or fifteen minutes at most.

My hands shook as I took out my phone and checked the time. I'd lost
hours
. Whole hours that had felt like minutes.

Just like before
, I thought with a sinking sense of dread. A whole morning gone, and I had no real memory of where all that time went. Or what I'd been doing during it.

The screen of the phone lit suddenly, and a list of texts greeted me, all from Lucy and Piers. As I scrolled through them, I saw that the messages had become more panicked with every one I hadn't answered. I tried to text Lucy back, but the reception wasn't strong enough for the message to get through.

As I walked, I shivered in the heat, wrapping my arms around myself to ward off the icy dread that had settled over me. Last time I lost time, Thisbe—my momma—had taken over my body and used it to hurt innocent people. I examined my hands, my legs, but found no sign that I'd been anywhere but the cabin. Which didn't make me feel much better. It's not like I knew how to tell if Thisbe had possessed me again.

As I ran a hand over the close-cropped cap of what was left of my hair, tears burned in my eyes. Thisbe was still out there, and she maybe still had the ability to get hold of me.

“What do you want from me?” I said to the wide, lonely world around me. “I need the truth.”

Silence was the only answer I got.

Giving up, I made my way across the unplanted field, but as I reached the line of trees that would take me back to Le Ciel, I heard the dark chuckling again, right up close to my ear.

You make it sound like the truth is an easy thing
, the voice that sounded so much like my momma told me.
Like it's a fruit you can pluck off a tree, whole and sweet for you and you alone.

I stopped, waited with my heart in my throat.

A wind rushed through the trees, brushing against my legs and arms, turning my sweat-damp clothes almost icy in its wake.

Truth is something that lies buried. Like a body in a grave. You want the truth, baby girl? You're gonna have to dig.

Five

As I made my way up the gravel path to the Aimes' house, Lucy's slim figure appeared as a silhouette in the wood-framed screen door. By the time I'd made it to the steps of the porch, she'd stepped outside, and a second, taller and broader figure had joined her.
Piers
.

At first I was startled to see him, but then I thought of the frantic texts. Of course Piers would be waiting.

He sure didn't look happy to see me, though. Actually, neither of them did. Their faces were matching masks of frustration and concern, and they didn't make any move to greet me. At first they both just stood there, side by side, at the top of the steps, dual sentries blocking my way.

Piers moved to meet me first. “Where have you been?” he asked, his arms still crossed against me, his face not registering any emotion but frustration.

“I had a hard time sleeping, so I took a walk,” I told him, ready to explain everything. I needed to talk through what had happened out at Thisbe's cabin, because I still didn't know what to make of it all, but before I could say anything he was talking.

“You took a
walk
?” he said, his brows rising in mocking disbelief.

I'd known he was upset, but the anger in his tone had me taking a step back. “I lost track of time,” I told him, knowing exactly how weak that excuse sounded. But with Piers looking at me like that—with more irritation than worry—I suddenly wasn't sure how to even begin explaining everything else. He was already looking at me like he didn't trust me.

“Why didn't you answer our texts or calls?” Lucy asked from her vantage point a few steps above us. Her voice didn't have the demand in it that Piers's did, but I could tell she was upset.

“I must have lost service,” I told her, holding up my phone and waving it a little. “My phone never even buzzed until a couple of minutes ago, and I got all your messages at once. By then I was already on my way back.”

Piers looked doubtful, like he'd already decided not to hear me out, but Lucy studied me with those ageless eyes of hers. I couldn't quite tell what she was thinking.

“You disappeared, Chloe,” Lucy said, an unspoken question in her tone. “You didn't leave a note or tell anyone where you went. And you've been gone for
hours
.”

“I … ” It was harder than I thought it would be to start. My throat was still tender from the grip of the icy fingers, and the weight of everything that had happened out there in that cabin pressed down on me so I felt like I couldn't even breathe.

Something out there had spoken to me. Something had offered me a choice—or maybe it had issued a threat. Either way, I didn't know what that meant about the danger any of us might still be in. Or the danger I might be to them.

“We were worried about you,” Lucy told me, and I knew from the way she spoke, she wasn't really mad. Scared, maybe, but not mad.

Piers didn't say anything, though. Just kept taking me in with wary, watchful eyes.

“I'm sorry,” I said, finally forcing out the words I knew he wanted from me.

Piers relaxed his shoulders a little, but he still didn't uncross his arms. It was like he was waiting for me to explain completely before he'd open himself back up.

But conditional love ain't no kind of love at all, and his closed-up expression made me feel all kinds of empty inside. It also made me hesitate, because I didn't know how to explain where I'd been or what had happened without that frustrated look changing to something else.

We stood there in uneasy silence, Piers waiting for me to explain myself and me not knowing how. Lucy's eyes darted between us as she retreated back up the steps. “I'm going to go in and grab my things. Let me know when you're ready to go,” she said before she slipped through the door. I could tell she was trying to give us some privacy to sort things out.

When she was gone and we were finally alone, Piers let out an impatient sigh. “Come on, baby. Just tell me where you went so we can get on with things.”

The way he asked, without any warmth at all and like he had a right to demand, made something inside me want to lash out. “I told you. I went for a walk,” I said. But I still hadn't calmed all the way down, and there was more attitude than I meant in my tone.

“Chloe, it's almost noon. Lucy said she's been up since around nine, and you were already gone by then.”

I glanced away, pushing down the panic that inched along my spine as I thought about the hours I'd lost out at that cabin.

“You didn't try to go back home, did you?” he asked, his brow furrowed like he was watching for a lie.

“Home?” It hadn't even occurred to me to walk back to my own house. True, it was only a couple miles west of Le Ciel and an easy enough stroll if you had the time, but after the rooster, it certainly didn't feel like no kind of home anymore. “I wouldn't try to go back there. Especially not on my own.”

“Then where were you?” he pressed, not giving an inch.

When Piers meets any kind of a problem, he attacks it with a kind of single-minded attention. I'd seen him do it a hundred times before when he was reading over some study or trying to make headway on a project for school, but right at that moment, he was looking at
me
like that. I didn't like that feeling one bit, but I knew he wasn't going to let go of this. And I didn't really have anything to hide.

“I went out to Thisbe's cabin,” I told him.

“You
what
?” Disbelief and fury flashed in his eyes. “Why the hell would you go there?”

I winced at his tone. “I don't think I meant to go at first,” I said, trying to explain. “But when I started walking, that's where I ended up.”

The scowl on his deepened at what I'd admitted. “You didn't go inside, did you?”

“Of course I went inside.”

He stared at me, incredulous, shaking his head at me like I was some kind of misbehaving child. “Why would you think it was safe for you to go in there?”

“It didn't seem like that big of a deal at the time,” I said weakly. “You and Lucy both have been in there and nothing happened.”

“Lucy and I don't have an evil witch for a mother,” he snapped. As soon as the words were out, his eyes widened, like he realized what he'd said. “I'm sorry, baby. I—”

“Forget it,” I said, cutting off his apology. I didn't want to hear it, and I certainly didn't want to think about the implications of what he'd said—that he saw something wrong with me because of the blood in my veins. My throat was as painfully tight as it had been when those icy fingers had squeezed it.

“I'm trying to keep you alive,” Piers told me, a pained expression dimming his eyes. He took a step toward me, but I pulled back. I didn't want his pity or apology.

“I don't need a keeper, Piers.”

But he didn't respond to that, so maybe he thought I did need one.

“You're going to have to step back some and trust me again,” I told him. “I can't keep living with you breathing down my neck and questioning every choice I make.”

The stiffness in his shoulders broadcast all his frustration, all his worry without saying a word. “You don't have any idea what it was like that night, Chloe. You don't know what you put me through all those weeks leading up to it—you were so cold and distant.”

“That wasn't me,” I reminded him.

“I didn't know it wasn't you at the time,” he said, his eyes shadowed with the memory of those days.

“But you know now.”

“Yeah.” Piers's jaw was tight. “I know a lot of things now,” he said, but there was something in his tone I didn't like.

“What's that supposed to mean?” I asked warily.

He looked me dead in the eye before he spoke again, like he wanted me to know that what he was about to say was important. “It means that I know what it's like to stare into the face of evil and realize it's a face I've known and laughed with and actually
liked
. And I know what it's like to aim a gun steady at your chest and know that I could pull the trigger,” he said, his voice so rough it broke at the end.

My shoulders sagged a little at the emotion in his words. “Is that what this is about?” I asked. “You still feel guilty?”

“It's more than guilt,” he said softly, before he finally glanced away.

I took an uneasy breath as I thought about all the other things that might be causing the way he'd been treating me lately, but none of them were good. “You would have saved me,” I told him.

“By killing you,” he said darkly. His eyes met mine and I saw the pain in them, the horror of that night still haunting him.

“But you didn't kill me,” I reminded him.

“Chloe, there was a moment in that cemetery when I knew I would—that I
could—
pull the trigger if I had to.” He let out a ragged breath and shook his head. “Every time I look at you, I keep seeing that moment over again. There was a split second where I knew what it was going to be like to lose you, and I was going to do it anyway.”

I took a step closer, my heart aching even as I couldn't quite shake off all the anger. “You can't save me from any of this, Piers. You can't keep standing in front of me, either.” I laced my fingers through his. “You're going to have to let what happened that night go, or eventually there'll just be you and me and nothing between but what used to be. Is that what you want?”

He squeezed my hand and for the length of a heartbeat, I thought he understood. I thought he would tell me all the things I needed to hear.

“Why were you gone so long, Chloe?” he asked instead.

For a moment, I was too disappointed to speak. He hadn't heard or understood a thing I'd just said to him, and I wasn't sure what to do with that.

But that bit of hesitation on my part was apparently all he needed to pull his hand away and take a step back from me. “We should get going,” he said, changing the subject. “Lucy and I have been waiting all morning for you to get back so we can go see Mama Legba.”

“Piers—” I started, but my voice sounded so damned pathetic that I stopped myself. Not that he heard me. Not that he even looked back. He was already up the three steps and through front door before I could stop him.