Not Quite Clear (A Lowcountry Mystery) (15 page)

Daria looks bemused by how quickly her conversation partner seizes up at the idea of having to go stand in a clump of other single losers and pretend to want to catch a wilted clump of flowers. I hardly blame her, but even before the twentysomething DJ, who is
so
not as cute as he thinks he is, shows up at our table, I’ve realized he’s one of
those
types. The follow-the-rules, everyone-plays, if-my-life-sucks-so-does-yours types.

I get to my feet without being asked and so does Daria, but it takes another two minutes of embarrassment before caterpillar-eyebrows joins us. We’re not even supposed to
be
at this wedding but not one person seems to notice
or care. Which was the plan, I guess.

There are about twenty-five of us single gals milling around the dance floor aimlessly, and it looks as though they’re all trying to decide, like I am, which is going to end up being the rear of the herd. Daria still seems amused and knocks back her drink in two giant gulps before clapping her hands together like she’s warming up for a big game.

I cock my
head. “You lookin’ to get yourself hitched, little lady?”

“Hey, I’m almost thirty, no guy in sight. These feet aren’t gonna rub themselves for the rest of my life.”

“That’s sweet.” I can’t help but laugh at her idea of married bliss.
 

The DJ gets on with this whole silly thing, finally, and we all find ourselves fighting to not catch the bouquet. Which lands square in my chest.

The win—or
loss, depending—finds me smiling for pictures with the pretty blonde bride, who is nice enough not to ask who in the hell I am and what I’m doing at her wedding. With all the people here, she probably figures I’m a distant cousin of her new husband’s, or maybe the date of a work friend. We get away with it, anyway, and I stuff the giveaway flowers in my handbag on our way out of the tent.

We
pause in the shadows, taking ten minutes to open the doors of communication in our minds, ask our spirit guides for help, and make sure we’ve got ourselves in order before moving forward. Daria’s anxiety seems to have lessened, probably because of the booze. It’s helped mine, too, and my hands are barely shaking as we slink toward the darkness.

The remnants of music tickle my ears as we trade
the lights and laughter and other evidence of living people for the darkness of the path winding along the water. We pass a couple here and there, one with a toddler who clearly needed to burn some energy, but by the time we reach the spot under the biggest oak tree where Mama Lottie has greeted us before, there’s no one about to witness my betrayal of a man who is nothing short of amazing.

In the past, we’ve had to wait. Had to search her out, let Mama Lottie arrive on her terms. Assert herself, I think, so that we didn’t assume her spirit was at our beck and call.

Tonight, though, she’s already here. It’s not hard to tell, because hanging from the tree in front of us is a carbon copy of the giant snake that bit my boyfriend.

Chapter Eleven

The slinky reptile issues a low, menacing hiss, its black eyes fixed on the two of us. We stop walking, for obvious reasons, and my stupid heels sink a full two inches into the mud. The white mist from the other afternoon, the one that busted up my face, winds around the snake. It grows and stretches, shimmering until it solidifies into a person shape, then sprouting a
turban and a generous figure that can only belong to Mama Lottie.

She’s got a shit-eating grin on her face, as though this is some circus act and she’s waiting for a round of applause. Maybe it’s the marginal terror on both of our faces that’s causing her so much pleasure.

“I thought you’d be back, Graciela Harper. Wasn’t sure, though, because you sure took your sweet time. Seems like it’s been
a month of Sundays.”

It’s hard not to notice how cleanly she speaks, without a trace of an accent even when she uses local vernacular. Her tone is clear, her speech clipped…like that of a Northerner.

I force a smile, glad that I can hear her. Worried I can hear her.
 

Maybe the worst part is feeling, in my gut, that it depends on whether or not she wants me to, and nothing I’m doing or learning
has anything to do with it.

“I’m back.”

“You have my answer, then?”

I swallow, not expecting the moment to have arrived so soon. A million and one questions zip through my mind like circling horseflies in the worst part of summer. They land and bite, begging to be noticed and asked, but there’s no time.
 

I know what I came here to do, and what she’s going to ask or how we’re going about it
are really just technicalities at this point. Except for one thing.

“I’m not going to hurt anyone. Not physically, not any other way. No dead Draytons.”

Her grin stretches wider. “I’m not that stupid. The family that took mine deserves to suffer, and death is a blessed release, girl. Surely you’ve seen enough in your lifetime to realize that.”

The images that flood my mind are my grandfather’s
last days—the struggle to breathe, the exhaustion, the willingness to lay back and slough off the body that was bringing nothing but pain and discomfort.

I blink away the tears, staring at her. It’s amazing, what she can do. How she can affect a world that she shouldn’t belong to anymore.

“Say you’re amenable,” she demands. “A curse for a curse. I help you break the curse on the males in your
family line, you help me make sure the Drayton family suffers like I’ve suffered.”

“Why, though? These Draytons have done nothing to you. They’ve kept up your house, let people see the cemetery. Let you be out here.” The trickle of desperation inside me turns into a flood, as though someone has opened a gate. “I’m not sure a single one of them even knows you existed. Why punish them for the mistakes
of their ancestors?”

Her face hardens into deep lines, pure hatred spewing across the space between us. The snake responds, jerking upright before slithering off the branch to curl behind her neck, then coiling around her arm. It stares at me as though an extension of the ghost, one poised to do real, physical world damage.

A shudder works through me. Mama Lottie proved her influence by killing
Mrs. LaBadie. If that had been her.

I didn’t have to ask to be sure.

“My reasons are my reasons. I’ll not explain them, and you’ll try to remember to hold your tongue until you’ve walked my path.”

It’s not a good answer but it’s the only one she’s going to give me. There’s no question of this agreement between us not being a true partnership. If Clete’s holding all the cards in our relationship,
Mama Lottie owns the casino. She’s the house, I’m the mouse, and that’s how all this is going to work until it’s over and done.

Over and done
means Amelia getting better, back on her feet, and back to the girl I love more fiercely than anyone else. It means her baby, Jack, living a good long life. It means our family being free from the shackles of the past, and Anne Bonny and Calico Jack finally,
after all this time, resting in peace.

“You’re stalling,” Daria breathes my general direction. “She doesn’t like it.”

The snake swirls down her leg in one smooth movement, landing in the grass. My heart hitches, my eyes burn, but the words are here.

“I’m amenable. I’ll help you get back at them as long as they don’t get hurt.”

“Oh, Graciela. There are so many ways to hurt someone. You really
should have been more specific.”

My eyes press closed, waiting to feel the disgusting brush of scales against my own legs, as though the snake represents the transfer of responsibility, the burden of ruining a perfectly respectable, if slightly misanthropic, family.

The snake doesn’t touch me, though. I open my eyes to find Daria staring at me with slight horror, and Mama Lottie looking like
the cat that ate the canary for the second time tonight.

“Well, how do we get started?”

“I already gave you a sign of faith, getting rid of the current vessel threading that wretched curse into your lives, so now it’s your turn to do the same for me. I need a piece of a living member from a certain surviving line of the Drayton family.”

My stomach twists. “First of all, what exactly do you
mean by ‘piece’?”

“Hair, blood, fingernail. Skin scraping in a pinch, but those are easy to lose and you don’t strike me as a particularly responsible individual.”

“Thanks.” The sarcastic response comes out on autopilot, without a thought as to if it might piss her off. Mama Lottie doesn’t seem to notice, and my mind wonders how I’m going to steal DNA from the Draytons.
 

Which leads to my next
question. “And by ‘living member of a certain surviving line,’ you mean…who, exactly? Because there are kind of a lot of them that have been born since you last took an accounting.”

“Direct descendants of Miss Sarah Drayton,” she snaps. “One member of each direct line.”

The answer comes so quick it makes my head spin. I try to go over Sarah and Charles’s family, to remember how many children
they had and how many children
they
had in order to assess how long it’s going to take me to track them all down, but it’s impossible. I’m too nervous, too sick over what I’m aiding and abetting, and too anxious to be done helping.

“Okay. It might take me a few days to track them down.” I put a hand on my hip, summoning courage I don’t think is in there. “Are you planning to beat me up again
if it takes longer than that?”

She shrugs, not admitting to the invisible wall but not denying it, either. Maybe she thinks showing me the mist trick seals it. “At this point, it only helps you to get me the first ingredients. Your cousin, she’s running out of time.”

I know this. We all know this, but hearing the words fall from Mama Lottie’s dead lips makes it real. And it makes it sound like
a curse itself. Or a threat.

The mention of Amelia straightens my spine. My determination is stronger this time, no regret or hesitation behind it. “I’ll do it as soon as possible. But you have to look out for Amelia. If anything happens to her or Jack, the deal’s off.”

Mama Lottie studies me for a long time. I study her right back until a sharp slice of pain lances my palm. I wince, jerking
toward Daria, and look down to find a two-inch gash that looks as though it’s been made by a large knife.

Blood drips out of the wound, drawing a lacy pattern on my wrist. In front of me, Mama Lottie’s image blurs through the stinging tears in my eyes. She holds up her own palm, bearing an identical, crimson slash mark. She moves as if she’s wiping her hand across an invisible pane of glass and
I feel pressure against my hand.

A gasp struggles free from my squashed lungs, and I look down to find the blood smeared over my skin.

Like someone shook my hand.

An agreement signed in blood.

I just made a blood pact with a witch. And dead or not, I’m guessing there’s going to be no backing out now.

Millie’s waiting up for me at the house, despite the late hour, and it’s not until I see
her face that I give myself permission to let go. Tears fall down my face like rain as my cheeks find her lap on the couch. I hold on for dear life, crying out my sorrow and loss and frustration as she strokes my hair, silent but present in the way only the oldest friends can be, and after a while—who knows how long—the emotions start to recede from the surface.
 

Common sense returns, sucking
my feelings away like the tide. Not until they’re gone, just until they’re drifting out to sea, staring up at the moon until the next time the Earth rotates and pushes them back to the shore.

What’s done is done. I’ve betrayed my boyfriend without even understanding the consequences, but I’ve saved my cousin’s life. That has to count for something.

I sit up, wiping my nose with the back of my
arm even though the action makes Millie’s lip curl in disgust. There’s a glass of water on the end table and I drain it. The taste it leaves in my mouth is dusty.
 

“That’s been there a couple of days,” my cousin says, even more grossed out now.
 

“I can tell.” I slump back against the cushions, wiggling my toes. They’re red and swollen from traipsing around in those damn heels all night. I might
be disfigured forever, all in the name of wedding fashion.

“Well? Are you going to give up the goods or do I have to drag it out of you? I suggest the former because you look even more tired than I feel, and a fight seems like a lot of energy.” Her emerald eyes don’t flinch, don’t waver, as she looks in my face.
 

If there’s anyone in the world I can tell everything to right now, it’s Millie.
 

“I did it. I made the deal.” I hold out my palm, which bears the bloody mark of Mama Lottie’s seal. Millie stares at the red gash, a tad crusty around the edges but already knitted back together somehow. “I don’t know what it means, but I told her if anything happened to you or if she asked me to hurt the Draytons physically, then the deal is off.”

“You really think she can do it? Break the curse?”
Her own hands go to her round belly, the way they do so often these days, as though they can protect him.

“I wouldn’t have gone through with it if I didn’t. She killed Mrs. LaBadie. She got rid of that snake. She cut my damn hand.” I don’t mention the incident in the library or the little girl in the road, even though Amelia knows about both of them. “She can do it.”

“What does she want from
you, though?” Millie’s fingers go to her lips, as though she’s thinking about reverting to her fourteen-year-old self and biting her nails just to piss off her mother, but she pulls them away before chomping down. “I mean, she wants your help with a new curse, but what
exactly
?”

“I have to track down the direct descendants of Sarah Drayton and get some sort of DNA from one in each line. Hair
or blood, but she’ll take a fingernail or skin,” I finish up, sarcasm acidic on my tongue.

Her eyes light up, and the realization hits me the same moment. Hope, so far away, rushes back in a flutter of heartbeats and breathless gasps. “It might not be Beau’s family.”