Not Quite Clear (A Lowcountry Mystery) (28 page)

It’s rare, actually, to have alone time. I’m not sure what to do with it so I pop some popcorn, grab a soda,
and open my laptop out on the back deck. I could keep trying to find out more about Travis, but with Clete at a dead end on his side of things, there’s not much incentive. Tonight, I’m interested in learning what I can about witchcraft.

There are too many variations, too little detailed information, for me to even hope to figure out what exactly Mama Lottie might be attempting to pull off with
the Draytons. Still, the research is interesting enough that I mostly miss the sun’s disappearance and the rise of the full moon over the trees and the river.
 

I stretch and check my phone after suffering half a dozen mosquito bites, surprised to see that it’s after eleven. Beau hasn’t called. The meeting must be running really late or his staff must have some motions to research, because even
if he’d decided not to come by, he’d call when he leaves or when he gets home. He always texts to say good night.

There’s nothing from Leo or Lindsay, either, a fact that grabs my spine with ice-cold fingers. The questions those detectives were asking weren’t the open-ended kind. They were questions cops ask when they already know the answers and are just hoping you’ll make it easy on them and
confess so they can do the paperwork and move on.

This is the knowledge I’ve amassed through twenty-six—almost—years of living. How to read cops, how to stay out of jail, how to kind-of-sort-of talk to ghosts. I’m pretty good at research and archiving, too, but only get to practice my passion when it coincides with my increasingly illegal activities.

My mother would be so proud.

I shake my
head. Who knows whether my mother would be proud or not? After living here for months, listening to other people’s ideas about my mother, meeting Frank Fournier—the father she lied about me still having—I’m starting to think that I’m the last person who knows anything about her at all.

There’s not much I can do about that tonight, or about anything else, for that mater.. It’s too late to call
the hospital, and hitting up Travis or Officer Dunleavy in Charleston to ask about Leo would likely make matters worse, not better. We need to focus on the good that came out of today: Amelia’s likely going to keep custody of Jack. That’s no small victory.

I gather my laptop and glass of water, along with my phone, and turn to go inside, almost running into Amelia.
 

And she’s not alone.

Next
to her, holding on to her hand, is the little black girl with the apron and braids from the road. From Drayton Hall.
 

The beads are back on the ends of her hair, but her apron is nearly rags, now. Filthy. She smells like earth and loam, with the faintest scent of incense burning in the air around her.
 

“Millie?” I say, carefully, hardly daring to take my eyes off the child to check on my cousin.
When I do, I see that her eyes are glazed over. Far away, how they were when she was sleepwalking all the time.
 

She doesn’t respond to my voice or to the fingers I snap in front of her face.

“She’s asleep,” the little girl informs me, the first time she’s communicated anything other than accusations.
 

“Why? Did you do something to her?” My heart clogs my throat, fear sour on the back of my
tongue.

The ghost looks confused. “No.
You
did something to her.”

“No, I didn’t. I just got home.”

“You said you would help me. You didn’t help.”

“I don’t know what that means.” My fingers twitch, desperate to reach out and grab my cousin back to my side. Everything in me screams that it would be a mistake. This little girl is in her head, somehow, and ripping her away could hurt Amelia.

The child ghost cocks her head, two fingers playing with the frayed hem of her apron. “You said you would help with the curse. But you didn’t.”

“I did,” I protest. “I left the things…” I trail off, what she said just registering through my panic. “Wait, who are you?”

“Carlotta. I’m nine.”

“You’re Mama Lottie.” I feel sick. It had been her the whole time. What did it mean? Who had the other ghost
been that night at Drayton, the one fighting with this one?
 

Who was telling the truth? Neither of them?

The ghost giggles. “Not yet.”

I suck in a breath, trying to steady myself. “I left the things she asked for in a jar by the river. Didn’t she get them?”

“You need to go see her.”

“I’m not going anywhere until you let my cousin go.”

“No. You’re going to the river, and I’m going to wait
here. With Amelia.” The ghost runs a creepy hand down my cousin’s forearm, eliciting a shudder but no facial reaction.

I want to argue, to refuse, but what’s the point? Carlotta’s a ghost, and as part of Mama Lottie, she must benefit from her power. Unlike my father, I can’t force the spirits to do what I want. If Mama Lottie thinks I tried to double-cross her, or that it’s my fault her stupid
awful curse isn’t working, there’s no telling what she’ll do.
 

I glance at Amelia, thinking that’s exactly why we’re standing here like this. She’s telling me she can get to Millie. She almost forced my car into an accident and hurt Leo. No one is safe until she’s satisfied, and apparently I fucked up somehow.

Maybe Anne and her merry band of half-rotted men are at fault. I doubt Mama Lottie
cares who put a damper on her plan, only that it’s not going as expected.

“Fine.” I point a finger at the child ghost, summoning strength that’s nowhere inside me right now. “If she’s not herself again by the time I get home, you can forget your curse. She’s the only reason I’m doing this.”

Her smile turns ghoulish, like a deranged jack-o’-lantern. “You said you would help me.”

“Yeah, yeah.
You sound like a broken record, kid.”

I push past her, taking care not to jostle Millie as I rush inside. Once my keys are in my hand and shoes are on my feet, I drive toward Drayton Hall as quickly as possible. There’s no time to call Jenna and make sure I won’t be seen coming or going, so on the twenty-five-minute trip, I rack my brain on other ways to go undetected.

There’s restricted marshland
that runs to the east of their property…I would be able to get to the river that way. It’s also full of snakes and rats and heaven knows what else, but it’s better than being arrested. Again. Especially with everything that’s going on with Leo. The last thing I need is to put myself in a position to be questioned by the Charleston PD.

Instead of pulling onto the private lane, I park my car on
the side of the road a half mile or so away. I’m wearing yoga pants and tennis shoes instead of shorts and flip-flops, which plays in my favor, and I try not to think about what exactly could be underfoot. The compass app on my iPhone keeps me moving the right direction. A couple of moments are touch and go as far as me having a heart attack, but the rustling and hooting and scratching stay in the
darkness where they belong, and I make it to the river.

The cameras at the back of the house don’t reach quite this far, according to Jenna, so as long as I leave the same way I came, no one should be the wiser.

One problem down, one major one to go. Where is Mama Lottie, and exactly how upset is she that the collection of genetic material I provided is apparently flawed?

Unlike the last couple
of times Daria and I came looking, Mama Lottie doesn’t take her sweet time to show up. She’s pacing underneath her big tree, her favorite spot, her ghostly face twisted in fury. Not one but three of those damned giant snakes curl in the mist—one in the tree, one draped over the ghost’s arm and shoulders, and one half obscured in the tall grasses by the water.

I clear my throat, and when she sees
me, she shrieks. The piercing sound rips away my plan to act as though I’m not about to shit my pants, and I cover my ears, my mouth falling open.

The ghost flies my direction, stopping inches away and hisses like one of her pets. “Who do you think you’re dealing with, baby? I’m Mama Lottie. I have more power in my little finger dead than you’re ever going to have in your entire life.”

Spittle
shoots my direction. Some of it sticks to her dark chin, and her eyes flash with lightning, as though it’s coming straight from the gods.
 

“I…I don’t know what you mean,” I stammer, trying my hardest not to scream, cry, or run when I want to do all three. Not necessarily in that order. “I did what you said.”

“No, you didn’t.” My jar, the one I left for her, appears out of thin air. She thrusts
it toward my nose but stops short of busting it. “If you did, if they were all here, my curse would be working.”

The scent of sandalwood and leather, some sort of medicinal oil and herbs, rises from the mist. It’s unclear where it’s coming from, or if I’m imagining it, until it visibly curls around Mama Lottie in a cloud. She raises a hand and the cloud surrounds it, whirling faster until it
turns into a purple, star-shaped amulet. It’s hollow, and inside is a tangle of twine and leather, and what looks like items from my jar, surely the source of the smell. The curse?

“Do you think you can fool me? That you can find a way for you and your horrible lover to thwart the consequences of his family’s actions? To live happily ever after?” She’s screaming now, eyes snapping, the amulet
slicing through the air as she gesticulates. “He will
not
be given something that was taken from me.
None of them will.
Do you know what matters to this family? Nothing but prosperity and legacy. Anything else is no concern. Anyone gets in the way, swipe them to the side.”

I don’t say anything. She’s not even talking to me. She’s ranting, losing her shit. Maybe it should make me feel better,
her not being able to keep it together, but it doesn’t. All I can think of is Millie at home with some part of this insane, ranting, powerful ghost. Of Beau, on the receiving end and about to bear the brunt of her wrath, to do penance for a woman he never met, who died centuries ago, who maybe didn’t even do anything wrong, for all I know.

The memory of the magical night we spent here last month,
the first time I met Mama Lottie, stutters through me. I thought she’d be my savior because she’d warned me about that snake…but she let it bite Beau. Maybe that hadn’t been an accident. Maybe none of this had.

“I’m going to take it away,” she hisses. “They took the thing most dear to me, my freedom. I’ll take what’s most dear to them—their legacy. Their education, their status. Watch. And you’re
going to help, whether you like it or not.”

The ghost focuses on me again, crooking one finger to indicate I should come closer. My feet obey as I try to hold them back, and no matter how hard I dig in my heels, my body moves toward her, ensnared in some kind of spell.

“Stop. I told you I’d help you and I did. I swear. There are twelve family lines directly descended from Sarah Drayton. They’re
all in there. I don’t know why it isn’t working.”

“Figure it out. The problem isn’t with my curse, baby girl. You start over if you have to.”

“But I don’t… How?” I swallow, latching on to what’s really important. “What about Amelia and Jack? What about
our
curse?”

“You think I’m going to help you break that flimsy thing when you can’t follow the simplest of directions? Think again.”

“But you’ll
leave Amelia alone,” I choke out through dry, cracked lips. I lick them, grasping for control. “While I figure this out.”

Mama Lottie appears to have calmed down, at least somewhat. She’s no longer shouting but continues to pace, nearly trampling her snakes as they jerk out from beneath her manic feet. Her fingers clutch the useless amulet as it swings at her side. It’s several moments before
she answers, whirling on me with such force I stumble back a few steps and almost land on my butt in the weeds.

“Five days to figure it out, or there are no promises between us anymore.”

She disappears, along with the jar and the snakes, but leaves the amulet on the ground at my feet. I guess she figures it’s not working and she’s going to have to make a new one once we figure out why, but my
fingers peel it out of the mud without a second thought. After months of amateur sleuthing, I know a clue when I see one.
 

No matter how bad I’m shaking, or how many tries it takes me to get it into my palm, no way I’m leaving it behind.

Then I run.

It takes me half a dozen attempts to hold onto my phone long enough to dial Daria, not caring that it’s way past what anyone would consider
a polite hour to call. She doesn’t answer. I leave a tearful, humiliating message and drop the phone on the console between the seats, giving in to the wash of panic and terror that’s been begging for release since Amelia sleepwalked out onto the porch next to little Carlotta.

Tears burst out of me, run down and drip off my chin. The steering wheel sticks to my forehead, and my palms sweat in
their death grip on the squishy leather. The amulet sits in my passenger seat like a traitor, a little piece of witchcraft that ruined my life. More.

I don’t know what to do. Witchcraft, spells, curses, voodoo…I have only the slightest inkling of what makes any of it work, so how am I supposed to figure out why it
doesn’t
work in less than five days? I agreed to all this knowing it would cost
me the man I love so that Amelia and Jack would be okay, but now it looks like I get neither.
 

Like a little kid throwing a massive tantrum, I let myself melt down over the unfairness of it all for the next five minutes.

My whole body is shaking, but the sobs have subsided now, leaving weak limbs and blurred eyes when my phone rings, startling me. Daria’s name shows up on the Caller ID and I
snatch it up, wiping the snot off my face with my forearm in the process.

“Hello?”

“Are you okay?” To Daria’s credit, she sounds concerned. Not amused or ready to toss me in the loony bin after that message.

“No. I’m not okay. Can we talk?”