Spell For Sophia (6 page)

"See anything?" I asked.

"Zip," Breaux replied.

"Something is wrong." I dragged my oar through the shallow, inky water. A bewitched Big Daddy alligator could be headed right for us and I'd never know. Every inch of me was on edge, as if I were back in the meth lab with my parents.
You always worried too much,
Sophia Maria.

"Yeah. Feels wrong to me, too," Breaux affirmed. I glanced back as he stopped rowing mid-arc. "The landmarks, the stars, everything tells me we are headed in the right direction. But we should have reached the boat rental place hours ago." He shook his head and lowered his oar.

Ahead and to the left, something plunged into the water. I tightened my hold on the oar and jerked toward the sound.

"Just a nutria," Breaux said.

I exhaled and relaxed my sweaty grip. "I hate river rats."

"They're vegetarians." His oar made a small splash as it cut into the channel. "They're not interested in us."

"I know, but still..." I shuddered.

"Look on the bright side. The nutria wouldn't be in the water if alligators were present."

"True." The muscles in my shoulders, back, and arms burned. Whatever adrenaline had fueled me earlier had long dissipated. My body screamed at me to stop and take a nap. Eat. Instead, I synched my movements with Breaux's. Maybe the water would deepen soon and we'd be able to use the motor. Without its deafening roar, the night sounds of the bayou filled my ears. Herons, peepers, crickets, snakebirds, raccoons — any of them might be lurking in the dark and adding eerie chirps, trills, and whistles to the nutria's odd mews.

"I'm going to try my cell again." He pulled in the oar, then fished his phone out of his front pocket, held it up, and jabbed at it. "We need to notify the police or the Drug Enforcement Agency. Your parents' old boss must have outstanding warrants." He lowered the phone. "Weird. Still nothing." He laid the phone on the bench seat and resumed dragging his oar through the shallows. "We never saw the bad guys again. Guess I didn't mess up your spell."

"Don't jinx it." For a second I flashed back to four years ago, when Ainslie and I had watched our first, last, and only zombie movie. It had been during a sleepover at her house, a three-story mansion with a game room over the five-car garage. I could still smell the popcorn from her popcorn machine and see the scary flick playing on her theater-sized television screen. At one point we became so freaked, we both shuddered.

"Heebie-jeebies!" we said in unison.

"Jinx!" we screamed. Our eyes widened and we clasped each other's arms, spilling the popcorn.

"Double jinx!"

"Soph?" Breaux's voice dragged me back to the present.

"Huh?"

"We're stuck."

"What?" I dug my oar into the water and hit muck.
This cannot be happening.

"Don't freak."

"I don't freak."

"Sure you don't."

I twisted on the narrow bench and glared at him. My pain jumped from an eight to a ten and I clamped my hand over my eye.

Breaux laid down his oar, scooted forward, caught my oar, and placed it inside the boat next to his. "Bring your legs around."

The hideous pain put me on autopilot and I scrambled around until I sat facing him. Breaux peeled my hand off my eye. "Migraine?"

"No."

"Liar." He pressed his forefinger against my eyebrow, searching for the pressure point. When I winced, he said, "Ah, there it is."

Breaux cupped the back of my head for better leverage, or maybe just to keep me from backing away. His touch, gentle yet firm, sparked something inside me. I sucked in a breath. "Okay. I'm ready."

Silently I began counting along with him as he pressed against my eyebrow, rocking his fingertip in a counterclockwise motion.
One. Two. Three. Four…
When we reached twenty-nine he stopped and lifted away his finger. "Better?"

"A little, thank you."

"See. I don't need voodoo. I have
qigong."

I pressed my finger to the arch in my eyebrow. "I still don't get it. You grew up with a
mambo
queen for a grandmother. You learned the fundamentals. Yet you practice an ancient form of Chinese meditation and energy movement instead of voodoo."

Breaux shrugged. "I'd rather heal than hex. Besides, my focus is on the future, not the past." His hand slid from the back of my head and trailed between my aching shoulders. I arched against his touch.

Regret tightened my heart.
Your bright future, the one Mam'zelle doesn't want me to screw up.
I drew away and hugged myself. "Both our futures will be cut short if we don't get out of here soon.
Something
is out there. I can feel it." I hunched over my wrist and pressed the illumination button on my watch. Ainslie had given it to me after we'd won the state science fair in sixth grade. "Almost midnight."

"Seriously?" His voice rose. I showed him the dark gray numbers against the green screen. His brows drew together.

The sinking feeling in my gut increased. "Not good, huh?"

He compressed his lips into a worried line. "Creepy feeling. Almost midnight. Deserted bayou. Definitely not good."

I laughed, a clipped, nervous sound. "What's the worst that could be out there?"

Breaux scanned the saw grass at the water's edge. "I don't know. Zombies. Ghosts.
Roux-ga-roux
. A violent drug lord with a personal vendetta."

"Great. Nothing to worry about except a zombie apocalypse, a half-human with the head of a wolf or dog, or a guy who wants to add human trafficking to his résumé." I rubbed my arms. "Any suggestions beyond the protection spells I've been reinforcing every hour?"

He answered my question with a question. "Depends. Can you generally see spirits or just
Grand-mère
and Papa Legba?"

"Before Mam'zelle died, I had never seen a spirit. Now I've seen Mam'zelle, Papa Legba, his dog, and She Who Guides Me. Why do you ask?"

"People like us don't get spooked for no reason." He scanned one dark bank, then the other. "We need to lift the veil between worlds so we can see the unseen."

My flesh prickled. "I'm not sure I want to know."

"Easier to fight the enemy you can see than the one you can't." He swiveled on the built-in bench and retrieved my backpack from the rear of the small boat. The craft groaned on the sandbar.

"Can you see spirits?" I asked.

"I could when I was younger. Not now." Breaux placed the backpack between us. "Your power is on the increase, though. You banished the drug dealers."

"That's a good thing, right?"

"It's good if you want to become a
mambo."
He unzipped the backpack. "Do you?"

Become a voodoo priestess?
The idea careened inside my brain, crashing against my view of myself as a future scientist or engineer. Ainslie had said I could become anything with my grades and my "story." Our plan had been to become co-valedictorians and then attend Columbia University together. We just hadn't planned on my education ending in the seventh grade.

I must have appeared bewildered and close to tears because Breaux changed the subject. "We need something of
Grand-mère's.
Something we can drape over our faces to create a symbolic veil. Did you bring any of her clothing?"

"No." I ran through the mental list of things I had stuffed in the pack. Clothes had been packed in the valise, which was now at the bottom of the bayou with the rest of the stilt house. All I had here was… I groped through the contents of the backpack until my fingers wrapped around a tightly folded bundle. "I brought this with me so I could dispose of it properly."

Breaux took the orange bandana and unfolded it beneath the lantern light. His breath caught when he saw the stains. "Is this—?"

"Yes. Her blood. No way am I putting the bandana over my face."

"Yes, way. And we have to do it before midnight." He zipped up the backpack, then bumped my left side with his hip, forcing me to scoot over and make room. The boat squeaked in protest. "We'll hold it in front of us. You'll only have to touch one corner."

"It won't cover both of our faces."

"We can each cover one eye."

He held it up. Reluctantly I took one corner. Breaux pressed his cheek against mine. His skin was warm and his curly hair tickled my ear. My hand dipped. Breaux depressed the light-up button on my watch.
Eleven fifty-seven.

I raised the bandana. We held it taut so it covered my left eye and Breaux's right.

"Hold it steady and conjure up a picture of
Grand-mère
in your mind."

I closed my eyes and pushed aside the first image of Mam'zelle — weak and on her deathbed — that popped into my mind. Instead, I conjured my memory of her standing in Miss Wanda's doorway the first time we had met.

Grief constricted my chest. My arm trembled. The bayou sounds faded away, replaced by the bandana's quiet ripple. Beside me, Breaux softly chanted to Mam'zelle's spirit for help lifting the veil between worlds.

"Grand-mère,
help us see what we need to see,

So we can be where we're supposed to be.

Happy and safe. Happy and safe."

"See what we need to see," I echoed. "Be where we're supposed to be. Happy and safe. Happy and safe."

My mental picture of Mam'zelle vanished into a flame of violet light. An otherworldly voice gonged inside my head.
Sophia.

A wave of magic circled outward from my left eye as though a seeing stone had been dropped into the Lake of Knowledge. Nausea roiled my stomach.

"Soph?" Breaux clutched my forearm.

I opened my eyes and the violet light extinguished. My palms rested on my thighs. At some point we must have dropped the bandana, because it lay at our feet like a fallen surrender flag, all color and blood magically bleached from it.

"You okay?" Breaux’s words warped as if they had swum through deep water to reach me. He swept up the bandana and stuffed it into his pocket. As he shifted, his leg pressed against mine. My awareness telescoped to the thin layers of denim separating our skin. He clasped my hand between his and rubbed, flooding me with warmth, grounding me.

The eerie chirps, trills, and whistles resumed. The feeling of being watched crept into my consciousness and shuddered down my spine. Breaux must have felt it too. He released my hand, scooped up the nearest oar, and clutched it like a baseball bat.

"Um…Sophia?" Worry tinged Breaux's voice as he rose to his feet.

I lifted my chin. The pain over my right eye resumed stabbing. I blinked several times to clear the wobbly vision in my left eye, and a fresh wave of nausea crashed over me. An elongated white light shimmered in my peripheral vision. Seizing the other oar, I stood and faced it. The white light glittered and assembled into a shaky form. "Mam'zelle?"

"Grand-mère?"

We lowered the oars to our waists. Though Mam'zelle's features were no longer distinguishable, I recognized her essence. In my mind's eye she shook her head and wagged her finger at me.
Child, didn't I teach you anyt’ing? What did you forget?

Panic seized me. "We forgot something. Something important."

Breaux's eyes rolled upward, then back to center. "We purposely skipped some steps because we didn't have time—"

Mam'zelle vanished. My arms tingled. A luminous red mist gathered along the bayou's edge. Corpses — men, women, and children — rose from the blood-colored vapors.

Breaux hefted the oar. "Do you see them?"

"The zombie army?" The boat rocked as we assumed a back-to-back stance and raised the oars to chest level. "Why are they here?"

Breaux shifted his stance. The boat groaned and creaked. "Maybe a portal opened—"

A gasp convulsed my throat. "I forgot to ask Papa Legba to close the gate!"

"Soph!"

I dropped my oar and dove for my backpack. The zipper slipped from my sweaty grasp. I found it again and pinched the tab between my thumb and forefinger. Nylon teeth unthreaded with a ripping sound. I shoved my hand into the pack and dug through its contents. "Where's the pencil?"

Breaux fingered the top of his ear and his oar clattered to the floor of the boat. Along the bayou banks, a contingent of undead rocked from side to side. Breaux reached into his front jeans pocket, withdrew the pencil stub, and thrust it into my hand. "Hurry."

The lantern illuminated the edge of the seat bench. Between the migraine and the magic, I had difficulty focusing. Working half-blind in the meager light, I sketched a crossroad onto the wood.

"Will it work?" Breaux asked. "Using a different crossroad?"

"We'll find out."

Breaux swore under his breath and cast a nervous glance at the shore. His eyes widened and he retrieved his oar — sure signs the undead had grown in number or were on the move. Something tumbled down the slight incline and plopped into the shallow water.

"Any time now." Breaux's fingers twitched against the oar.

I chanted:

"Papa Legba
, fermez la porte.

Papa Legba
, fermez la porte, la porte.

Papa Legba
, fermez la porte.

Close the door, Papa Legba, and return these spirits to their own realm. Allow us to go where we need to go."

The stench of death and decay spider-walked up my nostrils. I pointed my oar as if it were a bayonet at a corpse dressed in a tattered Civil War uniform. The air grew musty and the temperature fell at least ten degrees.
Heebie-jeebies
. The zombie reached for the oar. "See it as so." I squeezed my eyes shut and envisioned the undead sinking into the ground.

My stomach spun. Something feathery and damp grazed my cheek. My eyes flew open. The red mist and its army of the undead advanced upon the boat. "Oya-Yansa!" I called out. "Queen of the Winds of Change. Please help us!"

A funnel of wind swept the bank. The zombies wailed as if they had been sprayed with acid. The sound set the fine hairs on my arms on end. The Civil War soldier zombie stumbled back and the top button on his uniform jacket splashed into the shallows. He crashed into a zombie with a frayed noose around her neck. Papa Legba's deep-throated laugh sliced the darkness, silencing the scream coiled in my throat. His mongrel barked once.