Crooked Crossroads (Child Lost Series Book 1)

by Trinity Crow

  Finally, my Beloved. It wasn't just that you believed in me, it was that you refused to give up until I believed in myself. Our love story has been the greatest adventure, the most poignant romance and the darkest of tragedies. I would do it all again without hesitation. You taught me to fly.

  Midnight Mojo

  Chapter 1

  Since the death, I guess, second death is more accurate, of my ghost dog, things were in a weird limbo and I went with the flow. Today's flow meant getting out of the house. For two weeks, I had mostly stayed in bed, and except for work, avoided the world. Not that I had much of the world to avoid. A lifetime of foster care had taught me to keep the everyone and everything at arm's length, or further. It had worked just fine until I got involved with that dog.

  I ran down the circular stairs of my carriage house apartment and yanked my bike free from the weeds. To avoid seeing the scorched grass where it had happened, I kept my eyes on the ground, wincing at the sight of a tennis ball, the yellow cover ragged from tooth marks.

  A leap onto the seat found me all set to pedal away…when someone coughed right next to me. I lurched in surprise and fell off my bike, cursing.

  “Go'damn!” a deep, slow voice said, and I heard a second, higher one laugh. I scooted backwards and got to my feet. With the sun out my eyes, I could see the intruders. Leotis Beaubiah, and his grand-daughter, Amandine.

  “Nope.” I said, “No voodoo today. Thanks.” I jerked my bike up and threw a leg over.

  Amandine planted herself in front of my bike. The bitch. The sun glinted off her copper skin and the shot red streaks through her hair pulled back in her trademark ponytail. The effect was to give her cat eyes an extra mean cast. Leotis shook his head at her and sighing, she moved.

  “Child,” he said, slowly. “Hello.”

  I stared at him. He was old as Methuselah, his dark skin lined with secrets and his eyes filmed over with a white caul that was Voodoo, not cataracts. Good old-fashioned Southern manners, his politeness in the face of my rudeness.

  “Hello…and goodbye,” I said. I had no patience for this man or his family. Maybe they had kept my family's secrets for two hundred years, maybe they had saved my life by saving my great (great, great, great, great, great) grandfather's butt, but they had also played me like a pawn and definitely weren't just in it for the holidays and hugs.

  I stood, jamming my feet on the pedals and rode off as fast as I could, knowing all the while you can't really outrun your memories.

  I flew through the back streets, avoiding the town square and anyone I might know. LaPierre is a small town, dinky even. Nothing much happens here unless you are cursed with the second sight. Blessed wasn't in it. Not in the town or the second sight. For years, a lot of them, over two hundred, the town had been off the world's radar held in check by the combined forces of two sides of a curse. When my dog was killed because of the power struggle in the occult community, I had gone all chosen one on them and put an end to the games. With nothing to hold us back, LaPierre was being flooded by the outside world. People moving in, moving out. New businesses, tourists. And the town bigwig's were trying to cash in. The Chamber of Commerce had even come up with a Historical Homes Tour. Delicata's Bakery, where I worked was on the list. The building had been the hoosegow, that's historic for jail, back in the 1800's, but it was more famous now for the food we sold.

  The plantation house I lived behind had also been asked to join the tour. Most of LaPierre was historical, but it's pretty hard to escape history in south Louisiana. Only, my landlady, Mrs. Evers, had stroked out when she murdered my dead dog so I figured Ruelliquen, the plantation, was kind of a no-go for a tour stop. I had worked through a bunch of the hatred I felt for her, but wasn't at the stage where I brought flowers or you know, gave a damn.

  After riding around a bunch of streets I barely knew, I ended up on a dead end road down by Bayou Teche. And that's where I was, sitting underneath a live oak, tossing sticks and crap into the water, when my two-week self-imposed abstinence from all things occultery came to an abrupt end.

  Most people get that in the South, it doesn't snow, but it's a less common fact that it pollens. Spring brings drifts of yellow from the hundreds of live oaks and every other damn thing that flowers. It's a little less in the summer, but pretty much continues until something resembling winter shows up. A sudden gust of wind and some late summer pollen drifted its way into my left eye. I blinked to clear the sudden pain. Double blinked, like the dumbass I was. Forgetting I no longer needed my ghost dog to see the other side. Forgetting the sight was like a cat's second eyelid, the dead just a blink away.

  The world shifted around me, from the lush green of summer to grays and blacker shadows of the spirit world. The water in front of me ran with colors. Silver, purple and green streaking together. I mental sighed. Somewhere upriver from me, someone was casting. Rootwork or witchcraft, I couldn't tell, but the water ran with the power they were stirring up.

  I sat there watching the colors swirl past, not caring who it was or what they intended. The colors were pretty, mesmerizing. They reminded me of the sparkling Voodoo veves I had once watched drawn for protection. Then the purple bled into red, the silver became a gray, and the green morphed into a corrupt slick of gold and black. This was black magic, crossing or cursing. Not a friendly good luck charm.

  I wasn't getting involved. This was not my circus and that was not my monkey. I shifted uneasily, blinking furiously to dislodge the pollen that had me stuck on occult-o-vision. A shadow suddenly blocked my view of the water and I tilted my head to see what was causing it. From long years of practice at finding myself in unpleasant situations, I held my face and body still as I locked eyes with the vacant gaze of a dead woman, her throat still streaming from the newly inflicted cut.

  Really? Can I not just have a normal day?

  Part of me was vaguely ashamed at my lack of give a rat's ass, but most of me was too comfortable wrapped up in that rat's ass of loss and bitterness to care. I rubbed my hands across my eyes. When I looked up again, her spirit was gone. Too bad her body was floating in the water in front of me.

  Where was the current when you needed it? I thought irritably.

  For a minute, I thought about getting a stick and poking her back out into the swift flow of the bayou. But I did one better. I stood up, got on my bike and pedaled away. Let someone else find her. Someone who gave a damn. I was done getting involved.

  I barely made it out the trees when I was stopped by Leotis and his shadow again.

  What was with these people? No means no, where I come from. The phrase like cornbread and chicken floated through my head and I shook myself mentally to clear it. Where had that come from?

  “We need to talk,” Leotis said. His seamed face showed the patience of a mountain. I had no such life experience or rock-like virtues.

  “Do we?” I said with full force sarcasm. “And what do we need to talk about? My rightful place in the family business? Some favors you think I owe you? How my abilities can really help you guys out?”

  “Um, how about that Julia you're so fond of is rotting away inside that house you live next to?” Amandine snapped, those curious caramel eyes angry in her tightly drawn face. I could never figure out if she always looked that way or if it was the effect of her hair being pulled so painfully back. “How about those lawyers coming with the appraiser in the morning to add up your new inheritance?”

  I stared at her. I knew that the Evers/Darveaux side of the family had kept Julia's body mummified, held by sorcery as a lodestone to call her missing child home. It had worked. I mean, I wasn't the original missing baby, but I was the descendant, the long-lost child. And if that sounded bitter, it's 'cause I was. I knew it because I had worked my own brand of magic across her withered corpse to unlock the spell binding her to this earth. I had set Julia, my dog and LaPierre free in one fell swoop and then wandered off and forgot her body was still sitting in the house next door. What could I say? My dog was
dead. I couldn't be expected to keep up with the details. Now, I was supposed to deal with this?

  "Is that true?" I demanded of Leotis.

  "It's true," he nodded heavily. "We got to get her body into the ground 'fore they come. They's a family plot out back. We have to burn a candle over her. Let it be done."

  I stared at him in shock. He was serious about this. He wanted me to help him remove a two-hundred-year-old corpse from my hospitalized landlady's house in the middle of the night - she, the landlady, was technically a fifth cousin removed a million times and by marriage only, but I wasn't claiming the relationship - then sneak the body out into the woods to some ancient cemetery, bury it and seal the grave with a voodoo ritual. Ordinarily, this is the kind of thing I just say no too, like drugs and close personal relationships, but the corpse was my great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother who I kind of owed, and besides, I had nothing good to read.

  Technically, it wasn't even breaking and entering since I was due to inherit the house and contents. Of course due to inherit and owning are two different things.

  "I can't believe you haven't even been in the house," Amandine muttered, exasperated. "It's yours."

  Was it? Maybe I was the descendant of these Travautier's, but nothing had been proven in court yet. In fact, my landlady's cousin had been by twice trying to get me to move out. He wasn't subtle either. The last visit had been pretty close to a threat. I couldn't imagine what kind of legal trouble we'd be in if they caught us moving the body. Maybe some kind of intent to fraud? On top of, you know, fraternizing with a corpse. And the way things stood with LaPierre's new open gates, I knew there be statewide coverage, if not national. On the other hand, if her body was found in the house, they would drag her off for all kinds of testing and declare the house a murder scene. The place would be full of people looking for evidence and clues. Screw that.

  "Fine!" I snapped at Leotis. "We can do it tonight. Not at midnight," I shook my head, "that's too weird. I see y'all about ten pm." I stared at him and said pointedly, "I'm inviting a few people to help."

  "People you can trust, I hope." Leotis' tone was mild and his milky eyes gazed blankly at me.

  Yeah right. When I had I ever trusted people? We traded stares for another minute, me wondering yet again just how much he could see through those white eyes. Then I gave him a nod and turned to pedal off, twisting back as I remembered.

  "Hey," I said, "there's a dead chick in the water if you want to do something about it."

  Amandine rolled her eyes at me. "Uh-huh, two black people in the South want to report a dead body."

  "Good point," I said, nodding to her. "Let's all leave."

  Leotis shushed us. "She volunteered," he said, "to seal the gates."

  "Not my business." Images of circuses and monkeys flickered through my head, all of them clearly not mine.

  Leotis frowned at me. Amandine looked like she had more to say so I went ahead and pre-interrupted her.

  "Ok," I snapped, "Great! Gates sealed. See ya tonight." I pedaled off and then called back over my shoulder "Oh, it's BYOS."

  Leotis' eyebrows climbed up. "Aren't you underage?" he said sternly as if he were my grandpa.

  I smirked. "Bring your own shovel."