Haunted on the Gulf Coast (Gulf Coast Paranormal Trilogy Book 2)

by M. L. Bullock

  “Leo!” she called as she turned the two-room house upside down. The boy had better not hide from her, not now! She found nothing, no Leo hiding in the cedar chest or under the bed. She’d even moved the full ash bucket, the one she’d told him to empty this morning, to fully open the closet door, but he wasn’t in there. Now she was covered in soot and ready to sob. “Leo?” she whispered into the darkness. She waited but heard nothing. He wasn’t laughing behind the curtains or squatting behind her chair. He was gone, all the way gone.

  Then reality struck her. This, all this, had been arranged. Simple had stolen her barrels, but even that had been a trap. Quincy knew what she would do, and now she had put herself and her son in danger. And then she heard footsteps on the porch. She flung open the door and stood face to face with the man she’d once loved so strong; she thought that love would have burned them both up. Now there was no love, only hate.

  “Say nothing you will regret, Ettawa. You brought this on yourself—you should have left Mobile when I politely asked you to. Now you will leave without your son.”

  Ettawa would never hunker down and slink away. It wasn’t in her blood. Of the three Maybee sisters, she had always been the strongest, the most determined and until recently, the most powerful. Yes, voodoo ran deep here along the coast, even amongst the white folk like Quincy Justice. And once he’d respected her, feared her. How she used to love looking into those blue eyes, as blue as a clear southern sky! And how many times had she run her hands through his corn silk hair? All that had changed. Quincy showed his true colors when he could not call upon her powers for his benefit. She no longer dreamed of being lost in his arms; she dreamed of cutting his throat and feeling his lifeblood surge away. She dreamed of putting her handprint on him, of claiming his soul as collateral for her own, for when the Death Shadow came to her—as he came for all people.

  Perhaps she had enough magic for one more curse. A true curse—no poisons and trickery! She could feel the magic stirring up in her. Yes, this one would be greater than all the others.

  “I am no man’s to command, least of all yours.” With a smile he didn’t expect, she stood stock still with her hands at her sides, her fingers splayed, her feet apart. Yes, this was the time. Time to give everything. She thought she saw him shiver, and that made her smile even more. She was a beautiful woman when she wanted to be, but today was not one of those days. She had traded in her softness and her kind heart. At that moment, Ettawa would sell it all for this last bit of power. So be it.

  “You bring me my son, Quincy Justice.” She waved her dirty hand in front of him. “You bring me Leo before the moon goes dark tonight.”

  “Your fakery doesn’t frighten me, Ettawa. Stop it.” He gazed down at her, reminding her that he would always be physically stronger than she was, but Ettawa didn’t back down—no, she didn’t. She felt the magic; it had returned to her. In a quick motion, she placed her hand on the side of his face, leaving her handprint on his skin. He’d never know what she’d done. He leaned down as if she wanted him to kiss her. No, that wasn’t what she wanted. Not at all.

  Whispering in his ear, she said, “When the moon goes dark, what is done cannot be undone.”

  Quincy pushed her away and stepped off the porch, backing away without looking at the steps behind him. His words said one thing, but his actions said another. He was afraid. That brought her great joy, but only for a moment. She wanted nothing but her son. “You do as I tell you, Quincy, or it’ll be bad for you.”

  “Silence, woman. You can’t curse me—I don’t believe in your magic. And he is my son too. He has my blood in his veins. Leave Mobile, or I’ll see that you’re run out on a rail!” He walked away now, almost shaking with fear.

  “Listen to me, Quincy! You’ll die if you don’t! I promise you that!” Fully expecting that he would return with her boy promptly, she went back inside, lighting a lamp first. With shaking hands, she plundered her cabinet for the necessary ingredients. If Quincy was foolish enough to ignore her, Ettawa would make him pay. Oh yes, she would.

  But he never came. He had defied her to the end. As the sun began to rise, Ettawa canvassed the field behind her house for arrowroot, sassafras, thyme and the green mold that grew on the side of swamp cedars. She did not cry or feel the urge to cry. Hate was what she felt, sheer and utter hatred. She went back into her tiny house and set the pot on the fire. Ettawa wanted to weep for Leo, but tears never came.

  Before she began the first mixing, the first utterance, she let the blood flow down her arm. She crooked the blade and sliced easily across her forearm. Yes, this curse would require blood. First, she wove a protection spell around her son and pleaded with the spirit world to keep him safe from this dangerous concoction. She then tossed the dried liver, the herbs and her metal amulets into the pot and began whispering. Curses were like sticky spider webs. No matter how hard you tried, if you chose to work with them, it was always messy, and your hands would always be sticky with the residue. She prayed that the residue from this curse would not linger on her own hands or anywhere near her son. But she’d already sinned, hadn’t she? She’d called on the voodoo spirits to achieve her revenge. How many times had she warned others about the dangers of a blood curse?

  But her hatred for Quincy and her despair for her sweet Leo overrode her common sense.

  And without admitting it to herself, she knew she was caught in this web now and destined to die.

  Chapter Three—Sierra McBride

  Joshua stacked his boxes in the hallway near the front door while I sat on the couch eating Lucky Charms. The pages of the magazine I pretended to read crinkled under my fingers. I also pretended my husband wasn’t breaking my heart.

  Two months after my stupid confession, we were still struggling. I’d been wrong, not just once but twice. Wrong first for having that brief fling with Jack and wrong again for telling Josh about it. I could see that now; my husband wasn’t the kind of guy to forgive and forget. I sighed as I scooped up another spoonful of cereal. Josh was swearing and looking to argue, but I was done with that. He had every right to do so, and I was too tired emotionally to argue my case again. I thought what we had was worth fighting for, but as it turned out, Joshua didn’t. I kept an eye on the clock, remembering that I had an appointment with Midas. Other than that, I had nothing else to do except sit here and be miserable.

  “You don’t have anything to say, Sierra Kay?”

  “What do you want me to say, Joshua, that I haven’t already said? What can I say that will make this better?” He stared at me for a moment but didn’t answer—he obviously didn’t have an answer, and neither did I. He clamped his jaw shut and walked back to the hallway, taking his first load of boxes out of the house. I carried my now-empty bowl to the kitchen and cleaned up an imaginary mess. I swept the floor and wiped the counters down just to kill some time and stay out of his way. I didn’t want him to leave, but what else could I do? Finally, I heard his footsteps pause at the door. I clutched my stomach as I waited.

  For the past two months, I’d bent over backward to make our marriage work. We’d been to counseling twice, but that had been the extent of our therapy. Joshua resisted the idea from the beginning, and when things didn’t go his way—when the therapist didn’t burn me at the stake—he’d had enough.

  What should I do now? Should I throw myself in the fire again? I was completely exhausted and out of ideas. No matter. I heard the front door close and the lock click behind him.

  Joshua had left me. It was now official. We were as near to over as we’d ever been. I didn’t have the heart to ask him where he planned to go. I hoped home to his parents’ house and not Merilyn’s, but I sure wasn’t going to call him. Mrs. McBride, my mother-in-law, had never liked me. What a fool she’d acted the day we got married. She even had the nerve to show up at the wedding wearing white. I had no idea what kind of message she intended to send with that getup.

  All I could do now was stare at the closed door. I sat i
n the hallway in my pajamas, my dirty hair piled on top of my head in a ponytail, crying like it all just happened yesterday. Wanting someone to hug, I tapped the floor with my hand. “Bozo…here, boy.” I waited but didn’t hear the little dog’s toenails clicking on the floor.

  “Bozo?”

  Dang! Joshua took the dog too.

  And that made me cry even more. I had not only lost Josh, I’d lost my whole family. Could my life get any worse? After fifteen minutes of wallowing in self-pity, I decided to get off the floor and continue my wallowing session on the couch. Reaching for my LSU blanket, I wrapped myself up. The room felt colder than usual. And lonelier.

  Sometime this week, I planned to visit my mom and tell her the news. She had no idea I’d cheated on Joshua, no idea I was such a horrible person. Luckily for me, she’d love me anyway. I hoped. I glanced at the clock on the far wall. I needed to get up and get dressed. I was a full-time GCP employee now—the only one, in fact—and I had a ton of things to do at the office. Midas depended on me to keep him organized. I hoped I wouldn’t let him down too. I closed my eyes and tried to take a nap, but sleep never came.

  And then Cassidy called. I blinked at the display screen for a moment and decided I’d better pick it up. I’d been trying for weeks to get a hold of her—for various reasons. She’d missed several investigations, which didn’t seem like something she’d purposefully do, but more importantly, Midas missed her. I think she broke his heart. He would never admit that, but then again, he was still broken from Sara too. Midas wasn’t one of those guys who was lucky in love, even though he was utterly gorgeous. To me, he was a brother, someone I could depend on, although I’d decided not to involve him in any more of my drama. He’d done enough for me by giving me a place to stay for a while.

  How should I handle this phone call? I wasn’t in the mood to be generous, and I could very easily take my frustrations out on her.

  “Hello? Sierra?”

  “Hey, Cassidy. What’s up?” I decided to try my hand at being polite.

  “How have you been?” she asked tentatively.

  I shrugged off the purple blanket. “I’m fine. How about you? Haven’t heard from you in a while.”

  “I know…been working on a project, and I got lost in it. Um, is Joshua there?”

  That was strange—she’d never asked for my husband before, and I knew for a fact she wasn’t his favorite person. Not since she painted that horrible mural in our home office. “Not at the moment,” I said with a heartsick glance at the closed front door. “Is there something I can help you with, Cassidy?”

  “I…uh…I’m not sure. I was kind of hoping to talk to him, and I don’t have his cell number.” If she thought I was giving it to her, she was mistaken. He wouldn’t welcome a call from her.

  “He’s not here, and I don’t know when he’ll be back.”

  I heard her mumble something to herself, but she quickly came back to the phone. Something was wrong, I could tell. “What’s going on, Cassidy?”

  “I think it’s better if I show you. I’ve painted something and thought you or Joshua needed to see it. I believe he’s in danger, Sierra. I truly do.”

  “Can you be more specific? Is this about one of your vision paintings? Is that the project you were talking about?” Apprehension crept up my spine. I tossed the blanket on the back of the couch and kept the phone at my ear as I scurried off to the bedroom to get changed.

  “Yes, it is. I don’t want to alarm you, and I can promise you I didn’t intend to paint this. It just came to me. I didn’t even know it was Joshua until the very end.”

  “Wait! Josh is in the painting?”

  “Uh, yes.”

  “I’m on the way. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “Okay, I’ll put on some coffee.”

  We hung up, and I dressed quickly and casually in blue jeans, a GCP t-shirt and a very messy ponytail. And not intentionally messy. I zipped up the road in my old car and made the quick trip to Cassidy’s apartment. Thankfully, parking was a breeze, and the elevator worked today. That wasn’t always the case in her building.

  I tapped on her door, and she opened it. Cassidy looked like a hot mess—kind of like me. Her long red hair was untidy, and the bags under her eyes indicated she needed about a week of sleep.

  “I’m sorry, Sierra,” she began to apologize as she closed the door behind me. “I don’t blame you if you’re upset or angry.”

  “What is it, Cassidy? Why would I be angry? It can’t be that bad, can it?” I smiled nervously and tossed my purse on her newspaper-covered couch. What was this? Depression?

  With dirty, paint-covered hands, she rubbed her lips and said in a shaking voice, “The only reason I called—I can’t live through this again. If I can prevent it, I will. I don’t want the same thing to happen to you that happened to me. I would hate myself if I knew about this and didn’t tell you.”

  Concerned now, I stepped past her and walked to the painting near the window. The back of the canvas was facing me now, but I nearly passed out when I saw what she’d painted.

  My husband lay bare-chested on a gray stone altar surrounded by thick, dark woods, and a lone shaft of moonlight shone down on his terrified face. On the right side of his face was a handprint, like the kind children made in a school art class. A wild-looking woman leaned over him, a grim smile on her face as if she were taunting us, daring us to interfere. Bound with ropes, Joshua couldn’t move—he was going to be her victim! I studied the woman. She appeared to be a practitioner of magic, and her hairstyle made her seem more intimidating. She wore a dirty white gown, no, that was a petticoat, and her hands were covered with golden rings and bracelets. Her eyes glittered as she reached for her prize.

  “Oh God!” I said as I studied the painting. This portrait was no ordinary work of art. It had a feel to it, an electric quality that hovered around it, just like the portrait of Estella Winters. This was a true seeing, in the old sense of the phrase. Once again, Cassidy had taken a peek into the paranormal. Only this time, it wasn’t a ghost from the past staring back at me but my very-much-alive husband.

  I ran back to the couch and with nervous fingers dug in my purse for my cell phone. “Josh? It’s me. I need you to come to…”

  “I don’t want to talk to you.” His steely voice cut like a knife.

  “But I have to tell you something!”

  With a heavy sigh, he said, “It’s over, Sierra. Leave me alone.” He hung up on me. Hung up right in my face.

  “Joshua?” I said into the phone. Dead air. I hastily redialed, and when he picked up, I began to explain, “Josh, you have to listen. Cassidy painted you! You’re in her painting, and you’re in danger. I need you to…”

  “Sierra, this is Mrs. McBride. Please stop calling my son. He doesn’t want to talk to you, and frankly, neither do I.” And she hung up on me too, like she’d been dying to do since Joshua and I married.

  I flopped on Cassidy’s couch and put my head in my hands. What the heck do I do now?

  “I’m sorry, Sierra.” Cassidy left briefly and returned with a cup of coffee. Sitting beside me, she gave me the mug. I stared into the dark brew like a gypsy fortune-teller. Only I had no answers.

  “Yeah, me too.” I sipped the coffee and put the cup down on the cluttered table. Cassidy’s mail was everywhere, and art books were laid open here and there as if a tornado had blown through her library.

  “Should I call him?” she offered quietly.

  “No, I don’t think that’s going to help. But you can give me a hand, Cassidy. I need you to go with me to Midas. Let’s take some pictures of the painting and start researching the scene. Do you know her name? Who was she?”

  “Her name was Ettawa Maybee. She lived in the first part of the 1800s, I believe, before the Civil War. She had a son named Leo; they stole her son. Let me see what else I can remember.”

  I dug in my purse for a notebook. Jotting down the names, I pleaded with her, “Who stole her so
n?”

  “Her ex. His name was Quincy…Quincy Justice. They used to live at the Red Hill Mansion, but he threw her out. I think she tried to give up voodoo for a time; some folks considered her the Voodoo Queen of Mobile, but Quincy didn’t like that. He wanted her for her power. When she didn’t have it anymore, he was through with her.”

  “We have to talk to Midas. He’ll know how to proceed with this investigation. Promise you will help me.”

  “I want to help you, that’s why I called, but I don’t think I’d be much good on an actual investigation. I haven’t had a conversation with Midas in…in…well, months. I wouldn’t know what to say to him.” She sounded sad, like she regretted that. An invisible cloud of depression encircled her usually bright aura.

  “How about saying, ‘I’m sorry?’”

  “It’s not as easy as you think.”

  “You must be joking, Cassidy. I know all about apologizing. You said you wanted to help me, help Joshua. This is how we do that, as a team, as the Gulf Coast Paranormal team. We belong together, all of us.” I teared up and swallowed hard.

  She sighed and slapped her knees with the palms of her hands. With a weak smile, she said, “All right, but give me a minute to shower and change my clothes.”

  “You’ve got it.” I took another sip of her horrible coffee, just to be polite. While she went to get ready, I snapped more pictures of the painting with my phone. And I did what any true friend would do; I tidied up the living room and kitchen. Apparently, Cassidy had been living off take-out. There was nothing in the fridge, and the garbage reeked of old Chinese food. Yeah, she and Midas would be a good fit. Midas was a rescuer; he liked helping people, especially the women he loved, which had been few and far between. Did he like Cassidy anymore? I didn’t know, but she sure needed some friends. We could do that, whether she liked it or not. And I would find a way to help Joshua, whether he liked it or not.