by Lyla Payne
He gets out of bed and I take a swipe at his ass, earning the sexiest naked-man look over his shoulder. “I think I’ll join you.”
“You’re a water hog, but okay.”
Beau wanders into the bathroom and I sit up, shaking my hair out of a messy bun and rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. My breath tastes so awful the fact that neither of us seemed to notice a moment before must be some kind of testament to where we are in our relationship.
The pattering of water comes from the bathroom, inviting me to things like soap and toothbrushing and my naked boyfriend. My phone lights up on the bedside table the same moment my feet hit the floor, distracting me, and my fingers press in the access code without a second thought.
My heart sinks at the sight of more than a dozen missed calls—some from Melanie and Will’s home number, others from Amelia, and worst of all, two from the police station. I have half a dozen messages but I choose the one from the cops, worrying that I’d forgotten to come in for that follow-up interview about the second robbery in town and now there’s a warrant out for my arrest or something. Again. I hold my phone to my ear and listen:
Ms. Harper, this is Dylan Travis with the Heron Creek PD.
I roll my eyes at the greeting. He’s been here almost three months now and he’s been over to my house for social gatherings on more than one occasion. He’s ridiculous.
There’s been a development in the LaBadie case that I think you’ll be interested to hear about, but I don’t want to leave it on a message. Please call me when you get a chance or come by the office. I’ll be in at eight.
My chest constricts at the mention of Mrs. LaBadie’s name—the woman had screwed with my head, tried to kill two of my friends, my cousin, and me, all in the name of an old curse, and then she disappeared into thin air. Did they catch her? What other development could there have been?
Hoping for answers, I dial Mel next and let my cousin sleep. Beau’s phone lights up on the end table on his side of the bed now, vibrating close to the edge. While Mel’s line rings in my ears, Beau’s stops buzzing. Even from here, it’s easy to see that he’s missed more than a few calls and messages, too. My mouth goes dry, palm squeezing my phone so tight it starts to sweat.
“Graciela, where have you been?” Mel rushes out without saying hello. “Have you heard?”
“Heard what, for heaven’s sake? I just woke up! Why are so many goshdarn people up and making phone calls before the herons have breakfast anyway?”
“Um, maybe because Mrs. LaBadie’s dead body turned up in the river behind your house.”
It doesn’t make sense. A ringing takes up residence in my ears, like when you spend the whole day in the water and your mom has to put drops in to make it all evaporate.
“Gracie? Did you hear me?”
“I don’t think so. It sounded like you said Mrs. LaBadie is dead.”
“She’s dead all right. Drowned is what they’re saying right now, but there’s going to be an autopsy and everything.”
This would be big news in our little town even if the person in question hadn’t tried to commit murder a few months ago.
“Who found her?”
“That’s the best part. Mrs. Walters was down there trying to get pictures of the Freedmans’ dog running around off leash, and she almost fell in the damn river.”
It’s hard to make sense of what Mel is saying or to really take the appropriate amount of pleasure over Mrs. Walters’s snooping finally coming around to bite her in the ass. “So is that why Travis left me a message?”
“I’d say so. Millie’s down at the police station. She’s freaking out.”
“For good reason.” So much for letting her sleep.
Beau wanders out of the bathroom, a towel slung around his narrow waist and a toothbrush hanging out of his mouth. His golden eyes take me in, roll me around a little, and spit out an observation—something’s wrong.
Or right, I suppose. It should be good news that the woman who’s been stalking us, terrorizing us, maybe giving Amelia sleepwalking nightmares, and is hell-bent on killing her unborn child has bitten the dust.
But this time it’s Daria’s voice in the back of my mind, relaying Mama Lottie’s words once she stopped letting me hear them: She’s going to give you a good-faith demonstration of her ability to follow through on her end of the bargain.
If this was her doing, if she murdered Mrs. LaBadie, I might throw up. On one hand, it’s certainly a demonstration of her ability to affect outcomes in a world far removed from her own. On the other, more terrifying hand, she killed someone.
“I’m headed there now,” I mumble into the phone before disconnecting the call.
My stomach knots up, jerking every direction at once. I have to lean on my knees and take deep breaths to get the black spots in front of my eyes to disappear. Beau’s hand touches my back, sweeps up to the base of my neck before trailing down my spine.
“Gracie. Tell me what’s wrong.”
“Check your phone,” I manage, figuring that, since he’s the mayor, at least one of those missed calls is about the dead body.
He grabs for it without questioning and then he’s beside me, his hand resuming its soothing, circular motion. “I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. This is good news, sweetheart. No more looking over your shoulder. Maybe Amelia can really start to heal, now, too. We can all move on.”
My throat clogs with tears. If only he knew. We weren’t moving on. The only thing we were doing was moving forward into a deeper, more dangerous swamp than the one that has sucked at our heels since the day we met.
I can’t tell him any of that. Instead, I get my shit together and straighten up, doing my best to swallow the messy, throbbing lump choking off my windpipe and squeeze his hand. “You’re right. This is good. It just…took me by surprise. And they found her on our property.”
Beau frowns, getting to his feet and pulling me up beside him. It’s a nice feeling, as though we’re facing this together. Maybe we are. At least as far as he knows.
“I know. I’m just glad it wasn’t Amelia who found her. And Travis better not get a bee in his bonnet about saying you were involved. I’ve about had it with him hassling you over things you had no part in.”
I wave a hand, distracted. “He’s just doing his job.”
“Yeah, well, I gave him his job and he’s going to have to answer a few questions of his own if he doesn’t back the hell off my girlfriend.”
He’s only half joking, and his protectiveness toward me both warms me and sets me on edge. After everything I’ve been through these past couple of weeks, being connected to people who can call in favors because of who they are feels like a tightrope strung over a pit of snarling, hungry gators.
Then again, I am dating the mayor. Maybe taking advantage of that wouldn’t be such a bad idea. It would be nice to go at least a week without Travis banging on my door about one thing or another.
“So I guess those pancakes are going to have to wait,” I pout in an attempt to distract him.
“It probably wouldn’t look too good for us to show up to talk about dead bodies and attempted murder with sticky blueberry-syrup fingers.”
“Maybe afterward. To celebrate. Amelia and I will open the library a little late and Mr. Freedman will have to look the other way since his dog started this whole thing.”
“What’s that, now?”
We get dressed while I relay the rest of what Mel told me, which is, as she claimed, the best part of the story—at least as far as humor is concerned. Then I follow him downstairs and decide to ride with him into town. I can walk back here later, or make Amelia drive me, or maybe we’ll both decide to stay over here since at least this place doesn’t have dead bodies floating in the river a few hundred yards away.
A shudder works down my spine as we traverse the few blocks into town, trying to focus on the sunshine, on the silver lining. I have a sinking feeling that making that deal with Mama Lottie will mean inviting more darkness
into Heron Creek. And that maybe I should be worrying about everyone, not only my family.
The police station is bustling with activity. Which is hard to achieve, considering the department only has three employees—well, four now, with Will—but the presence of Beau, Amelia, and myself help. For once, neither of the Ryan twins pick me up like baboons. It could be because of the seriousness of the morning, but more likely it’s because Beau’s here. It’s not that he doesn’t have a sense of humor, but the twins have always been the doff-the-cap-and-avert-the-eyes types when authority figures step into the room.
It seems to have escaped them that they’re authority figures now. We can only hope, for the sake of people everywhere who love decorum and good sense, they don’t realize that for a good long while.
“Good morning, Miss Harper. Mayor Drayton.”
“Oh, for the love of Pete, Travis. It’s Graciela. That’s Beau.”
“You can actually keep calling me Mayor Drayton,” Beau corrects, his jaw set and a glint in his golden gaze.
I roll my eyes. “Whatever.”
Amelia steps to my side and takes my hand. Her green eyes are wide, unsure, an expression that’s somehow better than the depressed melancholy that’s been her norm lately. Her presence reminds me that we’re here for a reason other than to quarrel with the town’s detective, and we both turn stares on him.
“If you’ll come with me.” Travis glances at Beau. “You can come, too. I assume you’ll want to be briefed.”
“You assume correctly.” Beau steps closer to me, one hand hovering near enough to transfer some heat.
We tromp down the hall after the detective, into the only office with a door. Travis normally doesn’t use this room. Every time I’ve been here, he’s been sitting at one of the four desks in the main room—this one is really for whoever is in charge of watching the single jail cell across the hall. So it’s basically always empty unless Strange Sal is sleeping off a bender or someone needs a few hours to cool off after a real bang-up domestic dispute.
It’s seen quite a bit less use since I moved away, according to…well, everyone.
Regardless of whether the desk belongs to Travis, he plops down into the spinning chair behind it and gets comfortable. A pile of manila folders is stacked on the desk, and the old, boxy desktop computer has a layer of dust that even I find impressive.
Beau pulls out chairs for my cousin and me, letting us sit while he prowls behind us like a lion protecting his pride.
“Well, I’m going to assume that you’ve heard the basics since everyone in town somehow knew before I pressed the power button on the coffeepot this morning.” He looks to us for confirmation but none of us move.
It makes him sigh. He looks tired, with dark smudges under his eyes and the skin on his face paler than usual, especially since he’s taken up fishing since coming to town. People say lots of things about fishermen, but you can’t accuse them of being pasty.
“Around five o’clock this morning, your neighbor, Mrs. Walters, was out for a walk along the river when she was startled by a varmint of some sort and almost stumbled into the water. There, in the reeds, she found the body of Zaierra LaBadie who, as you know, used to be the town’s librarian.”
“Before she tried to kill us,” Amelia interjects, defensive.
I cut her a sidelong look, wondering why she’s feeling like she needs to explain anything. Travis wasn’t the detective here when the crazy shit hit the fan, but there’s no way he hasn’t sniffed out all the sordid details. More likely they’d been offered up freely at one of any number of spots around town.
“Right.” Travis brushes her with a concerned look of his own before continuing. “There was an open case file when I took this job, so I’m familiar with the details. We’ve been looking for her, in conjunction with the state and federal authorities, with no luck.”
My lips twitch in an expression of doubt. The woman had been leaving voodoo bags and hexing us for months, but no one seemed to be able to find her. Bang-up police work.
“At any rate, it’s not obvious from the state of the body whether there was any foul play involved. We’re doing a full autopsy before deciding how to proceed.”
“What did you want to see us about, then?” The question comes from me, even though my thought process hasn’t quite caught up with my mouth. My brain is stuck on the uncertainty of whether foul play was involved, but as my devils so cleverly pointed out earlier, I’d be lying to myself to believe that Mama Lottie and this whole curse thing is somehow not involved, that Mrs. LaBadie died behind our house by coincidence.
Right.
“Well, the body was found on your property, and as the two of you have a long history with the deceased…” It’s not hard to notice that Travis is avoiding calling LaBadie the “victim.” It eases the tension in my neck just a tad, enough that I don’t feel like baring my teeth. “The feds and state police were already involved and we notified them of the development earlier this morning. They’re going to be in touch since they’ve got their own cases to close on this one.”
“Fabulous.” I close my eyes, feeling a headache coming on right between my eyes. “Do you want to go ahead and talk to me about that other case since I’m already here?”
Travis toys with one of the files on the desk. “I’ll get back to you on that. This is going to take priority for a few days, and I can assume you’re not going on the lam anytime soon.”
“Not planning on it.”
“This is getting out of hand, Travis.” Beau’s voice is gravelly and holds an edge that makes us all pay a little more attention. “Gracie and Amelia both have alibis for last night, and if you could actually figure out when the latest robbery took place, Gracie could give you one for that, too. This is bordering on harassment, and if you come near either of them again without a legitimate, evidence-based reason, you and I are going to have a discussion about your future in this town.”
Amelia stiffens beside me, and my own heart sinks. He sounds so much like his mother right now, so much like the entitled, rich, Charleston snob that he swore he wasn’t when we met. He senses our disquiet a moment later and drops a hand to the back of my chair. Travis doesn’t respond, and when Beau speaks again his voice is back to normal. Soft. Respectful.
“You know I respect your office, Travis, and you do a fine service. I’m sorry. It’s just that so much has been happening, and it all seems to surround my girlfriend. I’m frustrated.”
“As am I, Mayor Drayton.” Travis’s gaze travels from Amelia, to me, to Beau. “As am I.”
Chapter Three
Beau goes to work, leaving me with a kiss and a whispered apology, the tight, worried feeling of his hand around my bicep lingering after his departure. Amelia trails by my side like one of my ghosts as we step lightly along the stone sidewalks on our way to the library. We’re early; it’s ten minutes until eight. Neither of us suggests we stop off at Westies to grab tea or coffee, and my craving for pancakes with blueberry syrup seems as though it must have belonged to some other girl.
Some girl who didn’t spend her nights talking to vengeful dead slaves and her mornings facing vague accusations across the desk from a policeman. That girl got to enjoy a leisurely breakfast with her handsome, powerful boyfriend before they both went to work. She probably didn’t even mind when he got protective because really, that’s normal.
But I’m not normal. My life isn’t normal, and my brain definitely isn’t normal. This whole situation has me feeling like all of Heron Creek is poised at the edge of a cliff. Worse, after what happened with Mama Lottie—and Mrs. LaBadie—it feels like I might be the only one who can pull it back toward safety.
Or push it off.
Amelia drops into the chair at what we generally consider my desk—the one up front, with the old computer on top that we use to look up books and place new orders—and puts her head in her hands. “I don’t know, Grace. I don’t know. Is this good? Is it bad? Doesn’t it just mean that s
omeone else, someone we don’t know enough to be afraid of, is going to take her place?”
Her questions tumble around in my head, and when she doesn’t get an answer, Millie opens her eyes. They’re confused, the way they were in the police station, but not desolate. Worried but not defeated. A piece of my heart lifts up, as though turning its face toward some invisible sunlight, and for the first time in weeks, hope sparks.
“I have to tell you something.” I bite my lip, glancing around to make sure no one has snuck into the library. Our boss isn’t even here yet, and we’ve got the place to ourselves. Even so, I move closer, around the back of the desk, and lower my voice to a near whisper. “I think Mama Lottie killed LaBadie.”
Her emerald eyes go wider and her mouth falls open, but only for a moment. Then she snaps it shut, raises an eyebrow, and gets down to business.
The transformation is so Millie that it makes me want to cry. “Why do you think that?”
“I went to talk to her last night, with Daria. She’d said that she knew about the curse and that she could help us, remember?” I’m not sure she does, because the last time we tried to discuss it she’d just gotten the news that no one would take her custody case against her ex-in-laws. At least that hurdle is behind us, thanks to Beau talking to one of his law school friends.
Unfortunately, his family’s law firm did take the case against Amelia…
But now my cousin nods, focused this time. I swallow. “I had to go back because she said she wanted something in return for her help, but the cops showed up the last time and interrupted us.”
“Grace, seriously. Could you please get to the point before I die waiting?”
The snappish words make me wince. The worry that she’ll die, either by her own hand or by some mysterious one, has not been far from my mind since this whole curse came to light.
“She says she’ll help us break our family’s curse if I help her put a new one in place. On Beau’s family.”
It hurts to say the words, as though uttering them could breathe life into them, send them scurrying into the corners of Beau’s office, into the eaves of the big house by the river. They might be tumbling down the side of the highway toward Charleston, catching rides on sunbeams as they bounce off the water, each on its way to seek out a person that my boyfriend calls family.