Lowcountry Mysteries (Boxed Set #1)

by Lyla Payne

  Waves of pain shoot out from my center, jangling all the way to my fingertips. At first, I think the sound of voices must be coming from my own mind, but when the black figure jerks up and listens like a dog in the dark, I know they’re not. The person stops moving me and, in one swift movement, reels back and cracks me in the face.

  I’m a puddle of sweat and pain when my eyes peel back again, starting in my face and ending in my midsection. Nothing hurts worse than my shoulder, a fact that presents itself when I attempt to move and find it tied behind me, my back pressed against something warm.

  My arm throbs, making my stomach sour, and I gag on the meager remnants of last night’s dinner. This is the second time in a few weeks that I’ve cracked my face—or had it cracked for me—and I’m sure now that professional boxing is not a missed career opportunity.

  I don’t know who happened by and startled off my assailant, but I know in the pit of my stomach, without the shadow of a doubt, that, uninterrupted, they would have killed me.

  I bite back a groan and try wriggling, anything to readjust my position to relieve the pressure on my arm, but freeze when something soft and silky tickles my cheek.

  It’s followed by something heavy flopping onto my shoulder, and I manage to crane my neck enough to discover a head attached to light blond hair. We’re tied together, sitting up on the floor of a room that looks familiar but I can’t quite place because the room is so damn dark.

  Wait. Why is the room dark? It’s morning, or at least it was, but the complete blackness suggests the entire day has come and gone. It doesn’t seem possible that a punch to the face could have knocked me out for so long, or that there’s anywhere in Heron Creek that could hide me for hours when Beau surely called out the dogs after I didn’t show up for breakfast.

  Anger lights a hot, quick fire in my belly. Someone felt as though they had the right to put their fucking hands on me, and I don’t know who is tied behind me, but I bet they don’t deserve to be here, either. My fight response kicks in, along with more fear than anything, because as hard as I try to act as though I’m handling this shit, I’m so not. I’ve been attacked. Kidnapped. Tied up. No one but the kind of psychos in the movies does things like that, and from what I can recall, they’re not much for letting people go.

  I work harder at getting loose, until I’ve worked up a sweat and bloodied my wrists, but make no measurable progress aside from earning a harder throb in my shoulder. The form bound to my back groans and shifts, coming awake. I’m not sure if that counts as progress.

  “Gracie?” The voice is groggy, confused, and shakes its head a couple of times, which is as long as it takes me to place it.

  “Mel? What are you doing here?”

  “I got a text around nine p.m. on my way out of class, asking me to meet you at the library. You said it was a matter of life and death, then didn’t answer when I tried to call.”

  “I didn’t text you.”

  “Well your phone did, then. Maybe it was Anne Bonny’s ghost.”

  It’s good she can joke, even if her voice is a mass of broken crystals. Someone, most likely the person who attacked me, kidnapped Mel, too, and the two of us lapse into silence as we consider our own failures, lured her here. It’s not my fault, or hers, except it’s kind of more mine. I didn’t tell her that getting involved in this whole historical hide-and-seek seems to be hazardous to health and property. After the warnings I’ve gotten, and the mysterious circumstances surrounding Amelia’s contractions, I’m almost convinced of the curse in Anne’s journal.

  “Are you okay?” My own voice trembles, skitters. She’s got to be okay.

  “My head’s killing me, and I’m tied to your dumb ass in the dark, but other than that, yes.”

  The darkness has faded to shades of gray punctuated by shadows, and I realize why the room looks familiar. “We’re in Mr. Freedman’s office.”

  “At the library?”

  “Yeah.” Something about this doesn’t add up. I mean, several somethings, but one in particular. “Didn’t you know I was missing?”

  “You were missing?”

  “I got jumped on the way to Beau’s house this morning, around eight thirty. I’ve been gone all day. He didn’t report it?” Because of the situation, my brain comes up with a million reasons why, but not one that doesn’t include him being involved somehow.

  “Not that I know of, and I can’t imagine not hearing about it all day.” She slumps against me. “If whoever did this texted me, Gracie, who’s to say they didn’t send the mayor a message, too?”

  It’s possible, but no one knew about our breakfast date except Amelia and Mel. I don’t think.

  “Who wanted us here together?” Mel’s mind seems to be fine, at any rate.

  “I don’t know, but I wish they’d stop acting like a cowardly shithead, playing the note-leaving, smack-me-in-the-face game, and tell me what in the hell they want. So I can spit in their face and tell them to go to hell.”

  “I’m not sure that’s the best course of action,” she replies, sounding more like the dry Melanie I know and might still love. “Did you see their face?”

  I shake my head. “No. Whoever it is wears a mask, anyway. Like the lily-livered oaf he is.”

  “I didn’t, either. I was on the phone with Will, waiting for you when someone got in the passenger door. I thought it was you, but they thunked me before I could turn and look.”

  I remember the softness of the person’s chest, combine it with the small stature. The only thing that seems off is the strength, but what kind of feminist am I, assuming it’s a man? “I think it might be a woman.”

  “Let’s get the hell out of here and discuss later.”

  We work together on the bindings around our wrists, but all we do is cut more of our flesh until hot blood smears us both. We could try scooting toward the door, but we can’t get all the way out of the locked library that way, and every time we move the pounding in my head makes me retch.

  Mel sits up straighter, her fingers tightening around mine. “Do you hear that?”

  I turn off my racing thoughts and focus, picking up the sound of approaching footsteps. They’re shuffling along the thin carpet in the corridor, then the lock snicks open and they cross the threshold. It’s the same dark-clad figure, small and wiry, and—close—definitely a woman. It rounds us and bends down, looking into my face, and even though my anger doesn’t leave, my fear burns far hotter.

  This isn’t real life, being attacked and bound and threatened by ninja women. I’m a recently dumped archivist from Iowa, not a super sleuth ghost hunter. I don’t think.

  Despite my trembling limbs I don’t blink. “Listen, asshole, what do you want? And you can let her go, she has nothing to do with anything.”

  “You haven’t the slightest idea whether or not your friend is important, just as you haven’t the slightest idea why you’ve been caught in the snare, either. You’re a disgrace to your heritage, and that’s pretty pockmarked to start with.” The accent is familiar to me, in the way that Shakespeare makes sense if you don’t listen too hard.

  I’ve heard a version of it before, but not so thick and lilting. It leaps over rolling hills and tumbles into deep valleys—too pleasant a tone to forget. Maybe I am a disgrace. All signs point to yes.

  I wish Anne would show up. The sight of her might give this bitch a good scare, at the least. A solid heart attack at most.

  “No use wishing for Anne Bonny to help you. Getting you to see her takes all of the energy she can muster in this world. She can do no more.”

  Shit, she’s some kind of mind reader.

  Melanie tenses but stays silent. The woman wanders into the shadows over by Mr. Freedman’s desk. She pulls off the mask and stretches, too much in the darkness to be identified. My mind races, trying to put the pieces together, to figure out for the hundredth time what any of this has to do with Anne.

  “It all has to do with Anne Bonny, daft child. Have you not realized t
hat none of your troubles began until she started to plague you? The fruits of her womb must never be allowed to multiply, not as long as me and my kind are around to ensure the curse. I tried to warn you to stop looking. But you convinced your poor little friend to find the other half of that journal. And now we’re here.”

  The journal?

  “You’re talking about the curse on Anne and Jack’s lineage,” Melanie supplies, her shoulders still tight.

  Mel must have read the other part of the diary. She knows what Anne found out about her husband’s mistress before Jack Jr. left for Virginia. Which apparently contains the ghost’s worst fears—an island curse.

  Come to think of it, this woman’s accent sounds suspiciously like one from the Caribbean.

  Kind of like a full-blown version of Mrs. LaBadie’s thin trace.

  “Mrs. LaBadie?” Her name slips off my tongue before I can check it, but there’s too much going through my mind—not the least of which is that I’ve been right about her this entire time.

  If I get out of here alive, Beau is so going to eat his words.

  She steps into the small patch of moonlight coming from the tiny window near the ceiling. It illuminates the whites of her eyes, her bared teeth, but leaves the rest of her in shadows—a ghostly figure more terrifying than Anne ever dreamed of being.

  It all clicks into place—the reasons she didn’t want me near the archives, the foul-smelling dirt in Amelia’s purse after she spent twenty minutes researching, her eavesdropping on Mel and I discussing the diary. The one thing that doesn’t make sense is why she cares about Anne Bonny or some made-up curse from two hundred years ago.

  “Think harder.” The creepy old librarian smirks and pulls a long knife from a sheath on her belt. It’s a dagger, maybe, and the edges glint in the soft moonlight.

  Mel gasps, but as I twist my head to reassure her with words that don’t mean dick in the face of our imminent death, I see that she’s not afraid. She’s surprised.

  A figure that I would recognize anywhere slides through the door, still ajar, on his belly. It’s Will. It makes sense, since his wife was talking to him in the parking lot when she got knocked out.

  We need to distract the crazy lady.

  The thought stutters through my head as Mel starts talking. “So, you’re, like, related to the mistress? The voodoo priestess from the kitchens on the plantation or whatever?”

  “I am part of her line, yes. Not blood of the body, but of the soul. We are bound to the curse.”

  Zaierra. Her strange name snaps into place, similar to the one Anne wrote in her journal. I keep Will in my peripheral vision and work on my bonds, ignoring the chafing pain, as Mel keeps chattering.

  “I don’t believe in that crap, personally. Curses and the like. Bunch of nonsense if you ask me.”

  “Yeah, and you’ve been mean to me since before Anne even visited me the first time,” I add, trying to keep her attention. “You didn’t know I’d listen to her.”

  “I have been charged with keeping this curse. It is my duty to watch over your family in this town, and when you returned, that included you.” She frowns. “Along with the curse, the hatred continues, undiluted. Zolarra called on great power, and the strength with which she despised Anne for tossing away all Zolarra ever wanted, formed a curious but unbreakable line.”

  “That’s what you meant the other day in the library? About our roles being cast?” It takes all of my willpower not to check on Will’s progress.

  “Yes. The nature of the curse is binding, passing from true witch’s blood to true witch’s blood. We can never be released, not while the combination of Anne and Jack’s blood runs in living veins.” She sounds tired, so tired, raising the question of her age in my mind once again. “When I heard the two of you talking, it became clear you’d found the diaries, or were about to find them. We’ve searched through generations on the spirits’ insistence they be destroyed.”

  “You’ve never read them?”

  “Anne might have been a murderer and a whore, but no one can claim she wasn’t clever. Especially so when it came to protecting her heathen child.”

  More clever than you, by half, I think, just to watch her snarl.

  It’s a duty, she said, but also that it’s unbreakable. Binding. What if she’s helpless but to carry it out?

  I decide I don’t give a shit. She doesn’t have to be so mean, and she certainly has no right to assault me or my pregnant friend. The memory of Amelia’s hand covered in stinky dirt after coming out of the archives—where Mrs. LaBadie served her herbal tea—makes it clear the crazy witch is behind the almost-miscarriage, too.

  “So, you’re a baby killer?” I spit at her.

  “I do what must be done.”

  “And you call Anne heartless,” Mel scoffs. “Dr. Pot, paging Dr. Kettle!”

  “The witches are tools, no more. The spirits ensure the curse stays intact, and use earthly servants of their choosing, willing and unwilling alike.”

  She is creeping me the fuck out, but I also feel as though she’s on the verge of revealing a detail that can help us make sense of her crazy. Whether or not there’s an actual curse, we’re dealing with an actual insane person who believes there is, one who’s already tried to kill Amelia’s baby.

  Before she can say any more, Will misjudges the space between a chair and the bookcases. His toe catches on the foot of the wingback, sending it toppling over, and a smattering of books crash to the ground.

  Mrs. LaBadie—or whoever she really is—whirls as he bursts from his compromised hiding place. They crash into each other, but whether Will never saw the dagger, or noticed it too late, I don’t know. It disappears into his midsection to the sound of Mel and me screaming bloody murder.

  “Will! Oh my God, Will!”

  Mel’s desperate shrieks pierce my heart as surely as that blade just sliced through my first love. My entire body feels cold, numb, unattached to my brain, this situation. As though I float above the room, taking it all in as a passive observer.

  That changes as Mrs. LaBadie jerks her blade free and whirls on Mel. Her eyes are crazed, burning with a strange fire as she advances, blood dripping from the dagger onto the carpet. My friend sobs, sagging against our bonds, all the fight gone out of her even though she has so much to live for.

  Not Will, something evil whispers in my ear.

  I snarl, push it away. Will’s not gone. It’s not possible.

  Yet it is, and Grant’s going to be an orphan if Melanie and I don’t pull our heads out of our asses and do something about it. I tear my eyes from the growing black stain surrounding Will’s gut and focus on the voodoo woman. She makes a mistake in the final moment before she’s close enough to slice Mel open.

  The pain in my shoulder tears a scream from my lips as I jerk forward, hooking my bound feet around her leg and toppling her to the ground. She lands with a heap and grunt, but like a wildcat taken down by a bigger beast, she scrabbles for her weapon, snarling as I kick it farther away from her grasp and then land a good whack in her stomach.

  She forgets the weapon and turns on me, tearing at my face with her nails. It’s all happening in slow motion to the sound of Melanie’s shouted sobs, but somehow I get my knees against my chest and shove.

  The tiny woman flies away from me and into Mr. Freedman’s desk, slumping onto the floor in a heap. My ragged breaths turn into torn sobs as terror joins my adrenaline rush, leaving my body shaking like a leaf in a twister. I watch Mrs. LaBadie for several seconds, until the movement of her chest up and down, in and out, catches a beam of moonlight.

  She’s not dead, which means we don’t have much time to get the hell out of here.

  “Melanie.” She doesn’t stop crying or shaking. “Melanie!”

  “Wha…what?”

  “We need to scoot over to Will. He’s probably got a cell phone in his pocket, right?”

  “His back one,” she manages, her whisper as broken as my body, as her soul, as both
of our hearts.

  “Okay. On three, okay, we scoot.”

  It takes four tries to get it right, and at least ten minutes for us to get across the room. Another five elapse, and my nerves jangle like sleigh bells by the time we manage to maneuver the phone loose and work together to dial 911.

  By then, Mel’s gone into shock, a silent, pale ghost. Her tears make no noise as she leans over, pulling me with her as she lays her head on Will’s chest.

  The operator comes on, and in a voice so calm it can’t possibly belong to me, I tell her we need help in the library director’s office, that someone’s been stabbed, and we’re still in danger.

  Then I lay down next to Mel, our backs pressed together, our heads resting on the boy we’ve both loved.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  It seems like half the town mills around the waiting room in the damn hospital, a place that I would prefer never to set foot in again for my entire life. The doctor’s bandaged my wrists and my forehead from the struggle along the river, then tended to Mel even though she told them a hundred times she wanted to be with Will.

  Will’s in surgery, and they haven’t been out to update us yet. Will’s parents are here, and so are Mel’s. Grant’s with one of his great-grandparents, and the rest of the people sitting or lounging or pacing are concerned friends. I spot Leo and give him a tight smile.

  Beau’s next to me, hasn’t left my side, and his hands have hardly left my body. They wanted to admit me, give me a bed, but even though I refused, it doesn’t stop the mayor from hovering. He shifts so we’re facing each other, concern and anger swirling into dark clouds in his eyes, then runs rough fingertips over my cheeks. “What hurts?”

  “I’m fine, Beau.” When he refuses to accept that answer again, I give in. “Shoulder hurts. Face.”

  “Yeah, you’ve looked better.” He sets one hand on my waist and uses the other to swipe filthy hair off my forehead, then grimaces. “Don’t move.”