Crossroads (Peri Jean Mace Ghost Thrillers Book 7)

by Catie Rhodes

  Mysti huffed in irritation but took out her cellphone and tapped on the screen. She put it to her ear. “Tyler, hon. I need to ask one more favor.” Whatever Tyler said made her smile. “Of course Peri Jean will do a séance for you.” She winked at me. I turned around and stared out at the road and listened as Mysti arranged for Tyler to make copies of her notes, especially the pictures, and meet us in the library parking lot. Mysti put her cellphone away and turned to Brad.

  “While Griff drives, tell me why you ran off while I was trying to help Peri Jean.” She turned to face him. “Now.”

  “But—but—but I ran after the poisoner. You were screaming and crying. Somebody had to do it.” Brad held up both hands and shrugged his shoulders.

  “She was right around the corner from where you stopped.” I grinned at Brad.

  His cheeks reddened, his eyes bugged out, and his lips puckered. This was his mad face. “After I lost her, I went back to that pub. Talked to a guy who was friends with the map thief.” Brad stopped his story to explain about the map thief to Griff. “The map thief’s name is Jeremy. Hasn’t shown up for work in three weeks. His friend is worried about him. Seems Jeremy found that rune out in Coachman Country.” He smiled at his witty name for the area where Camilla Plantation had been. “Jeremy got all weird and secretive after that. Obsessed with the Coachman. Made a bunch of new friends.”

  “Surely you asked where to find this Jeremy, where he lives.” Griff didn’t sound happy about Brad’s mini investigation.

  “Hasn’t been home in three weeks.” Brad smirked at Griff. “Anywho…Jeremy had been going out to an old school building near where Camilla was.”

  I held up one hand to stop Brad. “I’ve been there. That’s the place I found where someone had been doing magic.”

  Brad shook his head. “Wait. That’s not all. Guy I talked to said he saw Jeremy with his new friends. Said the way they looked at him, he was afraid of them.”

  “Did he give you any useful descriptions?” Griff’s tone implied he’d have gotten way more information.

  Brad sighed. “Not really. Just a bunch of kids with an older woman. He thinks they killed Jeremy. Maybe for that rune.”

  Griff whipped into the library parking lot. He drove under the portico as though we belonged there. Tyler rushed out of the building with her coat clutched tight around her. I rolled down my window. She stopped in her tracks, mouth open, and stared at me.

  “Were you able to get the copies?” I went for meek and grateful, but I probably sounded like a loan shark.

  Tyler's shoulders dropped. “I wasn’t. All the copiers are in use right now, and I couldn’t very well kick library patrons off to do personal stuff. But I’ll scan them into PDFs and email them to Mysti within the hour. Would that do?”

  There was no other option than to say that was fine. I managed a hollow version of the words.

  “What happened?” She came closer and leaned into the car to look for Mysti. “Were those sirens for the two of you?”

  “I just had a little trouble.” I heard the slur in my words and winced. I sounded just like my old boyfriend, Chase Fischer, at the end of one of his alcohol and drug binges.

  “You look like my sister did the day she ODed on sleeping pills.” She shoved her hands deep in the pockets of her jacket. Another car pulled up behind us. Rather than coming to a stop, they edged forward in tiny increments, as though doing so would make us go for fear of them rear-ending us. Griff glared into the rearview mirror.

  “That’s pretty close to the truth.” I knew I ought to lie to her, but the truth came rolling out almost on its own. “Someone blew some powder into my face down on the Waterway. Made me…” I trailed off and shrugged. Tyler didn’t need to know too many details. Her curiosity might kill her. “Sick.”

  Tyler blinked twice. “What do you remember?”

  “Where it hit my skin burned like fire.” I rubbed at my still tender cheeks.

  “Did it taste like metal?” Tyler focused on me so intently my heart ramped back into gear. I nodded my answer. She said, “Mysti?”

  Mysti scooted forward until Tyler could see her face.

  “Have you ever heard of Bengalo Dust?” Tyler stood on her tiptoes and leaned into the SUV.

  “I’ve heard it’s a mild hallucinogenic made of dried and ground branches from a Devil’s Bone bush and a little magic.” Mysti studied me, probably speculating on whether that’s what I’d been given. “But Devil’s Bones is a hard bush to get hold of. And the spell requires the shifting of more energy than most are willing to risk. It’s rare. I’ve never even seen it.”

  “Maybe you did today.” Tyler lowered her voice. “Someone approached a member of my coven trying to buy some Devil’s Bones. They wanted to make a batch of Bengalo Dust.” Tyler took in the expression on my face. “Maybe you should talk to the woman they approached. She has a shop in Old Town Spring.”

  The car behind us honked. Tyler shot them a glare. The driver noisily shifted into reverse and zoomed backward out of the portico. He shot around the side of us, leaning across his seat and scowling. Had I not felt so bad, I’d have laughed.

  “Where is your friend’s shop?” The likelihood the shop owner would have any useful information was low, but I had gotten a good look at the woman who blew the powder in my face once she took the blanket off. I thought I could describe her well enough to get a confirmation on whether it was the same person who visited the shop.

  Tyler took out her cellphone and tapped a few buttons. Mysti’s phone dinged. Tyler said, “She closes early on Saturday, but I’ll call and tell her to expect you.”

  “Thanks for your help.” This time, my words had a little less slur. At least Bengalo Dust wore off fast.

  “I’ll scan the pages and send the email as fast as I can.” Tyler knocked on the door and walked away.

  “So much for that,” I muttered.

  “It’s not a total loss.” Griff drove Mysti to her car. After a side trip back home to drop it off, we were on the road again.

  Mysti enabled the map feature on her cellphone, and a robotic voice began spitting out directions to Old Town Spring. The traffic rushed from one red light to the next. The fast starts and stops had my head swimming. I couldn’t take much more without puking.

  “Mysti, is there any chance you have a magic potion to help me feel better?” I turned in my seat and tried to smile.

  “Barf, and you’re walking.” Brad curled his lip in disgust.

  Mysti swatted him. “She is not.” She obediently dug in her purse and handed me one of the remedies she made out of tamarind and magic. I licked the goop off the wax paper and leaned my head back on the headrest and closed my eyes. I must have dozed, dreamless, for the short drive to Old Town Spring. I awoke when Griff bumped into a public parking lot and shut off the SUV’s engine.

  “Looks like we walk up this street here and then take the first right.” Mysti opened her door and climbed out. “The name of the shop is Morrigan’s Attic.”

  Mysti and Griff locked hands and walked ahead of me. Brad and I tagged behind them. He walked as though nothing was amiss, but I felt acutely aware of being the third wheel. The idea I was intruding poked every tender spot in my emotions. Soon as we got this mess straightened out, I’d move out of Griff and Mysti’s, even if it was to a short lease apartment. The idea of taking action brightened my disposition. The potion and my short nap had done me a world of good. The phantom tinges of intoxication had passed out of my system. I hurried after my friends.

  This was my first visit to Old Town Spring, and I took in the many shops and eateries the historic area offered. I could buy anything from wine tastings to hats to financial advice. Unlike The Woodlands, where everything was made to look shiny and new, the buildings of Old Town Spring seemed proud of looking old.

  Tourists jammed the streets, passing in and out of the shops, many red-cheeked with booze and good cheer. The place reminded me of all the things I liked to remember ab
out Gaslight City, even though so close to Houston, Old Town Spring had a more of a big city feel than my hometown.

  “Here it is.” Mysti stopped at the walkway of a quaint wooden house with wood siding painted a soft grape color. We walked up the unfinished two-by-four walkway and past an elaborate bottle tree made with indigo and green bottles. A wind chime made of metal bent into shapes that I recognized from Mysti’s grimoire rattled at its top. The porch floor, carefully painted the same color as the house, creaked beneath our feet.

  A strong memory of the porch on Memaw’s house, now nothing but charred wood and ashes, popped into my memory. I swallowed the lump in my throat and blinked back tears. To distract myself, I raised my head and stared at the porch’s ceiling. It was painted the aqua color old timers called “haint blue” because folklore claimed it would keep away ghosts. Memaw had always kept the ceiling of our porch painted the same color. I was still smiling, almost crying at the same time, when the door opened.

  I pegged the woman in her late forties or early fifties because of her skin, which had absorbed more sun than any skin needed and looked the way chicken skin looks after a stint in a high temperature oven. Her bleached, almost white, blonde hair rustled dry and stiff in the cool wind. But her smile, tobacco-stained teeth and all, was genuine, her dark eyes full of kindness. “Tyler send y’all?”

  “Sure did.” Mysti strode forward, her hand out. The woman shook it. “I’m Mysti Whitebyrd.” Griff, Brad, and I introduced ourselves in turn.

  The lady shook with each of us. “I’m Yvonne Miller. Come on in.”

  The shop smelled like patchouli and love. Yvonne had a wide selection of mundane items in the front room, but I saw a few more specialized goods in the second, smaller room. We quickly explained what had been done to me at the Waterway. Yvonne’s crinkled skin paled, but she listened without interrupting. I described the woman who’d poisoned me, realizing she’d been young, very young, and Yvonne’s head bobbed up and down. She knew exactly who I meant but said nothing.

  I prodded her gently. “If you’ve spoken to this woman, any information you have would help.”

  Mysti smiled at her and fingered a display of necklaces, cheap glass balls set into faux silver pendants shaped like bird claws. I fingered my own black opal pendant and took comfort from the singe of magic it sent through my fingertips. Yvonne’s nostrils flared at the surge of magic. She seemed to decide something.

  “I’ve got no problem telling you what I know.” Yvonne reached under the counter and took out a small white notepad with writing all over the first page. “That woman scared the life out of me. I remembered her as soon as Tyler called.” Yvonne glanced around, as though afraid of being overheard, even though we were alone in her little shop. “You see, not many people know about Devil’s Bones or Bengalo Dust. But even fewer know of Lazarus Root.”

  Mysti drew in a sharp breath. “I wasn’t aware there was any in existence.”

  “If someone has enough money and enough stupidity to look for it, it’s out there.” Yvonne straightened. “Not from me, of course. I don’t deal in that kind of stuff.”

  “What else can you tell us about your customer?” Griff’s voice still had that lighthearted, glad-to-know-you brightness, but he’d fixed his gaze on Yvonne, and I knew from experience it was intimidating.

  “She parked in my side lot.” Yvonne raised her eyebrows at us.

  Mysti and I exchanged puzzled looks. I sure didn’t get the significance, so I shook my head.

  “I’ve got video surveillance,” Yvonne stage whispered. She tore the top page off the notepad and held it out. Griff took it from her and began to smile. I leaned into his personal space and read the string of seven numbers and letters. Her license plate.

  “Right after I spoke with Tyler, I called up the surveillance videos for that day. She was my only customer, so it was pretty easy.” Yvonne gave us a short laugh.

  “Thank you for your help.” I smiled at Yvonne. “I’ll definitely be back to look around.”

  Yvonne walked us to the door and turned the Open sign to Closed. The deadbolt slid home behind us.

  Griff led the way back to the SUV. “I have a contact who can run the plate, but probably not on a Saturday.” I gave him a vague nod.

  Mysti’s phone dinged, and she checked it. “It’s the files from Tyler.”

  We huddled together to scroll through the images. I dismissed the ones that only had text because Priscilla mentioned a picture.

  Finally, I found it. I used my fingers to enlarge the image and stared into the face of my great-great-grandmother, Samantha. I had no trouble recognizing her from the photos Cecil showed me, even though she was at least twenty years younger in this picture.

  “Why is there a picture of her in this stuff?” I pored over the tiny text until I found the passage that concerned me. “Lakeworth Carnival, in town at the time Camilla Plantation was destroyed, reported hearing a loud explosion that day.”

  Cecil told me his grandmother had no firsthand knowledge of the Coachman. She’d either kept it from him, or he was lying. I had no trouble believing the second one. Cecil hit me as a man who hoarded information the way squirrels hoard acorns.

  I looked up from my reading. “Let’s go see Cecil.”

  GRIFF GOT us back onto the freeway, and we sped north to the RV park. I sat with my head down, still trying to put everything together. “The lady blew Bengalo Dust into my face to immobilize me, right?” I spoke to everyone and no one.

  Griff glanced at me. “Bengalo Dust doesn’t just immobilize. It opens your consciousness.”

  Mysti rubbed at her forehead, thumb massaging her temple. “The users want to allow entities into their bodies. Bengalo Dust was blown into your face to make it easier for the Coachman to get into you.”

  “What about Lazarus Root?”

  Mysti shook her head. “It allows a dead person’s spirit to be reborn into another person.”

  My stomach twisted, and cold spread over my body. “So that thing, whoever it is, wants to be reborn in me or Zora?”

  Griff shook his head. “We’re going to take care of it. It’s not going to go that far. Besides, I doubt they were able to find any Lazarus Root. The last mention I saw of it dated back to the nineteen-seventies, and the person claimed they went to South America to get the ingredients.”

  “What’s not going to get that far? Griffin, you talk to me.” My chest tightened. I had a feeling this was about to get so, so bad.

  “It’s likely the Coachman plans to resurrect in Zora—not you. The Lazarus Root will allow him to transform her body into his likeness, basically be reborn through her. She’s a child, so more malleable, and she’s got your family’s magical blood to help the spell along.”

  Zora didn’t just have my family’s magical blood. She could raise the dead. Terror took root and spread through my body. My throat tightened, and I choked, whooping for air. Griff took the next exit and whipped into a gas station. I leaned my head between my knees and coughed. Zora, poor Zora. That’s what he wants with her. Mysti pushed a bottle of water into my face and yelled for me to drink.

  “He’s got another reason for wanting Zora.” I whooped for breath, but my heart wouldn’t slow down. “She can raise the dead.”

  Griff stared at the road, his hands clenched on the steering wheel. “If he has the Lazarus Root and Zora, he only needs one more thing. You. Your blood specifically, for the human sacrifice required. The more powerful the human, the more chance the resurrection succeeds.”

  Something still bothered me. “You keep saying resurrection. How is that different from possessing Zora?”

  “He’ll be reborn of her body,” Brad muttered. Mysti swatted at him, but he shoved her off and yelled, “She needs to know what’s at stake.” He spoke to me. “Have you ever seen those time-lapse films? How it’ll speed through a day?”

  A picture started to form in my head, an ugly one, and all I could do was nod.

  “The Coac
hman’ll implant himself in Zora, incubate, and be born really fast—like over the space of a few minutes.” Brad swallowed hard. “That little girl’s magic will resurrect the Coachman. He’ll grow to adulthood in a matter of a few more minutes. Then Zora’ll be sucked dry and torn apart. The Coachman gets both her life force and her ability to raise the dead. He’ll be a god.” Brad looked sick.

  My ears began to ring, and sweat broke out on my head. The images in my head made me want to scream. “What are we going to do?” My gaze darted between my friends.

  Brad wouldn’t look at me. Griff and Mysti stared back, faces tight with fear. Neither gave me an answer. Their silence was worse than them pulling a fit. I hadn’t realized until just then how much I depended on them having all the answers I needed. Dread teased at me and begged me to panic some more.

  “There’s a way to outsmart this spirit.” Griff’s nostrils flared, and his chest heaved with each breath. “There is. We will fight until we can’t anymore.”

  “Tell us everything you saw when you were out.” Mysti glanced at Griff, and he nodded. “Let’s try to find this thing’s weakness.”

  Leaving out the details of my final meeting with my ex-husband, even though Mysti already knew, I told Griff about my hellish visit with Priscilla Herrera. “Then I was on top of the scar tissue caused by the mantle-blocking spell.” I closed my eyes and ransacked my memory for the clearest way to explain what I saw. “The Coachman was on his hands and knees sucking up the mantle. It looked like a white mist. I had to stop him, so I bit him.”

  Both Griff and Mysti stared at me, mouths open. Brad started laughing, and Mysti pinched him. He yowled and shoved her away.

  “Priscilla told me to do it.” I raised my voice. “She said to turn his power back on him.”

  “And did you?” Mysti leaned forward, mind working behind her brown eyes.

  I let out a breath. “I was going to, but I heard Zora crying. I forgot about using his power against him. I tried to get in him and go looking for her, maybe in his memories or something?” I glanced at Griff for approval, and he nodded. “But the Coachman kicked me out, and then he left.”