by Rebecca York
When he produced a substitute, she put it into the trunk herself, figuring she wasn’t going to give him another crack at screwing up the vehicle.
As she headed out of town, she looked in the rearview mirror to make sure no one was behind her. Then she pulled onto the shoulder, retrieved the Glock from the shopping bag and loaded it. One thing she liked about the weapon was the safety system. The only way it could fire was if your finger was on the trigger, which made her feel okay about slipping a loaded gun into her purse.
When she reached the house, neither Janet nor Andre was around. But there was a new pile of cut and split wood near the back door.
Thinking that luck was with her for once, Morgan walked quietly inside and into the library. The book where the maps had been concealed was in the same place. After a glance over her shoulder, she put the sheets back where she’d found them, then breathed out a little sigh before going up to her room to leave the carry bag. Since the incident with the alligator and the log, she’d vowed that she wasn’t going to go tramping around the estate armed with just a kitchen knife. So she kept her purse strap slung over her shoulder as she hurried downstairs and outside again.
The saw was buzzing again, but she set off across the lawn, heading toward the sound, thinking Andre had cut enough wood for one day.
She hadn’t been to this part of the grounds before. At the edge of the lawn she came to a slate path that led under the trees, and she followed it to a three-foot-tall wrought-iron fence. Beyond it were several white horizontal objects. As she drew closer, they resolved themselves into aboveground crypts.
Apparently she’d stumbled across the family graveyard. To her eyes, the coffin-shaped burial chambers looked strange, but she remembered that down here they were the norm.
As she walked slowly forward, it registered somewhere in her consciousness that the sound of the saw had stopped, leaving her in a bubble of silence.
The cemetery plot was not as well tended as the rest of the grounds. Weeds poked up through the dark earth, a rose climbed along one side of the fence and leaves were scattered across the graying tops of the crypts.
A small inner voice warned her to walk away from this place. Instead Morgan pushed at the gate. The hinges squeaked, grating on her nerve endings. The moment she entered the enclosure, the temperature felt as if it dropped ten degrees, and she looked down at the fingers of fog that began rising from the ground.
Fog. Only here?
She wanted to get out of this place. But somehow the mist twisted around her ankles and held her, the way something had held her at the scene of the flood, she thought with a shudder.
Run. Get away, a voice in her head warned. Instead she kept moving forward.
She could hear a noise in the background now. Not the saw. Was it more like the beating of a drum? Wrapping her hands over her arms, she rubbed her chilled skin. It felt as though she had stepped into a supernatural place. Or some supernatural force had taken over the graveyard. Taken over her.
Shadows flickered around her, creating the illusion that the little cemetery was haunted by the ghosts from the past. And something from the present, too—a force that pressed against her, making it hard to breathe.
She looked up, seeing the tree branches overhead swaying in the wind, shifting the patterns of light and dark around her, blurring her vision.
Someone called her name, a ghostly sound carried away by the wind.
She straightened her shoulders, struggling to put the idea of specters out of her head as she moved reluctantly toward the nearest crypt. Brushing away the leaves, she saw that the name was almost completely worn away, but as she squinted at the carved letters, she saw that a Margot Gascon was buried here.
Who was the woman? Morgan didn’t know. But she understood that it was important to look at the other names. One name in particular. She must find it.
She was moving frantically now, hurrying through the cemetery. A grave at the back drew her. That was the one. Yes. She knew it, even though she couldn’t see the name yet.
Leaning over the flat top of the crypt, she brushed frantically at the leaves, then tried to read the worn letters. At first she couldn’t make any sense of the words. With a shaking hand, she traced the carving. The stone felt like ice against her fingertips. When the name came into focus, she gasped.
It said Andre Gascon.
Instinctively she leaped back, then bumped into something that hadn’t been there before.
Not something. Someone.
Two separate and distinct thoughts vied for prominence in her frantically scrambling mind. The men from town had followed her to this isolated location and were going to finish what they’d started on the road. Or one of the ghosts she’d sensed in this place of death had sneaked up behind her.
If the men were after her, her next act might have been rational. Fumbling in her purse, she pulled out the gun she’d just bought and slipped her finger through the trigger guard as she whirled around, prepared to shoot the enemy.
Her heart leaped into her throat when she found herself facing Andre.
He was wearing a T-shirt, jeans and muddy work boots. His face and shirt were streaked with perspiration, and he was staring at her with an expression that mirrored her own shock.
“Put down the gun,” he said in a steady voice.
“You’re dead,” she gasped, backing away from him, bumping into another crypt. Somewhere in her brain, she knew she wasn’t thinking rationally. Andre was standing in front of her—alive and well. He had been out in the bayou working and he had followed her into the cemetery.
Still she kept seeing the white burial chamber imposed on his image, and she kept the gun pointed at him, the weight of the weapon reassuring.
“No. I’m very much alive.”
“But…your name.” Without lowering the weapon, she gestured toward the crypt.
“That’s my grandfather.”
“Your grandfather,” she repeated. Suddenly she felt dizzy. Closing her eyes, she pressed her free hand to her temple. “Andre, what just happened to me?” she whispered.
He answered with his own question. “Where did you get that gun?”
“In town,” she said, lowering the weapon, feeling now like it was weighing down her hand.
“Put it away before somebody gets hurt.”
“Right.” As she eased her finger away from the trigger and carefully put the weapon back in her purse, realization slammed into her.
“I could have shot you,” she wheezed.
“You didn’t.”
“What’s happening to me?” she asked again, fighting the pain in her head.
“I don’t know.”
Suddenly it was important to explain why she had been so startled. “There are no dates on the gravestone,” she whispered.
He kept his voice even. “They’re at the foot of each marker.” He moved past her, brushed away leaves and pointed.
She made out the dates. Andre’s grandfather had been born in the late 1800s, died in the 1970s.
“You knew him?” she asked.
“When I was a boy. He was pretty old when I was born,” Andre said, then cleared his throat. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Yes.” She wanted to get as far away as she could from this place. When he took her hand and led her to the gate, she followed willingly. But something glistening on the ground made her stop short, a strangled sound bubbling in her throat.
Chapter Ten
Andre shoved Morgan protectively behind him. “What is it?” he asked urgently.
She pointed to the gris-gris. “Another one. It’s another one.”
Still shielding her, he knelt and pushed the weeds aside, then swore. Prepared with another handkerchief, he scooped the gris-gris up and closed his fist around it.
“It did that to me,” she whispered.
“Did what?”
“Messed with my mind. Made me reach for my gun and almost shoot you.”
“Unfor
tunately, you may be right,” he said as he led her outside the fence and closed the gate.
She gulped. “I saw another one today.”
He whirled toward her. “Another charm? Where?”
“On the road into town. Near where you rescued me from the flood.”
“And what happened?” he demanded.
“I felt like the water was sweeping me away, even though I was safe in the car.”
His face turned fierce. “Merde!”
“Is it the priestess?”
“Who else has that power?”
She shook her head. She hadn’t believed in supernatural power at all. Now it looked as if she had no choice.
“You should go back to the house,” he said.
She knew he wanted to protect her. She was also pretty sure he was looking for an excuse to withdraw behind the wall he’d built around himself since she’d arrived.
“This time, stay and talk to me,” she whispered. “Why are you so different from the man I thought I knew?”
His gaze burned into her. “What do you mean—the man you thought you knew?”
She forced herself to speak frankly. “I mean, when we sent e-mail messages back and forth, you…you seemed friendly and open. We exchanged a lot of information. Not just about the case. Personal stuff. Then, as soon as I got here, you started being…evasive.”
He clenched and unclenched his fists. “The first thing that happened when you got here was men from town threatening you in the bayou. I realized I’d put you in danger by asking you to come to Belle Vista.”
“But not giving me information doesn’t help!”
“I’m trying to figure out what to do!”
“Well, you can’t do it on your own. You hired me to do a job. Let me do it.” She struggled to get control of her own emotions. Fumbling her way back to a less threatening topic, she said, “Tell me about the graveyard.”
His face contorted. “My ancestors are buried here. I don’t visit them often, so I tend to neglect the place.”
“You could hire someone.”
“There aren’t many people around here who would work for me.”
The flat way he said it tore at her. But she needed more than words. Reaching out, she wrapped him in her arms.
“You should stay away from me,” he whispered.
“Why?”
“Like I said, I’m putting you in danger.”
“From whom?”
“From the voodoo priestess. And from whoever is trying to drive me away from Belle Vista.”
“When you hired me, you didn’t say anyone was trying to drive you away.”
“Because it’s hard to talk about something that disturbing.”
“So you thought you’d get me down here, then work it into the conversation.”
He laughed. “Something like that.”
“Well, I’m prepared to hear anything you have to say. I’m not some little librarian from Baltimore. I’m a trained undercover agent.”
“Right. Tough as forged steel,” he murmured, and she caught a hint of the very appealing man she remembered from their correspondence.
Was that why she’d come down to Louisiana? Because she’d enjoyed his company long-distance? And was that part of the instant physical attraction she’d felt for him?
She had fought that attraction. Now she heard herself say, “Maybe neither one of us is as tough as we think.”
When he didn’t answer, she said, “I’m here. You don’t have to go it alone.”
His arms slipped around her shoulders. When he’d held her before, his touch had turned passionate. Now he was deliberately keeping them both at a less-heated level.
“Tell me about the curse,” she whispered.
She half expected him to pull away. Instead he dragged in a breath, then let it out. “I told you I didn’t go away to school because I had to take care of my father. That was true, but it wasn’t the only reason. I can’t leave this place. So whoever is trying to drive me away is doomed to failure.” He laughed, and this time the sound wasn’t pleasant. “The joke’s on them.”
“What do you mean you can’t leave?”
His teeth clamped together, then he seemed to make a deliberate effort to relax. “The priestess comes out here to reinforce an old grudge. Her ancestor cursed my family. We have to stay at Belle Vista.”
She tipped her head back, staring into his eyes. “You believe that?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“You said you felt the power—on the road and now in the graveyard.”
“Yes,” she admitted.
“I feel it, too.” He grimaced. “If we put it in medical terms, we could say that what you experienced were acute episodes. What I’ve got is a low-level, persistent infection that flares up if I stay away from Belle Vista for too long.”
“If you stay away overnight?” she guessed.
“Yes.”
“And what happens here at night?”
She saw him swallow. “I have to go out into the bayou…and stay there until near dawn.”
“But isn’t that dangerous?”
“Yes. But I have no choice, so I’ve learned to live with it.”
“Can you break the curse?” she asked in a shaky voice, amazed that she had bought in to the reality of a voodoo curse. But she’d discovered it was the only way to have a coherent discussion about his problems.
“Maybe if I had someone at my side to help.” He swallowed. “Someone willing to stay here with me.”
She nodded silently, not sure what to say.
His eyes drilled into hers. She wanted to look away, but she held herself steady. Another question burned behind her lips. A question she was afraid to ask. Yet Andre had finally been honest with her. Now she had to face her own fears about the dreams she’d had since she’d put on the robe.
“The woman your grandfather loved and lost—was her name Linette Sonnier?” she whispered.
Morgan watched a host of emotions chasing themselves across Andre’s face. “Where did you get that name?” he asked in a hoarse voice.
“Where could I have gotten it?” she asked carefully.
His jaw firmed. “You could have researched my family.”
“Well, that’s not how the name came to me,” she answered.
He opened his mouth, but she hurried on, forcing herself to grapple with one of the other questions that had been gnawing at her since the first afternoon when Andre had rescued her from the flood. “Why was that robe you gave me in a bag of clothing in your car?”
“I told you, it was going to a garage sale at the church.”
“You don’t get along with the town, so why were you taking anything to a church sale?” she challenged.
“It was either that or burn the clothing, and I was taught from a young age never to throw out anything that someone could use. Just because some people in St. Germaine don’t like me is no reason to spite the rest of them.”
“Okay.” She would give him that much. But it still didn’t get to the crux of her question. “You didn’t have the robe—” She stopped then began again. “You didn’t have the robe in the car so I could put it on?”
Instead of answering, he made a frustrated gesture with his hand. “I asked you about Linette. What does that have to do with the bag of clothing? I didn’t even know it was in there until you were sitting there shivering like a drowned muskrat. Why are we going on about the robe?”
Lifting her gaze, she looked back toward the cemetery plot. It was no longer visible through the trees, but she knew it was still lurking in the shadows. “I had a couple of weird experiences today.”
“And? This is the damn strangest conversation I ever had,” he added in exasperation. “Are you just going to ignore every question I ask you?”
“I’m working up to an answer,” she murmured, scuffing her foot against the ground, watching with great interest as she scraped a line in the dirt. “This is hard. What I wante
d to say was that I…had another weird experience when I put on the robe.” She swallowed.
“A bad experience?”
“No. I…I had a vision of Linette.”
His reaction seemed to be as strong as her own. “What?” he gasped out. “What are you talking about?”
“Andre, I’m a pretty down-to-earth person. I don’t know how to describe what happened exactly. It was like I had a dream. About her.”
“While you were sitting in the car, right after I pulled you out of the water? When you looked like you were asleep?”
“Yes,” she answered. Then, because she wanted to be honest, she said, “And later, when I went to bed that first night I was here.”
He gave her an appraising look. “A dream. If you’re in a dream, you’d be one of the characters. So who were you?”
It was a very perceptive question. She wanted to duck away from his probing gaze, but she wasn’t going to be a coward, so she kept her eyes focused on him. “I was Linette.”
His indrawn breath raised goose bumps on her skin, but she struggled to stay rational. “What do you know about it?” she demanded.
When he didn’t answer, a terrible notion leaped into her mind. “Tell me what’s going on, damn you! Were you projecting some sort of dream into my head? Is that it?”
“No! How could I do something like that?” he returned.
“I don’t know! If you didn’t hypnotize me, then what?”
She saw his hands clench, then unclench. Slowly and distinctly he said, “I don’t know what happened to you, but I’ve dreamed about Linette for years.”
She stared at him. Then the obvious question tumbled from her lips, the question he’d asked her. “And in those dreams who are you?”
For a moment she thought he was going to walk away instead of answering. He dragged shaky fingers through his hair. “I’m Andre. My grandfather. Myself. Hell, I don’t know anymore!”
Stunned, she tried to cope with the implications—just as the sounds of shouting and banging made them both look up. Once again someone had interrupted their conversation before she could find out what she needed to know.
Andre took off toward the house. Morgan followed him. When they arrived at the front of the building, they found a man pounding on the door with his big fists. He had obviously come here to make trouble, and Morgan gripped her purse, wondering if she was going to need her gun.