“Hush,” she said. “It’s my job. But now, what you want to do? I really will take the corpse. Brett could—”
“No, Cheyanne,” Marchland said, not unkindly. “We can’t bury the body in your front yard. That PI is already watching your house.”
As if that were the only reason.
Cheyanne shrugged, but let it go.
I pulled away from Blaine and faced Marchland, whose eyes were wide and fixated on the edge of the circle.
“What is it?” I asked.
I followed her gaze. When Blaine had entered the circle, he’d not only risked his well-being by interrupting the magic, but with his steps he’d scattered the salt and broken the capsule.
“What does this mean?”
Marchland pressed her lips together so tightly they disappeared into her pale skin.
“Marchland?”
“I don’t know. I will have to look in the book to see. You were the one that always was listening to Granny’s stories. She never spoke of a broken circle?”
Had she? I thought back over the years of tales I’d heard at the feet of my granny. Marchland was right, it had always been me who grasped at the folds of her long skirts, listening to stories and tales. Of all of us, I knew the most of our history, but try as I might, my rattled brain wouldn’t cooperate and I could focus on nothing but the decaying scene in front of me. “I… I can’t remember.”
“Welp.” Cheyanne pushed up from the ground and dusted off her hands. “We might as well get to work.” She leaned forward and slid her arms under the armpits of the body and heaved, before stumbling backwards and landing on her butt. “This may be a little harder than I thought.”
“Cheyanne?” What was she doing?
“If you ain’t going to let me have the body to feed Brett, then we better get to work burying it, like Marchland suggested earlier.”
I shook my head. “No. No the body can’t be here. If the police come here looking for it, then they will find Chase and I can’t have Marchland going to jail…” I almost said “going to jail, too,” but stopped myself.
If the police found the be-spelled man living in the gardening shed, and a body buried in the yard, not only would we go to prison, but our home would end up on one of those cheesy Haunted New Orleans tours. I would risk myself before I risked my sisters or the home that had been in our family since the beginning. No, I could not saddle Cheyanne, Marchland, nor house with the corpse of my victim.
“Bradley, listen to me. You don’t have a choice.” Marchland’s voice was as close to panicked as I’d ever heard her get. Even when she’d set off the events that resulted in Chase becoming her prisoner, she’d always sounded calm. “The magic—our magic, House’s magic—it will protect you. It will keep the body from being found.”
I closed my eyes. I had no other ideas. No other plans. I’d killed a man and I had no idea what to do next. Could I put his body in the ground near where I slept? Could I pollute the yard of the one happy place from my childhood with his rot?
My eyes fluttered open and I shook my head, no. “We can’t. Not here.”
“What then? You have a better idea?” Cheyanne was again trying to move the corpse.
“Maybe I should just turn myself in… Maybe if I tell them what he did and that it was an accident.”
“Brad, it is a little late for that.” Marchland had a point. The body was mutilated and covered in my blood.
“No. Don’t even think about turning yourself in. That man hurt you. I know what to do.” Blaine stood. “If I can get him back into my car unnoticed, then I know where to get rid of this piece of shit.”
Chapter Five
The long stretch of highway to Lafourche was abandoned at three in the morning. I stared into the flat darkness on the other side of my window as Blaine drove in silence.
After we loaded the body, he’d gone back to Broussard’s office and cleaned the mess. In his janitor’s uniform, even if anyone had been on campus, they wouldn’t have given him a second look. Now we were driving to his family place near Cut Off in south Louisiana bayou country.
Radiohead played over the speakers, and the air conditioning blasted icy cold, forming condensation on the windows. I leaned my head against the damp glass and blinked hard. How had this happened? How had my life gone from not that great, to complete shit in a matter of hours? What had been the cataclysmic event that set off this ungodly domino effect?
Jonathan.
He’d hurt me all over again—the effects of what he’d done by violating me were like ripples that seemed to stretch forever over a lake. He’d shared my naked pictures with the student body, and now I was driving to dump my professor’s corpse.
Blaine touched my shoulder. “Hey. Listen, I know that anything I say is going to sound… not right, but I can tell you, if anyone can get through this and be okay, it’s us. We are going to be okay. Okay?”
I found myself leaning toward his touch. I rested my cheek against the top of his hand, enjoying the warmth from the contact. I pressed my eyes closed and said nothing. I had no idea if we would get through this unscathed, but I believed that Blaine thought we would. And I believed him when he said he would help me. He was probably the only man who’d ever said those words to me and meant them.
Thirty minutes later, Blaine steered his sedan onto a narrow road that hadn’t seen a fresh layer of asphalt in at least fifty years. The sides of the road were hugged by swamp and marsh but Blaine didn’t slow down, as if he’d driven the path a thousand times. Maybe he had.
We bounced along, and briefly I wondered what the corpse was doing to Blaine’s trunk. It had to be slamming around the small space, leaking god knows what into the carpet.
Blaine slowed and cut his lights. I sat up and squinted into the night, but instead of stopping, Blaine turned onto yet another road—one that made the first one seem like it had been recently paved. The potholes jarred my teeth and I squeezed my seat until my knuckles turned white.
“I’ve been driving these backroads since I was ten,” he said as if he knew what I was thinking. “It will be better without the lights. We just have to go slow.”
Finally, he pulled into a makeshift parking lot, with only enough room for three cars tops.
“My cousin’s pirogue is tied up nearby. He works for wildlife and fishery and is always talking about the gators in this one protected area.” Blaine shrugged.
“But won’t your cousin notice that his boat has been used? What if we get blood in it?”
“I take Renee’s boat all the time. And you can’t think like a guilty person. If there is a little blood in the boat, he will think I cut myself while fishing or something. He ain’t going to assume there was a dead body. Besides, even if he did, Renee’s my boy. He would ask me about it, but he’d never say anything.”
I wasn’t so sure about the plan, but it was a little late to voice any concerns. Besides, I had no other ideas.
As long as I live, I will never forget the site of red eyes glowing in the dark bayou as we slid the body over the side of the boat. The small ripples made from reptilian bodies gliding through the water, curious and in search of their next meal, sent me in a tailspin. It was beautiful and terrifying. In the dark, bullfrogs and alligators called to their mates, and somewhere an owl hollered as Broussard sunk lower and lower, until there wasn’t so much as a bubble of air to give away his grave.
A gator swam by, close enough to touch. I tripped over my own feet trying to back away, and landed on my butt, rocking the boat. “It’s done. Let’s get out of here,” I said, trying hard to keep my composure.
Blaine joked about a Louisiana girl being so afraid of a gator when she was safely in a boat but I’d grown up in trailer parks across southern Alabama, coastal Mississippi, and south Louisiana. All of my happy memories were from Granny’s house in New Orleans. I’d never been to the bayou before in my life. Gators weren’t exactly roaming the college campus or streets of uptown New Orleans.
The drive back to my house was a blur. Blaine pulled to a stop outside Granny’s and turned in his seat to face me. He placed a hand tenderly on my cheek. “You okay?”
I nodded.
“Then I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I shook my head. “No. Are you serious? No, I can’t go back there.”
Blaine’s hand slid from my cheek to my shoulder. His grasp was firm but gentle. “Listen to me Brad, you have to go to class. Everyone in that room knew you had a meeting with Broussard. We both have to go on with business as usual. You show up and keep your head down. Just for a little while until everything blows over, okay? Something tells me that this isn’t the first time Broussard has acted like a sleaze. Just… just go to class, okay? If you can do that, then everything is going to be fine.”
I stared into his wide, brown eyes. “I don’t know. It was bad enough before… when I was just worried about the photos. Now, though…”
“You want me to come pick you up? We can ride together?”
“Okay,” I peeped. “Yeah. That’ll be good.”
Before I opened the door, Blaine leaned over and brushed his lips against my forehead.
We weren’t the kind of friends who hugged. Hell, I wasn’t a toucher in general, but his lips, his hands, even with the terror of the day, they felt right. Blaine was my best friend, and I’d be lying if the thought of him—the thought of us—had never crossed my mind… but he was Blaine.
I pulled the chenille comforter higher until it was tucked under my chin. It was the same blanket that I’d slept under during summer visits to Granny’s when our Mama would disappear and needed somewhere to dump us. It still smelled like Granny, a mix of Charlie perfume and the spicy tea she’d serve to my great aunt’s when they’d come over in the afternoons. It was comforting—a recollection of the one good thing from my childhood.
For that moment, everyone at school hadn’t seen me naked. For that moment I hadn’t killed a man. For that moment I was spending the night at my favorite place in the world. My safe space.
The hairs on my arm prickled to attention. Get up. Get up and see…
I opened my eyes and blinked away the blurriness of sleep. Get up…
The words were like a whisper in my mind. House.
Get up and see.
Get up and see what? It had been a long time since the house had woken me up. The last time I’d been a child and Mama had shown up in the middle of the night, drunk, to try and collect me and my sisters. Granny actually had to call the cops on her.
I rolled to the edge of my bed and traced my fingers along the wooden floor, knowing the contact with the house would help me to understand. I slid out of bed, my bare feet silent on the floor. My eyes adjusted to the purple darkness as I slipped across the room to the window, where moonlight spilled through sheer curtains.
There was a shadow on the street. I leaned forward, pressing my hands into the ledge. The outline of a man was on the sidewalk, leaning against the iron gate.
We lived in New Orleans, so people walking the street wasn’t unusual, however, Foncee Street, without the rambling mansions of the Garden District, or the balconies and bars of the Quarter, was hardly a tourist trap. It was quiet, inhabited by young families and artists. I squinted through the dusty glass. The man was just standing, staring up at the house. His face was shaded by night, the shadows turning him into nothing more than a silhouette. I could almost believe my eyes were playing tricks on me.
From the backyard, the sound of a door banged open, scaring me out of my skin. I jumped, bumping my knee on the wall. “Shit.” I took a deep breath. When I turned back to the window, the man was gone.
Chapter Six
The next morning, floorboards squeaked nervously with every soft step taken. Doors refused to budge and when they did open, they often led me in circles. The walls and ceiling were gray and the temperature inside dropped enough to fog the window panes.
After trying to leave my bedroom four times only to find my bathroom on the other side of the door that should have led to the hallway, I sank to the floor and spread my palms onto the cypress planks.
“Okay. Something is bothering you… I know. You are freaked out about yesterday. So am I. But I have to go to school. If I don’t go, I could end up in real trouble. You have to let me go.” In response, House settled, throwing open all of the second story bedroom doors as the pipes groaned from inside the walls. On the other side of the door, the hallway was in its proper place. “It will be okay. It has to be.” I whispered the words and stroked the floor.
I stood to leave, and the air left my lungs in a whoosh. I caught myself against the wall, one hand pressed to my forehead. The room spun around me from the sudden lack of oxygen.
Be careful. Be careful. Let the circle be unbroken. By and by… Let the circle be unbroken.
A shiver curled around my spine. I’d understood House my entire life—but this was more than a feeling. This was a whisper. A prayer in my mind.
House was freaking me the hell out.
When the room was once again steady underfoot, I ran from the bedroom and took the stairs two at a time. Thankfully every room was in its proper place.
Marchland was in the kitchen, her hands wrapped around her favorite mug. Cheyanne wouldn’t be up until closer to noon. That is, if she was even here. She could have already slipped out and began to make her way home to her beloved tree.
“Bradley? Are you okay?”
I narrowed my eyes.
“Okay. Dumb question. What I mean is, is there something else? You look like you’ve seen a ghost?” She watched me over the rim of her cup, her red curls floating around her face like a burning cloud.
What could I say? I imagined I saw a man on the sidewalk and now house was freaking me out? What was wrong with me?
“No. No I am definitely not okay. But what choice do I have? I have to be okay, don’t I? Blaine said I have to carry on as normal, which means going to class. The class where my professor isn’t going to show. Because I killed him.” My heart pounded in my ears.
“Oh, honey. You fought back. What were you supposed to do? Let him rape you?” She sat her cup down and pushed away from the table. A second later her long arms were draped around me. Until Blaine had surprised me with his touch, Marchland was the only person I’d let hold me like this. Cheyanne was the oldest, but Marchland had always been my mama-surrogate. Cheyanne took care of us, handling business when it needed handling. Marchland made sure we were loved. I was selfish—I’d never had a part to play other than letting them take care of me. I’d never realized it before that moment, and it was enough to make tears sting my eyes.
I was really losing it.
“What am I going to do, March? I cannot handle this. I’m seeing things. Last night I thought I saw a man watching the house, then this morning I imagined House was talking to me—like really talking. I don’t think I can pull this off.”
“Shh.” She whispered into the top of my head. “You can handle it and you will handle it. You want to know why? Because we—me, Cheyanne, and you—we have had a lot of practice handling things that are out of our control. Do what we always do, focus on one thing at a time.” She pulled away and tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear. “If you still feel bad tomorrow, I’ll bring home my equipment. I know just the ink you need to calm your soul.”
I nodded. Marchland’s tattoos had the power to help. To heal.
I gave my sister a squeeze. She was almost six foot tall, and soft, with curves that would be at home in a Botticelli painting. Next to her I was small and frail. Pitiful.
I sniffed. She was right though. I would hold it together. Not for myself. Not even for Blaine. I’d hold it together for March. And for Chey. They’d dedicated their entire lives to making sure I was okay, and now I wouldn’t slip up and do something to send me, or them, to jail.
Marchland pulled away and glanced at the blinking time on the back of the stove. “Shoot! I have an appointment
in five minutes.” She ran to the cupboard and pulled out a pack of instant oatmeal.
I took it from her. “I’ll feed Chase. You go.”
“You sure?” She raised her auburn brows. She knew that Chase made my skin crawl.
“Yeah. I’m sure. You are so good to me. I think I can manage delivering a bowl of oatmeal to the gardening shed.” I knew she was struggling in her own way. Marchland had a good heart, and after messing up a spell, and then being unable to do what was needed to fix it, she was carrying a world of guilt on her shoulders. “I got it. Promise.”
Marchland watched me for a few seconds, biting her bottom lip.
“March, I promise. It’s no big deal.”
Finally, she sighed and grabbed her bag from the table. “Okay. If you’re sure. You know I would never ask you to.”
“I know.”
“Just open the door and set it inside and then shut the door. The spell is in place like a brick wall.”
“It’s fine and I know. Now go so you don’t miss your appointment.”
She gave me one last long look, then scurried out the door in a billow of red curls and purple cotton.
Ten minutes later I was dressed in a knee length black shift dress and black sandals. My hair was pulled into a low pony tail. I didn’t bother with makeup. My skin looked like shit from lack of sleep and stress. It was fitting because I felt like shit.
The grass was damp from morning, and the humidity plastered my bangs to my forehead. When I reached the shed, I could hear the sounds of a game show on television inside. Damn. I was hoping Chase would still be asleep. I should have known better. He basically lived to see my sister, so of course he’d be up and waiting on his breakfast if it meant a short visit with her.
He was not going to be happy to see me.
I clicked open the door and pushed it open a crack, planning to set the bowl down and leave, as March had instructed, but Chase was sitting up on his cot, staring at the door.
Magic Flame (Enchanted Book 3) Page 9