Gathering Deep

by Lisa Maxwell

  Understanding dawned on Piers’s face. “You want me to steal it?” He didn’t look happy about the idea at all.

  “Not steal it,” Mama Legba said, “but maybe we could borrow it long enough for me to take a good hard look at it. If it’s safe, maybe—just maybe—we can let Chloe take another look.”

  “To do that, I’d actually have to take it to Nashville.”

  “So take it,” Lucy said. “Maybe the tests will tell us something.”

  Piers shook his head. “I don’t want to leave New Orleans right now, especially not with this latest murder.”

  “But if I could get a good look at the charm, we might could tell something about the magic it holds and understand where these visions Chloe’s been having come from.” Mama Legba took a thoughtful sip of her tea. “Wouldn’t take but a few hours, and then you could take it on to that professor of yours and let him do whatever tests they want. I can keep Chloe safe until you get back.”

  Piers frowned, and I could practically see the thoughts spinning around that brain of his. He knew the plan could work, and he didn’t like it one bit. His expression was strung so tight I thought for sure he would say no, so I was surprised when he finally spoke.

  “I’ll do it on one condition,” he said, his voice as firm and determined as I’d ever heard it. “I won’t have Chloe anywhere near that thing again until and unless Mama Legba can tell it’s one hundred percent safe.”

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  “You heard me.” Piers met my eyes and didn’t look away. “I saw how you looked at it yesterday. I don’t even know if you realized how focused you were, but you didn’t hear a thing I said to you. If I do this, I don’t want you around while Mama Legba looks at the charm.”

  I crossed my arms. “Last I checked, I don’t take orders from you.”

  Piers sighed and rubbed a hand over his smooth head. “That’s not what I meant, baby. It’s not an order.”

  “No, it’s a condition, and maybe that’s even worse.”

  “You have to understand—”

  “I do understand,” I snapped, interrupting whatever bit of nonsense was about to come out of his mouth. “You make it sound like I’m some kind of idiot who doesn’t know how dangerous Thisbe can be.”

  “Chloe … ”

  I shook my head, refusing to hear anything more. “You want to push me out of this, but you don’t seem to realize I’m already wrapped up in it, Piers. If we’re going to look at that charm, I want to be here. I deserve to be a part of this.”

  Piers’s jaw went tight, and I knew he didn’t like what I was saying. But he didn’t even bother arguing with me. Without another word, he turned to Mama Legba. “That’s my only condition. Take it or leave it. You want to study the charm to see if it’s safe, fine. I’ll bring it to you, but I won’t have Chloe here while you do it. Until we know there’s no way the visions are coming directly from Thisbe, she stays away from it.”

  Mama Legba looked to me, her mouth turned down like she was considering her options.

  “You saw what happened here just now with Lucy,” Piers pressed. “That’s never happened before.”

  I understood what he was implying—that maybe it happened because I was there. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but I had a bad feeling that he was right. The wind, the snuffed-out candles … all of it felt linked to me somehow.

  “You don’t really think Chloe had anything to do with what happened?” Lucy demanded, and I felt a spark of hope for how she stood up for me.

  “I don’t know what I think about it, but I’m not going to put her at risk by underestimating Thisbe’s power again,” he said to Lucy. “If y’all want the charm, fine, but it’ll only be me and Mama Legba until she can guarantee it’s safe.”

  Mama Legba was still watching me as she considered Piers’s offer.

  “Don’t … ” I pleaded.

  “I’m sorry, Chloe-girl,” Mama Legba said, and I knew that her mind was made up. “I don’t agree with keeping you out of this, ’cause you do have a right to it. But Piers’ll be taking something of a risk by doing this, and he got a right, too.”

  Seven

  When we finally got back out to the plantation, Lucy sent me a tight, pitying sort of smile before she excused herself, leaving me alone with Piers. Not that the privacy she gave us did any good. Neither one of us seemed to know how to step across the space that was growing between us. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to anymore.

  “I need to talk with Dr. Aimes about delivering the charm,” Piers said after a couple of awkward moments of silence. “If I’m going to do this, I’d like to get it over with. Are you coming in with me?”

  I stared at him, waiting for him to say something more. “That’s all you have to say to me?” I asked when it was clear he wasn’t going to offer me anything more.

  Piers let out a frustrated breath and shook his head. “What do you want me to say?”

  “If I have to tell you, I don’t want it,” I said.

  “Chloe … ” He stopped, and then let out an irritated huff of breath. “I get that you’re mad at me, but I’m doing the right thing here.” Piers was still frowning at me, but now there was even less tenderness in his expression. Instead, a guarded distrustfulness filled his eyes. “You told us that Thisbe might have bound another man in the past, but when you were talking, it sounded to me like you might think she isn’t all evil. Did you ever stop to wonder if you just imagined what you wanted to see in her actions?”

  I had plenty to say about that, but I knew he wasn’t going to hear it, so I kept quiet.

  He let out a ragged, frustrated breath. “Fine. Stay out here and be mad at me then.” Without another word, he mounted the steps up to the house, leaving me and my angry thoughts behind.

  Like I was going to follow any more of his orders.

  My limbs were practically vibrating with all the frustration and fretfulness I’d been carrying around all day, so I let my feet take me out toward the big house. I followed the path that led up over a small rise and cut through one of the big gardens to come up on the back side of the mansion, the side facing the river.

  On the upper balcony, a group from one of the last tours of the day was taking pictures of the alley of oaks that led toward the Mississippi. Those ancient trees had been there long before Roman Dutilette built the house, even long before his father, Jean-Pierre, bought the property in the 1790s, though no one quite knows where they came from or who planted them. Anyone’s best guess is they were put there long before any of the French or Spanish settlers moved in and took over.

  Centuries have passed with those big, graceful limbs watching over the river. The planters and their descendants came and went years ago, but the trees are still there. I’ve always felt like there was something about those oaks that spoke of a different sort of power—one that couldn’t be bought or stolen. I knew then that if my visions could be trusted, Thisbe would have taken wood from one of those trees to make her charm, for that very reason.

  But thinking of the vision made me remember the way the unnatural wind had spun through Mama Legba’s rooms and how the invisible fingers had snuffed out the light of the candles. I thought of the bottles in the tree outside my own home crashing to the hard earth below, and something inside me shifted uncomfortably.

  I wanted to believe Thisbe had been the cause of all those strange happenings, but there was a part of me that wasn’t so sure. I felt like there was some part of me getting stronger and more unsettled ever since they’d cut the last of my hair and tossed it into the fire. It was like that particular part had been balled up tight so long, and now it had time to stretch itself out.

  When I’d felt the wind whip across my skin in Mama Legba’s shop, that unsettled feeling had eased a bit, like a cat ruffling up its spine and flexing its claws. I didn’t trust the spark of excitement I’d felt thinking that maybe I’d caused that wind, and I certainly didn’t want to feel so drawn to it.

  A
fter a while, Piers found me there, under the canopy of one of those old oaks. I sensed him before I heard his approach, but even once he was standing a few feet away, I refused to turn and greet him. I was still too hurt and too angry that he could push me aside and try to fit me in some box. And I was still uneasy about that part of me that sometimes felt too big for my own skin.

  “I’m taking off,” he told me. “Sooner I go, the sooner I can get back.”

  “Have a safe trip,” I said, picking at a piece of grass that had been tickling at my leg.

  He was silent for a long moment, like he was waiting for something else. But I wasn’t about to give it to him. Not until he realized that what he’d done to push me out of this was wrong.

  “Are you really going to let me to leave with things like this between us?” he asked, his voice soft and low.

  I glanced up at him then. “You’re the one that made them that way.”

  His mouth went tight and he let out a tired-sounding sigh.

  I picked at another piece of grass. I wasn’t going to go through all this with him again. I knew what he was going to say—that he was trying to protect me, that I didn’t understand—and I didn’t want to hear any of it.

  “Chloe?” he asked, and then waited, like it was my turn to speak.

  “What do you want me to say, Piers? You want me to thank you for treating me like I can’t take care of myself? I’m not going to.” My voice came out more tired than angry. “I understand you’re worried, but I feel like you aren’t even trying to hear what I’m saying. I get that you want to keep me safe from Thisbe, but you can’t protect me from my own life.”

  “Thisbe isn’t your life, Chloe.”

  I looked up with him then. “She’s my momma. You said so yourself, and I can’t just set that fact down and walk away from it.” I glanced away. “Like it or not, she made me. I’m her flesh and blood, and I need to be part of what happens to her.”

  “You’re not your mother, Chloe,” he said, and his voice was so kind and gentle it made my teeth hurt.

  “I know that,” I told him. “But sometimes I wonder if you know that, Piers. Sometimes when you look at me, I get the sense that you’re seeing her.”

  A muscle in his jaw clenched. “That’s not true,” he said, but the words sounded hollow, like he didn’t believe them himself.

  “Isn’t it? I see how you look at me sometimes, like you’re waiting for her voice to come out my mouth again. But trying to protect me from all this ain’t gonna stop the fact that I’m still her daughter. What happened might not have been my fault, but that don’t mean I don’t bear some of the guilt just the same. Whatever happens next, I need to be part of making it right.”

  Piers only shook his head, like he didn’t want to listen to what I was telling him, much less really hear it.

  I took a breath and got myself ready for what I needed to tell him. “You’ve been trying to keep me away from anything and everything involved with Thisbe, but you don’t seem to want to even consider that my connection to her might be able to help us stop all this if we use it. I need to be there, Piers. I need to touch that charm again so I can know for sure.”

  His jaw was tight. “I can’t,” he said finally.

  I shook my head. “More like you won’t,” I told him, and I started past him.

  He snagged my arm gently to stop me from going. “Don’t be like that, Chloe.”

  I let out a hollow laugh as I jerked away. “You lost any right to tell me how I should be when you stopped believing in who I am.”

  The frustration vibrating between us felt like some kind of runaway train, and I didn’t know how to stop it without getting broken up myself.

  He studied me with those dark, soulful eyes of his, and then let out a great, frustrated sigh. “Okay then.” He stepped forward, finally breaching the spaced we’d kept between us. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe we need a little distance and me leaving for a few days will be a good thing, so we can both get our heads back on straight.”

  I didn’t like the way he said that—like he was talking more about me than himself—but I didn’t argue. I’d had enough of fighting with him for one day.

  When I didn’t disagree, he took my head gentle-like, cupping the sides of my face in his hands, and placed a kiss, warm and soft, square in the middle of my forehead. Then he stepped back, and the distance was there between us again.

  “I’ll call you when I get to Nashville. We’ll figure everything out when I get back.”

  My throat had gotten so tight-feeling by that point, I couldn’t hardly swallow. So I couldn’t have said anything to stop him from walking away even if I’d wanted to. All I could think was no, but I wasn’t sure if I meant no to him calling me later or no to him leaving. And before I figured it out, he was already gone.

  Eight

  That night, I avoided everything and everyone. I went straight back to that sterile little guest room and sat with myself until I couldn’t stand my own thoughts anymore. Eventually, I sent Piers a text telling him that I was sorry for how we’d left things and asking him if he got in okay, but I didn’t get a reply before I finally drifted off to sleep.

  I woke in the thick grove of pines again. The night was as cool and dark as it had been before, and through the thick canopy of trees, the sky was clear and the stars looked like salt spilled on a dark table.

  The world felt like an empty place, and that emptiness crept along my skin, up my spine, and made the nape of my neck go tight. I could feel that emptiness more than anything else—more than the air around me, more than the rhythm of my own breath, more even than the cold that had my muscles shivering for warmth.

  I needed to be free of that silence and that cold and the stars that were looking down like they were laughing at my foolishness, so I started walking. But like before, the grove of pines never ended. No matter how far or long I walked, I never reached the end of them. Still, I felt boxed in. Trapped, like there was no way out.

  Exhausted and still cold despite the good sweat I’d worked up, I stopped and waited. I didn’t know what I was waiting for, exactly, but the longer I waited, the more I felt like I was there in that endless place for a reason.

  Then, just as I couldn’t stand it no more, right about the time I felt like I would scream from the frustration and the fear, a figure appeared in the darkness a ways off. He was cloaked in the shadows and moving slowly and carefully through the trees, creeping his way closer to me with every step he took.

  My every instinct screamed for me to run, but I’d done that already and hadn’t gotten anywhere. So I forced myself to be still and wait until the figure got close enough that I could see it was only a man.

  He was tall and broad, and he had a way of walking that marked him as a man who knew what he was, who knew what he always would be. When he stepped into a shaft of moonlight, my heart leaped straight up into my throat, because for a moment, I thought it was Piers.

  Before I could stop myself, I stepped forward, too. Because even with all we’d said to each other, I missed him and regretted the distance that had grown between us. Because relief shot through me to know he’d come back, even with everything that was keeping us apart. Now that he was there, we had a chance to make everything right between us again.

  But when the figure turned to me, the glow of the moonlight lit up the planes of his face and I realized my mistake.

  Not Piers. Not Piers at all.

  It was the man I’d seen in the vision—the sleeping man that Thisbe had kissed after she’d sliced open his hand. Just like in that vision, I felt a sense of rightness, or possessiveness, when I looked him. Even knowing it wasn’t Piers, something about him pulled at me, made me want to move closer. But I forced myself to ignore that pull, and I held my ground.

  After what felt like an endless moment, the man took a step toward me. His face was so steady and determined that I could barely think much less move. I was stuck, paralyzed with something that felt like a cros
s between fear and want.

  He smiled then, a flash of straight, white teeth that had my heart thundering in my chest. His eyes glinted like obsidian as he took another slow, steady step. And then another. He was only two steps away by the time I could finally make myself move, and I stumbled back on the uneven ground as he reached for me.

  But he didn’t grab me.

  He didn’t even touch me.

  One second he was in front of me, reaching with his broad, callused hands, and the next second, he was through me.

  Through me.

  Like I wasn’t even there.

  Like I didn’t even exist.

  I felt the warmth of him as every cell in my body vibrated from the violation of being passed through, like I was nothing more than a ghost. I turned, and he was still there—still walking, but I saw then that it hadn’t been me he’d been reaching for after all.

  A girl stood in the clearing behind me with sharp cheekbones and hair that pillowed out around her face, settling about her shoulders like a dark cloud. Her broad mouth was curved up in a smile as welcoming as the warmth in her eyes as she lifted her arms to the man, and there was something in the curve of that smile that reminded me of my mother.

  Augustine, I heard a voice say in my head.

  The world flashed warm, like the heat of the summer was washing over me when his lips settled onto hers, and I had to look away. But even looking away, I could still feel their kiss—the want, the need, the desperation and love all mixed up together.

  I woke up, my skin cold to the touch and my body shaking from the fear and adrenaline. Flushed and uncomfortable from the intensity of the dream.

  He hadn’t been all that much more than a boy, I realized then. Tall, yes. Broad, most definitely, but now that I thought back on it, there had been something about him that seemed young and untouched despite his strength. He must have been a few years younger than he was in that other vision—he couldn’t have been older than nineteen or twenty.

  “It was just a dream,” I said out loud, needing to hear a human voice after the deafening silence of the pines. But hearing it didn’t make it feel like the truth, and even though I could feel the warmth of the covers over me, I couldn’t stop shaking.