Gathering Deep

by Lisa Maxwell

  “Piers would never go anywhere with you.”

  “Of course he will. You think I didn’t have a plan all along?” She took a step toward me, and I found I couldn’t move. Not because I was scared—which I was—but because my muscles weren’t under my control any longer.

  “I’ve been watching you your whole life, baby girl. Watching you and then watching him. I always thought he might have something more to him, but after that night where that girl nearly destroyed me, I knew for certain. When I realized your Piers could see that French boy’s soul, I knew I’d been right about him all along. About his worthiness.” She smiled, a sickening sneer.

  “You can’t kill him,” I said, desperate.

  “Kill him?” She looked genuinely surprised. “Why would I kill such a fine, fine specimen? No, I’ll use him once I free Augustine. No one will be the wiser—me in your strong little body, Augustine in his. You two have always been so head over heels, it’s the perfect cover. Who would suspect?”

  I glanced at Odane out of the corner of my eye, but it was enough to remind Thisbe of his presence.

  “Oh, don’t you worry. You’re not going to last long enough to tell anyone,” she said to Odane, reaching out her hand and drawing it into a fist.

  Odane collapsed to his knees, his hands around his neck like he was trying to pull something away from it.

  “Leave him alone,” I said, trying to lunge toward her but unable to move. “You can do whatever you want with me, but leave him go.”

  She scoffed. “I can do whatever I want with you anyway, baby girl.”

  At a flick of her wrist, I stiffened. Something came over me and bubbled up from inside of me all at once. Suddenly, I couldn’t make myself do anything. It was like being trapped inside of my body, paralyzed, but my limbs kept on moving without my say-so. I spun on my heels, my arms and legs all akimbo like a marionette. Then all at once it stopped.

  “See?” Thisbe drawled. “You feel it, don’t you? Like something deep inside you finally got set free. That something is me. It always has been.”

  It was powerful, the thing she was talking about—that something deep inside me that felt like it could fly. Part of me wanted to let it have all the freedom it craved, but I struggled against it. I fought against Thisbe’s power with every bit of energy I had left.

  Thisbe’s mouth curved into a cold smile. “Go ahead and struggle all you want,” she said. “It’ll only make the whole process faster. To think, my Augustine has never been gone. He’s always been here, just as I suspected, and I’m going to free him now. I’m going to free us both.”

  I felt weak, so weak. Not in my body, no—it was as strong and young as always, but deep inside myself, I felt different. Suddenly, I felt so far away from the skin I’d always lived in, like the power I was drowning in would overtake me at any moment.

  But that other part of me pushed it away again with my last bit of strength. “Won’t. Work,” I choked out, remembering Lucy and all she’d been through. If Thisbe freed Augustine’s soul from the house, she would lose him, just as Lucy had lost Alex.

  She me pinned with those devilish eyes of hers, and I couldn’t make my voice work. “I won’t lose him if I have a body for him to live in,” she said, smiling like she knew she’d won. “I have Piers all ready to receive him. There’s just the small matter of calling on the one spirit who can finish this once and for all.”

  Thisbe looked me over, and then she dismissed me and went to stand near where Piers was lying on the velvet settee. On the side table was a bulbous glass bottle. Thisbe picked it up and unstoppered it. Then, chanting the same weird syllables in the voice that sounded so much like my mother, she poured the contents in a circle around them both.

  In the corner, Odane was still struggling against the invisible hands that were strangling him, but his movements were getting slower and less forceful. I couldn’t move at all, but I knew something was going to happen—something bad.

  In my mind, I screamed for her to stop.

  Thisbe glanced up at me, surprise in her eyes.

  Had she heard me? I tried again: I know what you’re about to do. It’s a bad idea, Momma, I thought, pushing the words in her direction, willing her to understand.

  Something flickered in the depths of her eyes when

  she heard me call her that, and the hand holding the bottle faltered.

  You can’t trust Baron Samedi, I thought, pushing the words toward her again.

  But it was the wrong thing to tell her. As quickly as she’d hesitated, Thisbe was back.

  “You think I haven’t learned everything there is to learn by now?” she asked as she finished pouring out the circle and then anointed herself—her head, her heart, her lips. “I’m not afraid of a spirit.”

  “You should be,” Ikenna said from the doorway. He looked at me and then saw his son struggling for breath. “Odeana called me and sent me over here,” he said, stepping into the room. He placed his hands on his son’s head, and Odane collapsed to his knees, his breath coming in huge, heaving gasps.

  Ikenna looked straight at me again and asked, “This the witch?”

  I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t move at all.

  Thisbe, clearly surprised by this turn of events, growled. “You’re too late, whoever you are,” she said, touching her finger to the circle of wetness around her feet. In a flash, blue flames sprang up around her, their eerie glow throwing grotesque shadows across her face.

  We have to get out of here, I wanted so badly to scream. The whole place was soaked with gas. It would go up like a bomb the second those flames hit it. But my lips were frozen, my voice stoppered tight.

  But when the blue flames started to lick at my legs, I realized they weren’t hot. They weren’t real flames, or rather, they weren’t burning. They traveled across the floor until the entire room was ablaze in their icy glow—the entire room except the circle in which Thisbe stood.

  Her voice rang out in strange, foreign syllables as she sliced her palm with a knife and dripped three drops of blood into the flames. When the blood hit the blue flames, they rose up in a blinding flash that I couldn’t turn away from or shut my eyes against.

  All at once, darkness settled over the room, and the only light came from the blue glow of the circle around Thisbe and the strange bluish glow from Piers’s still body.

  A man stepped out of the darkness between those spots of light. Drawing himself up to his full height in the center of that darkness, I recognized him as the skeletal man from my dreams. Baron Samedi.

  He was dressed in all black, and his purple top hat was tipped rakishly over one of his empty eyes. Although he had the face of a man, his fingers clacked as he moved the bones that made up his hand. The overpowering smell of cigars and unwashed bodies, of the sweetness of rum and the rot of the grave, swept over the room. And all at once, I felt a sense of such desperate desolation that I would have done anything to make it stop.

  “Ikenna Gaillard? My faithful servant,” Baron Samedi said, in a voice filled with the emptiness of a forgotten grave and the wetness of rattling phlegm. “You dare call me?”

  Ikenna cowered in the corner, his body thrown over

  his son’s.

  “I called you,” Thisbe screeched, obviously displeased that Baron Samedi didn’t realize who had summoned him.

  He turned to her, his gaunt face scowling, and examined her. As he looked her over, a millipede crawled out his empty eye and down into his black-as-night shirt. “And what are you to summon me?”

  “I am Thisbe Bookman.”

  Baron Samedi cocked his head, breathed her in. “But what are you? And why have you brought me here?”

  Thisbe, visibly shaken, pulled herself upright. “I want to make a bargain.”

  “With me?” Baron Samedi took a long draw off his cigar and blew a ring of smoke right into my mother’s face. “You don’t have leave to make deals with me.”

  “I brought you a sacrifice,” she said, poin
ting at Piers. “A life for a life. I know how this works. You’ll take my offering. You’ll bring back my Augustine.”

  Baron Samedi laughed. His voice was like metal dragging against cement as he laughed and laughed. “You know? You know?” He laughed again. Then, with a motion so fast and unexpected that all of us gasped, he flung out his arm and backhanded Thisbe. She tumbled out of her blue circle and hit her head against the marble end table as she tumbled to the floor.

  “Momma?” I cried, suddenly free from whatever control she’d had over me. I ran over to her unconscious body and shook her. With her face slack, she looked more like an older version of the mother I knew. Her breath was shallow, though, barely there.

  “Ikenna,” Baron Samedi said in his rattling voice. “I am not pleased you let this happen.”

  “No,” Ikenna said, visibly shaking as he tried to block Samedi from Odane. “I didn’t know.”

  “A lie,” Samedi drawled, puffing again on his noxious cigar.

  “I tried to stop it,” Ikenna pleaded.

  “But you didn’t,” Samedi growled. “And now I’m here. And I am hungry.”

  Ikenna trembled, refusing to look at the skeletal man.

  “You know my price, Ikenna. You call me to the living, you give me a life.”

  “Take hers,” Ikenna said, pointing at Thisbe. “She called you. Take her with you when you go.”

  “That?” Samedi puffed on his cigar again. “That is so far past a life that even I won’t dig its grave. No, I need a real life. Young and fresh and full of power.”

  “Then take her,” Ikenna said, pointing to me.

  “No,” Odane rasped, but he couldn’t do much more than try to stagger to his feet before his father stopped him by raising a single hand. Frozen in place, he looked up at me, his eyes wide with shock and anger.

  “She’s young and strong and drips with power. She’d make a welcome addition to your collection of souls.”

  Samedi turned to me, his head cocked like he was trying to decide. “It doesn’t look to me like she wants to be taken,” Samedi said. “A sacrifice has to be willing.”

  Ikenna smiled. “I can help you with that … Chloe,” he whispered, and I felt an energy wrap around me as his dark voice filled the room. “Chloe,” he said again. “Don’t you want to go with the good Baron?” he crooned.

  No, I wanted to say, but I found that I couldn’t. Without me wanting it to, my right leg took a step forward.

  “Chloe,” he crooned, calling to me again. His golden eyes practically glowed as he watched my other leg step forward.

  Everything I was felt pulled toward Ikenna, toward Baron Samedi and his boney hands. I couldn’t seem to stop myself from feeling the pull of his words, from following the command in his voice.

  Sacrifice, I thought. Yes. To give myself as a sacrifice.

  It made a sudden, sick sort of sense in that moment. Perhaps this is what I was called to do all along. To give myself to stop a demon. To give myself over to save the ones I loved.

  My leg took another step toward Samedi.

  No, another voice called, rocketing through my head and drowning out the call of Ikenna saying my name. Chloe Sabourin, you are mine. Body and soul, baby girl, and no one else’s.

  My feet went still and I felt pulled in two directions at once.

  You weren’t meant for that side of the grave, the voice said. And then it called to me, until my own name sounded like a chant. Over and over, the syllables of my name rolled through my head, Ikenna’s voice warring with my mother’s. Over and over, until the soft chords of her voice began to drown out his.

  I took a gasping breath and fell to my knees, Ikenna’s hold broken.

  Samedi’s skeletal fingers scratched at the skin drawn taut against his sharp chin. “It don’t seem like the girl is willing, Ikenna,” he growled, turning on Odane’s father. “Are you so weak that you can’t bring me what I require?”

  “But I’ve been your faithful servant all these years,” Ikenna pleaded from his knees.

  “You have, at that, haven’t you?” Samedi said, examining Ikenna. “Maybe it’s time you see another realm then,” he said, smiling around his cigar.

  Ikenna’s eyes widened. “No—” he started to say, but in a blinding flash of fire, they both were gone.

  The blue flames died out completely then, leaving the room lit only by the light of the candles Thisbe had used while summoning Samedi.

  “Odane,” I said, leaving my mother to go to him. “Are you okay?”

  He sat up, dazed. “I think so. Ikenna—?”

  “He’s gone.”

  “The Baron?” he asked, still looking more than a little dazed.

  I nodded. “We have to get out of here,” I said, choking out the words. “Help Piers, and I’ll get my mother.”

  “Leave her. The police can deal with her later.” Odane pulled himself up, still rubbing at his throat, and then he walked over and struggled to get Piers upright. Straining, he managed to get Piers’s arm looped over his own shoulders. Piers moaned like he was trying to come to, but his legs were unsteady.

  Cursing, Odane tried again, this time struggling to sling Piers over his shoulder. Piers isn’t a small guy, but Odane’s days on the rig must have helped, because eventually he was staggering under Piers’s weight. “Ready?” he asked, turning toward the door.

  But when he turned, he knocked over one of Thisbe’s candles, and flames licked at the carpet. I lunged for the flame, but it was too late. Before I could smother it, the fire flared up, crawling across the carpeting my mother was laying on, making a quick meal of the ancient fibers as it consumed them with its hungry glow.

  “We have to go. Now!” Odane shouted, stumbling a bit under Piers.

  I looked back at my mother. “I can’t leave her here.”

  “Now, Chloe!”

  “Get Piers out,” I said, stepping back. “I’ve got to get my mom.”

  “After all she’s done?” Odane’s eyes were wild.

  “She stopped Ikenna,” I tried to explain. “And if I leave her here, I won’t be any better than she was. I can’t be like her, Odane.”

  “You’re not like her,” he shouted, stepping back from the heat of the growing blaze.

  But I felt something stir inside of me, and I didn’t know if I believed him.

  Flames began to lick their way up the far wall. I knelt next to Thisbe and tried to slap at her face to wake her.

  “Chloe!” Odane still hadn’t left.

  “Go! Get him out of here,” I told him as smoke started to fill the room. It was only a matter of time before the flames hit the gas-soaked hallway.

  “I’ll be back for you,” he said, straining under the weight of Piers’s body.

  And then it was just me and Thisbe.

  I shook the still-unconscious body of the woman who was my mother. “Come on, Momma. We have to go.” I could already feel the heat from the flames as they engulfed the room. “I have to get you out of here,” I said, mostly to myself.

  “Baby girl?” my momma mumbled, her eyes glassy and unclear as she blinked at me. “Chloe?”

  It wasn’t just the smoke stinging my eyes as I gasped and hugged her. “I knew you were in there somewhere.”

  “What happened?” she asked, still looking like an older version of my momma.

  “You summoned Baron Samedi.”

  “Did it work? Where’s Augustine?” she asked, struggling away from me.

  “He’s not here, Momma.” I tried to pull her upright. “Come on. We have to get out of here.”

  Her eyes went flat. “Leave me.”

  “What?” I tugged at her. “No. You have to come with me. I can’t leave you here.” Not after the way you saved me. But I couldn’t make those words come out.

  She pulled away, and then met my eyes. Hers were dull, dead, like a woman who had given up. “There’s no reason to go out there. It’s all over. Everything’s over. I’ll be with him now.”

&n
bsp; “No!” I tugged at her again. “You’ll be with me. What am I supposed to do all alone?”

  She stared at me with those dead eyes. “You’ve always been alone, baby girl,” she said, pulling away from me. “I’ve only ever been living for him.”

  I saw the truth of her words, then—the stark truth of what had always been my life.

  “Go on,” she said. “Get out of here.”

  I hesitated still, feeling the way the heat licked at my skin. In a moment, it would be too much to bear. In a moment, the halls would go up in flames and the smoke already hanging heavy in the air would be too much to breathe through. I couldn’t leave her, not to that kind of death. Even with all she’d done, nobody deserved that.

  Outside the room, the hall crackled with flames as the gas-soaked carpets began to ignite.

  “Go!” she growled. “I don’t want you here.”

  I pulled away. She didn’t want me. Maybe she never had. And I wouldn’t die here for her.

  Grabbing one of the side tables, I heaved it through the window, and then, my shirt covering my nose and mouth, I worked as quickly as I could to clear the rest of the glass away so I could climb out. Carefully, I hoisted myself over the low windowpane and eased myself outside, but a piece of glass sliced open my calf. Hissing at the pain, I looked back into the library in time to see the walls go up in flames completely, but the heat was so great that I had to turn away.

  I staggered off the veranda and across the lawn to where a crowd of people had gathered. Odane was there, laying on his side and coughing up the smoke he’d inhaled. When he looked up and saw me, his eyes were full of the terrible relief that comes from having outsmarted death.

  Dr. Aimes was kneeling over Piers, who was beginning to stir, and Mrs. Aimes had T.J. caught inside the circle of her arms, but her eyes were wild as she searched the crowd for Lucy. I staggered over to her and let her know that Lucy was safe at Mama Legba’s. She sobbed her relieved thanks before she took T.J. off to the side and pulled out her phone, leaving me alone to watch in a daze as the mansion that had defined my childhood was engulfed in flames. As my mother burned right along with it.