by Ariella Moon
My pulse spiked. "Hand me my oar."
"No way. You may have a broken rib." He shifted on the bench seat and his knee grazed mine. His touch grounded me. The vertigo halted. The breath I had been holding eased out of me.
"You have a concussion." I reached for the oar. It felt cold and wet and smelled like the river. When my bare fingers brushed Breaux's, magic — lightning quick and blinding — surged up and down the pale wood. Stung, we dropped the oar. It plopped into the water at the bottom of the boat where it crackled with yellow light before fading back to normal.
"Did you see that?"
Breaux flicked energy from his hand. "See it?" He pressed his palm to his forehead. "I felt it."
Magic thrummed my skin and my heart buzzed inside my chest. A second ship's horn pierced my ears. I snatched up the oar and slid it into the metal oarlock. Breaux secured his oar as well. We plunged the blades into the water and rowed as though zombies still pursued us. The bloodstain on the bandana bloomed like a red rose opening to the sun.
A white container barge plowed past our backside. Ripples from its wake propelled us forward, halving the distance to the levee. As we reached the steep embankment, two early morning joggers ran past us on the promenade.
I unzipped my hoodie, then tugged my long, fuzzy scarf from my neck. Maneuvering the scarf around my ribs proved more difficult and painful than I had expected.
Breaux stopped rowing and secured the oars. "I'll do it." He crouched beside me, seemingly heedless of the cold water seeping into his cross trainers. The tornado had made a wild mess of his black curls. Blood plastered one lock to his forehead. I slipped my finger beneath the curl and freed it.
Breaux stilled. My hand dropped to his shoulder. Beneath his hoodie and shirt his muscles bunched against my fingertips. Our gazes collided. My breath caught. He leaned close. This is it. But he stopped himself and lowered his chin, refocusing his attention on binding my ribs. A childhood full of rejection and feeling not good enough, not pretty enough, not worthy enough, sucker-punched me.
"Darn it, Soph."
I clawed the skin graft on my neck and pressed my lips together to keep the well of rejection from overflowing.
"How do you manage to look so beautiful when I'm covered in blood and reek of vomit? You didn't even lose your cap in the tornado."
My hurt unraveled and my shoulders sagged. The sob I had been holding back escaped as a strangled laugh. "I like your windblown look."
"Trust me. It looks better on you." He placed the scarf beneath my breasts. Color returned to his cheeks. "Tell me if it's too tight."
I nodded and he crisscrossed the scarlet cloth behind me, leaning so close his breath huffed like a warm cloud against my throat. I imagined us married and living near Miss Wanda in a periwinkle house with white trim. Ainslie would visit us, and there would always be gardenias or hydrangeas in a vase on the table.
"You're not breathing."
I forced a breath. "Sure I am."
"How do you feel?"
"Like a stuffed sausage. But there's less pain. Thank you."
He returned to his seat and resumed rowing. "One of the foster kids who lived with us for a while arrived with a broken rib."
"Lots of broken kids in the system." Me included. I zipped my sweatshirt over the binding.
"One of the many reasons I want to go into law and politics."
Dismay cratered me. Tell him not to squander his good luck and brains. I cleared my throat and averted my gaze.
We rowed parallel to the levee. "See any place to dock?"
I sniffed, keeping the tears at bay. When had I become so weepy? It must be the exhaustion and lack of food. I shaded my eyes with my hand. Ahead, a luminous white light appeared above the water's edge. "Is that—?"
"Grand-mère." Breaux dug his oar into the water and pulled.
I synched my strokes with his. Why is she here? Has she come to warn me to stay out of Breaux's life? Mam'zelle vanished as we neared. A mooring buoy bobbed in the spot where her spirit had hovered. We drew the boat alongside it. Breaux pulled in the oars, then threw the looped rope, lassoing the mooring on the first try.
I rose. Either the soreness in my ribs was easing or the binding had helped. The craft swayed as Breaux shouldered my backpack and slipped his arm around my waist.
"I'll go first," I said. "In case you get dizzy."
He didn't protest, which added another worry to the weight pressing against my heart. Silently I cast a protection spell just in case Mam'zelle decided to hex me, blood being stronger than friendship. I placed extra warding around my heart chakra. Little good it would do me. Breaux had already breached it.
When we were both on the small landing, I eyed the shallow wooden steps set into the loose rock lining the levee. "How's the dizziness?"
"I can manage. You?"
I rubbed my hand across the scarf encasing my ribs. "I'm good as long as I don't fall into the water." No way can I swim like this.
"I'll walk behind you, just in case."
I clutched the front of his jacket and drew him closer. "You may have a concussion. Are you sure you don't feel faint?"
"Don't worry. I promise I won't topple into the brink."
I fisted more cloth until my knuckles pressed against his washboard stomach. "You better keep your promise."
"Always." He touched his fingers to the raw gash above his eye when he thought I wasn't looking. His other hand stayed on my back, reassuring me, as I made the slow ascent. By the time we reached the Moon Walk, sweat drenched my knit top.
"I better call my mother and…" His voice trailed off as he reached into his pocket. "My cell phone is gone."
"Maybe it flew out during the tornado."
"Crap!"
As he patted his other pockets, an unseen force tugged me toward one of the benches. As I drew near it, vertigo struck. The landscape spun. I braced myself against the bench and the cool iron acted as an off switch. The spinning stopped. Expelling a long breath, I glanced down. Maybe if I found something to focus on, my eyes would stop ping-ponging inside their sockets.
Breaux joined me and pulled a brass fleur-de-lis money clip out of his pant pocket. "My cash is still here, and my driver's license, student ID, health insurance card, and gas card."
I grasped his arm. "How many people named Shiloh Breaux Martine do you think there are in Louisiana?"
Breaux snorted and puffed out his chest. "One."
"No, be serious."
He stuffed the money clip back into his pocket and met my wild-eyed stare. His brows arched. "Martine is a fairly common name, but not Shiloh Breaux. Why?"
Wincing, I retrieved a castoff newspaper from the bench and handed it to him. He glanced at the lead article and read aloud. "Congressman Shiloh 'Breaux' Martine introduced a bill yesterday—" His brows dove together. "What?"
I stabbed my finger at the date.
Breaux stepped back. "January! I'm a week late for class, for my job!" He pressed his hand to his forehead. "We missed Christmas! "
"We missed a lot of Christmases. Check the year."
His brows pinched together. "Is this a joke?" He glanced around as though searching for a hidden camera. "Or am I dreaming?"
I shook my head. "I don't think you're dreaming." My hand tunneled beneath my sleeve, not stopping until it found my skin graft. "I think we've been hurled ten years into the future."
Chapter Sixteen
Ainslie
My nostrils flared as I breathed in the liquid sage and Yemaya's tangerine-and-patchouli scent. Despite the cloying smells and the occasional hiss of swamp mist from the spell book, my bedroom seemed lighter after we had vanquished the shadow entities. I checked my watch. "We have about ninety minutes until my parents return."
"Almost done." Yemaya completed the second ring of protection around the spell book and white plate, then stashed my tin of chamomile tea under the glass-and-white-stone coffee table. The grimoire scowled at me. I glared back, then felt s
tupid because the book didn't actually have eyes.
Yemaya rose from her knees and perched sideways on the daybed, facing me at an angle. Her knees bounced up and down. "What's wrong?" I asked.
Yemaya stilled her legs and fingered her cameo necklace. "I'm sorry. I should have been upfront with you from the moment I read the spell book. I guess I was too stunned."
"You saw something there, didn't you?"
"Yes." She twisted the amethyst ring on her left forefinger. "It had to do with my life in New Orleans before I moved here. Promise you won't tell anyone."
"Okay. I promise."
She shifted and her long honey-blond dreadlocks snaked over her left shoulder. "Mama and I left New Orleans after my best friend was murdered. Amélie's killer was never caught. He will never be caught."
My skin prickled. "Why not?"
Yemaya's unsettling pale blue-gray eyes bore into me. "He's a Walk-in."
"A what?"
"A Walk-in is a soul that enters another soul's body and takes it over."
I drew back. "How?"
"It usually happens when a person is unconscious, like during surgery, or sleep, or after a traumatic event or suicide attempt."
I swallowed. "Great. I'll never fall asleep again."
"Don't worry. You're safe. The soul exchange can only happen if the body's original soul agrees to leave."
"And you think this happened to your friend?"
Yemaya bit her lip. "I think it's possible. Amélie's older brother, Christophe, had been bullied a lot. In middle school, some kids started in on Amélie because she was his sister. Then the cyberbullying began. One girl set up a hater page. You should have seen the horrible things she wrote. 'Do the world a favor and kill yourself.' I told Amélie to ignore it and delete her own account, but she wouldn't. It finally pushed her over the edge and she overdosed. I believe the Walk-in got to her before the ambulance arrived."
"So Amélie's body is still walking the earth, but her soul is gone? You said she had been murdered."
Yemaya drew in a long breath than expelled it. "In a sense, she died twice. When she woke up in the hospital after the overdose, it was clear she had vanished and someone else had taken over her body. She didn't recognize her family or me. Her personality changed—" Yemaya snapped her fingers, "—in an instant.
"Eight months later, the Walk-in tried to rob someone in an alley off Bourbon Street. The mark had a gun and killed Amélie. I arrived just as the Walk-in was leaving her body. He laughed and told me he'd find someone else mentally unstable and vulnerable." Yemaya hugged herself. "Now he's roaming New Orleans and I have no idea what he looks like."
"Wow." The words mentally unstable and vulnerable wormed into my brain.
Yemaya leaned close and lowered her voice. "The Walk-in made a mistake. He left too soon. Amélie was still alive, though barely. She re-entered her body the second he departed it. As soon as he left the alley, she managed to tell me his name."
"You know his real name? Then can't you do a banishing spell or something?"
"I think I know his original name, but I'm not one hundred percent sure. I can't act without confirmation. Even then, I'd have to figure out how to protect whatever body he has overtaken. If I banished him and the body's true soul had vanished, then…" She shrugged.
"The body would have no soul, and it would either die or be vulnerable to a new psychic invader."
"Exactly. Amélie said the Walk-in called himself 'Overseer.' She knew which cotton plantation he had worked at back in the early nineteenth century. I traced him through public records. I mean, I found someone with almost the same name who had been an overseer."
"The man with the whip who forced as much labor as possible out of the slaves."
Yemaya nodded.
I slouched into the cushions and waited for my anxiety to whirlpool and catapult me into freak-out mode. Instead, an odd sensation crept over me. I felt…bigger. Powerful. Battle-ready. I sat straighter, pushed upright by the melding of the disparate factions within me. The synapses in my brain sparked, connecting the linear-thinking future astrophysicist part of me to the kick-butt ninja wannabe aspect. Both fused with whatever warrior or dragon shaman I had channeled when I had blasted the demons at Spiral Journeys.
Crazy Girl? Hah! Crazy brilliant. "You may not know what he looks like now," I said, "but you'd recognize his energy, right?"
Yemaya shuddered. "Are you kidding? It haunts my nightmares." She uttered a hollow laugh. "It is my nightmare."
"What did you see in the spell book?"
"I'll show you." She approached the grimoire with caution, as though it were a feral dog, and held out her hand. The alligator-like book cover bunched as she neared. One corner retracted like lips drawn back to bare teeth.
"Easy," Yemaya said.
I lobbed the tome a behave-or-be-fried glare.
Yemaya's hand angled upward and over the spell book. Her fingers trembled. She commanded, "Show me the Walk-in veve."
A heartbeat passed, then two, then three. Yemaya withdrew her hand. The grimoire flipped open with an alligator-like bellow. The pages riffled, a quick dry pfft sound like wind through a graveyard. The flipping halted, revealing a veve accompanied by handwritten text.
Yemaya extracted a worn piece of binder paper from the hippie bag at her feet and smoothed it open. "This symbol appeared to me in a dream the night Amélie died. I've never seen it anywhere else." She smoothed the paper and placed it within the double circle next to the grimoire.
I leaned in. Yemaya's drawing was almost identical to the veve in the grimoire.
My gaze slid to the text for explanation. A few French words leapt out at me, but unfamiliar African words intermingled with them. "Can you translate?"
"The writing warns of entities that wile weakened minds into yielding their bodies." Yemaya traced her finger along a line of text. She read aloud. "And they shall be recognized by this symbol."
I pulled the closest throw pillow onto my lap. "But you didn't see it until you slept, when it was too late to do anything."
"Correct. But this time could be different. I'm more experienced. I know what to look for. And I have you."
My elbows sank into the pillow. "Maybe we'll get lucky and rescue my friend and avenge yours."
Yemaya leaned toward me. "The school system failed to protect Amélie from bullies." She shook her head. "I failed her. If I had been a better friend, if I had done more to help her, maybe she'd still be alive."
Our eyes met. I realized we were two sides of the same coin. I wanted to hug her or at least touch her hand — do something to reassure her she wasn't to blame. But my OCD sparked up and down my arms, immobilizing them.
"Amélie would be proud of you for helping me and Sophia."
One corner of her mouth tugged into a fleeting almost-smile. "Thanks." She withdrew from her hippie purse a tiny plastic bag, the kind jewelry charms and earrings sometimes come in. She parted the zipper lock, releasing spicy cinnamon and pepper smells, and tipped some of the reddish powder onto her drawing.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Evil Away incense. I made it myself."
"But I thought you wanted Amélie's murderer to reveal himself."
"I do, but our mission is to find Sophia and Shiloh. I can't risk the Walk-in preventing us from finding her."
I squirmed, shifting back. "Chances are, Overseer-Evil-Dude will be nowhere near them. But if you do spot him…"
"I won't engage."
I blinked. "I thought you wanted to avenge Amélie's death."
"We'll be disembodied. Powerless. He probably won't be. And if he is embodied, he could cut the silver cord connecting our astral spirits to our bodies." She made a sword slicing movement.
"And thus kill us."
"Ten points for the smart blonde."
"Thanks. I'll take them." I plumped the accent pillow, striking it harder than necessary. "Would there be a silver cord connecting the Walk-in to whatever body he had tak
en hostage?"
"I guess so. But we'll be in spirit flight so we won't be able to sever it, even if we knew the original soul was waiting to jump back in." She studied the veve.
I placed the pillow beside me. "So we don't engage. We get the name of the person he's taken over instead. Then we go after the Overseer later when we aren't astral projecting."
"I go after him. This isn't your fight."
I snorted. "It is now. But we'll have to figure out how to kill the Walk-in without murdering whosever body he's taken. There has to be a way."
"I know a way. But I can't employ it unless I'm certain the original soul is waiting to jump in. Which seems like a long shot." Yemaya reached her hippie bag and withdrew a six-inch cylindrical quartz crystal. "I carry this everywhere. It's a soul catcher."
"Somehow I doubt you're planning to catch and release."
"Not a chance." Yemaya slid her fingers across the glassy crystal.
"Promise me something," I said.
"What?"
I locked in her gaze. "If the Overseer jumps into me, promise you'll take him out."
"He won't—"
"I'm not the most mentally stable person on the planet. So just promise."
Yemaya raised her right hand. "Okay. I promise."
I raised my hand and our pinky fingers entwined.
"Pinky swear," we said in unison.
A jolt of energy shot up my arm as though blue lightning had zapped me. I wiggled my fingers, then flexed my hand. "Wow." My gaze traveled over Yemaya's honey-blond dreadlocks bedecked with feather, copper, and bead jewelry and then swept her slightly exotic features. I tilted my head.
She arched one brow. "Looks can be deceiving."
"Indeed.
"Here's the plan." Yemaya took on the cadence and battle-ready posture of a Special Ops agent. "We journey together. We find Bayou. She leads us to Shiloh Breaux Martine. Shiloh leads us to Sophia. If Shiloh and Sophia are together, then I'll be at your side the whole time."
"And if they're not?"
The spell book bellowed like an alligator, a low, rumbling roar-like sound. The pages riffled.
Yemaya went still. "You search for Sophia and I'll find you. Sophia is the mission, not Shiloh."