by Angie Sandro
“Ew, seriously?” I look around with new eyes. Shade from the oak, the scent of wildflowers, and the coolness of the pond equal a magical place. I laugh. “I can’t say that I blame them. I wonder how many of my ancestors made love in this very spot. Bet this clearing is stuffed full of sexual energy. That’s probably why the area is still so green in fall.”
“Except over there.” Landry points toward the far side of the pond. The pond’s the size of a football field in width and length. Not that I went to any games for comparison. But I imagine it’s pretty large. When I fish, I tend to stick to the middle, never going past a certain point where I can’t swim to shore if my boat springs a leak. I never paid much attention to the far bank.
“Wow, it’s really dead over there.” I follow his stare. The waist-high grass in the field is brown. Even the few trees appear skeletal, as if devoid of nutrients.
I pull myself from Landry’s arms and sit up, squinting at the gleam of white in the grass. My heart thuds in recognition. I need to get closer to verify my suspicions, but…“Mother Mary, I think I found the second murder spot.”
“Are you shitting me?” Landry sits up to stare across the water. “That dried-up piece of land is the place from your dream?”
“I remember at the time thinking it seemed familiar, but I didn’t know why. It looks exactly like it did in the dream.”
I push down the blanket and grab my hooded sweatshirt, shivering at the nip in the air as I pull it over my head, then grab my panties and jeans. “Okay, maybe not exactly, since the sky doesn’t look like it’s bleeding. Also there aren’t any…”…butterflies.
My throat tickles, like wings brushing my trachea. I cover my mouth and cough. Holy psychosomatic symptom. Every time I think of those butterflies it feels like I’m about to cough up a hairball. I’m turning into a hypochondriac.
I clear my raw throat.
Landry stands with a groan, and I pause to appreciate the rippling muscles of his pecs and washboard abs as he stretches the kinks out of his lower back. He catches me drooling and gives me a wicked grin. “So, do you want me to play Watson to your Sherlock?”
My mouth snaps shut, and I shrug. Usually, I’d be all over this clue. But not today. My perfect day. “No, let’s call in the sheriff’s office to check it out.”
He gives me an exaggerated double-take. “Who are you and what did you do with my girlfriend? Are you serious? We’re out here already. Let’s just row over there and confirm first so we don’t look like idiots when they don’t find your conveniently located crime scene.”
“Hey, I said I think it’s the crime scene.”
“Relax, babe. Crazy shit happens in your world. It’s not a question of would someone plant a bunch of murdered kids on your land, but why?” He pulls on his jeans and sweatshirt so fast that I don’t have enough time to interpret the strange reluctance curling my toes in the dirt. He tugs on my hand. “Let’s go.”
I don’t want to. “I have a bad feeling…” A cough doubles me over. Landry gives two hard thumps between my shoulder blades. I flinch away, waving my hand. “I’m okay. It’s just allergies.”
“Did you forget to take your medicine? I saw it in the kitchen cabinet by the sink.”
No, I didn’t. “I probably need to buy the nasal spray. The pills aren’t cutting it anymore.”
Landry plucks a purple lilac and waves it in my direction. “At least you can’t complain to Maggie and Dee that I never give you flowers. I would if I could.”
I sniff, slapping it away. “Flowers are synonymous with death. No thanks.”
“Actually blasted earth is the symbol of death.” He squints again at the brown grass across the pond, then shakes his head. He reaches Daisy first and unties the boat from the stump.
I drag my feet until I reach his side. At the water’s edge, I still can’t see anything definitive. I flick off a curl of dried paint from the bow, noting that Daisy needs a new paint job.
“Aren’t you getting in?” Landry asks, holding out his hand.
I can’t believe the role reversal going on here. Landry’s pushing me to investigate. And I’m the one second-guessing the situation. I just can’t shake the fear that something bad is about to happen. Maybe I’m finally growing up. I don’t know if personally solving this mystery is worth any more pain or loss.
My toes curl in the dirt. “I left my shoes on the blanket. I should go get them.”
Landry grabs my arm. “Let’s get this over with. Didn’t George say he was dropping Pepper off with Dad half an hour ago?”
“Yeah, she’s pretty upset. Hopefully your dad will help her through the grieving process.” I dig my heels into the mud, resisting his nudge toward the boat.
“I still can’t believe Judd’s dead.” He squints at the sky, trying to look all innocent with his thick eyelashes, but I’m onto his manipulative tactics. “Did he seriously have a stroke?”
My chest tightens, and I grit my teeth against the swelling sympathy I feel every time I think about Judd. “George said he died the same way Madame Ruby did—a brain hemorrhage within twenty-four hours of possession. His doctor thinks the cause of death was a preexisting condition that triggered his psychotic behavior. It’s not like an autopsy will reveal the truth—ghost-fried brain.”
My sigh chokes off, and I clear my throat. “Now I feel sorry for him. He’s really as much a victim as the boy in his trunk. He’ll probably end up catching the blame for all of the murdered kids. He’ll get written up in the history books alongside Dahmer, Bundy, and Rader, the BK killer.”
Landry deals the next card with no shame. “And we both know the real murderer is still free.”
I can’t let him get away with killing a bunch of innocent kids. My throat closes, and I wheeze. Flutters tickle my throat, rising upward. I beat on my chest, trying to clear my airway of whatever feels lodged in it. I sway, dizzy from lack of air.
Landry doesn’t slap my back this time, and I remember what he always says: If you’re coughing, you’re breathing. Wrong. Black spots dance in front of my eyes. The tickle moves across my tongue. Flutters, like wings brushing against the roof of my mouth, make my nose tingle. He wraps his arm around my waist, supporting me as I double over with my mouth hanging open and hack up a blue-black blob.
It plops onto the ground, and I gulp in air, blinking the tears from my eyes. My blurry vision clears, but I still can’t believe what I coughed up. Not a major hunk of phlegm, but a…a fucking butterfly.
Blue wings, almost purple, open and close, drying in the breeze. I poke it with a finger while yanking on Landry’s leg. “Oh my God, do you see it?”
“The fact that you puked up a live butterfly? Yeah, kind of hard to miss.”
“I didn’t puke…” The butterfly spreads its wings and lifts into the air. I swing my cupped hands to catch it, but I miss. It zigzags out over the water. It’s getting away. “Follow that butterfly,” I cry, afraid we’ll lose sight of it. We can’t. “It’s a clue. Just like Sophia said.”
Landry and I push Daisy off the bank and wade into the water. He grabs me by the waist and lifts me aboard, giving my ass a farewell pat, then climbs in. He grabs the oars while I pull my bird-watching binoculars from the storage compartment and I drop onto the bench at the back of the boat.
“Hurry, Landry.” I use the binoculars to scan the area. It takes a bit to find the butterfly, mainly because I expected it to be halfway across the pond, not flying in lazy circles above the boat as if waiting for us to get in gear.
“Let’s play it smart this time,” he says. “We only get close enough to the bank to verify it’s the murder scene. With Gaston God-knows-where and Sophia and Ferdinand squarely on Team Evil, we’re screwed if we get stuck in another trap. We’re not strong enough to break free on our own.”
“We’ll just get close enough to see if those white sticks are really the bones I saw in my dream.” The butterfly still flutters through the air, buffeted by the breeze.
&nb
sp; “Deal.” Landry puts his back into his rowing, and it feels like Daisy skims across the water. All his muscles make him almost as good as having an engine.
I stare without blinking at the far bank. “This is our first real clue to find out what Magnolia is up to now that she’s disappeared.”
“You’re preaching to the choir, babe. I’m with you on that.” He lets out a puff of air, and I glance back to check on him. Sweat plasters his hair to his forehead and runs into his eye. “I blame her as much as Magnolia for losing the baby,” he says, voice huskier with bitterness.
I bite my lip, still not convinced I was ever pregnant. But he is. If I’m wrong and I was pregnant then…“We can get her back.”
The slight roll of his eye tells me he thinks I’m spouting crazy-talk.
I don’t look away. “I’ve been thinking that if our baby’s soul still exists on the other side, then she just needs us to make her another body to inhabit.”
Landry sets his jaw, and the muscle flexes as he grinds his teeth. I shut up, since he’s obviously not ready to hear my theory with an open mind. His grief’s too raw. I’ll just sound like I took the cuckoo-ca-choo train and succumbed to the insanity that plagues my matrilineal line. Besides, to be honest, I really don’t want a baby right now. Someday, I will. As long as she’s safe on the other side, in heaven with Lainey or whishing about wherever baby souls are kept, I can wait to meet her. Can’t she cross over from the other side after we get married and are ready to start a family? Do we lose out on this particular soul if we don’t get pregnant right now?
We’ve reached the middle of the pond. The hairs on my arms rise, and I rub the goose bumps that aren’t from the cool air. “I think this is as far as we can go without crossing the spell.”
Landry pulls the oars from the water. “I feel it too. Do you hear the hum in the air? It’s like we’re next to a live wire.”
I put the binoculars to my eyes and focus on what is indeed a thigh bone sticking out of the dirt, glinting in the sunlight with the myriad blue and black wings of the butterflies crawling on it. Our own butterfly crosses the barrier with a bright spark of light to join its brethren.
I drop down on the bench, and the binoculars fall into a puddle of water at my feet. It takes a few seconds to pull myself together and tell Landry what I saw, following up with my impression of the barrier we don’t dare cross. “It’s like the spell caster somehow brought the otherworld and this world together,” I say, staring at the shimmery blur in the air. “It reminds me of the Bad Place, where the ancestor spirits gather.”
Landry nods. “Ferdinand explained that the veil is thinner in that spot so the spirits cross over with ease. It must be the same here. Of course you’d know all of this if you ever bothered to attend our training sessions.”
Kind of wish I’d gone too. Maybe I would’ve figured out what’s happening a long time ago. “What about entities trapped on the other side?”
His head tilts. “What are you thinking?”
“For things like ghosts, they’re already part of both worlds, like Dena was and the girl I raised with Magnolia. Their spirits are tied to their physical bodies. But what about other entities…creatures like what’s his name? It can’t walk this earth without a physical host. It needed you.”
“I died.”
“Right. Unlike Judd and Ruby, who couldn’t handle the pressure of having two souls inside their bodies, you crossed over to the other side. Somehow that allowed you to gain a passenger without your brain exploding when you came back.”
I bite on my lip, working through all the things I’ve learned. “What if our earlier suspicions were right and Magnolia fixed a spell to trick my body into simulating a false pregnancy? She used my body to open a door to the other side for a new soul to cross over and enter me. But rather than a human soul finding a fetal host, what if the plan was for something else to enter me instead?”
Whoa, as crazy as that sounds, it feels right.
“Did I really just figure out Magnolia’s nefarious plan simply by watching a soul-eating butterfly?”
From the expression on Landry’s face, I think so.
He thumps the flat of the oar on the surface of the water, and I flinch at the loud thwack. “Everything that’s happened has been a calculated plan stretching back who knows how long—at least as long ago as the hotel. Maybe even from the night when Magnolia spared my life and Dad’s after Ms. Jasmine died.”
Oh shit! I should’ve kept my mouth shut. He was already broken up about the false pregnancy. This makes the situation ten times worse. “I don’t know how she did it, but yes, I think so.”
Tension radiates from him in waves. “Your mother’s death…Lainey?”
“I don’t know. We need more answers. If we could just find Sophia.”
Silence grows thick. He’s gonna blow a gasket. Go on the warpath. Put himself in danger. I don’t even think I can hold him back since I plan on being right by his side, kicking some old witch ass. “You stopped her at the hospital.”
“Did I? We don’t know that for sure. And what about next time?”
“When I get my hands on Magnolia…”
“You’ll die,” Landry says flatly, and I realize I muttered the last bit. “She’s too powerful. We can’t come straight at her. We’ll have to blindside her.”
I let Landry rest his arms by rowing back to shore. Instead of calling dispatch about what we’ve found, I call Bessie with our suspicions. She says she’ll send out Andy and Rex to investigate based on an anonymous tip. That works. I’m glad I called her until she asks if I’m going to Aunt March’s party. Like that’s important.
Except she sounds excited and giddy when she says, “I have a date tonight, cher. The first since my husband died. It’s time, right?”
“That’s awesome, Bessie. I can’t wait to meet him.” I hang up, knowing I can’t do anything but be there for her and cheer her on.
The walk from the pond to the Acker’s place takes on a new urgency. George promised to drop off the contents of Sophia’s suitcase when he brought Pepper home. If we’re lucky, we’ll have enough time to search for more answers to our questions before heading to the party.
I push through the trees, skirting the fence surrounding the Savoie cemetery. The shield around my thoughts dings, like someone’s pressing their finger repeatedly against a doorbell, as the ghosts in this area pound against it, wanting me to let them in.
“Damn, they’re acting crazy today,” Landry says.
“I know.” They’re determined to break in. “I wonder why they’re so agitated?”
“Do you want me to drop the wall to find out?”
“No! Don’t.” There are too many. He would be overwhelmed. I focus on him, blocking out the subliminal calls of the spirits. “Did the demon come back? Have you been able to tell it what happened?”
Landry brushes his fingers against the bark of a nearby tree, peeling off a strip and tossing it on the ground. “It’s like when I first came back…” I finish his unsaid sentence: From the dead. “My muscles ache, as if it’s stretching my skin. I feel it inside me, but quiet, gathering its energy.”
“That sounds ominous.”
He shrugs. “It warned me that we could both be swept across to the other side when you went to rescue Dena. When I heard you screaming, I didn’t care what happened to me.” His Adam’s apple bobs as his swallows. I tense up, sensing he’s working toward admitting something he doesn’t think I’ll want to hear.
He turns in my direction, arms crossing. A slight shiver causes him to hunch slightly. He avoids my gaze, staring in the vicinity of the tip of my nose. “Being on the other side was…hard. On both the creature and me. The whole time I fought the tug trying to draw me through that doorway, but when Lainey went through…” His eye flicks up, then drops again. “I almost went with her.”
“What?” My feet tangle up, and I stumble on the step I take toward him. He grabs my arm, keeping me from falling, bu
t I jerk away. Shock numbs my body as I process his words. Each one hits harder than the last. I can’t believe what I’m hearing. It doesn’t make sense. “Are you serious? You almost left me?” I close my eyes so I don’t see the shame on his face. But even that’s not enough because I still feel his eye burning a hole in my forehead. “No. Don’t answer.”
“Mala, I—”
“Shut up! Don’t say another word.” He almost gave up on us.
“But I didn’t,” his voice whispers in my mind.
“Give me a minute…I—” I’m still too shaken to look him in the eye. His words sent a chill deep into the pit of my stomach. I turn my back to him. I need to process…This sucks. Hurts. But I understand how he felt. I wish I didn’t, which makes it even more frightening. Even I felt the call of the other side. If he hadn’t come when he did, Dena and I would’ve been swept through that black-hole thing, like Magnolia had planned. With my soul sucked from my body, what would’ve taken its place? The darkness that lives under her skin?
Now that her plan has failed, what does she intend to do next? Because like Landry said earlier, she’s playing a long game. Always one step ahead. And even though I think I’ve figured out plan A, she’s got a plan B, C, and D ready to put in play.
Chapter 26
Landry
Battle Prep
I hate that Mala’s thoughts come so randomly. I don’t get the whole picture. I’m not even sure she’s aware that I’m reading her mind. She never comments on it. Not that this new ability to connect telepathically with each other matters so much in the here and now. Her shoulders tremble. A rush of heat floods through my body. My feet move without conscious direction, crossing the distance between us.
My arms wrap around her waist from behind. She gasps, stiffening. I hug her to me, afraid if I let go she’ll storm off without hearing everything I need to stay. I need her to understand what happened. What might happen again if I’m faced with a similar situation? The force almost got me. Only Lainey’s intervention and my love for Mala and the baby kept me from being swept away.