Conjure

by Lea Nolan

  Cooper sighs. “I would, but after carrying that rock, I can barely move my arms. They feel like Jell-O, or maybe stretched-out spaghetti. I’m sorry, but there’s no way I can steer.” He slips his hand back into mine and rubs the edge of my thumb.

  Um, what’s going on? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind all the hand-holding, but this doesn’t make sense. We’re clear of the museum, so there’s no reason to keep up the charade. Plus it isn’t like Cooper not to help Jack when he’s down. Or to let him keep driving Beau’s car.

  But the selfish part of me, the one that’s dreamed of Cooper’s affection for an entire year, refuses to ask the questions looping through my brain out loud. For now, I’ll enjoy this moment and keep quiet.

  Jack grinds his teeth. “Fine. I’ll drive, but keep your criticism to yourself.”

  Cooper chuckles. “So long as you keep your mouth shut and your eyes on the road.”

  …

  We drive straight to Miss Delia’s. Normally we park the car on the side road, just outside of the dirt lane leading to her house, and walk the rest of the way. But not today. There’s no way Cooper can carry the mortar by himself. My puny arms aren’t much help, and since Jack’s bony hand is missing its muscle, he’s useless, too. Plus we can’t risk a stroll through the forest in case those maniacal dogs show up again. We’re driving. And praying we don’t wreck the suspension.

  Jack does a fairly decent job steering the car through the minefield that leads to Miss Delia’s house. He only hit three holes, which is really not his fault because they were camouflaged by some serious overgrowth. For the most part, the car’s intact, although after all the monster dog drool, dirt, and plant material, it needs a total wash down. I’ve got to admit, this excursion has sharpened Jack’s driving skills way more than our trips to abandoned parking lots with Dad. Maybe it’s the fear of getting caught driving without a license, or the life-threatening demon ditching, but after today, I’d say he’s graduated to almost-menace on the road.

  We park the car next to Miss Delia’s bottle tree. Cooper and I roll the mortar across the backseat toward the open door. With a grunt, Cooper scoops it into his arms and wobbles across her lawn and through the herb garden, while Jack and I run ahead to alert Miss Delia. She opens her door just as Cooper climbs her steps.

  Her hands fly up in excitement. “My mortar!” She’s so happy, I’m afraid she might try to jump for joy. “Bring it straight to the kitchen.” She steps aside to let Cooper through. Jack goes to follow, but she puts a gnarled finger on his chest and stops him. “I’m sorry, son, but I can’t let you bring that curse in here. You’ll have to go sit under the bottle tree.”

  Jack’s face flashes with apprehension. He’s probably just as worried as I am about more devil dogs showing up. Out here, on her lawn, he’d be a sitting duck just waiting to be gobbled up. But she must sense his concern because she waves him off. “Pshaw, ain’t nothing going to happen to you under that tree.”

  “Uh, if you say so.” He nervously eyes the enormous oak.

  “I do.” Miss Delia’s face softens. “I know it hurts, but it’s for the best. If we’re going to cure you, my home needs to stay purified. Now I know those bottles don’t seem like much, but they’ll help soak up some of that evil in your hand.”

  “O-okay.” Jack turns to leave.

  “Hold up. Let me see it while you’re here.” She points to his glove. Without a word, he slowly pulls it off, revealing the newly exposed area at his wrist and the bare bones in his palm and fingers. And, of course, the rancid scent of his rotting flesh. She winces. “This is truly an ugly curse.” She reaches out and touches the tip of his index finger. “And now it’s drying.” Shaking her head, she sucks her teeth. “We are running out of time to make you whole.”

  Jack’s brow creases. “What do you mean?” He grips the top of his phalanges with this good hand.

  She cocks her head as if she’s surprised he doesn’t already know. “The bone will dry and turn to dust, then blow away in the wind. When that happens, it’ll be too late to repair, even if we do break the curse. If you’re lucky, you’ll keep these fingers, but you’ll likely be left with a stump or two. Haven’t you heard the prayer, ashes to ashes, dust to dust? It’s what the preachers say when your soul has departed your body and moved on to the Great Eternal. That’s exactly what The Creep means to do.”

  He staggers back, and I grasp his shoulder. “Don’t worry, Jack. We won’t let that happen.”

  Cooper returns from the kitchen, wringing his hands. “I set it on your island counter. I hope that’s okay, because I don’t think I can lift it again.” He notices the sick expression on Jack’s face. “You okay, bro?” Jack nods, then shakes his head. Tears well in the corner of his eyes as he jams his hand back into the glove.

  Miss Delia pats Jack’s other shoulder. “He’s just adjusting to a revelation. One he won’t have to worry about if that mortar does its job. But you’d better sit with him under the bottle tree. It’ll make him feel better.” Cooper gulps. “What’s got you boys so spooked? I thought you were big and tough.” She laughs.

  Cooper shrugs. “Well, it just feels so, I don’t know, out in the open.”

  Miss Delia sets her hands on her hips. “Do you think I’d put you in harm’s way?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Of course not. I’ve worked charms all over this property.”

  As much as I trust Miss Delia and her spells, I’m sort of with Cooper on this one. We’ve already been chased by hellhounds today; we don’t need another round. Her magic should hold, but if it doesn’t, the tree is just yards from the car and front porch. If another dog does show up, Cooper and Jack will see it and have plenty of time to sprint to safety.

  Cooper may be thinking the same thing because his shoulders ease as he switches his gaze between Miss Delia, the tree, and his car.

  Miss Delia claps her hands. “Now get on before you ruin my good mood.”

  Without another word, Cooper guides Jack off the porch and through the garden while Miss Delia and I make our way to the kitchen. Holding her arm to keep her steady, I figure I have to tell her about the beasts that nearly killed us. It’s the only way to explain Jack’s and Cooper’s fear. But I try to keep the news casual so I don’t upset her. Now that we’re so close to breaking the curse, the last thing I want is for her to wind up back in bed, or worse. “You know, we ran into two of those devil dogs on our way over here.”

  She grips my hand, scanning me for signs of damage. “They didn’t hurt you, did they? I didn’t give you anything to fight them off.”

  I smile and reassure her by omitting a majority of the facts. “No, we’re fine. We outran them with the car. To be honest, it was so easy to get away I debated whether to even mention it at all, but then I thought you should at least know.”

  She pats the back of my wrist. “Good girl, although I’m sure it wasn’t as easy as you’re pretending, especially with two at your heels.” She takes another step toward the kitchen. “I expected another plateye to show up sometime, but I thought it would be here. Don’t worry about your boys. Thanks to all the protection charms I’ve worked, the plateyes won’t be able to get into the house. And that tree’s filled with protective magic.”

  “That’s good to know.” I sigh with relief. “So is that what they’re called, plateyes? We didn’t have much time to talk about them when you were, you know, recovering.” I hate to bring up that frightening week of her near-total incapacitation.

  “Yes, child, that’s what we Gullah call them. Sometimes they show up as a dog, other times it’s a bear or even a horse. However they appear, they always mean evil. And now that they’re multiplying, we know they mean business. They don’t want that curse ended.”

  I gulp. A giant psycho dog is bad enough. I don’t want to imagine how frightening a horse or a bear would be. But rather than dwell on those horrific possibilities, I choose to be positive. “Well, then they’re going to be very disappo
inted when we break it.” I force a laugh, mostly to convince myself that we will.

  Pushing the swinging door open, I see the mortar in the center of the counter. It looks…at home. Miss Delia nearly sprints to the counter to inspect it. Her lips quiver as she runs her hands over its rough outer surface. “I haven’t seen this since I was a little girl. I don’t care how you got it.” I open my mouth to explain, but she puts her hand up. “I don’t want to know, Emma. All that matters is it’s back where it belongs.” She stares at it lovingly, then runs her arthritic finger over the crude scrolls etched into the rim. “See these markings? This one means hatred and this one divorce. But of course, to balance those energies, on the other side we’ve got the symbol for love here, and this one is for unity. This one means, ‘the earth has weight,’ which reminds us of Mother Earth’s divinity. And this here is my favorite. It means, ‘help me and let me help you,’ a reminder of how interconnected we all are.”

  Now that I know what they mean, the markings are so clear. And even though the carvings are simple and uneven, they’re beautiful. I reach up and touch the symbol for love. “This one’s pretty special.” Maybe stroking it will bring me a little luck with Cooper. Before I can prevent it, a wistful half-grin works its way up my cheek.

  Miss Delia hitches her brow. “You thinking about your boy?”

  There’s no use lying to her. I bite my lip and remember how soft and velvety his felt on mine. My face flushes. Even though it wasn’t real and was only to throw off the guard, I can’t pretend it wasn’t one of the best moments of my life. And then there was all that hand-holding in the museum and afterward in the car. As much as the rational side of my brain tells me to forget that, too, the hopeful side pleads to believe I might have a chance. “Yeah. Aside from getting the mortar, let’s just say I’ve had a pretty excellent day.” The smile spreads until I’m beaming like a lovesick fool.

  She sucks her teeth and winks. “That Follow Me Boy charm works every time.”

  My heart stops. “What?”

  “The leather pouch I gave you. It’s filled with the Follow Me Boy spell. Guaranteed to work. Have as much fun as you can with him for now, but you’ll want to toss out that gris-gris bag before he turns sixteen. Remember what I told you about those Beaumont men.”

  My hand flies up to the extra bag she gave me before the museum heist. The special one she mixed for me alone and said would give me a little of what I want. I figured she meant the mortar, not Cooper. So all his extra attention wasn’t for mutual support, or even because he kinda, sorta, might possibly like me. It was because she bewitched him with hoodoo magic.

  I’ve loved Cooper for more than a year, but I don’t want him this way. I want him to like me for who I am: the awkward art freak who listens to indie emo music and sketches in the woods, and who knows enough about plants to become a hoodoo apprentice to save my brother from a vicious curse, but who wouldn’t think about using magic for anything else, especially not to manipulate someone into loving me.

  I suddenly feel sick. Lifting the leather bag off my head, I toss it on the counter. “I understand why you did it, but no thanks.”

  Miss Delia’s face turns down. “Oh, sugar, you don’t understand—”

  But I cut her off because I don’t want to prolong this humiliation. “Forget it. Really, it’s fine. I don’t want to talk about it.” I look down at my feet and see my messenger bag lying on the floor next to the counter. Amid all the super fantastic news about Jack’s fingers drying up and turning to dust and my ill-fated and secret love charm, I’ve completely overlooked our other stolen object, Bloody Bill’s knife. “Oh, I almost forgot this.” Holding my lip tight to keep it from quivering, I bend down, pull the dagger out of my bag, and hand it to Miss Delia, handle first.

  Her eyebrows pinch together. “What is this?”

  “Cooper saw it in the medical equipment display in the museum, but it doesn’t look like any of the other Gullah tools.”

  She shakes her head. “It doesn’t look like anything my folk would make.”

  “But it does look like the treasure box we found. The one that exploded and gave Jack The Creep. It was carved exactly the same as this one. And look at this.” I grab the magnifying glass off the counter and hold it over the handle, then run my fingers over the etching. “This isn’t just a design. It says BBR, which are the initials for Bloody Bill Ransom, the pirate who wrote the letter we found in the bottle. We figured you might know what to do with it. And since we were already stealing the mortar, we kind of figured one more crime wouldn’t matter. Much.”

  She closes her eyes and rubs the handle. “This knife has great energy in it.” She takes a deep breath. “If it did belong to your pirate, it could give us important information about how The Creep was cast and how to break it.”

  My forehead crinkles. “How’s a knife supposed to tell us anything?”

  Her eyes gleam. “Would you like to see into the past?”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “We’ll be working a Psychic Vision charm.” Miss Delia settles into her stool, as pleased as a kid at a carnival with a giant wad of cotton candy. “But first we need to purify this knife. If it did belong to your pirate, there’s no telling how much of his taint could be left on it, even after all this time.” She pours some citronella on it, then instructs me to gather a list of ingredients, which I pile on the counter next to the dagger.

  “I haven’t seen a Psychic Vision performed since I was a girl. My gran cast it before they stole her mortar.” She hands me the purifying oil to cleanse myself. “Make sure you use plenty of this. After casting those spells this morning, you’re likely to be extra tired when we’re through.”

  Oh. Good to know. Dabbing some of the oil on my wrists and neck, I scan the assembled crocks and wonder what the heck she’s talking about. Granted, there are a few ingredients I’ve never heard of, much less used before, but for the most part, they’re ordinary roots and herbs, not a time machine. “Um, I think I’m missing something. How are these things supposed to help us see into the past?” The teapot on the stove squeals as it comes to a boil. I lift it off the burner and shut off the gas.

  Miss Delia spoons dried herbs into two small pieces of cheesecloth. “Each of these plants has its own purpose. When mixed in the right concentration they form the perfect blend to open our minds.” Her fingers shake as she works to fold the cloth into neat squares. But the thin fabric won’t cooperate, so I reach over and help complete the makeshift tea bags. When they’re done, she hands them to me and points to the mugs I’ve already placed on the counter. I drop the bags in and add steaming water to steep her psychic tea. She gazes at the mortar and strokes its stony surface. “But no matter how open we are, only a deep and ancient power will reveal the past. That’s where this mortar comes in. It’s bursting with old magic. Here, lay your palms against it. Can you feel its energy?” Her eyes crackle with excitement. Even the cloudy one.

  All I feel is the mortar’s cool, rough surface. I shrug, obviously missing something.

  “Close your eyes and quiet your mind.” Her voice is slow and soft. I quirk my brow, unsure what she means, but she prods me on. “Go on, child, it’s not going to bite. You’ve got to learn to tap into these places in your body and soul. It’s the same way you’ll hear that spirit guide of yours.”

  Judging from how my spirit guide basically forced me to steal the knife in the museum, I’d say I hear her just fine, thank you very much. But since Miss Delia doesn’t want to know the details of how we came to possess either the mortar or the knife, I decide not to get into it. Instead, I shut my eyes and think of a big black hole. A low, tingling vibration hums beneath my palms. My eyes fly open.

  The mortar is a block of solid granite. I’m no geologist, but I’m pretty sure rock is not supposed to vibrate.

  Miss Delia cackles. “There you go! You did it. Good girl. That’s the magic I’m talking about. It’s strong enough to rip those memories right out of that knife.
”

  I drop my hands. “Wait, the knife has memories?”

  She nods. “Everything has a memory, child. You just have to know how to coax it out.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. People have memories. That knife’s an inanimate object made of metal and wood.”

  She smiles and hitches one brow. “Yet you’re both made of the same thing, aren’t you? Aren’t we all?”

  Based on a vague memory from science class, I think Miss Delia’s right, but it’s still hard to believe. “Okay, so let’s say the knife has memories, just like people do. How do we get them? I mean, it’s not like it has a mouth to tell us what happened back then.”

  “That’s where the root blend comes in to open the Psychic Vision. But there is a limit. You see, people recall what they want, from whatever happened over the course of their lives. Objects aren’t the same. Their memories happen in a straight line according to how they’re used. We’re going to ask this knife to tell us what happened the last time it cut, and hope it had something to do with The Creep.”

  I sit on my stool and prop my feet on the brace near the bottom. “But what if it didn’t? That was almost three hundred years ago. How do we know your ancestors didn’t use it before it ended up at the museum?”

  She shakes her head and glares at the dagger on the counter. “None of my kin would use that knife for hoodoo.” Her voice is deep and gravelly. “It’s filled with bad mojo no root doctor could miss. I don’t know how it ended up where you found it, but chances are, some doctress was keeping it hidden so it wouldn’t be used for evil.”

  A shiver runs up my spine. If it’s filled with so much dark energy, why the heck are we messing around with it? “You’re freaking me out. Are you sure it’s safe to do this?” My voice cracks. Between The Creep and those scary plateye dog-monsters, I’ve had enough bad mojo for one summer. Actually, for my whole life.