Conjure

by Lea Nolan

  A few guests get up from their seats and wander around the room, staring at pillows, a lamp, and the terra cotta wall paint. One plays with the stereo, increasing the volume and drowning out the howl of the beating wind and rain. I swallow a snicker, delighted the charm’s kicking in.

  Missy nods. “I hope not, Bunny. As you can see, we’ve got so many valuables here at High Point Bluff, we’d be a natural target for robbers.” She downs her margarita and shakes her empty glass. “Oh, Jared, where’s my refill?” Jack springs up to replenish her glass.

  Bunny empties her plate, then comes up to the buffet for more salsa and chips. “Of course you would, Missy. They’d especially love to steal that gorgeous necklace of yours.” She scratches her head and surveys the buffet table, her eyes filled with uncertainty.

  I spoon an extra large serving of salsa on her plate. She scoops it up with a chip and swallows it whole, then walks aimlessly to a different couch and plops down, draping her arm around another woman’s husband. Several more guests shift in their seats, their eyes filled with vacant stares.

  Missy swallows the last of her fajita and rubs the ruby. “You’re right, Bunny. I never thought of that.” She gulps her second margarita in one long mouthful, then sways on the couch and grips her forehead. “You know, I never take it off.” Her eyes stretch wide, and her voice quiets to a whisper. “If a robber wanted it, he’d probably kill me to get it.” She rakes her acrylic fingernails through her hair, mussing it, and slides off the couch onto the floor.

  Since no one seems to notice the hostess’s condition, the potion’s got to be in full force. Everyone is in their own confused world, including Dad, who’s drooped on a stool behind the bar, his head propped in his hands and muttering to himself. It’s time to strike.

  I nod at Jack, then Cooper, who rises from his chair in the corner and scooches next to Missy on the Oriental carpet. “You’re right, Missy,” Cooper says. “That necklace is putting your life at risk.”

  She tilts her head to the side and nods. “Yes. Bad guys. Danger.” She grabs her plate off the end table, scoops a handful of hoodoo guacamole with her fingers, and shoves it in her mouth.

  Cooper forces back a laugh. “I’d hate to see something bad happen to you because of that silly ruby.”

  Missy sticks out her tongue and laps at the green dip that’s smeared around her lips and cheek. “Me, too.” Then she crawls on her hands and knees to the coffee table to down someone else’s margarita. “What do you think I should do?” she whispers.

  Cooper balls his fists, undoubtedly still uncomfortable with what he’s about to do, but forges ahead. “You should put it away for safekeeping.”

  She nods. “Yes. But where? They’ll take it if it’s at High Point Bluff.” She wrenches the chain around and fumbles with the clasp. It falls open, dangling from her swerving hand.

  He gulps and opens his palm. “I’m sure I can find a good place for you.”

  “Thanks a lot, Coopie.” She drops it in his waiting hand, then pokes the tip of his nose. “You’re cute.” Then she lies down, rubbing her guacamole-caked cheek against the silk carpet. “Don’t let the bad guys get me.”

  Cooper slinks back toward the door while Jack crouches next to her. “Remember, it’s a secret hiding place, so you can’t tell anyone what you did with the necklace.”

  “Uh-huh.” She nods, tracing the rug’s pattern with her finger. “What necklace?”

  Jack snorts. “Never mind. There is no necklace. Forget I said anything.” He backs up, grabs one of the lanterns, and joins me and Cooper at the archway to the foyer.

  “Okay.” She hums to the mariachi music on the stereo.

  Jack turns and slaps Cooper’s arm. “Come on, Coopie. Let’s go bust some curses.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  I duck into the kitchen for my bag of supplies and meet the boys at the door. We don’t bother with raincoats, since they won’t do us any good, anyway. We’ll be drenched no matter what.

  Beau’s locked the cars in the garage for the duration of the storm, so we’ve got no choice but to use the golf cart. Racing to the cart in the dwindling light, I struggle against the driving wind and rain, which knock me back toward the Big House. I’ve come too far to be beaten by the wind. Tucking my head, I trudge forward, determined to make it out to the tabby ruins and with any luck, the end of these curses.

  Cooper inches the cart down the driveway. If the ruins weren’t so far away, we’d probably be better off walking. The gusts are more powerful than before, rocking the vehicle and dumping what feels like gallons of water on the flimsy roof. Without doors or a windshield, we’re assaulted by storm debris as small branches and dead pine needles whip through the air, smacking our bodies and clinging to the car. There are no headlights, so it’s nearly impossible to see through the heavy rain and mist. No one says a word, allowing Cooper to concentrate amid the lashing wind and rain.

  Lightning strikes, sending a giant pine branch flying in front of the cart. Cooper yanks the wheel to the side, just missing the tree missile as it lands on the opposite side of the driveway. A moment later, another tree lining the drive bends so far over, it topples, its roots pried out of the ground.

  Cooper floors the cart to get off the tree-lined entrance to High Point Bluff. The driveway is majestic in beautiful weather but a certain death trap in a hurricane. The back tires skid on the slick pavement, but he corrects the wheel and guides us toward the dirt path that leads to the tabby ruins. Off the asphalt, the cart sinks into the soaked forest floor. Just as I’m sure we’re stuck in the mud, the rear tire catches and propels us out of the muck.

  Minutes later, we’ve dodged a few more fallen trees and arrived at the ruins without major damage. Cooper snatches a flashlight from our supply bag while Jack and I dash through the clearing to where we’ve left the mortar and other equipment propped on a tabby stump and wrapped in Dad’s blue plastic tarp to stay dry.

  Even though it’s the height of summer, the air is cool, infused with the salty scent of the angry sea and the thrashed earth. I peer out at the Sound. The roiling water’s nearly as dark as the dusky sky, making it difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins. But I can tell how close the water is. It’s risen so much, the crashing waves almost crest the bluff. If it gets much higher, the murky water will flood the ruins.

  Jack sets the lantern next to the mortar and clicks it on. “What do you want us to do?” he yells over the howling wind. Cooper jogs up next to him.

  I wipe the pelting rain from my face. “I need you two to hold the tarp like a canopy so I can stand underneath it and light a fire in the mortar.” My hair whips my face, stinging my eyes.

  Cooper shakes his head. “There’s too much wind. You’ll never get a flame going.”

  “Let me worry about that. Just give me some cover.” I grab my hair and tie it in a knot at the back of my head to keep it from slapping my skin.

  Cooper hands me the lit flashlight and helps Jack unwrap the mortar. I toss my bag over the open vessel to keep the inside as dry as possible. They clutch the tarp’s ends and hoist it above their heads. The wind catches the plastic, snapping it like a sail. It billows, nearly flying out of their hands.

  “I don’t know if I can hold this, Emma!” Jack shouts, digging in his heels and pulling the tarp against the gusts. “My hand isn’t strong enough.”

  I shake my head, and my hair falls out of its knot. “You’ll have to, Jack. Try to make your good hand do most of the work.” I glance at his white golf glove as my hair whips around again. “You should take that off. And undo the button on your sleeve. If we break the curse, and your skin comes back, it should be as free as possible.”

  The last thing we need is for it to grow back all weird, like if his skin enmeshes with the glove and shirt. That would be grosser than what he’s got now. He jams his hand into his mouth and rips the glove off with his teeth, exposing his brittle bones. Then he thrusts his arm at me. I tuck the flashlight unde
r my elbow, reach my waterlogged fingers to undo the button on his long-sleeved waiter’s shirt, and roll it up over his swollen and blistered bicep.

  With Jack’s radius and ulna unobstructed, I duck under the makeshift shelter, which flaps like a parachute in the gusting wind. Cooper holds the end of the tarp behind me, and Jack’s in front, watching my every move. The tarp blocks the brunt of the blustery rain, but it doesn’t keep all the weather out. There’s still plenty of air and water to propel the spell.

  Crouching next to the ruin, I scoop up a little dirt and dump it into the mortar. Then, slinging my bag across my shoulders, I pull out two cups of charcoal chips from a Ziploc and pour them in, dousing them with one of Miss Delia’s paraffin-based unjinxing oils. If lamp oil won’t burn in a hurricane, nothing will. Bracing myself for the inevitable fatigue, I strike a match and drop it into the mortar’s deep belly, then watch as it flickers to life. The flame is small, though determined in the dampened breeze.

  Rubbing my collier for luck, I grab Miss Delia’s spell book from the bag and, keeping a firm grip, flip to a passage I found while sitting on her hospital bed. Ever since the first plateye arrived, she insisted we needed her ancestors’ help. Since she’s not here to explain what she meant, I’ve got to trust she was right and invite them here. Maybe they’ll tell me the secret to Sabina’s incantation, since I’m not at all convinced blood orange juice and seawater are the answer.

  The hurricane’s power bears down on Cooper and Jack, drenching them and blowing hard against their strained bodies. Their sopping hair clings to their heads, and the rain whips their faces. Jack especially struggles against the gale, relying on his one strong hand. He grunts. “Emma, I don’t know how much longer I can do this.”

  Thunder booms nearby, making us all jump.

  After my heart stops racing, I call, “We’re almost there, Jack,” and hope he hears me over the wailing wind. I sprinkle one of Miss Delia’s premade white magic charms into the crackling mortar, a mixture of althaea root, myrrh, frankincense, and copal, which is supposed to attract well-meaning spirit helpers. It smokes, releasing a rich, aromatic, and slightly chemical smell.

  The exhaustion slams into me like a ten-ton truck, and I struggle to stay on my feet. Every ounce of energy seems to drain from my limbs, amassing in my core, this time centering in my chest. The pain and tiredness has never been this bad, but then again, I’ve never attempted to conjure a spell this big before. Miss Delia said magic was energy, and this particular charm is going to require nearly all I’ve got.

  I close my eyes, do my best to quiet my mind, and force out the words I copied from Miss Delia’s spell book. “Benevolent spirits reveal your existence, present to us now, we need your assistance.” Another verse leaps to my lips, probably influenced by my collier, so I add it even though I can barely afford the effort to speak. “Miss Delia’s ancestors are the ones that we need, but only the ones who’ll help us succeed.” Because there’s no way I want to meet Sabina. Not today. Not ever.

  A sharp pain jabs in my chest, causing my knees to buckle. I crash to the muddy ground.

  “Emma!” Jack calls, his voice brimming with alarm.

  I wave them off and muster the strength to stand. As long as I don’t breathe too deeply, the sting isn’t too bad.

  Two giant bolts of lightning strike the woods behind the clearing.

  The clearing’s perimeter glows as bright orbs of light float in the air, then stretch and elongate into person-shaped entities and settle onto the ground. Gawking, Cooper and Jack wrench around to see what’s happening. I gulp and grip the sides of the mortar to help me stay upright. So this is what it means to see dead people.

  The figures sharpen and come into focus, then morph into sixteen very real-looking women, all with skin in varying shades of brown and wearing different periods of dress. A few have scarified faces and wear cloth that appears as if it was spun in Africa. Others seem to have lived in the Americas, their clothes ranging from simple coarse slavery garments to more modern dresses worn in the early twentieth century. Maggie is among them. Our eyes meet, and she nods with a grin. The women turn to one another and smile, then walk toward us and join their outstretched hands to form a perfect circle around the ruins.

  The ground rumbles. From the corner of my eye, I catch a glimpse of something on the beach, just beyond the dunes. I turn my head and squint to make it out.

  It’s sort of a tannish-gray cloud that hugs the shoreline. It’s billowing. And growing closer.

  Holy sticklewort, it’s a sandstorm! A pain stabs in my chest. In my shock, I must have inhaled too much air.

  Within seconds, the storm rolls up the dune, churning up a hazy fog of sand and prowling toward us. If we don’t do something—or move—it’ll envelop us all.

  Yellow energy grows from the ancestor’s clasped hands, stretching toward the sky and forming a bubble above the clearing. Like a giant sieve, it shields us from the brunt of the biting gusts and blasting sand but still lets in enough of the storm’s power to maintain the spell. The shield glows a bright amber, illuminating the darkness as if it’s midday and warming the area under the bubble by at least ten degrees. It suddenly smells like a giant botanical garden as the scent of roses, gardenias, lilies, peonies, even honeysuckle, infuses the ruins.

  My pulse pounds slow and deliberate in my ears, which I can hear now because the shield has dampened most of the storm’s noise. If I wasn’t seeing this with my own eyes, I’d be sure it’s a dream. An amazing but incredibly freaky dream. A calming wave rolls over me, reassuring me we’re safe.

  Exhausted, Jack and Cooper drop their arms and clear away the tarp, then twirl around to gaze at the supernatural spectacle. Maggie delinks from her celestial sisters and steps forward as the two women at her sides join hands to maintain the circle.

  “Emma Guthrie, you have come very far indeed.” She smiles. “You have combined the elements. You are nearly there.”

  What is she talking about? I’m miles away from making this work. I shake my dazed head and strain to keep my head up. If I didn’t know better, I’d say my blood pressure was dropping. “I’m trying. I’ve got unjinxing oil, but it’s not enough.” My voice cracks. “I don’t know how to bind the blood of the sun and the moon, the day and the night.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “No, I don’t. Why can’t you just tell me what to do?” Desperation swells in my gut. I thought these spirits were supposed to be benevolent. Why won’t they help?

  “Because I cannot. You must find the answer on your own.” She hitches her brow, and her gaze bores into me. “It is one of the fundamental laws of hoodoo.”

  Light-headed, I ignore the pain, then clutch at the sharp twinge in my side. Righting myself, I push a long hank of tangled hair off my face and forge ahead with the mission.

  “Is it the juice from a blood orange?” I manage to mutter. “Because I’ve got some here in my bag. And the moon regulates the tides, so maybe the moon’s blood is water?” My mind spins, unsure of how I’ll have the energy to break through the ancestors’ protective barrier and claw through the flying sand to get some seawater. The deadpan expression on Maggie’s face tells me I’m way off.

  She purses her lips. “Look within you and without you. The answer has always been before you.”

  What the heck is she talking about? Her stupid riddles make no stinking sense.

  I sip shallow mouthfuls of air, my head throbbing as I peer at the fire in the mortar. It’s dwindling. I don’t have more charcoal, and the wood in the clearing is soaked. It’ll never light, even if I use another whole bottle of paraffin oil. We’re out of time.

  My gaze cuts to Jack, who seems as clueless as I am. I don’t have to tell him how frightened I am. I know he can sense my panic and anxiety.

  His mouth turns down, and he grasps my hand. “It’s okay, Em. You tried your best. Maybe it’s time to accept that I’m going to die like Edmund and the pirates.”

  Cooper shakes his
head. “Don’t say that. There’s got to be something we can do.”

  “I don’t think so.” Jack grimaces.

  My stomach seizes, and the tears roll down my cheeks. “No!” I wail as I collapse into him and bury my head against his wet shoulder.

  He wraps his arms around me and rubs my back with his bony hand. “Shh,” he whispers. “It’s okay.”

  Sobbing against his damp shirt, I hyperventilate as I imbibe his Jackness, the same boy-scent I’ve smelled our whole lives. I can’t imagine life without his piles of dirty clothes, his unmade bed, or his nasty soccer cleats lying around. Life without my other half. My twin.

  I squeeze his unfairly skinny midsection tight, wanting to keep him here in this protected clearing forever, but it’s no use. He’s right. He’s going to die. And it’ll be a horrible, grotesque death that he doesn’t deserve. The flesh on his upper arm will fall off next, and then The Creep will inch up his shoulder and crawl over the rest of him, destroying his body one part at a time.

  Pulling away from his now-slimy shoulder, I blink through burning tears and gaze at his face, wanting to etch it into my memory. This is the Jack I want to remember—young and strong, loving and fearless, and bravely resigned to face the horrors of The Creep. I reach my feeble hand to stroke his cheek. Soon he’ll become a terrifying walking skeleton, stripped of this glorious olive skin, his brilliant blue eyes and thick jet-black hair.

  Suddenly, a shooting pain rockets through my chest, squeezing the last reserve of air from my lungs. I try to inhale, but my side refuses to budge. It’s like being caught in a vacuum. I may not know what I’m doing with magic, but I do know one thing: I can’t last long without breathing. Panicked, I tug at my weary muscles, but they’re limp and refuse to draw oxygen.

  A shock charges through my body, shooting from my toes all the way up to my scalp. I don’t know where it came from, but it’s an energy boost I desperately need. Sucking in a breath, I ignore the jabbing ache and revel in the glorious, life-preserving air. My hand vibrates, shaking against Jack. His eyes bulge. He must have felt it, too. I stare hard at my hand and try to discern what it, or my spirit guide, is trying to tell me, but all I see is my pale hand on Jack’s golden cheek. It pulsates again, this time with more force.