It was close to midnight as they pulled up to the house without a phone. A rundown, older home in the Lower Ninth Ward, it was a memory Eleri hadn’t visited in forever. She would have wondered if her Grandmere was even here, except she knew that she was. She was also relatively confident Grandmere had been expecting their arrival since the time it had been decided they would leave, maybe even before they knew it themselves.
Something in the air here felt right. She’d needed this.
As she unbuckled her seatbelt, Donovan did the same. He’d been watching the houses with fascination as they drove through the patchwork neighborhood. This area had been under more than ten feet of water during Hurricane Katrina. Some houses were rebuilt, though not most. Some lots hosted new, brightly colored modular homes on stilts. Those had been brought in by celebs and charities. Some lots were just eerily blank, while others had sagging structures still sporting marks from the immediate post-hurricane rescue work. The house next door to Grandmere’s still had black words spray painted on the front, “Power and gass off.” Eleri almost loved that “gas” was misspelled.
She stepped out of the door, breathing in the heavy air that felt like home. Her heart settled in her chest in a way she hadn’t known was so necessary to her well-being.
Donovan, stood, too, closing his car door and looking at her over the top of the small SUV. He looked down at her—normal, given their height difference. “I figured it out. The woman in the woods. What was off. She wasn’t escaping. She wasn’t afraid. I think she’s the killer.”
12
Eleri was still looking at Donovan, digesting the idea he’d just thrown at her, when she felt her Grandmere around her. Arms, hugging her tightly, making a circle of safety and comfort and home. It wasn’t the place so much as the woman.
“Grandmere!” Eleri turned into the hug, feeling like a kid again. She held onto Grandmere with everything she had, giving and taking in a way that was usually shut off to her.
“Hello, Donovan.” Grandmere said over Eleri’s head. No one questioned that Grandmere knew his name. She’d sent him gifts in the past, known things about him that Eleri had only just found out herself.
In a moment, when she and Eleri broke apart, Grandmere turned her immense personality on to Donovan. He was soon enveloped in a hug that he—unlike Eleri—resisted. She could see him stiffen as Grandmere held on tighter.
Eleri watched, wondering what would happen, but her money was on Grandmere. In a handful of tense seconds, that played out. Even Donovan broke and hugged the woman back, looking like he was melting into her hold. For the first time Eleri put pieces together. His mother had probably hugged him, but she’d died when he was very young. His father hadn’t touched at all, not in a positive way. From what she’d seen, his father didn’t stay cold—no, he’d hit. Who told Donovan he was okay?
She’d done it some, but in an offhanded way. Not like this. Not like Grandmere had. She’d sensed he needed it, and she delivered. As Eleri watched, the hug ended, with Donovan looking decidedly more relaxed. Before she could think, her Grandmere turned to her.
“Where is the brown wolf? Why did you not bring him?”
Of course, Grandmere knew about Wade. Not that she’d ever met him. Eleri wasn’t even sure if she’d ever mentioned him. “He’s working with the team, Grandmere.”
The old woman nodded, deep, dark skin showing lines but looking far younger than her actual years. Grandmere had to at least be in her nineties; Eleri was always astounded at the number when she tried to add it up. Grandmere was actually Eleri’s great grandmother. Her own mother, Natalie, had been twenty-five when Eleri came along. Her grandmother—the first Emmaline—had been in her teens and left Nathalie on Grandmere’s doorstep before promptly disappearing. That math put Grandmere possibly cracking the triple digits. She didn’t look it.
There was a smile and a turn and a casual gesture inside. Donovan raised his eyebrows as Eleri grabbed her bag. She just nodded. He didn’t know it yet, but he wanted to stay at Grandmere’s.
Inside, the place smelled like her childhood summers, both before and after Emmaline disappeared. It smelled like comfort food and lemon cleaner and an underlay of scents Eleri could never fully place—herbs, fire, broken rock, woods, sun, and more.
She bet Donovan could pick pieces out of it. She didn’t ask, just turned and watched as he took in the tiny house. It was cramped with furniture too old to be nice, but not old enough to be antique. Things came in shades of faded bright blues, oranges, reds, nature-style greens and gold. Somehow it all worked.
In moments, Grandmere had them sorted into the three tiny bedrooms the place sported, and Donovan didn’t comment on the single, compact bath. When Eleri emerged from unpacking her bag into the drawer—a compulsion as she was probably only staying a single night—she’d sat on the end of the small bed and stared across the room. She’d done this every time she arrived. The other twin bed belonged to Emmaline. The other drawer, the lower one, also belonged to her little sister. Eleri had insisted she was taller and deserved the upper drawer. It had been bitchy, sure, but looking back through years of guilt, she could see that she had been a normal kid. For years, she had stared at the other bed and known that Emmaline was out there. Eleri had believed the distance was temporary. But then, when she was nineteen, she’d woken cold in the middle of the night and seen her sister. Not a big deal, as she’d been “seeing” her sister all along.
But that night she’d known. What she saw was not a projection of a living Emmaline, but the end. Eleri had cried the next time she came here. Grandmere had held her. Neither had spoken but both had known. Now, she stared until she almost broke. The bed stayed empty, neatly made, somehow dust free. Her only recourse was to leave, the feelings were too powerful despite the fact that she’d sat there for only a minute or two.
She ventured into the kitchen, finding Donovan at the table with Grandmere. He ate a hearty beef stew and steaming bread despite the heat that pervaded the city. A tall glass of ice water sat by his hand. Grandmere ate only a buttered piece of bread. She stood when Eleri entered the room, acting as though it were merely noon instead of well past midnight. Without speaking, she served Eleri a much smaller bowl of the stew and a single slice of the bread then silently added another ladleful to Donovan’s bowl.
Only as she sat back down again did she speak. “Your Donovan has been researching me.” She ignored the choking sound Donovan made as he swallowed wrong in surprise. “Apparently, I’m on the internet. I didn’t know that.”
Eleri felt her eyes go round in surprise. Donovan got himself together.
It was Grandmere who spoke, asking him, “What did you do? Something like an ancestry search?”
“No, in Eleri’s file. Her mother’s name is listed and it has her maiden name. So I looked her up.” He took another bite, though he still looked a bit disconcerted. “Nathalie Remy Eames pings a lot of charity connections, but it also links to Nynette Remy of New Orleans. That’s how I found you, Mrs. Remy.”
“Oh honey,” the old woman put a hand on his arm, “you can call me Grandmere, too.” Then she pushed her head out a little, sniffed the air at him a bit.
Eleri found that funny. Someone sniffing at Donovan for a change, but she didn’t get to laugh. Grandmere was speaking to him.
“You smell like a wolf, and they aren’t all decent people like you.” Her pause was brief and knowing. “You’ve met them. You knew that before you knew there were decent ones. Which makes your accomplishments all that much more impressive.” She reached into her pocket and pulled something out which she pushed into Donovan’s palm without revealing what it was.
“You carry this with you. It’s not from me. It’s from your people in Europe. One of them handed it to me about three years ago, told me I’d know who to give it to. I’ve known a while now, but I wanted to give it to you in person.” She folded his fingers over it, preserving the mystery. “You keep it on you.”
He nodded as
though that wasn’t as strange as it actually was.
Eleri remembered Grandmere was always giving or selling trinkets to people who stopped by. Sometimes she talked with them for hours, sending her granddaughters out to play. But she’d not given them to Eleri before. In fact, she’d rarely even spoken to Eleri about any of it.
Eleri frowned, then asked Donovan, “You’re just taking a weird token from someone in Europe, through an old woman you’ve never met before?” Because when she thought about it that way, it was beyond odd.
“She’s your family, Eleri, so it’s not that strange. And she’s not any old—” he stopped himself, “—she’s not just anybody. You know this. She’s Nynette Remy.”
Sure she was. Eleri nodded but didn’t say anything and Donovan seemed to realize something. He spoke again. “Nynette Remy is considered the highest ranked voodoo priestess alive today in the U.S.”
Eleri froze.
Sure, her great grandmother practiced the old ways. When Eleri was in her early twenties she’d looked up references to Aida Weddo and the prayers Grandmere had incanted over them. She’d thought it was much the same as the ones she got at church, just a different religion. Voodoo was something many people practiced, especially in New Orleans. And her mother had told her Grandmere was crazy, believing in things that didn’t exist. Eleri had somewhat dismissed it. She’d floated between belief and the unquestioning acceptance that came from it being part of her childhood. It was just the way things were. She hadn’t looked further.
“Eleri.” Donovan spoke softly, his spoon no longer moving. “You’re the direct descendant of the Remys. The most powerful Voodoo family ever in the US. Stronger than Marie LaVeaux.”
“She was all show.” Grandmere scoffed, as though she’d been there.
Eleri looked back and forth between her great-grandmother and Donovan.
“Your talents aren’t random.” He told her.
“Oh, she doesn’t know the half of it. Nathalie didn’t want any part of it, so she raised her girls far away in a little white church and a big, sprawling house. But that didn’t change what you are.” Grandmere took her hand, the heat between them feeling stronger than before, though Eleri had no idea if that was real or her imagination.
She didn’t know how to respond. She’d come here thinking she would relax for the night, be home in a way she hadn’t been in a long time. She was not prepared for family secrets to come clawing their way to the surface. But they weren’t secrets—it seemed everyone knew but her. She turned to Donovan, “You knew? You didn’t say anything?”
“Why would I? I only recently put it together that you didn’t. I didn’t start digging until the notes came, until the second time your Grandmere pegged our operations. She was right. We needed to trust GJ. She helped crack that case.”
Eleri nodded, her brain fleetingly wondering where GJ Janson had gone off to. Wherever it was, Special Agent in Charge Derek Westerfield was keeping tabs on her. He did not like that Eleri and Donovan had let the grad student get mixed up in their previous case, though Eleri thought GJ Janson had been at the heart of things even before they’d gotten there. GJ had tangled herself into things.
“You don’t go blaming him.” Grandmere patted her hand, bringing her thoughts back to the now. “It’s time.”
“Time?” Eleri asked. What had she walked into? Her only consolation was that she trusted her Grandmere.
“You’re ready. You’re here to pick up the pieces that your mother wouldn’t. You have gifts she didn’t.”
She must have looked horribly confused.
Grandmere patted her hand again. “No, you aren’t my successor, as much as I would have liked that. It should have been Emmeline. Instead, I have found another. You have cousins. One is powerful. He will follow in my stead. You are yourself with your own place in this world. You will help many. Save many. But it’s time.”
Grandmere popped up from her seat. “It’s time for ice cream.” She picked up the bowls in front of each of them and carried them to the sink, leaving Eleri and Donovan staring at each other as though the old woman was crazy.
“We always have ice cream after dinner,” Eleri told him. It was inane, but the only thing she could think of to say.
Grandmere returned with a small container and three spoons.
“This isn’t your usual brand.” Eleri commented as Grandmere screwed off the top. The woman was a bit of a connoisseur when it came to ice cream. Maybe that was an element of living in the hot south without air conditioning.
“Oh, it’s gelato. It’s terribly expensive, but I’m living large in my old age.” She smiled.
The three of them dug in, clearing the pint-sized container in no time. They ate as though her Grandmere hadn’t just delivered a statement worthy of a prophecy. Standing, the old woman screwed the cap onto the empty jar and tossed it into recycling. Eleri wondered if Donovan was right, that Grandmere was some high-priestess. But that couldn’t be right. Grandmere was oddly normal. She liked Magic Eraser sponges. She recycled. She didn’t have a phone, never had. Never had air conditioning in the house and refused when Eleri offered to buy it for her. She wasn’t some priestess—she was just your standard, eccentric old woman. Those were a dime a dozen.
Expect she wasn’t. In the next sentence, she proved it.
“I know it’s time. And you do, too. You’ve been dreaming of the house, haven’t you?”
13
Donovan pulled up the rented SUV and parked near the minivan where Dana and the others were just exiting the vehicle. Eleri had slept most of the two hours on the way to Alexandria, Louisiana, forfeiting her right to the steering wheel. No wonder, she’d seemed a bit shell-shocked.
When Donovan researched her Grandmere, he found some very interesting things. But he thought she already knew them; he hadn’t been holding out. Still he’d gone to bed after the ice cream and the bomb Grandmere had dropped.
Eleri had mentioned repeated dreams about an odd house, but that had been a while ago. Apparently, she was still having them. Before he left the room, he’d leaned over and told his partner, “Be sure to tell her about the other night when you woke up on the floor with your white clothes in a pentagram around you.”
Eleri glared at him. Maybe she thought he hadn’t noticed at the time? But neatnick Eleri sleeping on the floor in a room that looked like it had been searched for cocaine? It had only taken a minute to realize she was sleeping in the center of a cleared circle with white clothes forming a five-point star. It would have taken more effort for him to miss that than to see it.
Now he reached across the car and pushed at her shoulder gently. “We’re here. Time to get back at it.”
Donovan didn’t worry about the fact that she was operating on two or less hours of sleep. No one graduated Quantico well rested.
She looked up at him from where she’d curled in to the corner, using the tension of the seatbelt as a pillow. Her eyes were fuzzy, but she managed to get out a full-fledged “dammit” before she sat up and shook the rest of her clouds out of her brain. “I should have been reading up on the way here.”
“No, you shouldn’t. We’ll go in cold, but we’ll go in alert. That’s more important.” There’d been another murder. His heart sank each time he let himself think about it.
Each murder was a personal failure. Chasing serial killers put agents in the looney bin. Eleri had already been there once. He didn’t think this was necessarily the best case for her. It occurred to him that might be the reasoning behind Westerfield putting them in such a big group. Serial killer cases needed as many brains working on them as possible. Anything that triggered a NightShade investigation needed more. Maybe it wasn’t punishment that they were working under Dana Brantley, maybe it was protection. Donovan liked this vision of a kinder, gentler Westerfield. He just didn’t fully believe it. And the painful twist in his gut didn’t go away. Another person was dead.
For a moment, he thought about going back to being a med
ical examiner. He’d have to move somewhere new. His old position had been permanently filled. At least there he’d never been responsible for anyone’s death. Now he was responsible for so many. He was tasked with finding justice for the dead, just like before, but now he also needed to keep the living alive. The race against the clock killed him. The clock had been turned on at Leroy Arvad’s house, and it had just started counting faster.
He looked to Dana and stated facts, not excuses. “We got in the car as soon as you called. I was driving, Eleri was asleep. Her grandmother kept her up all night. Bring us up to speed?”
Dana only nodded. No berating them. “Body is in that apartment building there.”
He saw a cluster of two- and three-story dwellings, but one had a fire truck and a handful of men in thick yellow pants milling around out front. One unit in that building had a doorway that was blackened almost to ash. Donovan shook his head. “Fire?”
“Yes. Somehow contained only to the apartment it occurred in. Aside from some smell, there’s not an ounce of visible damage in the surrounding units.” Dana let that sit between them for a moment.
It was Eleri who asked the obvious question. “How is that even possible?”
Dana sighed. “I’m hoping you can tell us.”
“No pressure there.” Eleri muttered, but Donovan didn’t think Dana could hear it.
Dana led them in, past the firefighters. Though they looked at her with questions, she stayed silent. Her closed lips and her lightweight navy, pinstripe suit declared to all the world that she was a fed. Christina came in behind her, dark pressed slacks, white button-down shirt, hair up, closed-mouthed, adding to that image. Then there was Wade—khakis (slightly not pressed) and a plaid shirt. Eleri at least always looked expensive. Probably from her upbringing. Even her white t-shirts looked nicer than anyone else’s. Donovan, on the other hand, had worked hard to look like a professional. To not look like his father. Only in the later years did he realize it wasn’t the dirt under his nails or the rips in his jeans that made his father look low-class. It was the way he carried himself, the unwarranted arrogance, the anger that radiated off him from the circumstances he’d never admit he created himself. Still, Donovan wore nice pants and dry-cleaned his shirts. Anything he could do to distance himself from his past, he would.
The NightShade Forensic Files: Echo and Ember (Book 4) Page 9