Barrie felt like nothing was going to surprise her anymore. She nodded without looking at Eight, but she didn’t need to see Eight to feel the waves of fury emanating from him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Eight didn’t start arguing with Barrie immediately. The fight brewed between them in silence while they descended the path toward the Colesworth dock. She darted a glance at him, then bit her lip and concentrated on keeping her footing. They both came to a startled stop when something large rustled and thrashed on the hillside to their right.
“What’s that?” Barrie scanned the overgrown mixture of wisteria and kudzu that blanketed the hillside.
“A deer maybe. Or a gator.”
Whatever it had been, the sound wasn’t repeated. They resumed walking, and the grim set of Eight’s features reminded Barrie of something he’d once said about Cassie needing to be defused before she exploded.
“You’re the one who wanted to go see Obadiah in the first place,” she said when they reached the river. “I didn’t want to go, so you don’t get to be mad at me.”
Eight stepped onto the surviving section of the Colesworth dock. Holding Barrie’s elbow, he moved cautiously to where the Away tapped lightly against the pilings in the current. For once, the river was deserted. There were no other boats in sight.
He unwound the rope and held it taut, gesturing for her to jump into the boat. “What promise was Obadiah talking about?” he asked. “What threat?”
“Your gift.” Barrie wished as hard as she could that they were already across the river and her head wasn’t pounding. “If I help him, then he’ll help you. Or not.”
Either her attempt at evasion worked, or Eight let it pass. “I’d trust an alligator to guard a poodle before I’d trust that man with my gift,” he said.
“All the more reason to keep an eye on him, don’t you think? Still, he could have made you trust him. He’s done it to me before. The fact that he isn’t messing with either of our heads right now should tell us something.”
As she said it, though, Barrie wondered if it was Eight’s gift that had somehow kept Obadiah from manipulating Eight’s mind the way he had played with hers. The Beaufort gift had probably been the reason Obadiah hadn’t wanted Eight involved in the first place, and when Eight had said he couldn’t read Obadiah, Obadiah had seemed relieved.
The problem—one of many problems—was that Barrie didn’t understand how Eight’s mind and his gift intertwined. She didn’t even understand her own gift well enough for that, which was one more reason why she had to be careful about the possible side effects of Obadiah’s threat.
Eight cast off as Barrie put on her life vest. “There’s a catch somewhere. If all Obadiah wanted was food, he could order up a pizza.”
Barrie snorted and settled onto the seat. “Think that through a minute. It’ll come to you.”
“He’s manipulating you. Some sort of smoke-and-mirrors enticement to lure you back in. Now that you’ve agreed to this, he’ll ask you for something else. The question is, what’s he ultimately after? It’s strange not knowing what he wants.” Eight pulled the cord on the outboard motor perhaps a little more forcefully than was strictly required. “It’s like I’m partially blind. I hate the gift, but being without it is disorienting. I might miss it a little.”
“You can’t read him at all?” Barrie raised her voice above the motor’s rumble, and lifted her face to the heavy air stirred up as the boat got under way.
The wind teased Eight’s hair and made him look younger. More vulnerable. “All I feel is a tar pit of wants with everything dark and bubbling, and every now and then a shape approaches the surface. I get a hint, and then it submerges again. I’ll tell you this much, removing the curse is only part of what he wants—and he doesn’t want me to know what he’s really after.”
“Not everyone is comfortable laying themselves open for examination,” Barrie said mildly. “Not that his motives change anything. We don’t have a choice. Sending Cassie back to jail isn’t an option, and the last thing we want is anyone even mentioning ghosts. If the archaeologists are going to dig, we can’t leave them vulnerable. You didn’t see the way Obadiah was blown backward last night—”
“You didn’t give me a chance to see it.”
Barrie blinked at him and blew out a long, slow breath. Her voice was small, swallowed by the sound of the motor, not even really intended for his ears. “Are you ever going to let that go?”
He surprised her by answering at all. “Maybe. Eventually. If you want it bad enough,” he said with a halfhearted almost smile. Then he closed his eyes. “Oh hell, Bear. I lied earlier. Or I was fooling myself. I wouldn’t miss this gift. I’d give anything—anything—to be rid of it. Wouldn’t you rather have a normal life?”
Bending over the side of the Away, Barrie averted her face, trailing her fingers in the water, torn about too many things. The river spilled through her hand, and she knew the moment she had crossed the midpoint, not only because her headache was gone, but because the current of energy that connected her to Watson’s Landing instantly returned.
She wasn’t used to having to explain herself. She’d only ever had Mark, and the two of them hadn’t been like separate people when it came to decisions or secrets or even thoughts. They had spent so many years being on the same side against Lula that Barrie couldn’t remember a single time that she had wanted something other than what Mark had wanted, or vice versa.
Obadiah had as much as said she had to choose between her gift and Eight. How could she?
The boat bumped against the Watson dock, and she took off her life vest and tossed it aside. “You don’t have to come to the door with me,” she said as he started to tie the boat off. “I’ll be all right.”
His face blank, Eight straightened slowly. “We’re supposed to work on the restaurant today, remember?”
It was on the tip of her tongue to retort that Pru and Mary didn’t need any help. The restaurant was the only thing that seemed to be going right. Everywhere Barrie turned, something needed to be fixed, and whether that was because it had all been brewing before she got there, or because she had somehow stirred it up, it felt as though most of it was her responsibility.
After crossing the garden in near silence, she and Eight climbed to the top of the steps, crossed the porch, and reached for the doorknob simultaneously.
Inside the kitchen, the table looked like a flower shop the day before a wedding, strewn with bows and flowers and silver ribbons being crafted into an assortment of experimental centerpiece arrangements. Pru and Mary had been laughing when the door opened, but their smiles slipped into almost comically identical expressions of suspicion on seeing Eight and Barrie.
“Well?” Mary said. “What’d the Colesworth girl do this time?”
Pru scrutinized Barrie almost frantically, as if checking for wounds or blood. “You look upset, sugar. Everything all right?”
“Of course.” Barrie shot Eight a silent plea for help. “The archaeologists have already found a hidden room using some kind of ground-penetrating radar. It was fascinating,” she said too brightly.
“Fascinating,” Eight echoed unconvincingly. He tucked his hands into his pockets. “I can’t wait to see what they find.”
“What do you mean ‘see’?” Pru stopped in the act of lacing a strand of ribbon through a basket of white hydrangeas and roses. Her hands went still, and the last pink-cheeked traces of laughter faded from her face. “You said you were going over for one quick look.”
Barrie took two tall glasses from the kitchen cupboard. “But now that they’ve found something—”
“I don’t care if they’ve found three-toed aliens from outer space, you aren’t going back there. I’m counting on you and Eight both to help with the furniture when the appraiser and the movers come, and then there’s the horses arriving tomorrow. The feed and the shavings for the bedding will be here in the morning, not to mention that the tack and grooming supplies I orde
red should show up. All that will need to be put away.”
“Going to Cassie’s won’t interfere,” Barrie said, hoping the yunwi would help with all that, too. She went to the refrigerator to pull out a pitcher of lemonade. “We’ll just run over to the dig a couple of times and see what they’re up to. There’s a whole crew working over there, so you won’t need to worry.”
Pru set the flowers on the table and sat back in her chair. “I suppose you and Eight are going to do what you want to do anyway, so I might as well save my breath. In some ways, you’re too much like your mother.”
Barrie whipped around from the refrigerator to protest, but Pru held up two fingers in a Hold on gesture. “You didn’t know Lula like I did. . . .” She flushed and dropped her hand. “Oh, sugar. That came out wrong. I meant you didn’t know Lula back when she was your age.”
Barrie didn’t know why that hit her so hard, but it did. Her stomach twisted as she felt all over again, as if for the very first time, that her mother was gone—truly gone—and she had never really known her at all. She hated that the curse and the gifts, and Emmett and the Colesworths, had taken so much away from all of them.
Eight watched her, then took the lemonade and poured her a glass. “You know,” he said, turning to Pru, “it would be a shame to waste these centerpieces. We should do a trial run of the restaurant. We could use Dad and Kate and Daphne as guinea pigs.”
“Daphne’s goin’ to be helpin’ me serve,” Mary said. “But that’s not a bad idea. It’ll be different from settin’ up in the tearoom, and if you two want to help cook . . . It’d be a chance to take pictures for the website and the advertising. Then we wouldn’t have to wait an extra week.”
Pru gave Mary a brief, keen appraisal. “We’d have to do it tomorrow night, since we have to deal with the appraisers and the movers. Can we make that work? Or is it too soon?”
“We can manage,” Mary said.
“That’s settled, then. In which case . . .” Pru turned to Eight and Barrie. “Would you two go by the hardware store for me? I talked to Darrel about the submergible lights you wanted. If we’re going to take photos, we’ll want to have that set up for effect.”
The last thing Barrie wanted was to be alone with Eight anymore.
“It shouldn’t take you long,” Pru said.
Eight poured himself a glass of lemonade and drank it with his back to the room and his shoulders stiff. Then he went to retrieve the keys to the Mercedes and stood jingling them while Barrie put the pitcher back in the refrigerator. Glancing at him worriedly, Barrie wondered if he’d read her—if he was hurt. Of course he was hurt.
She really needed to figure out how to keep her wants to herself. She also needed to learn to drive a car so he wouldn’t have to cart her around like a five-year-old. And a boat would be nice. Probably she needed to learn to swim, too, and she definitely needed some friends of her own, because how pathetic was it that the only person who was available to teach her any of those things was Eight? He was the reason she needed to learn them in the first place, so she wouldn’t need him for every last stupid little thing.
“Damn, I think I need a twelve-step program. Or a shrink,” she muttered.
“Tell Darrel you’ve come for the fairy globes, and don’t forget to get some fishing net and sinkers to keep them from floating away,” Pru called after her as Barrie followed Eight through the swinging door into the corridor.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Not wanting to argue with Eight when they got in the car, Barrie concentrated on thinking how happy Pru and Mary had looked working on the flowers. “That was a good idea about doing the trial run,” she said. “For Mary’s sake, maybe we can open next week, if we can book some customers.”
“Dad can take care of that. He’ll bully people into coming, if necessary. He’s good at it.”
They passed the turnoff for Alyssa’s barn and continued on to where the first straggling houses of Watson’s Point began, and Eight pointed across Barrie to a tiny patch of lawn on her right. “That’s a bottle tree over there, by the way. In case you’re interested. That looks like it was a dead magnolia someone made over, but people make them out of old boards and nails, or wire, or plastic. Virtually anything.”
The ten-foot tree looked like it was still rooted in the soil, but in place of leaves, a blue wine bottle had been stuck upside down onto the end of every branch. Eight veered onto one of the more residential roads and pointed out another example where the bottles had been threaded onto the branches like oversize Christmas ornaments. Not just trees, either. Bottles hung from the roof of a porch like wind chimes, and someone else had used old Coke bottles to make a chandelier. One house even had a multicolored garden of jelly jars staked along the walkway.
“Clearly,” Barrie said. “People aren’t superstitious at all on Watson Island.”
“It’s not superstition if you know magic is real and dangerous.” Eight took his hand off the wheel and waved it at the houses along the quiet street. “Around here, we’ve all lived with the Fire Carrier and the yunwi and the devil digging for lost shoes a lot longer than you have. If you’d ever heard some of the local Gullah stories about boo hags, you wouldn’t blame them.”
“Boo hags?”
Eight sent her a sideways glance. “Ghosts that steal energy and borrow a person’s skin to be able to walk around. I thought about Obadiah being one of those, too. Still not convinced he isn’t something like that.”
“A ghost or a witch? Because that sounds a lot like the Raven Mocker, doesn’t it? Hell.” Barrie shook her head too hard then regretted it, as that made the throbbing headache behind her eyes even worse. “It’s all starting to sound alike,” she said.
Turning back down toward the main road, Eight said, “That’s not surprising. You throw slaves from all sorts of places and religions all together, and you get a melting pot of folklore and magical systems: hoodoo, voodoo, obeah. A few people here still believe in root medicine and using spirits to help with everything from curing coughs to casting curses. Mostly, it’s because they can’t afford doctors—or don’t trust them, or because their parents used root, and their parents before that.”
Barrie stared out the window, searching for more bottle trees. “This root medicine traps spirits like Obadiah was trying to? Like John Colesworth’s slave trapped the Fire Carrier?”
“I think medicine is more about asking than trapping, and I don’t know what Obadiah was doing with the raven. Something a whole lot darker.”
“If it was real,” Barrie said. “I’m still not sure.”
Then again, she wasn’t sure about anything when it came to Obadiah. Something, whether it was intuition, or her gift, or something else entirely, had been telling her he wasn’t that bad—she couldn’t get past the belief that beyond his threats and the promise of removing Eight’s gift, there was more. But maybe that was wishful thinking more than anything else.
Her gift was definitely growing, changing. She wished she understood that better, too.
Attempting a practical application, she closed her eyes and tried to sense where Darrel’s Tools and Tackle might be located. The slight tug on her finding sense was instant. Even before Eight turned on the blinker, she knew that the store was down the street to the left and that the turn after that would be a right. As soon as she walked under the brown-and-gray-striped awning hung with potted begonias and entered the crowded little shop, she knew where to find the boxes of small pillar candles on the shelves. Knew without having any way of knowing except that they were something she needed.
Darrel, the store owner, was a whip-thin man with a sunburned, balding head and a pleasant smile. Unlike everyone else Barrie had met on Watson Island, he didn’t seem curious about her, or at least he kept his curiosity well contained. As Barrie and Eight walked up, he wrestled a stack of medium-size cardboard boxes out from behind the register and set them on the counter beside a display case of chewing tobacco and a box of fishing lures.
“Like I told Pru, I’m happy to get rid of these. I’ve got twelve cases taking up room on my shelves after a tourist ordered them and never picked them up. Still, I got to thinking after I hung up with Pru, and I’m wondering if y’all might not do better with the AquaLeds we got in for the Fourth of July celebration a few years back. The mayor never used the orange ones ’cause he figured folks would think something was on fire, but that might be just what you’re looking for to make folks think they’ve seen the Fire Carrier, if that’s what you’re after. I’d charge admission, if it was me. Throw the gates open at midnight, take the money, and run—and keep running with it as long as I could. Said so to Pru when she called.”
“You never know who would come prowling around if Pru and Barrie did that,” Eight said.
Darrel pursed his lips, thinking it over. “I reckon that’s true enough. Wouldn’t be safe, would it? Say, did Beezer get that new security system put in yet?”
He and Eight started discussing microwave barriers and perimeter detection, and Barrie excused herself. Letting the finding sense guide her along the shelves, she gathered up the candles and lead sinkers that she wanted, but the finest-gauge fishing net she could find still seemed too big to hold the fairy globes securely. She grabbed some fishing line and, with her arms full and the box of sinkers balanced between the candles and her chin, headed back to the counter.
“Is there a fabric store around here anywhere?” she asked.
Eight came and took the stack of packages from her. “There’s Alice Loly’s place, Threadbare Crafts. It’s just down the road.”
“Would they have netting? Or cheesecloth maybe?”
“My wife bought some of that stuff they use to make ballerina dresses there last year for my granddaughter’s dance recital.” Darrel steadied the boxes Eight set on the counter, and then went back to ringing up a stack of word search puzzles Eight had taken from a carousel of audiobooks and travel games.
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