Persuasion

by Martina Boone

  “What are the puzzles for?” Barrie asked.

  Eight’s grin was uneven, a little sheepish, and too charming for Barrie’s equilibrium. “I figured, since you wanted practice looking for answers,” he said, “they would come in handy.”

  Every time Barrie ever started to doubt, he showed her exactly why her intuition had chosen him. She stood on her toes and kissed him on the cheek.

  After she had paid for the lights and supplies, Darrel helped them carry the boxes out and stack them in the trunk. Instead of getting in the car when they were done, Eight took Barrie’s hand and headed down the sidewalk. “Threadbare Crafts is only about eight doors down,” he said. “We might as well walk.”

  His long legs made his pace faster than strictly comfortable, and Barrie had to hurry to keep up. “I keep forgetting that you know what you know,” she said. “There are times when I hate your gift, but then you do something like this. . . .”

  “I know exactly when you forget because that’s when you stop trying to convince me you want something other than what you really want.” Eight’s lips twitched, and his head cocked to the side as he looked at her.

  “I’m sorry.” In her head, Barrie made the apology a blanket statement, covering everything from going to Cassie’s without him to not telling him about his father or Obadiah. Hurting Eight was the last thing she would ever want to do, but her gift was part of her. She couldn’t give it up.

  Eight stopped walking. “I lied earlier when I said that I wouldn’t stay mad at you if you didn’t want me to be mad,” he said. “That’s only part of it. Mostly, it’s hard to stay mad at you when what you want most so often has to do with making someone else happy. I know you agreed to look for Obadiah for me today. I wasn’t fair earlier.”

  “I’m trying to do the right thing,” Barrie said. “I just wish I knew what the right thing was.”

  A beige Ford that had been driving by suddenly pulled to the curb, and the passenger window descended. Eight caught Barrie’s elbow and started walking again even faster than before.

  The car followed them, keeping pace, the red-faced driver leaning across the passenger seat to shout out the open window. “Hey, aren’t you Barrie Watson? I recognize you from your picture—I’m Carl Abrams from the Journal of Parapsychology.”

  “Keep walking,” Eight said to Barrie.

  The driver stayed with them. “Hey, no. Please. Can’t you give me just a minute? I’ve been trying to get ahold of you or your aunt to ask if I can set up some equipment at Watson’s Landing. And I’d like—”

  Whatever else he’d been going to say was lost in the jangle of a cowbell above the door of the craft shop as Eight pushed Barrie inside. She looked back through the glass. The reporter had been leaning across the passenger seat with the window rolled down, but already he was straightening and throwing the car into park to come after them.

  Eight propelled Barrie past a startled-looking white-haired woman wielding a pair of scissors at a fabric-cutting table. “Hey, Alice. Reporter.” He hooked a thumb behind him at the sidewalk. “Can you head him off while we duck out the back?”

  To the left of the fabric counter, a curtain made of long strings of buttons marked the entrance to a back room. The strands clanked gently as Barrie followed Eight through, and then settled back into place behind them. They had only just fallen silent when the cowbell rang out in the shop to signal that the front door had opened.

  Barrie hated running away. Part of what she loved most about Watson Island was the sense that she didn’t need to hide anymore, not her gift and not herself. But wasn’t that exactly what she was doing now? Hiding herself at Watson’s Landing. Hiding the Fire Carrier. Hiding what she was doing and what she knew. She didn’t want to live like that.

  As she and Eight ducked back through the hardware store on the way to Eight’s car, she stopped long enough to buy every box of orange AquaLeds that Darrel had. If she and Eight were going to have to keep Obadiah fed, they would need to shuttle between Watson’s Landing and Colesworth Place. Eight would be back and forth from Beaufort Hall. They would all have to come into town to shop for supplies. None of that was going to be possible with ghost hunters watching them and reporters jumping them at every opportunity, so she had to do something about them once and for all.

  She hadn’t changed her mind about what she’d said to Darrel. She had no intention of trying to fool anyone by re-creating the Fire Carrier’s flames in the water around Watson’s Landing. At least not for money.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  The reporter from the Journal of Parapsychology remained on the sidewalk looking after them as Eight drove away. He made no move to follow, and Barrie let herself relax against the seat.

  “Okay, you can slow down,” she said. “Before we leave town, can we loop back around to the QuickMart and park without being too obvious?”

  “Why, exactly?”

  “To pick up a cooler and sandwiches so you can drop them off for Obadiah. It’ll save me from having to sneak something out of the pantry.”

  “So I can drop them off? You don’t give up, do you?”

  “Not when it’s important, no. And can you stop on your way home tonight? Please?”

  Eight left the car in the street behind the QuickMark, and they ducked through a driveway and a low hedge to reach the small parking lot behind the store. Inside, the aisles were narrow and crammed full of everything possible, most of it geared more toward tourists than regular residents. Exactly what Barrie had hoped to find.

  Her finding sense led her toward the carousel of thin, neon-colored beach towels in the back corner, but she nearly barreled into a pyramid display of toilet paper on the way. Swerving around it, she knocked a bottle of Cheerwine off the shelf onto the yellow-gray linoleum, where it bounced, rolled, and finally came to rest against a bottom shelf of dusty camp stoves and generic look-alike NyQuil bottles. Eight stooped to pick it up.

  Three sun-faded Styrofoam coolers stood on the shelf beside the window. Even better, a deli in the back of the store made sandwiches to order. Barrie bought two chicken salad and a couple of roast beef, as well as two loaves of Italian bread, a package of ham, a box of Pop-Tarts, and a gallon jug of drinking water. Finally, she found a thermos and filled it with viscous coffee that looked like it had been warming on the burner most of the day.

  “Also a bag of ice, please,” she said to the guy behind the cash register as she pulled out her credit card again.

  “You can pick that up from the freezer in the parking lot.” The kid, wearing his ball cap backward on his freckled forehead, had his eyes glued on her and his elbows splayed across the counter. He shifted the toothpick in his mouth to the other side and flicked a look at Eight before ringing her purchases up.

  All told, the shopping spree had taken less than fifteen minutes, but Barrie stopped to check the street before she stepped back outside. “Hey, what’s parapsychology anyway?” she asked.

  Eight, too, stepped out onto the sidewalk and looked both ways. “Some kind of ghost hunter thing,” he said. “The coast is clear.”

  “Thanks.” Then she had to smile. “This is stupid, right? I feel like I should be wearing a dark trench coat and practicing my code words. ‘The night is dark and full of terrors.’ ”

  “I’m not sure anyone uses Game of Thrones quotes as code words,” Eight said, laughing out loud. “But if you’re so worried about ghost hunters, why’d you change your mind about the AquaLeds?” He headed around toward the parking lot.

  “Because Darrel had the wrong motive, but the right idea. I’m tired of worrying about people going into the woods or seeing us go back and forth.”

  “We can always use the tunnel. Dad had someone out to brick up the piece we tore out and put a new grate on, but we have keys, and it would be less conspicuous. And the first diners at the restaurant will all be people who grew up hearing stories about the Fire Carrier. Dad will make sure of that.” Eight stopped at the blue-and-white self-
serve ice freezer and handed the cooler full of sandwiches and drinks to Barrie to hold while he grabbed a bag of cubes.

  “I don’t want Pru worried anymore,” Barrie said. “All this ghost stuff, the people watching us from the river . . . I want our privacy back.”

  “What’s that got to do with the lights you bought?”

  Rubbing her head, Barrie stepped around a melted ice-cream cone someone had dropped onto the asphalt. “I want to try putting the AquaLeds around the dock and shoreline. If we’re lucky and we can make it look like we’re trying to make the river seem like it’s burning underwater, or at least as if someone seeing it from a distance could think that was what was happening, maybe people will assume the rumors of the Fire Carrier have been a hoax all along. At the very least, maybe we can create enough light and confusion that people like the reporter will give up or focus their attention somewhere else. The fire runs all the way around Watson’s Landing. Let them watch from the other side of the river, if they want to. Or from the bridge over the creek. As long as they aren’t parked out behind the house. Starting tonight, I want our privacy back.”

  Eight stared at her for what seemed a very long time. “Well, I admit the idea is no crazier than anything else you’ve come up with lately. Which, I’ll admit, isn’t saying much.”

  Barrie had to give him that, so she just smiled. The more she thought about the AquaLed idea, the more she was able to convince herself it might actually work.

  It had to work.

  She couldn’t bear the thought of having more articles published, bringing more ghost hunters, more people staring.

  Thinking of the Fire Carrier also reminded her that she’d been ignoring him as a source of information. He was the only one who knew the truth of what had happened with John Colesworth, Robert Beaufort, Thomas Watson, and Obadiah’s ancestor. If Barrie could find a way to communicate with him, he might be able to help her navigate through any danger that Obadiah posed to Watson’s Landing.

  The Fire Carrier wanted something from her, and it was past time she found out what that was. At the very least, if she could find out more about the lodestones, maybe she could move the Watson lodestone somewhere else.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  They reached Eight’s car, packed the cooler with ice around the food, and headed back toward the highway.

  “The more I think about it, your idea with the lights isn’t totally crazy,” Eight said, pushing his hair back out of his eyes. “At the very least, it will be a nice effect for people coming to the restaurant, and it will probably look great for the photographs. We can set it up tomorrow.”

  “Why not tonight?” Barrie took in the sudden tension in his jaw and instantly tensed herself.

  He looked away with an embarrassed flush. “I have to go out to the University of South Carolina for a baseball team thing. They finally wrote and said they want to meet with me about a spot. I was supposed to ask you earlier if you want to come with me.”

  “Supposed to?” Barrie turned more fully in her seat, and the seat belt felt loose, as if she had grown smaller or lost all her air. “But you didn’t ask.”

  “There’s been a lot going on today. So do you want to come?”

  Anyone who said they were supposed to do something wasn’t looking forward to doing it. Not that Barrie could blame Eight if he hadn’t completely forgiven her yet. Talking to the Fire Carrier might be a step toward finding a permanent solution, and she needed the boats gone for that.

  “Would you mind if I don’t come?” she asked, fidgeting with her watch. “I’d really like to get this done, and you know how much I don’t know about baseball. I’d embarrass you the second I opened my mouth.”

  “I wanted you to see the campus and see Columbia. I thought maybe we could get away from here for a change. Go somewhere we can be just ourselves and not all the things that come with being Watsons and Beauforts.”

  Barrie reached for his hand instead, because that was all she could reach, and she wound her fingers through his and took simple pleasure in the warmth of his skin on hers for a moment before she spoke.

  “Your dad’s not coming?” she asked.

  “I didn’t ask him to.”

  Barrie wanted to go with him, and have a real date, and celebrate with him if the coach said they would have him, and commiserate with him if the team turned him down. She wanted to say, of course she would go. But if she even asked what time they’d be home, he would become suspicious.

  “You should ask your dad instead of me,” she said instead. “You and I can go another night—I’d love to do that—but you two need to figure things out. You need a chance to talk.”

  Eight took his eyes off the road long enough that the old boat of a car began to drift across the yellow-painted line in the road. “You’re trying to mask what you want again. What are you up to now? Or should I even ask? Why is it so important for you to do the lights tonight?”

  Widening her eyes, Barrie gave him a ghost of a smile. “I just want everything to be perfect tomorrow night. For Mary’s sake, but also because I thought we could try a bit of matchmaking. As stubborn as your dad is, he and Pru might never get around to having a date if we don’t give them a push. Also, Pru tends to make him more human, and . . . I don’t know. ‘Nice,’ I guess, is the word I’m looking for. I was going to suggest you and I do the cooking tomorrow and let him and Pru have an ‘impromptu’ romantic dinner.”

  “By which you mean that Mary will be in on it?” Eight considered, and after a beat, he nodded. “I like it.”

  He helped her carry the bags and boxes into the kitchen, where Pru and Mary had moved from flower arrangements to folding stacks of linen napkins into complicated roses and designing a short and elegant menu that could also work as a souvenir. After retrieving the cooler and the bag of bread, Pop-Tarts, and coffee, Eight caught Barrie’s hand.

  “Walk me to the steps.”

  Barrie’s heart skipped a beat as they ducked out the back door, but then she grimaced as she spotted two boats on the river, closer to the dock than boats had ever ventured before. Something glinted in the sunlight—a camera or binoculars.

  Eight muttered under his breath and then caught her elbow. “Come downstairs.”

  “I thought you were in a hurry to leave, baseball guy.”

  “Soon,” he said with a grin.

  He descended faster than she did and stopped at the bottom beside the rosebush where he had offered her a rose not long after they had met. Out of sight of both the kitchen and the river, he put the food down and slid his hands up slowly, bringing them to rest on her waist. Their eyes were level while she stood a step above him. Barrie couldn’t stand to look at him that directly for fear that he would see inside her too deeply.

  “I wish you were coming tonight,” he said, “but you’re probably right. You wouldn’t want to sit around waiting on me. It’ll be more fun another time. Just promise me you don’t intend to go over and see Obadiah in the middle of the night. Or anything equally ridiculous.”

  Barrie wiggled her little finger. “Pinky swear. I promise I’m not going over there alone.”

  He didn’t look away until after Barrie had blushed beneath his scrutiny. “Before you say it, yes, I know I was the one who said we’d go over there today. But that doesn’t mean we have to keep digging ourselves deeper.” He pointed to the cooler and the bag of food.

  “You don’t really believe the Raven Mocker or boo hag thing, do you?”

  “Do I think that he’s going to borrow my skin and wear it like a suit? Or that he’s going to eat my heart? No, not really,” Eight said. “But if he’s as old as you think, he’s getting those years from somewhere. That can’t be exactly safe.”

  Barrie tried to ignore the chill that ran through her at the idea of Obadiah’s age.

  “I’m not telling you this to get you to change your mind about taking the food. Whatever Obadiah’s up to, it won’t hurt to watch him. What I’m trying to say is that I
don’t want to fight anymore. Especially not over this. Part of the reason I got so mad last night didn’t have anything to do with you. I’ve had to fight my dad for years just to get a vote in my own life. He’s always wanting me to do things because he thinks he knows what’s best. I know you meant well, but making a deal with Obadiah that involved my gift, that hit a trigger point. It’s too similar to what Dad’s always done.”

  If guilt had a taste, it was the copper-penny tang of blood in Barrie’s mouth as she bit her lip. Eight was apologizing, and she was the one who had put her own gift ahead of his, her own opinions ahead of his. And she was still doing it. She had to keep doing it. She was worse than Seven. Or at the very least, just as culpable, since she was keeping Seven’s secret.

  “You have to talk to your father about the binding,” she said. “Take him with you tonight, and use the time in the car to make him tell you everything he knows.”

  Eight pulled her close, and she rested her forehead against his. “What are you thinking?” he asked.

  “Would you rather know what people think than what they want?”

  “At this moment, no.” His brow furrowed, and he looked her straight in the eye. Then he sighed and slid his thumb across her cheekbone, pushing back a strand of hair that had escaped her elastic band. “You’re torn between wanting to be closer and wanting to push me away,” he said, “so I vote for closer. I’ll always vote for closer.”

  He dropped his arm back around her waist, and the strength of him flowed around her, but it was more than bone and muscle. Standing within the circle of his arms, Barrie was both stronger and weaker than she’d ever been. It took vulnerability to forge strength, the way true courage required fear.

  She craved the closeness of honesty, but she wasn’t convinced she had the strength for it. She kissed him instead, wanting to breathe him in, wanting to make every moment count. He stepped closer, pressing until her back was against the post.