by Lyla Payne
Dread fills my heart. Wherever the illegitimate line of Draytons began, it’s clear enough that he wishes I hadn’t revealed its existence to Mama Lottie.
“Be gone, brat!” Her voice booms, and the ghost of the small boy squeals, disappearing into a mist before he is two feet away.
I turn back to Mama Lottie, water dripping from my bangs onto my forehead. I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve given away something I shouldn’t have, but the mysteries at Drayton Hall are too many and too hidden for me to understand how they weave together.
“Who is he?” I ask, unable to stop my curiosity even when everything else is falling apart.
“No one who matters anymore.” She waves her hand dismissively, gaze fixed on the jar of hair I’ve yet to set down for her. “Leave that, and be gone with you.”
I have no idea if she’ll keep her promise, no matter her boast regarding her reputation. No idea why the boy thought it would have been better if she never found out about the missing Draytons. No idea if the actions I’m taking, and have already taken, are going to screw with the cosmos and destroy the future of the world, even if it does save my family in the process.
I don’t care. Right now, I want out of Mama Lottie’s presence and away from Drayton Hall. If I never see either again in my entire life it will be too soon.
Greed twists her expression into a terrible mask of manic glee as she stares at the jar. The strands of hair I pulled from that shower drain in Savannah are all she needs to complete her curse on my boyfriend’s family. Ex-boyfriend? I don’t even know, but after this, it’s not hard to guess which way we’ll end up.
I shouldn’t do this. I know it, feel it deep down in my bones, but as hard as we’ve tried, there are no alternatives. I’ve learned nothing about Mama Lottie that I can use to deter her from her evil mission. No way to convince her to simply give up the ghost—literally—and move on from this place of hatred.
Tears burn in my eyes. Thoughts of everything my family has suffered, the deaths of children, generation after generation, do a macabre dance in my mind. Memories of what Amelia has been through trying to bring baby Jack into the world knock the wind out of me, and the knowledge that I’m doing that to another family threatens to push tears from my eyes.
“Please,” I try, unable to stop myself. “Please don’t do this. You can change your mind. The Draytons are good people. They cared for you.”
The malevolence that leaps out of her is so black I can see it. It reminds me of the shadows inside the terrible house I visited with Daria, the ones that made me feel as though I’d never be warm again. They fly at me along the riverside, and the ensuing touch against my cheeks is as bad as the caress of any ghost.
“Do not dare defend them to me. Do not dare.” She’s gone still again. Terror grabs hold of me, begging me to run. “You know nothing of my life, of my sacrifices. You could never. You will never, because of the circumstances of your birth, have such a precious thing as your life stolen from you.”
I stare at her, frozen. Words form in my mind but my mouth remains still, locked open by the force of her hatred. It’s created the black creatures that surround me, and they hold any action at bay. Maybe there are no words, no response, because she’s not wrong. Not about this, anyway.
“Get out of my sight, you wretch.” She steps forward, the malice coloring her face enough to convince me she would be only too happy to curse me again, if only she could. My heart squeezes, desperate to obtain her promise that she’ll fulfill her end of the bargain, and the disgust that curls up her lips in a smile says she reads it. “I’ll help you remove the curse on Anne Bonny’s maternal line. Come back in three days. Do not be late.”
With that, she’s gone. The creatures evaporate with her, dumping me onto my hands and knees in the muddy grass. Only the snakes remain, watching me through slitted, glassy eyes and encouraging me to my feet. I beat a hasty retreat the way I came, trying to be thankful that the curse is almost over. I’ve delivered what she wants, I haven’t been arrested, and I’m still alive.
Things could always be worse, I remind myself as I climb into my car and bend over the steering wheel, trying and failing to hold back tears. It must be true, but no matter how hard I try to come up with how, nothing comes to mind.
Chapter Two
The drive back to Heron Creek takes longer than it should. My car slides off the muddy roads around the plantation not once, but twice, slowing me further. The first time, I’m able to get it back on the road with nothing but patience and well-timed curses, but the second, I have to hunt for wood to jam in front of my tires so that they can spin their way out of the muck.
I think about calling someone while I’m on my knees caked in filth, but I’m tired of inconveniencing people. Tired of thinking about the fact that Beau’s not mine to call anymore. I just want to get home, and through sweat and pure determination, my Honda and I are on our way after more than an hour’s delay.
Heron Creek, the sleepy little town that felt like home before it officially became that, greets me with weary eyes and wet streets, water sluicing in raging rivulets through the gutters. The houses and streetlights are dark, likely the effect of the now-calming storm on my quiet hamlet.
Hamlet. What a funny word, lost to the association with Shakespeare’s well-known emo whiner of a main character. I’ve always loved the writer, and a good sad story, but cannot bear that particular tragedy.
My headlights bounce off the front porch as I swing into the driveway, taking care not to hit Amelia’s new sedan where it’s parked. The car in the street makes me wary—I’m pretty sure it belongs to Dylan Travis, the last person I feel like confronting at the moment.
I just betrayed a good man, my integrity, and possibly the ghost of a little Drayton boy in the process. I’m cold, wet, covered in muddy slop and heaven knows what else. Beau and I are teetering on the edge of being over, if we haven’t already slipped down the other side. It’s not as though that damned email from Travis’s adoptive parents is the last thing on my mind, but at the moment, it’s nowhere near the top. I need to check on Millie, take a hot shower, throw back something that can warm up my insides, and pass out.
The look on Travis’s face when I find him on the front porch suggests what I want and what he wants are incompatible. He steps forward, his too-strong jaw set with determination and the rest of him looking as haggard as I’ve ever seen him. He runs a hand through his hair. The question in his eyes is clear: he wants to know if I know who he might be to me. I wonder if he’ll tell me what he should have told me himself months ago, when he first arrived in Heron Creek.
I hold his gaze, letting him see the truth in my eyes.
His face droops, and he folds in on himself, crestfallen. He opens his mouth, then closes it again as we both hear a bump from inside the house.
The glance he casts toward the windows is wary, then he looks back at me with a glint of manic desperation. “Graciela, I have to talk to you.”
All of the events of not only this evening but the past few days pile up on my back like a legion of monkeys grown fat over the holidays. They weigh me down with fatigue, with an exhaustion that won’t allow for sympathy, regardless of the obvious distress that’s taken hold of the town’s new detective. There is only space for anger, in the hopes that it will push away anything and everyone trying to bar me from my room.
“It seems to me that the time for talking was weeks ago. I’m not sure what it’s time for now, but at the moment, I’d love some silence.” I hold up my hand when he starts to protest, sure I’m going to relent if he starts to cry—which honest to Cheez-Its looks like it’s imminent. A twinge in my chest softens my voice. “Travis, I’m not saying I hate your guts, for heaven’s sake. We can talk. Just not now.”
He swallows once, then again, seeming to struggle with getting himself under control. As hard as I silently will him to step around me and off the porch, to sense that nothing good can come out of us discussing anything
right now—never mind the mind-boggling revelation that he thinks we’re siblings—he doesn’t move.
“What are you even doing out on the porch, anyway?” I ask, exasperated by how close my sanctuary is without my being able to access it. A sudden, unexpected fear turns my tongue to ash. “Is Amelia home?”
What if she isn’t? What if something happened, and because my phone didn’t have service, she couldn’t get me? I reach into the pocket of my windbreaker, fingers scrabbling for the outdated phone. I turn it on, seeing that the service has been restored and I’ve missed a dozen calls from my cousin.
“She’s fine,” Travis assures me, snapped out of his stupor and edging toward the porch steps. Finally. “She, uh, got tired of me and told me to leave. When I sort of refused, she banished me out here.”
I feel my eyes go wide even as warm relief gushes into my chest. My fingers relax their stranglehold on my phone. “She banished you?”
He shrugs, color flushing his sallow cheeks now. “I think she was worried about not being able to get a hold of you. Plus, that Asian girl from Drayton Hall was here and they’ve been reading. I don’t know.”
“Look, Travis, I’m sorry to do this but there’s a lot going on and I need to go inside. We’ll talk later, okay?”
The front door flies open before he can reply or escape, and the light from the foyer frames my cousin. The change in her appearance happened so slowly, or at least appeared to since I see her every day now, that confronting it all at once stuns me. Amelia is due in about two months now and her belly is round and huge, but the most striking difference is the wild alertness in her eyes. Well, that and the fact that her blond curls are seriously greasy. The Amelia I grew up with was meticulous about her hair.
There are too many versions of Amelia to keep track of what was altered and when, but if I could get back the one who counted as not only my cousin but childhood best friend, everything would be worth it.
“Grace, oh my god, why didn’t you answer your phone?” She grabs for my arms, dragging me inside and shooting a murderous look at Travis in the process. “Go home, Dylan!”
She shouts the last part as she slams the door in his face, then focuses her attention on me. Something’s happened, that much is clear from the excitement on her delicate features, but the worry in her emerald green eyes—replicas of mine and Anne Bonny’s—has become a fixture.
“Why are you being so rude to him?” I ask. “Grams would be rolling over in her grave to see you leave a guest out on the porch in a rainstorm like that.”
She waves her hand, grumbling impatiently. “I gave him an umbrella. Did you see Mama Lottie?”
“Yes.” There’s more I could say, perhaps, but she knows what the simple yes entails. I don’t want to confess aloud all of the sins I’ve committed tonight.
“Oh, Grace.” She tightens her fingers, still on my arm, and tugs me into the kitchen.
The table is piled with old books in various faded shades of greens, blues, and reds. No words adorn the spines and a few of them lie open and on top of one another. I remember then that Travis said Jenna was here earlier, and it clicks—these are Charlotta Drayton’s journals.
My interest piques. “Jenna brought the journals.”
“Yes.” My cousin picks up one of the open volumes. “And you’ll never guess what I found out about James… He’s Mama Lottie’s son,” she rushes on, not waiting for me to guess, thank god.
“What?” The blood rushes from my head, leaving me dizzy and clinging to the back of one of the kitchen chairs for support. “How?”
“I don’t know. They’re all from Charlotta’s point-of-view, you know, and she and James met when they were young. She was around ten. It took her a long time to find out who his mother was because he would never tell her. But they fell in love. It’s all there.”
My brain struggles to make sense of it all, to put it in order. “How did she find out he belonged to Mama Lottie?”
Amelia grimaces, her impatience with me clear. “What does it matter, Grace? You can read about the details yourself, but right now, you need to turn your ass around and get back to Drayton Hall.”
I’m so tired. Too tired and heartsick to keep up, but I manage to bite my tongue to stop myself from asking another stupid question. It only takes a moment for me to answer it myself.
“You think she won’t curse the family if she knows she’ll be cursing her own descendants, at least in part.” I bite my lower lip, thinking it over while my cousin nods. “I don’t know if it will work. She’s pretty pissed, and who’s to say she doesn’t already know about her kid fathering a child with Charlotta?”
Even as the words leave my lips, I think about the distress on the little boy ghost’s face when I revealed to Mama Lottie the existence of an illegitimate branch of the Drayton family tree. He hadn’t wanted her to know, and combined with her own surprise when I told her why the original curse had been incomplete, must mean she doesn’t know. Which is something to work with, anyway.
“How do you know if you don’t try?” Amelia encourages me. “Maybe she died before they had the kid. Maybe he never told her.”
“Do you know what happened to James?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t have time to read them all, obviously, and we started at the beginning, which took up a bunch of time. We can finish, though. There might be more details.”
“I don’t need details. You’re right.” Strength trickles through my veins with the tiniest spark of hope that this train can be stopped before it rams straight into everyone I love.
I hadn’t taken off any of my clothes or even dropped my purse, so I dig my keys out and slog out of the kitchen, leaving a mess in my wake. Amelia hurries after me, bumping me with her new width.
“Let me come with you.”
I shake my head. “No way. It’s disgusting out there, and there’s nothing you can do.”
“What if she doesn’t believe you? I could help.”
“You’ve done enough.” I stop with one hand on the front door, turning to look at her. Her lips are pressed in a determined line and her hands are on her hips. My heart clenches. “I can’t, Millie. Mel and Leo have already been arrested. Beau’s about to be cursed. I’m doing all of this to save you and Jack. I couldn’t stand it if you ended up in more trouble because of me.”
“Let’s get one thing straight, Grace. No one is in trouble because of you. They’re in trouble because they know you’re fighting to do the right thing and they want to help. Same as me.” Her lips twist into a semblance of a smile. “That said, I’ll stay. Not because you told me to but because I think it’s best not to give you any more stress.”
“How magnanimous of you,” I tease, a little surprised I have the capacity. The knowledge about James has buoyed my spirits. Maybe because I finally know something that Mama Lottie doesn’t. Presumably.
“Be careful.” My cousin looks like she’s starting to fret, shifting her weight and twisting her fingers together. “Good luck.”
“Thanks.”
I don’t want to go back out in the rain. I don’t want to go back to Drayton Hall, just a few hours from dawn now. I don’t want to leave Amelia.
I walk out the door anyway, noticing that Travis is gone and so is his car. Amelia will have to tell me what exactly caused her to toss him out in the weather later, because it’s certainly curious.
Then again, there’s so little these days that isn’t.
The subtle change of the sky from black to navy blue sends shivers of anxiety down my spine. I’ve been back on the grounds at Drayton Hall for over two hours with no sign of Mama Lottie. The daylight, no matter how watery and limp, means it’s time to leave. My former co-workers have all been informed about my banishment from the property and are either too scared or too loyal to let my presence go without sounding the alarms. Except Jenna, maybe, but I’m pretty sure she’d prefer to keep our alliance a secret.
As a last-ditch effort, I dig out my phone
and call Daria. I’ve got 2 percent battery left and figure there’s no better use. She’s the medium who can actually see ghosts when she wants to, after all, as opposed to my annoying talent for having them pop up whenever they damn well please.
“Do you seriously not know what time it is?” Daria grumbles into the phone.
“I do. To be honest, I’m more than a little surprised you picked up.”
“What do you want?” Hesitation edges her wary question. Daria made her feelings about having anything to do with Mama Lottie and her curses clear. As in, she prefers to steer clear.
If only I could do the same.
“I’m at Drayton Hall,” I start, then push on through her groan. “And I can’t find Mama Lottie.”
“That sounds like you should be counting your lucky stars and not calling me.”
“Daria, I need to tell her something! It’s really important, and she’s not here. How do I find her?”
“Have you tried going through your grounding and opening process? That will protect you and let any willing spirits know you’re open to talking.”
She sounds loath to suggest it, as loath as I am to attempt it on my own with a ghost as powerful as Mama Lottie.
“No. I’m not sure I can handle it.”
“You can’t handle it, I’ll tell you that.” She pauses, and the sound of ice clinking into a glass filters over the line. Daria’s making a drink. At six thirty in the morning. “She might have her reasons for not wanting to appear or talk to you.”
“Yeah, I pissed her off earlier tonight, and she told me to leave.”
“Anyone ever tell you that you’re not very bright?”
“No. I am quite bright.”
“Well, use your God-given brains and get the hell out of there, then!” The sound of her swallowing not once, or twice, but three times comes over the line. “Seriously, Graciela, you know I don’t think you should be messing with that woman. You should turn around and leave.”