Not Quite Right (A Lowcountry Mystery) (Lowcountry Mysteries Book 6)
Page 18
It’s a simple, one-room space with a pit on one side for a fire and a pallet on the other side. That’s where we find Odette. She’s soaked in sweat, her forehead gleaming, but shivers underneath a threadbare blanket that looks scratchy.
Her eyes are as sharp as ever, despite the fever, and don’t show the slightest bit of surprise at seeing me hovering over her out here in the middle of nowhere.
“Yah brung that thar curse all tha way ta me, huh, girlie?” She shakes her head weakly. “Shoulda known yah coun’t handle it on yah own.”
The woman, who never introduced herself, slips out of the hut. I plop down on the dusty floor next to Odette’s pallet, happy for the warmth from the fire and ready to rest, while she eyes Leo.
“How ya doin’ t’nigt, hansom?”
I can’t help but roll my eyes. The last thing Leo needs is an ego boost.
“I’m doin’ just fine, Miss Odette.”
“Miss.” She chuckles. It’s raspy. “You young devil.”
“This is Leo Boone,” I tell her, anxious to move on. “We’re here because I gave Mama Lottie what she wanted, but I don’t know if she took away the curse.”
“She ain’t done it.”
“I suspected as much.” I pause. “What’s wrong with you? Are you okay?”
“I’s an old woman, and a virus got me. I be fine in a few days. Root doctor comin’ tah see me t’night.”
I can’t help but survey the small hut. I’m not sure a man who calls himself a “root doctor” is someone I want to meet.
Or maybe I do…
“What’s a root doctor?” I ask.
“Med’cine man. Healer.” She startles, as though she’s realized the same thing that hit me, then eyes me with renewed interest. “’Haps he can help yah, girlie. Won’ hurt tah ask.”
“You think he could help with the curse? Really?”
“Sure as shootin’. Man know his curses.” She peers at me, then her gaze slides to Leo and back. “Where’s yer kin? The one got it tha worst?”
My throat clogs at the mention of Amelia, at facing the fact that I’m going to have to stay it aloud.
“She’s missing,” Leo says, coming to my rescue.
“S’that so.”
Odette goes silent for a few moments. I’m acutely aware and sorry that I didn’t bring her anything, not even tea or a drink or some of the pralines from the Market that she likes so much. I hate that I’ve become so single-minded and focused, but there are so many things pulling me fifteen different ways.
“I’m sorry I didn’t bring you anything,” I say, my heart hurting. “I wasn’t thinking.”
“Yah got enough on yah mind. I s’pect yah’ll make it up tah me somehow.” She grins, her half-toothless one, and I feel better. “Root doctor gonna be here any time. Yah wanna wait, yah can.”
Leo puts a hand on my shoulder and squeezes. “I’ll be right back.”
“Where are you going?”
“Just out to the car to grab something.”
“Yah better be careful of that ass out thar, hansom!” Odette squeals with laughter, sounding more like a teenage girl than a sick old woman, as Leo steps outside shaking his head. Once he’s gone, she turns her grin on me. “I likes ’im.”
“Well, I’m afraid you might have to take a number.”
“He gonna settle down someday. Yah can count on it.”
“Odette,” I say, wanting to get away from the topic of Leo and women. “Do you think it’s possible that Mama Lottie could have taken Amelia? She was at our house the night she disappeared and I…I made her angry.”
Her expression turns serious, the grooves that line her eyes and mouth deepening with concern. “What did yah do tah her? Shouln’t be messin’ with no evil. Yah knows better. Or yah should.”
“I wasn’t messing with her. I had information that I thought she would want. About her new curse.”
“Like what?”
I can’t tell if she’s curious because it sounds juicy or because she thinks more information will make it easier to help me, but in reality, I don’t care. Who’s she going to tell, the people outside? The customers who buy her sweetgrass baskets at the Market?
“Mama Lottie’s son fathered the illegitimate line of Draytons. I thought she might reconsider cursing them if she knew she’d be cursing her own blood, but I don’t know. It only seemed to make her hate them more.”
Odette licks her lips, which look parched. I spot a pitcher of water and a cup in the corner and go fetch it, pouring some for her and handing it over.
“Mercy. I’s tired all the way tah mah bones.” She drains the cup, then wipes her lip and settles back on the straw that lines the pallet. “Yah don’ know tha whole tale. ’Bout yah ghost.”
“Obviously,” I mutter. “But I’m working on it.”
“She gots her own secrets, child. Yah gotta know ’em, too, if yah wanna crack her.”
“I’d like to crack her neck. She did her best to crack me in half the other night.”
Odette shakes her head, dark eyes boring into mine. “No. All people’s got their own troubles. Hers might be worse’n yah think. Worse’n yah can imagine. Find out why she’s hurtin’, then figure out how tah help her. That’s what yah do, innit?”
I think about it for a moment. It’s what I hope I do for the spirits who come to seek my help. Maybe that’s my problem: I’ve been think of Mama Lottie as an adversary when, in truth, she’s another ghost who needs my help.
My fingers explore the still-tender bump on the back of my head. Thinking about helping her goes against the genes my mother handed down, the ones making my blood thick with the desire for revenge, but if turning all of this around to help Mama Lottie means putting an end to this whole thing, then I have to find a way to get my heart behind it.
“Look what I found!” Leo crows, stepping back into the hut clutching a small, brown leather case in one hand. He holds it above his head like a triumphant athlete at an award ceremony. He raises his eyebrows at our blank looks. “It’s dominoes.”
“Holy crickets, Leo. Are you a ninety-year-old man trapped in the wrong body?”
“Shut up.” He settles on the floor next to me, dumping the rectangular pieces out onto the floor. They clatter against the wooden floorboards, and he starts to sort them out. “Odette, if don’t feel like sitting up, you just tell us your move and we’ll take care of it, deal?”
She struggles into a seated position in response, her dark eyes snapping with delight. “Ain’t played in a long time, hansom. Good idea. It’ll take mah mind off things.”
The satisfied look on Leo’s face says that’s exactly what he was going for, and to be honest, I don’t mind. If we’re going to be sitting here waiting on this so-called root doctor for heaven knows how long, then a distraction is exactly what I need, too.
It takes me awhile to remember how to play—it’s been years, and my family always went more for cards than dominoes—but the summer Sundays spent visiting my great-grandmother in the nursing home come back to me soon enough. Who would have guessed playing dominoes is like riding a bike?
We haven’t been playing long when the sounds of voices and laughter outside cease. The silence is so unexpected—their chattering has been the ambient noise the entire time we’ve been here—that I notice it right away. Odette goes still, her hands freezing over our growing and complex board.
“He here,” she whispers.
Leo and I exchange a glance that says neither one of us knows whether to run away, clean up the game, or sit still as statues so that maybe he won’t notice us. It turns out there’s no time for any of those options, because a second later, a tall, reedy man steps over the threshold.
He’s dark-skinned, with the whites of his eyes almost luminescent as he surveys the three of us. His long, thin fingers wrap around the handles of a boxy, old-timey suitcase that’s frayed in spots. He grips it tighter, then releases the case onto the floor before straightening back up.
I swallow as his gaze burns into my face. “I’m Graciela Harper.”
“Leo Boone.”
Neither of us offer a hand, but he doesn’t extend one, either. There’s no animosity radiating from him, no dislike. I don’t get the impression that he’s wondering why there are outsiders here, but he’s not making an effort to be friendly, either.
He doesn’t introduce himself, simply crouches next to Odette and begins an examination of sorts. I’m not sure what he can diagnose with his eyes closed, but he’s sure trying to figure out something. His hands hover over her body, lingering at her chest, stomach, and again at her head as he hums quietly to himself.
After a moment, his black eyes pop open and he nods. “We’ll fix you up, darlin’. No need to fret. Not that you’re the frettin’ type.”
She waves a hand at him. “Yah know I ain’t.”
The root doctor sweeps the long tails of his dark suit coat out of the way and lays his case open flat. My eyes go wide at its contents. The case is packed full of bright green herbs, vials filled with different colored liquids and crystals, what look to be scraggly roots, and a dozen other things too foreign for me to identify.
We watch him work in silence. He pinches off herbs and dumps them into a small, wooden bowl that looks handmade, then uses a matching pestle to muddle them with drops from the vials. Scents mingle and fill the hut, too tangled together to parse out, but it’s not pleasant. Odette seems unconcerned, not even watching the man. She’s staring at me, her bottom lip caught between her teeth and worry in her gaze.
I hope she’s going to be the one to ask him about helping, because I’m not sure I can find my voice.
“Here you go.” He transfers the paste into a plastic bag and ties it at the top, then hands the concoction to his patient. “Rub that on your chest twice a day, sunrise and sunset. I’m leaving you some bark to make tea, as well.”
“Thank yah, Doc.”
He nods, then casts a glance over his shoulder at me and Leo. Like the women outside, his gaze lifts to my head, then moves to the air around me. A frown follows quickly in its wake as he turns back to Odette. “I don’t like the look of that curse the girl’s carrying. I can’t be sure, but it could have gotten stuck to you. Or someone gave you something similar.”
I gasp, my heart pounding into my ribs. If my coming around has hurt Odette, I won’t forgive myself.
“Ain’t found nuthin’ strange lurkin’ ’bout.” Odette frowns now, too. “But could be. The child’s got a bad one, Doc. She needs help, and no way tah get it.”
He closes his eyes, hearing the request in her voice, but only for a brief moment. When he opens them again they’re on me. “Do you mind?”
“Mind what?” I ask, wariness pursing my lips.
“If I take a look?”
“Um…I guess not? Everyone else has been checking me out and not even asking,” I joke. It tumbles and smashes its nose when no one laughs, not even to humor me.
I resist the urge to move closer to Leo or grab his hand as the intimidating man stands and comes over to me, reaching out to put one hand on my shoulder to steady me. The other goes over my heart and then drifts upward to my head, his frown deepening with every pause.
“It’s old. One of the oldest I’ve seen, and one of the tighter bound. It’s wrapped right up in your DNA.”
It takes my breath away, how easily he guesses, what he can see.
I nod. “Yes. Is there a way to break it?”
“Once it’s broken, it will break.”
It’s the same frustrating advice Odette gave me the first time we met—that the only way to break a curse is to see it fail.
“So the only thing to do is for my cousin to have her baby and then wait thirteen years, hoping he doesn’t die?”
“Not the only way. The only sure way.”
“What’s the unsure way? Because your first suggestion sounds like hell, and I would know. I’ve lived in the suburbs.”
That makes him chuckle, and for the first time since he entered, he seems to relax. He paces over to the wall and then leans against it, crossing his legs at the ankle. “I’m a powerful man.”
“S’true,” Odette adds, bobbing her head up and down.
“I’m not powerful enough to lift this curse, not on my own. It’s possible that if you give me a few days, however, I could round up help.”
His readiness to assist me, a girl he only just met, sets my wariness on high alert. “Why would you do that? You don’t even know me.”
“First off, you’re friends of Odette’s, and that goes a long way in my book. Second, I don’t know how much you understand about our religion, but like all forms of voodoo, juju, and root magic, Gullah is beholden to a balance between dark and light.”
He pulls a pack of clove cigarettes out of his pocket and lights one. My skepticism returns. What kind of root doctor doesn’t know that inhaling smoke is unhealthy?
“There cannot be light without dark, you understand?” he goes on. “We cannot eradicate it, but we can make sure it does not gain too strong of a foothold in this world.” He takes a long draw, then turns his face toward the opening to expel the smoke. When he turns back, the passion in his eyes freezes me in place. “That curse on your family, it’s born of pure evil. Seething malice. Hatred and jealousy. All things that do not belong in this world, not after so long and not in such abundance. That is why I will try to help you banish it back to the spirit world where it belongs.”
A lump forms in my throat. It must be the thousandth one I’ve swallowed since Amelia disappeared two nights ago. “Thank you. If there’s anything you need from me or my family, just let me know.”
“I will require your assistance, and most likely more than that. Be ready. I will contact you soon.”
With that, he gathers up his herbs and his case and bends to accept a kiss on the cheek from the patient he came here expecting to treat. Leo and I stare at each other as he steps out of the hut and the sound of his footsteps disappear. Then we leave, too, saying good night to Odette, who obviously needs to get some rest. Our night has tired her out, and I feel worse than ever for not thinking to bring her something.
At least I’ll have another chance, because it sounds like I’ll be back. I don’t know what to make of this root doctor, or what he meant when he said he would require more than my assistance, but there’s no hesitation on my part. Whatever he needs, whatever it takes, we’ve got to get rid of this curse.
Chapter Fifteen
I’m startled awake in a pool of sweat, my hair stuck to my face and neck, and my body in the grips of a massive chill. My first thought is that I’ve somehow entered early menopause in addition to all of my other awesome issues, but then the unmistakable feeling of being watched has me wide awake and searching the room for Henry.
It’s not him. The little boy from Drayton Hall, the one who says his name is Charles, stands near the bed, his big eyes inquisitive.
My fingers clutch the sheets to my chest, even though I want to cast them off and stand in front of an open window to dry up my sweat.
“Hi,” he says, as though he’s been waiting for me to wake up for a while now.
Children are not known to be patient, and neither are ghosts. A hard combination to bear.
“Hello.” I cock my head to the side. “Why can I hear you?”
“I don’t know. Some of us are better at getting through than others. Or maybe…” He trails off, fear widening his eyes as he peers into the dark corners of the room. “It could be because of Mama Lottie. She does spells at Drayton Hall, where I live most of the time.”
“How old are you?”
“Nine.”
Older than I’d guessed. He’s small f
or his age. “And your name is Charles. Which Charles?”
“Charles Henry.”
Part of me wants to relax, to ask every question I have about the things that happened at Drayton Hall over the past two hundred years, but the rest of me is scared he’ll disappear. Terrified that whatever is allowing us to communicate with such ease will flutter away, as impossible to catch as it was with Anne and Glinda, then Henry and Dr. Ladd. I can’t afford that. I need to ask the right questions.
“Are you Charlotta’s father or younger brother?”
He makes a face. “I will be her father. Right now, I am only a boy.”
“You know Mama Lottie. She’s your friend. Would you tell me about her?”
“I knew her my entire life. She came to the plantation when I was this age, and she wasn’t old, either. That’s why we still play together like this, sometimes now.”
It’s odd, talking to a boy about the life that he would lead when he grew up—how he would deal with his daughter, what he thought about her affair. He’s my best shot right now at learning more about Mama Lottie, though, so I’ll take it.
“She has her,” he says. “Your kin.”
My heart stops beating, and a second chill seizes me. I stare at him for several seconds before words stutter out past my lips. “Mama Lottie has Amelia?”
He nods. “You made her angry. She wants to take something from you that you love more than anything else, so you’ll understand how she feels about us.”
“About the Draytons?” I keep repeating what we already know like some kind of idiot, but my thoughts are numb and sluggish as I struggle to wrap my mind around his statement.
“She’s wrong, you know. She doesn’t want to see the truth.” He bites his bottom lip, and in his childish gaze there is a sorrow so deep it twists my insides until I want to cry out. “My parents…they did know about her. They knew she was different. So did my wife, and she made sure Mama Lottie would be free.”
“They knew she was abducted?”
He shakes his head. “No, I don’t think so. My family was better than most. They treated her and the rest of the workers pretty well, all things considered. They knew she was different, that’s all.”