Compulsion (6 page)

Mist from the fountain cooled on Barrie’s skin. “You do realize I’m a Colesworth too?”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

“What did you mean?”

“You’re different.”

Different. And there it was.

All her life Barrie had been on the receiving end of
different
. Even once she’d learned to disguise the Watson gift, she’d still been the daughter of a woman who stood at the window and glared at people on the street from behind a curtain. The goddaughter of the ex-drag-queen who went to parent-teacher conferences dressed in vintage suits and designer shoes. Barrie had been judged or pitied by strangers, by teachers, by parents, and by classmates. By people she had hoped would be her friends. Being a Watson, being herself, had been hard enough
that it had barely occurred to her that she wasn’t just a Watson.

Eight cut her off when she tried to walk around him. “I meant different from Wyatt, that’s all. Finding out about the Colesworths doesn’t mean anything has changed.”

Everything had changed.

And how did Eight always know exactly what she was thinking? Was it written on her face in Magic Marker? “I still want to meet my cousins,” she said.

“Don’t push it. Your aunt and my dad would have a fit.”

“Come on. It’s a small town. We’re bound to bump into them by accident. Or we can make it an accident. Where do they hang out?”

Barrie waited for Eight to answer, but he seemed lost in thought. How was it possible for him to have so much life inside him and go so still? As if he were taking her apart, weighing the individual pieces, memorizing them, and putting her back together.

“Please?” she asked. “Help me meet them, or I’ll have to figure out another way.” She wasn’t going to let ancient history get in the way of family.

“You realize my dad will skin me alive when he finds out. And he will find out. You’re sure you want to do this?” He ran a hand across the back of his neck and watched Barrie until she nodded. “Fine. Cassie works at a restaurant in town. I’ll take you there for lunch tomorrow.”

Too anxious to sleep, Barrie carried her sketchbook out onto the balcony. Sitting on the rough-painted wooden slats, she leaned back against the house and let the magnolia-scented night settle in around her. Across the river, the lights of Beaufort Hall shone steadily on the hill, and the ruins of the house downriver shone like jewels lit to tempt a thief.

The idea startled Barrie. Was it the sneaking around behind Pru’s back that bothered her?

There hadn’t been any actual sneaking yet. Pru had gone to bed with a headache by the time Barrie and Eight had made it back to the kitchen, and Seven had been too focused on getting home to ask many questions.

Barrie thought about meeting Cassie, and it made her smile. Cousins. She had two cousins. Possibly more, if Luke
Watson and Twila Beaufort had children somewhere. Those cousins would be related to both Eight and Barrie, which seemed strange since she and Eight weren’t related to each other. She kind of liked that, though, the idea that she and Eight were linked in some way. She found a clean sheet of paper and started drawing a family tree to show connections between relatives she had never—until today—even heard of.

The more she sketched, the more certain Barrie became that meeting Cassie wasn’t wrong, whatever Eight or Pru might think. She and her cousins weren’t responsible for anything that had happened between the families before they’d been born. Barrie wanted, needed, to stay at Watson’s Landing until she graduated. If she and Cassie were going to live in the same small town, be in the same class, they couldn’t be enemies.

Pru was going to be furious, though, wasn’t she? If Barrie went behind her back. Mad enough to send Barrie away?

Lula would have.

How much was Pru like Lula?

Below the balcony the river sparkled in the glow of the moon and a breeze stirred the leaves and sent the shadows racing. Barrie tried to sketch the scene: the dock, the marsh grass, the river flowing toward the ocean. Her pencil refused to behave, and the round face of the moon became Pru’s face. The moss hanging from the trees turned into an image of Lula in her concealing veils. Even the picture of the dock showed a boy and a dog jumping off into the water. Barrie tore out the page, crumpled it, and threw it onto the balcony floor.

Downstairs, the grandfather clock tolled midnight. The light reflecting on the water brightened, as if a thin cloud had cleared the moon. Except no clouds hung in the star-dusted sky.

The night turned orange and gold, and even brighter. Barrie leaned forward, grasping the railing to steady herself. She pulled herself to her knees.

Where the edge of the marsh skirted the Watson woods, a ball of fire hovered a foot above the river, shedding threads of flame onto the water like a ball of yarn unrolling. The river grew brighter. The sphere grew smaller and smaller until a faint glow was all that remained where it floated in midair. But behind it, the river had been cast aflame.

Barrie closed her eyes and reopened them. The railing dug into her fingers, reminding her that she wasn’t dreaming. The flaking paint crumbled, and the splintered wood pricked her skin. She
wasn’t
dreaming. She wasn’t.

So what, then? What was it? Ball lightning? A will-o’-the-wisp? Marsh gas igniting?

The river was
burning
.

Flames blanketed the water from the Watson side to the midpoint between Watson’s Landing and Beaufort Hall, as if an invisible wall kept the fire from burning all the way across.
Both the flames and the unseen barrier ran upstream as far as Barrie could see, and downstream almost to the Colesworth dock, where the fire turned inland at the shallow creek and blazed toward the wooden bridge.

Barrie jumped to her feet. She had to call someone. Alert the fire department. But there was no smoke. No burning smell. No sound of flames crackling in the quiet night. A hallucination, then? Too much excitement?

Or too much Watson crazy.

It was beautiful, whatever it was, and it compelled,
impelled
, Barrie closer. She tiptoed along the balcony. The old wood creaked, the sound impossibly loud in the stillness. Not that a hallucination would pay attention.

And yet, it did.

A shadowed figure of a man took shape where no one had been before. Lit by the flames on the river, he stood in three-quarter profile, and the sputtering ember, all that remained of the fireball, was cupped in his hands. A cloak of black feathers covered his back and shoulders, and a matching feathered headdress melded into his long, dark hair.

He turned suddenly and looked at Barrie—straight
into
her—with eyes that were only lighter spots in a face painted with a war mask of black and red. Barrie felt the stare. Felt him searching inside her, weighing her the way Eight had weighed her earlier, though that was impossible.

How could she see eyes, features, from this distance?

She couldn’t breathe until the figure turned away. Then she blinked and he was gone, leaving only the burning river and the remaining wisps of the sphere hovering in the air.

Her heart was a drumbeat in her throat, war drums pounding, pounding a retreat. The fire on the water shimmered, flared higher, then surged back toward the shore, converging where the figure had been and spooling itself into a dense, fiery ball. When the sphere was once more as bright and large as it had been when it started, the river was dark except for the drifting moonlight. The fireball hovered for another breathless moment, then floated slowly back into the Watson woods and wove itself between the trees.

Whatever spell had held Barrie in place released her. She raced to the far end of the balcony, suddenly desperate to keep the fire in sight. But it moved deeper into the woods, illuminating the trees and underbrush, and creating illusions of eerily moving shadows as it passed.

She rubbed her arms, leaning over the balcony and craning her head to keep the light in view. Eventually she lost sight of it. Or it vanished. Or the flames went out.

Had it been there at all? Flames on the river. Under the water. Rushes in the marsh that glowed but never burned. A ghostly hallucination that reacted to her—interacted with her.

She hurried back into her room and latched the door to
the balcony behind herself, as if she could lock out the memory of the river on fire, shut out everything that had happened since Mark had made his cancerous announcement. It was all too much. She had to be going crazy. Maybe there was something in the air here that made people hallucinate.

No wonder Lula had run away.

Shivering despite the summer heat, she crawled into bed and huddled with the quilt wrapped around her, watching the river, waiting for the water to turn to fire again. The clock chimed one, then two, and the moon and stars cast the only light.

She dreamed. The river and the marsh were burning, and Lula was screaming, running from the flames, always a few steps out of Barrie’s reach.

Waking up on West Coast time, Barrie’s eyes were gummy, and nightmares had left her brain feeling bruised. Her first thought was about caffeine. She needed coffee. Vats of it.

Still in her sleep shirt and pajama shorts, she pushed through the swinging door into an empty kitchen. A plate of croissants, a basket of tea bags, a thermos of coffee, and a note from Pru waited on the counter:

Hope you got some rest! Sorry about last night. I’m out in the garden. Come and find me when you’re ready.

Barrie poured herself a cup and wandered out the back door. Dipping the croissant into the steaming coffee, she stopped
at the railing to look out beyond the lower terrace at the river that had turned to fire at midnight, and at the woods where the flaming sphere had disappeared. The woods where Eight had told her not to go.

Was that a coincidence?

Not very likely.

She searched the garden for her aunt. Spotting Pru by the fountain, she waved, staring with a puzzled frown at the enormous blue ceramic bowl Pru was lugging along. The bowl was so large, Pru had it braced against her hip.

“Hello, Aunt Pru. Good morning!”

Looking up, Pru paused. She beckoned for Barrie to come down, then took off the floppy wide-brimmed hat she was wearing and tossed it into the empty bowl.

Barrie started down the stairs. She heard Eight before she saw him: the
slap-slap
of his flip-flops, the crunch of the gravel path, the song he whistled softly as he rounded the rosebushes at the corner of the house. There was no time to sprint back up to the kitchen and duck inside. Halfway down the steps, she stopped in all her pajama-clad, barefooted, bed-headed glory, and cringed as he saw her.

He burst into a grin that made her feel like someone had hit her in the chest, and a returning click went off in her head. She scowled at him, wishing he would go away.

His smile disappeared. “Hey. Whoa. What did I do?” He
broke off a white rose from a bush by the stairs and waved it in the air. “White flag. Truce, all right?”

“That’s a flower, not a flag.” Barrie glanced over at Pru, but her aunt had gone back to work. Deliberately, Barrie suspected.