Not Quite Gone (A Lowcountry Mystery) (13 page)

“What happen?” Odette’s mouth
is full of sticky goodness, which is both gross and problematic as far as deciphering her already-questionable speech.

“I’m not sure.” I sit and think a moment, trying to figure out exactly what I want to ask. If talking to her has taught me anything it’s that she’s sure not going to answer the wrong question. She barely answers the right ones. “Is there a connection between snakes and voodoo?”

“Odette only knows ’bout the Gullah practice.”

I struggle not to roll my eyes. The distinction is important to her, but for me, not so much. At the moment. “Okay, is there a connection between snakes and Gullah?”

Her chin dips, milky eyes raking my face. “All living things connected. Gullah, and voodoo, tap the life force. All’s connected.”

The information settles, too generic to be helpful.
Frustration balls in my gut, a heavy thing that has me stuffing my praline back into the bag, uneaten. “Life is a push and pull between dark and light, though, right? Are there people who practice these sorts of traditions who fight on one side or the other?”

“Don’ wanna fight, girl. Don’ need ta.” She polishes off her ice cream and downs half her lemonade in one gulp. “But when sumthin’ bad’s
about town, sure. S’our duty.”

“Something bad… Like the curse on my family?”

That gives her pause. Odette even stops eating for a moment. Slowly, she nods, her gaze off on the horizon. “Mebbe. Could be.”

A glance at my phone gets me to my feet. Beau’s going to be released within the hour and it’s going to take me half that long to get to the hospital. Odette’s staring up at me with slightly
more interest than usual. I shrug. “Thanks for the information. And the company.”

“Anytime, girl. I feel sumpthin’ brewin’ round you. Could be good. Could be bad.” She frowns. “Could be worse than that.”

“You really know how to make a girl feel optimistic, you know that?” I start to walk away, then pause, wondering if she’d answer one more thing since she seems to be in such an amenable mood.

“Ask it.”

It sends a chill down my spine, the way she seems to read my mind, but I can’t let it stop me from being brave. Not with so much on the line. “You said all living things are connected. What about dead things? Or dead people?”

She tries to hide the fear in her eyes but she’s not quite fast enough. I don’t know whether she thinks I’m talking about zombies or something equally terrifying—if
those exist—but it’s clear that something scares her. Which is new information.

“Don’ go messin’ with tha dead, girl. Good way ta git dead yourself.”

“I’m not talking about anything weird. Just…could the dead come back and help? If there was a fight with something dark, like you said.”

That turns her tense shoulders loose, dropping them back into place. Her fear turns to curiosity. “You worried
ole Odette gonna haunt you?”

“More than you know, but I wasn’t talking about you.” I pause, then remember she’s a homeless woman who weaves grass on the street and talks about spirits. So what if she thinks
I’m
weird. “I almost got bitten by a snake last night. One that doesn’t belong on this side of the Atlantic. A dead woman—a ghost—showed up and tried to steer me away from it. Then she closed
her eyes and waved her hands and the thing died.”

Odette watches me for so long it starts to feel as though we’ve floated into another dimension. The noise from the street, the chatter from the market, swirls into a murmur that sounds faraway. It’s as though she’s frozen my face and my eyes, the way the ghost of the woman had last night when I’d tried to call out, in an attempt to see right through
my skeleton.

Her lips press together before they part again, her head tipped to the side. “I believe ya. Don’ mean you ain’t crazy, ’course, but if that happened like ya say…she might be tha answer.”

“What answer?” I whisper, my lips cold, my heart pounding.

“To how to break tha curse, ya daft girl. Ain’t that whatcha been comin’ here to learn how ta do?”

My heart rate returns to normal by the time the bright sterile halls of Saint Francis Hospital greet me, the scent of antiseptic grabbing at my skin and clothes. The thoughts pinging off the inside of my skull are a different story altogether. It’s going to be days before they calm down enough to parse out and nail down into sense.

Could
we break the curse? Could the mystery woman at Drayton
Hall be the answer? She knew about the snake—a creature I have to wonder whether Mrs. LaBadie either planted herself or used voodoo mind control to get into place—and kept me from stumbling into it. She killed the damn thing with her mind, too, and from another dimension. If there’s even the smallest chance that she’s strong enough, even from beyond the grave, to help me and Amelia obliterate
this curse, to set us free, I have to try to find her.

The fact that none of my ghosts talk to me—or really communicate more than the most simple of requests—balls my hands in frustration. Then Daria’s face pops into my head, purple hair and all. Maybe she could help. If I explain what’s at stake, ask her to teach me how to make this whole undead relationship work both ways, it might be worth
a shot. I would stand on top of the Presbyterian church and shout through a megaphone that I see ghosts if it meant helping Millie. Saving Jack. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to turn things around for all of us.

The door to Beau’s room stands open. His naked back greets me, corded muscles rippling as he raises both arms and slips his undershirt over his head.

“Hey.” I hurry over, guilt climbing
into my throat at being gone so long. “Do you need a hand?”

He gives me a rueful smile. “My leg’s swollen, not my arms. Come here.”

He folds me in his strong arms, pressing my cheek into his chest. A faint scent of his aftershave and cologne cling to the threads of his shirt even after hours out by the river and a day in the hospital. I breathe deeply, tightening my grip. There are a couple
of things we need to talk about, and he knows about at least one of them—probably why he’s holding me so snug—but it can wait.
 

He’s okay. We’re alive, we’re going back to Heron Creek, and in light of that damn snakebite, our frantic drive to the hospital, and not knowing whether he might die, him being scared to tell me about Brick and Birdie’s involvement in Millie’s case just doesn’t seem
as all-important as it probably would have two days ago.

I pull away, smiling as the relief pours through me, and I swipe his hair away from his forehead. “You’re looking fine.”

“Am I?” He wrinkles his nose. “I feel like I could use a shower.”

“Showers are overrated.”

He groans. “Stop trying to woo me to that particular dark side. I’ll be a two-a-day shower guy until the day I die. Or the
day I leave a state with ninety-percent humidity the majority of the year.”

I laugh, handing him his button-down shirt and then helping him into his shorts, despite his protests that he’s not a child. “Good, because I have no idea how to take care of a child. Hell, I’m still learning how to take care of you. Do you suppose your mother has a manual she’d loan me?”

He sobers despite the fact that
I was totally joking, the mention of his mother pulling a shroud over his good humor. If I let it, it would do the same to me but I’m not in the mood to angst over Cordelia Drayton. There’s plenty of time for that.

Beau grabs my hand, forcing me to go still. “I know Birdie told you about our family’s firm handling the Middletons’ case against Amelia.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry.” There’s a catch in
his voice that snags my heart.

My fingers untangle from his and thread through his thick, honey brown hair, and I press my forehead to his, locking our gazes. “Look. I wish that you would have told me as soon as you found out, but you don’t have anything to be sorry for, Beau. It’s not your job to apologize for your family…or for friendships that go back basically to the foundation of this country.”

His lips turn up, his smile defeated. “I didn’t figure it would take you too long to figure that out. Or remember it.”

“You can’t control your family’s history, and I am not irrational. For the record.”

“I know. I know you’re not.” He traps my palm against his cheek, hazel eyes searching mine. “I just… I guess I want things to be simple between us, that’s all. And my family… They complicate
things.”

“I’m not dating your family. I also don’t expect them to change allegiances just because you and I have been dating for a few months.” I give him a smile and pinch his cheek. “We’re going to be fine.”

Birdie’s incredulous voice when she found out he hadn’t told me about something else, something that happened with a girl named Lucy, replays in the back of my mind. I don’t let my smile
waver. We all have secrets, rooms in our hearts that are locked and dusty. Not fit for visitors, even ones we love. I’m determined not to ask for admittance unless he wants to invite me, because there are corners in my own that are far too raw and jagged to have a light shined on them.

“I love you, Gracie Anne Harper.”

“I think we should have your melon checked before we get out of here.”

Beau laughs, a good one from his belly. It infects me and we snicker together until my cheeks hurt in the best way possible. And maybe that’s what love is—making each other hurt in as many good ways as bad ones. Regardless, by the time we get him into the car and we’re on the road back to Heron Creek, I’m starting to feel as though maybe I can believe my own words.

Maybe we really are going to
be fine.

Chapter Nine

I spent half the morning relaying the details of Beau’s snakebite to Sean, then Jenna, then half the staff at Drayton Hall on my next day there—Thursday. I spent the morning at the library and left Amelia there after lunch so I could sneak out for a few hours. At the moment, Mr. Freedman remains in the dark about my new part-time gig. It’s not that he would care, necessarily,
since he pretty much lets my cousin and me do what we want as long as someone’s manning the front desk when the occasional patron wanders in to escape the heat. Or death from boredom.

The only time he noticed we weren’t where we were supposed to be was the day the place was closed during story time. I learned an important lesson that day: never mess with mothers who are counting on a thirty-minute
break once a week.

The staff gave up on me after the third time hearing the story of the escaped snake. I tried to make it more boring every time but their boss’s son getting bitten by an escaped African viper seems to be exciting no matter how it’s toned down.
 

I’m finally alone with my boxes of files now, and I kind of want to hug them. There are so many papers—pieces of correspondence, marriage
licenses, death certificates, family trees etched in giant Bibles, et cetera—between Middletons and Draytons that part of me wonders whether Beau, Brick, and Birdie are all part of some secret society.

A grimace twists my lips. I haven’t told Millie about Mr. Drayton’s firm handling the case against her. The last thing she needs is to lose more hope, and there’s no question the development is
less than encouraging. The Draytons’ power and influence combined with the Middletons’ money is a recipe for disaster, and unless we can figure out a way to shake the curse and get Amelia back on an even keel—or better yet, find some dirt on Jake’s parents—she’s going to lose custody of that baby.

Determination sets my jaw, my mind and heart and gut all rejecting that possibility. I stand up,
making sure that the brittle, smudged pages are settled and safe behind airtight seals, and sneeze. Then I loose three more, leading me to make a mental note to ask Mrs. Drayton to have this place cleaned again, top to bottom. Once a week isn’t going to be enough, not with the way dust and dirt swirl in under the door and around the windows. It could ruin half these little treasures within weeks.

The air outside clears my plugged-up nose, the cooler air not nearly as stuffy as that inside the cabin I’ve taken over from Jenna. Not that she uses it, ever, if her empty desk and shelves are any indication.
 

I traipse over the grounds looking for the baby preservationist, avoiding a small tourist group listening attentively to a lecture on the origins of the gorgeous reflecting pond out front
before they head inside the main house.

I find Jenna out on the steps leading up to the rear balcony, a shiny laptop perched on her tanned knees. It looks out of place.
She
looks out of place—this compact Asian girl with a shiny ponytail and work boots typing away a mile a minute. Behind me is the huge lawn that gives way to the trees and the Ashley River, and the spot where Beau could have easily
lost his life the other night.

“Hey.”

“Hey, sugar pie.” She replies without looking up, her focus impressive. “I only have a few minutes before I’m due on the tour.”

“What do you do on the tours?” It’s not what I came out here to ask her, but I’m curious. Given her love for the property, Jenna has the potential to be a bang-up ambassador, except for the fact that she gives off the vibe that
she’s much better with boards, nails, and power tools than people.