Persuasion (10 page)

Mark would have loved him.

“A drag show?” he repeated. “No, I’ve never been.”

“I used to beg Mark to do his Gayle Force act for me. He’d sing ‘I Can’t Stand the Rain’ as Tina Turner, and ‘Heat Wave’ as Diana Ross, ‘Rain’ as Madonna. Then for the finale he would do himself—Gayle—belting out ‘It’s Raining Men.’ He was better than the Weather Girls or any of them. He always said he never minded giving up performing to take care of me. He said that’s what you did for people you cared about. But I always seem to be on the receiving end when people give things up. First Mark, and now you with your scholarship, and Cassie losing her freedom.”

“I wondered where you were going with this.”

Barrie swiveled her knees around and tucked her hands beneath her thighs so she wouldn’t reach for him. Not until he met her partway. “Cassie getting herself locked up might not be my fault, but I don’t want to look back and regret it, either. The amends thing makes sense. It gives her a way to fight back from the hole she dug for herself.”

“I hated even seeing her in the same room with you after what she and her father did.” Eight shook his head. “She didn’t seem like she even gave a damn. If she had apologized, or even looked at you like she realized what she had done—”

“She’s an actress. I respect her more for the fact that she didn’t put on a show.” This time, she did reach for Eight’s hand. Slipping it between hers, she folded his fingers around her own.

The world slowed down to details. The hardened skin that kept him from feeling pain. The white scar of an old injury across the backs of his knuckles. A wisp of cloud parted, and the sun slashed through, making his green mosaic eyes look darker. She painted him in her mind, fixing him there permanently. He smelled familiar and important, rumpled cotton and sunshine with undertones of salt and his particular cherries-and-root-beer scent.

She turned back out to look across the water. “Do you believe in karma?” she asked. “Because I think I do. I don’t know about heaven or hell or reincarnation or any of the rest, but I believe that what we do comes back to us one way or another. If I can be generous to Cassie, whether or not she deserves it, maybe I’ll deserve a little generosity back.”

Really, it came down to that.

She had never agreed to keep Seven’s secret, but somehow that was what was happening. Eight would be hurt and furious if he ever found out she had kept the knowledge from him. To avoid that, Barrie was going to need every ounce of good karma she could get.

Two small motorboats were anchored near the mouth of the creek by the time Eight guided the boat toward Watson’s Landing. The pair of paunchy middle-aged men in the first of the craft were chatting with each other, but the lone guy in a checkered short-sleeve shirt and a camouflage fishing hat in the other boat had a rod and reel set to dangle fishing line into the water. He didn’t seem very interested in catching anything except Eight and Barrie.

He stood up and waved as the
Away
approached. “Hey, are you the Watson girl? You live here, right? Can I ask you some questions?”

“No,” Barrie and Eight answered simultaneously.

Barrie averted her eyes, but that brought her attention to the charred boards of the Colesworth dock. Memories are
powerful things; a whiff of the burned wood, and she was right back in the midst of that night, smelling the smoke, heat licking her skin, water closing over her, and the lack of oxygen searing her lungs.

“Is your shoulder hurting?” Eight asked.

She hadn’t realized she was rubbing it. “Not much,” she said.

He swung out toward the Beaufort side of the river to go around the other boats, then returned to cross the midpoint and nose the
Away
back toward the Watson side. Barrie had a brief moment to realize that at some point in the future, that spot, the midpoint between Beaufort Hall and Watson’s Landing, might be the only place where she and Eight could meet without one or the other of them being in pain. Then the surge of returning hit her like she imagined a dose of ecstasy or some designer drug must feel—like a shot of Alice’s “muchness” infused into her veins. The boat bumped against the pilings on the dock, and Eight jumped ashore to tie the line.

“You don’t have to walk me to the house,” she said. “Isn’t your sister coming home from camp today? It’s already bad enough your dad won’t be there, and if you’re meeting with the coach from Charleston later, you’ll want to spend some time with her.”

“Kate is self-sufficient. Five minutes after walking through the door, she’ll have grilled the housekeeper like a backyard
cookout and wrung every piece of news out of her. Trust me, I’m going to be a low priority.”

Barrie hesitated, glancing back at the intruding boats, then gave a shrug. Hooking his hands into his pockets and watching the ground beneath his feet, Eight fell in step beside her. They passed a fresh line of
NO TRESPASSING
signs along with several gray-green boxes that hadn’t been there earlier that morning. Which probably meant that the perimeter control system had gone in—or at least part of it had.

Eight scanned the woods on the way to the house, only stopping a few feet from the terrace steps, where they were out of sight of the kitchen and the rooms above. The look he gave Barrie was like a physical touch, curious fingers probing her thoughts.

“Are you done being mad at me yet?” she asked.

“I don’t like you being generous to Cassie when she doesn’t deserve it. But that’s who you are, and since who you are is what I happen to like about you, it wouldn’t make sense for me to blame you for it.”

“Does that mean you don’t?”

“It means I’m working my way out of it.” Leaning forward, he stole a kiss before she could decide whether they were still in a kissing sort of relationship anymore. Her lips made the decision for her; she couldn’t help responding. When he pulled away, his grin held a smugness that should have made her want to grind her heel into his instep.

“I’ll call you as soon as I’m done with the coach and I know what Dad has planned for tonight,” he said. “He’s probably going to want to take Kate out for dinner. It’s what we usually do, but I’m sure she’s dying to meet you, so maybe you and Pru—”

“No. Your sister should get you to herself for one night. Anyway, I need to tell Pru about Cassie and the restaurant. Plus I still have unpacking and sleep to catch up on. I think I could sleep for a week now that I’m back.”

The stir of the wind in the trees and the splash of the fountain seemed louder as he reached back over and pulled her toward him. He hadn’t bothered to shave that morning, and the stubble was dark against his tanned skin, a contrast to his sun-lightened hair. His eyes stood out, as bright and green as the little tree frogs that congregated near the river.

He kissed her more slowly, a permission-asking kind of kiss, a glad-we’re-back kind of kiss. “Are we okay now?” he asked. “I’m not mad at you, and you’re not mad at me?”

Barrie’s eyes filled and her throat clogged, and she hated Seven and magic and gifts for making it all too complicated. “Yeah,” she said. “We’re fine. Good luck with the coach.”

Taking the steps two at a time, she fled into the kitchen and shut the door behind her. Fingers pressed against her lips, she watched Eight through the window above the sink. In spite of what he’d said, he walked with his head bowed
and shoulders hunched, looking as close to defeated as she had ever seen him look.

Not that she could blame him. He had given up something he had wanted badly, and neither of the two people he had expected to cheer for him had given him anything but grief.

Before she could stop and think, she threw the door open again and ran after him, but he had reached the
Away
before she came level with the fountain. She couldn’t bear the idea of shouting across at him and having strangers listening and judging from the boats on the river, so she stopped and waited, hoping he would turn and look back.

He didn’t.

The sun beamed down relentlessly.
Yunwi
chased one another along the rows of hedges, and the pulse of Watson’s Landing thrummed beneath her feet, echoed in the hum of the earth’s energy, the whisper of marsh grass, the warbled conversations of the birds, and the low, incessant drone of insects. Across the river, Beaufort Hall sat on the opposite bank, and she could’t help wondering if the binding and connection felt the same to Seven.

She turned back toward the house. A shadow crossed above her with a rush of wings, and another raven alighted on the edge of the fountain basin. Cocking its head, the bird studied her curiously, its ink-oil wings glistening with purple
highlights in a way that made her think she should be remembering something.

She found herself thinking of Obadiah, and with the name on the tip of her tongue again, she wondered how many Obadiahs there could possibly be. Thousands probably. Hundreds of thousands. Still, she dug her phone out of her pocket, opened up the web browser, and typed in
O
-
b
-
a
-
d
-
i
-
a
-
h
, hoping she had spelled it right.

A voice spoke behind her as the browser began to think. “Careful, little one. Names are powerful. You don’t want to call for things you can’t control.”

Barrie’s heart jumped. Hand at her throat, she felt the thud, thud, thud of it beating in triple time. She turned and found Obadiah himself sitting on the edge of the fountain in the precise spot where the bird had been. Stepping back to put distance between them, she ended up in a flowerbed with her legs pressed against a boxwood hedge.

Obadiah didn’t come toward her, though, only watched her with mild amusement. The more she looked back at him, the more he seemed raw and out of focus, like a modernist painting come to life. She blinked, and the impression cleared. He was just
there
again. Present instead of absent.

“I wasn’t aware Google was magic,” she said, trying to sound anything but petrified.

Obadiah raised his eyebrows, and the slight flicker of his
eyes suggested he was laughing. “I suspect more people believe in Google magic than in my particular kind.”

“What kind is that?” Barrie asked, trying to decide whether he had actually been a bird, or whether the bird had only been an illusion of some kind. Or hypnotism, maybe?

Around her, the
yunwi
were converging from every corner of the garden, rushing as if they hadn’t had any warning he was coming, either. As they neared the fountain, they bent to scoop bits of gravel and oyster shell from the ground, which they flung at Obadiah before stooping to pick up more.

A shell pierced Obadiah’s wrist. Blood trickled and dripped to the ground.

When Barrie had dropped her blood-soaked socks on the night the water spirit had appeared in the fountain and bound her to Watson’s Landing, the
yunwi
had fallen on the blood like dogs in a feeding frenzy. Now their eyes grew dull in their faces.

“Who
are
you?” Barrie locked her knees to keep herself from running.

How could she have forgotten anything about this man? From the high cheekbones to the long dreadlocks and the expensive cut of his black silk suit, everything about him was memorable. His shirt was a dark, shining green instead of eggplant like before. That was the only difference.

“What is it you want from me?” she asked.

“A favor. A small one, and in exchange, I’ll give you what I offered you before.”

“Which is what?”

“Truth,” he said. “And freedom, if you want it.” Obadiah’s teeth slithered from behind his lips. “You wish to know if the Beaufort boy loves you for yourself. You want assurances and choices. I can give you all of that.”

Barrie’s brain lagged sluggishly behind his words. She caught herself about to ask how he could possibly know anything about her, but really, the answer was obvious, wasn’t it? If the man could turn into a raven and back again, listening to a conversation would be all too simple. If he could turn into a raven, what else could he do? What
couldn’t
he do?

Her world shifted on its axis with the force of a seismic quake. It was one thing to accept the Fire Carrier and the family gifts, to believe in Cherokee witchcraft and voodoo on an ancient level. Seeing magic standing before her in the shifting shape of a man who could turn into a bird and back . . . That was fierce and fearsome. And wonderful. It meant there was more magic at large in the world than she had ever imagined, and that opened up countless possibilities. If that kind of magic existed, what else was real?

“You’re not afraid anymore.” Obadiah watched her with open curiosity. “Why not?”

“Should I be afraid?” Barrie asked.

He cocked his head and walked around her slowly, and without his changing his expression at all, she had the impression he was laughing at her. She spun in place to follow his progress, but the alarm that had been growing in her subsided as fast as it had risen. She had no reason to be alarmed.