Persuasion (16 page)

“You think
that’s
what it’s like to be locked up?” Cassie shuddered, as if even the mention of the word was more than she could bear. “Every little thing that happens is earth-shattering to you, isn’t it? You have no idea what it’s like to have your world destroyed. My father is dead. Do you get that? He might have had his problems, but he kept us safe. At least, he did his best.” Her voice shook, and she turned away.
“Just go away, would you?” She stumbled back to the angel statue and slumped down with her back against it.

Berg went and crouched beside her again, leaving Barrie reeling. She was desperate to walk away from the unfairness of Cassie’s words. From Cassie herself, because who needed more proof that Cassie was awful? But she couldn’t leave. Nothing that had happened changed that.

Berg was still offering Cassie sympathy. “It’s normal to want to lash out when you feel like this. Do you have someone you can call? Someone who can help?”

“ ‘Someone’?” Cassie gave a bitter smile. “You mean like a shrink? Someone who’ll
talk
to me? You know what would
help
? Having everyone give me some space. That would be fantastic. Can you make that happen?” She looked toward the house, and her mouth snapped closed on anything else she might have been going to say. “The best thing you could do for me is ask Dr. Feldman to start right away. In fact, if he wants to dig here at all, tell him he has to start tomorrow, or I’ll find someone else.”

“You’ll have to deliver that message yourself.” Berg watched Cassie steadily. “Anyway, you can’t stay here alone. Whatever happened to you—”

“Nothing happened to me! Nothing that matters.” Cassie raked both hands through her hair and pushed it out of her face.

“You don’t have to tell me about it, but you shouldn’t keep it in—”

“Keep it in? I’ve kept it in for
four years
.” Cassie laughed, a harsh, ugly sound. She stopped abruptly, as if only then realizing what she’d said, and she glanced from Berg to Barrie and back again before nervously licking her lips. “I was kidnapped, all right? But it was only for a couple of days, so it was no big deal. I’ve been fine. I am fine. I don’t know why I’m even thinking about it.”

“Did you see something that reminded you about what happened?” Berg asked.

“Reminded me? The whole day. Everything.” Cassie sighed, looking genuinely confused and overwhelmed—as much as anything about Cassie was genuine. She cut another look at Barrie, and her chin quivered. She turned back to Berg. “I’m sure everyone in the whole state has heard that my father worked for a drug cartel. Everyone thinks they knew him, but he wasn’t in it for the drugs. He needed money, and once you start working for the cartel, you don’t ever get out. Daddy tried. Four years ago, when the tunnel collapsed, he told them he wanted out. They took me and kept me in a basement until he agreed he wouldn’t quit.”

Barrie thought back to the way Cassie had simultaneously controlled her father and feared him. The way Cassie had dismissed Wyatt at the Resurrection Tavern when he had intruded on their girls’ night out because he couldn’t resist coming to quiz Barrie on how much Lula had said about
him. The way Wyatt had hit Cassie when he’d found out that she had invited Barrie over to find the treasure without his approval. The way he’d let Cassie come after Barrie to apologize for him so that Barrie wouldn’t go to the police.

Watching Cassie shake off the hand Berg offered to help her up, Barrie couldn’t help feeling a grudging drop of admiration for her cousin’s strength.

Which made Cassie’s breakdown even less believable.

It simply wasn’t real. It was some angle that Cassie was playing. The performance might have been directed at Barrie, or it could have been for Berg’s benefit. Either way, Cassie wanted something.

“I think you’re exactly right,” Barrie said to Berg. “Cassie needs someone to talk to. Why don’t I give it a try?”

Berg’s expression was protective as he measured Barrie, as if Cassie were the one in danger. Which was the biggest joke of all. Not that Barrie could laugh about it.

He turned back to Cassie before he straightened. “You’re sure you’re all right?”

Cassie’s hand tightened on the stone folds of the angel’s gown. Her voice sounded tired. “Yeah. I’m just fine.”

Berg turned and walked away. His footfalls were silent on the grass and weeds that had already grown too tall in the week since Wyatt’s death. Everything about Berg was eerily quiet and controlled.

Barrie waited until he was out of earshot. “Cassie, I don’t know what you’re cooking up to cheat the archaeologists. That’s your own business, and it’s going to backfire soon
enough. What I came to tell you is that I’ve found someone who can remove the curse.”

Cassie’s head shot up. “What do you mean ‘remove the curse’?”

“I met a m-m-ma . . .” Barrie began, intending to tell Cassie about Obadiah, but the words to explain him wouldn’t come. Her mouth felt as dry as sand, and her tongue felt too thick to form the word “man” or “magician” or even “guy.” How was she supposed to convince Cassie if she couldn’t explain? With a growl of frustration, she lowered herself to sit beside Cassie on the base of the angel statue.

Cassie scooted over. “Are you planning to say something anytime soon or do you expect me to wait all day?”

“Who’s buried here?” Barrie asked while she furiously tried to think.

“Are you trying to stall? What are you up to?”

“I’m curious.”

Cassie touched the same fold of the angel’s gown that she’d been holding earlier. “Her name was Charlotte,” Cassie said. “But she isn’t actually buried here. She disappeared when the house burned down, and no one knows what happened. It’s a romantic story, really. She was the most beautiful girl in three counties, and she promised to wait here for her fiancé to come back from serving with the cavalry. I guess she did, because the family never went away, even when they knew the Yankees were coming.
They say she was the inspiration for
Gone with the Wind
.”

“
They
say, or you say?” Barrie dropped her gaze to the ground, where the rocks had faint flecks of red from the painted soles of Cassie’s shoes. “See, this is the problem. You make it impossible to believe anything.”

“You’re the one who asked. And you’re wasting time. You’re supposed to be telling me about the curse, so talk fast, or I’m going to decide you don’t have a thing to say that I’m interested in hearing.”

Rising to her feet, Barrie dusted off her pants. “You know what,” she said, “forget I said anything. You go ahead and keep the Colesworth curse. Enjoy it. I don’t even know why I thought you would want to get away from here. You’re going to have such a fabulous future.”

She walked toward the gate, but as she’d suspected, Cassie didn’t let her go five steps before jumping up to follow. “Wait,” Cassie said. “Who is this guy you say you met?”

Barrie focused all her energy on getting the words out. “H-he says he’s descended from the slave who cast the curse.”

“It wasn’t the slave who did that. John Colesworth got a slave from the West Indies to trap the Fire Carrier, and it was the Fire Carrier who cursed us.”

“Or maybe the slave never told John he was the one who did it. Or, gee, here’s a stretch—maybe one of your ancestors
lied
about how it happened.”

“Or your guy is the one who’s lying. My family has been trying to get rid of the curse for three hundred years.”

“Maybe you’ve asked the wrong people all along. I’ve also heard that asking
nicely
works wonders.”

Cassie peered at Barrie as if Barrie were the one who went around locking people in tunnels and stealing from them. “Why would I believe you even want to help me? You could be after the gold for yourself.”

“I have no interest in helping you,” Barrie said, taking the last couple steps to the gate, “but I want you to go
away
. Unless the curse is broken, I can either make sure you stay in jail suffering, or I can spend the rest of my life never knowing when I’m going to run into you at Bobby Joe’s or the Resurrection.”

Cassie recoiled, and then she laughed, a cackle that had nothing to do with her usual silvery peal of amusement. “Bless your heart,
Cos
. You’ve finally found the guts to be honest about what you want.”

“You know what? You being stuck in jail is starting to sound not so bad to me right now.” Barrie reached for the gate.

Cassie grabbed her arm, seeming to sense that Barrie’s patience had run out. “All right, I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s hard for me to apologize when I mean it. And I do mean it. Locking you in the tunnel was wrong. I snapped, seeing you and Eight happy together—you both have so much already, and I don’t have anything. The curse used to make me want to leave here,
when leaving here—going anywhere else—was what Eight wanted most. I was all right with that because I wanted to go to Hollywood anyway. But then you came, and the thing
you
want most is to stay—and to be with Eight.

“Now suddenly I want to stay, and I want Eight, and I know that neither of those is what
I
really want, but knowing that in my head doesn’t change what I feel. Do you understand how awful that is? It’s like being possessed by someone else’s emotions. On top of that, I’m stuck here on this stupid property because I get these headaches that make me want to die, and I might not be able to stay because we have to sell the place. And then today . . .” Cassie bit her lip and bowed her head.

Back at the house, the archaeologists were now clustered around the Prius in which they’d arrived, having what looked like a heated conversation among themselves. Cassie’s mother and grandmother had Pru cornered just inside the front door, and Pru, looking like thunder, was staring fixedly in Barrie’s direction.

“I’m going to have to go soon,” Barrie said.

“Please.” Cassie put her hands together to reinforce the word. “I can’t leave Colesworth Place. If you know how to break the curse, then tell me. Help me. What did the guy say?”

Pleas had always poured out of Cassie’s mouth too easily. In the past, Barrie had given in too easily.

“He says the curse is anchored in some kind of a lodestone that’s buried here,” Barrie said, relieved that she didn’t have to try to say Obadiah’s name. “If I find it, he says he can remove it—but it has to be done at night.”

“Buried . . .” Cassie’s expression hardened. “Are you stupid? He’s after the gold.”

Barrie’s lips parted, but she couldn’t deny it. It was a possibility. A probability.

Still, even if Obadiah
was
after the gold, it changed neither the carrot he had dangled in front of her nor his threat. She’d had a taste of his power, and a taste had been enough to convince her he could do as he’d warned.

“I’ve told you from the beginning that what’s buried here doesn’t feel like money,” she said. “The loss I feel is darker and more personal than that, so it doesn’t matter what he wants. Even if he is after the gold—”

“Hang on.” Cassie snapped her fingers. “You’re right. It doesn’t matter. We don’t even need this guy. The archaeologists are already here. You find the lodestone, and I’ll tell the archaeologists that’s where the gold is buried. Once they’ve dug up the lodestone, you can point them to the place where the gold is really buried. . . .”

Barrie’s jaw hung slack. “Aren’t you listening to me at all? I don’t know where the gold is, and I’m not interested in finding it for you. As far as the lodestone goes, do you even know
what it is? What it looks like? Because I don’t. What if it’s just some ordinary-looking rock and the archaeologists cart it off, or bury it again? Even if we could get it out, you would still need someone to remove the curse. Problem is, I’m not sure removing it would begin to cure what’s wrong with
you
.”

Thrusting the gate open with a creak and letting it bang shut behind her, Barrie left the cemetery and walked toward the house.

“All right! All right, you win,” Cassie called after her. “We’ll try it. Bring your guy over.”

Barrie stopped walking, but instead of feeling victorious, she felt as if a noose had tightened around her neck and was cutting off all her air. And the thought of getting in a car or a boat with Obadiah by herself didn’t help.

“He wants to do it soon,” she said. “You’ll have to come bring your boat over to get us.”

“Tell him tomorrow night, then—eleven thirty. We’ll have to wait until my mother’s asleep, and you’ll have to find your own way here.” Cassie twitched up the hem of her wide red slacks to reveal a gray rubberized ankle monitor attached to a bulky three-inch box. “I get to wear this stylish new piece of jewelry until the final hearing, so all hell would break loose if I tried to get across the river.”