Persuasion (22 page)

The witch’s fire hadn’t burned her, but she had felt the heat of the explosion, and she still carried the stitches from the piece of metal that had hit her shoulder. What part of it all had been real, and what part had been magic? Or was there a distinction? Throwing a sidelong glance at Obadiah, she had to concede that maybe reality wasn’t as simple a concept as she’d thought.

Not that she was sorry Wyatt Colesworth was dead. By his own confession, he had knocked Barrie’s father down, left her mother in the bedroom, and set fire to the apartment the night Barrie was born.

Death by fire was justice for him. Wyatt Colesworth had deserved to burn in hell. But why did Cassie assume Barrie had caused the explosion or had anything to do with it?

Cassie couldn’t have known. She had to be guessing, prodding at Barrie, hoping to find a wound.

Obadiah strode toward Cassie. When he spoke, he looked down at her along the length of his long, thin nose. “I have no doubt you spent hours working on that accusation,” he said. “Did it make you feel better to say it,
chère
? Do you feel smarter? More certain of yourself now that you think you’ve put your cousin at a disadvantage? Yes, that is how people like you operate, isn’t it? Always at someone else’s expense. But you have forgotten some crucial things.”

“I haven’t forgotten anything, and you don’t even know
me.” Cassie spoke calmly, but her muscles had tensed, and it was costing her visible effort not to retreat from where she stood. “I don’t know you, either. You’re probably only here for the treasure.”

“Do you see me loaded down with shovels and wheelbarrows to transport gold bullion?” Obadiah quirked his eyebrow at her. “I am here because my ancestors laid a curse on your ancestors, who were every bit as unscrupulous and unpleasant as you are. Now, if you want me to remove that curse, I suggest you close your mouth. You need me more than I need you. In short, you are dispensable. Remember that, because it seems to have slipped your mind.”

It wasn’t nice to enjoy seeing Cassie squirm. It took only one look at Obadiah’s profile to remind Barrie that whatever game Obadiah was playing was dangerous.

A comeback parted Cassie’s lips, but even she thought better of it as she took in Obadiah’s stance. She bit off whatever she had planned to say. Or not planned—that was Cassie’s problem. She never thought before she acted.

Not for the first time, Barrie wondered how much of Cassie’s seeming self-possession was real and how much was sheer bravado. How much of her impulsive behavior was desperation to convince herself, and the people around her, that she was actually okay even when she wasn’t?

Obadiah stood at the base of the path, peering through the swirling fog toward the knob-kneed cypress tree that marked the tunnel entrance where Wyatt and Ernesto had hidden the drugs they’d been smuggling. Higher, above the obscuring haze, the slave village of brick cabins that Wyatt had restored stood at the top of the riverbank, screened from the ruined mansion by a rank of oaks.

With an odd warding-off gesture and a grim expression, Obadiah turned and strode up the path as if he knew exactly where he was going. The strange glow that had lit the boat moved with him.

Barrie rubbed her aching head and followed. Memories ricocheted all around her, hurtling at her from the woods between the Colesworth property and Beaufort Hall, where
the tunnel Cassie had trapped them inside had one of its two riverfront exits: from the muddy, narrow shore, where she had tried to run from Wyatt and Ernesto; and from the water’s edge and the burned-out pier, where they had dragged her toward the waiting boat. She could almost smell the stench of the urine that had been used to mask the sweetness of the smuggled drugs, and her ribs ached from being kicked. Her arms and palms felt sticky with sweat as warm as the river she had jumped into that night to save herself.

She was sick of Cassie making her feel guilty—and tired of letting herself feel guilty—about things that weren’t her fault. Cassie dared to accuse her of being responsible for Wyatt’s death? To hell with that.

About to stalk past Cassie up the rise, she stopped in front of her instead. “You know, if you hadn’t locked the tunnel, I would never have run into your father, and he might still be alive. I don’t expect gratitude from you, but you’re lucky you’re not rotting in jail right now. You should try taking some responsibility for yourself.”

She swept past Cassie and continued up the path. Of course, she tripped and had to catch herself. Briefly, she thought that Cassie had stuck her foot out, but it was only a knotted root on the unkept walkway, reminding her to pay attention.

Cassie managed a half-convincing laugh. “Careful there,
Cos
. Your Prince Charming’s not around to whisk you off your feet this time.”

“That’s the difference between us,” Barrie said without looking back. “I’ve never believed in fairy tales.”

A short way up the rise, they cleared the fog that clung to the river. The moon emerged, but the glow that surrounded Obadiah didn’t dissipate. It lit the railroad ties that created footing and stability on a grade that still struck Barrie as too unnaturally steep for the relatively flat coastal area. Once again, she wondered if the Colesworths had deliberately steepened it to discourage unwanted visitors. They’d been smuggling one thing or another in and out of the property for centuries.

She picked her way up the slope. Tangles of wisteria, Spanish moss, and resurrection fern cloaked the trees and structures on either side of the path, draping the hillside in a green mask that hid what lay beneath. It would have been an easy place to hide pretty much anything. Or anyone.

At the top, Obadiah waited for Barrie and Cassie to catch up. Where the mansion had stood before Sherman’s long march from Savannah to Columbia, the eight broken columns, a hunk of chimney, and the cracked marble steps were all that remained. Even the stage where Cassie and her friends had performed
Gone with the Wind
had been cleared away sometime after the night Wyatt died.

Obadiah turned to face her. “Where do we begin?”

She studied the lawn and the structures that Wyatt had spent so much money restoring—the icehouse, the cookhouse, the overseer’s house and the slave village, the stables and the smithy. Crouched among the trees, there was also the cemetery beyond the church, and the small modern house where Cassie and her family lived. Even without the pieces of land that had belonged to the old rice fields, the property was enormous, and Barrie had no idea what she was searching for.

Presumably the lodestone, though, if it registered at all, would register as something important. Something like the bone-jarring lostness that radiated from beside the ruined mansion.

“This way,” she said, letting the Watson gift guide her toward it.

With Obadiah striding beside her, she left Cassie to bring up the rear. Cassie seemed in no hurry to get any closer to Obadiah than was absolutely required, and Barrie wondered whether that was Cassie reacting to his obviously magical glow, or to his equally obvious dislike. Where Obadiah went, a solid dose of fear was probably not unwise.

Reaching the steps and the jutting columns of the mansion, Barrie stopped where the finding sense was strongest. Lostness roiled from the ground and drilled into her temples, making it impossible to feel anything but loss—the kind of loss she had felt in the Watson tunnel where she’d found Luke
and Twila. The kind that said, whatever was buried there had mattered to someone, and had mattered with devastating consequences.

“There,” she said, pointing to the spot.

Obadiah squinted at the patch of ground covered by grass. In the moonlight and the dimmer but still visible macabre glow that seemed to seep from the very darkness of his pores, the small lumps of broken bricks and charred chunks of mortar that occasionally protruded from the ground stood out in colorless relief.

“You’re sure? What do you feel?”

“Don’t
you
feel anything?” To Barrie, that seemed strange, when for her the sense of loss was so very clear. But seemingly, magic was specific, like eye color or hair, and no matter how much Obadiah had, and how little she had, it was not the same.

She was watching Obadiah, still thinking about magic, so she yelped softly as Cassie came up and dug her fingers into her forearm. “What kind of a joke is this?” Cassie demanded. “The collapsed tunnel is over there, and the foundations of the mansion are way over there. The tunnel has to lead back that direction.” She gestured toward the river. “Why would there be anything over here?”

Cassie’s face was hollow-cheeked and tense. She had lost weight in the past days, and she seemed to be perpetually cold, or maybe she was trying to cover up the ankle monitor again
by wearing the heavy jeans she had on now despite the heat. In Barrie’s case, it was a fear of snakes that prompted her to cover herself, but Cassie wasn’t afraid of anything.

“I’ve felt something lost here since the first time I came. Apart from Charlotte’s grave, this is the only big loss, the only
important
loss on the property. Sorry if that’s not convenient for you.” Barrie shrugged out of Cassie’s grasp.

Cassie held up her hands. “Fine. Just find the damn rock and make him remove the curse.” She hooked a thumb at Obadiah, and then crossed her arms. “And hurry the hell up before my mother wakes up and sees us.”

Obadiah’s answer was deceptively quiet, but there was ice underneath. “Magic can’t be rushed, and not every spirit here is friendly. Show some respect, or you’re liable to find that there are things worse than curses.”

Cassie fell silent briefly, then her chin came back up. “I know people like you. There’s a catch here somewhere. You figure that we’re desperate, so you’re going to ask for money. Blackmail us.” She pulled a packet of folded bills out of her back pocket. “This is all I’ve managed to scrape together. Five hundred and seventy-five dollars. That’s it. There isn’t anything else. We’re going to lose this whole place and everything in it, so don’t plan on holding out for more at the end of this. And don’t assume I’m giving you any money at all until you can prove the curse is gone.”

“You think I want your five hundred dollars?” Obadiah asked.

The words were so soft that Barrie barely heard them, but the sound shuddered up her spine like a knife scraping stone, leaving the nerves exposed. Even Cassie stepped back with her face drained of color by fear and moonlight.

“You do not buy magic with a fistful of dollars,” Obadiah said. “You buy it with blood and bone and desperation, with revenge and fury and prayers. I want many things from your family. Five hundred dollars doesn’t begin to cover it.”

“Five hundred and seventy-five,” Cassie whispered. For twenty seconds or so, she looked like a frightened child. Then she flicked on the secret switch inside herself that allowed her to become someone else, someone in her own way nearly as magical as Obadiah. Pushing a long strand of dark hair behind her ear in a deliberately sensual motion, she kept her eyes locked on his and raised her head. “If money’s not enough, then what is it you want?”

“More than is in your power to give, and it isn’t about what I want at all.” His eyes fixed on her, but to his credit, they stayed on her face and didn’t take up the flirtation. She blushed darkly and wrapped her arms protectively around her waist. Glancing at Barrie, she blushed even harder.

Obadiah moved to the spot Barrie had pointed to on the ground. After removing a pouch of white powder from his
pocket, he sprinkled the substance onto the ground in the shape of a cross. Moving counterclockwise, he connected the ends of the cross in a circle, and then made a smaller circle within the other. He stepped inside and toed up to the centerpoint of the cross, angling his hands away from his body, palms turned upward. He went still, so still that he was scarcely breathing. A shudder wracked his body and he appeared to grow smaller, energy draining from him so that he was diminished, or the night was getting larger and dwarfing him.

Cassie backed away. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to bind the spirits of my ancestors before they wake and discover we’re here to break the curse. Be quiet and let me concentrate.”

The tendons on his neck stood out with strain, his fingers contracted toward his palms as if in spasm, and he rocked forward onto the balls of his feet. Then he drew back on his heels again, as if something was pulling at him and he was fighting against it. At last, his eyes flew open. Stooping, he raked up two handfuls of grass and rolled the roots between his hands, releasing the dark earth speckled with charcoal and crumbled brick and letting it rain onto the ground before he dropped the grass as well. Arms raised, he tipped his face to the sky.

The air filled with the rush of wings. Darkness blotted out the stars and swept across the moon. The raucous caw of a raven made Barrie exhale sharply as ten or eleven birds, all
soaring and diving, circled above them. Obadiah kept his eyes closed and his face skyward as if absorbing the birds’ movements the way a sun-worshipper absorbs heat from the sun. He brought his hands forward, one wrist held slightly higher than the other, and a dark bird immediately landed on it.