Rocks & Gravel (Peri Jean Mace Ghost Thrillers Book 3) (24 page)

Amanda took a slip of paper out of pocket and began writing on it, saying stuff about forgetting. Barbie stopped her.

“How do I know you won’t remove the spell to get her to remember so you can send me to jail?”

“You’ll hold the focus of the spell, the power that holds it intact.” Amanda shoved Barbie’s hand off her. “You’ll have to make a point to make physical contact with Peri Jean, frequently at first, but later—once this memory would have naturally faded anyway—every ten years or so should do it.”

“What about for Jesse? You said you’d make him forget us stealing the treasure from them. The forgetting has to be really good or we can’t frame him for killing Paul.”

Amanda sagged. “You planned this all along, didn’t you? No, don’t answer. I see it on your face.”

“I can kill you, too, keep the treasure all for myself.”

Amanda shook her head and kept preparing the spell. Barbie walked over to her and kicked her to get her attention. Amanda spun to face her, red faced and pissed, but stopped short of giving my mother exactly what she deserved.

“What about Jesse?”

“You’ll hold the focus of his spell, too. If you can’t make physical contact with him, send him letters every once in a while.” Amanda took the compact apart and hid the slip of paper inside as she talked. “All we need is some physical item he loves and hopefully won’t get rid of, but we can hide the ticket—the spell itself—well enough so it hopefully won’t get destroyed even if Jesse gets rid of the item.” Amanda touched her hand to little Peri Jean’s head, said some words, and the vision ended.

“Find what you were looking for out here, kiddo?” Barbie’s voice came from behind me. I turned, still shaky from the intensity of what I’d seen. She stood in front of me holding an axe handle and grinning. She brought the axe handle up. Fury welled in me, sharp and hot, and I swung one foot out to kick her at the same moment she swung the handle. I don’t know where she intended to hit me, but it caught the top of my head. The whole world went white and filled with the sound of the stupid bird croaking, croaking, croaking.

* * *

H
ead throbbing
, I listened to Barbie and Amanda grunt as they dragged me to the base of a slim tree. They leaned me against it and looped a length of nylon cord around my chest. The rope tightened until it dug into my skin through my shirt.

“Hold her hand out,” Amanda said in the same businesslike tone I’d heard her use in her hair salon.

Barbie grabbed my wrists. I struggled against her, but the blow to my head had made me weak, and I ended up slapping at her like a kid in her first playground tussle. She deflected my attempts with no more effort than a fly dodging a flyswatter. I shook my head, trying to get some sense back into myself. It just made me dizzier.

Amanda drew a wickedly long dagger out of a metal sheath attached to her belt. The jewels on its handle winked in the sun, blinding me and making my head hurt even worse. Barbie’s grip tightened on my wrists. Realizing what Amanda intended, I knotted my hands into fists.

“Please don’t.” In my panic, my voice paled to a whisper. “I won’t do…I don’t know. Please don’t.”

“Get her hand open, Barbara.”

The woman who gave birth to me dropped one of my hands and focused her grip on the other. Fast as a snake striking, she jammed her thumb in the webbing between my clenched middle and ring fingers. It felt like someone was driving a nail into the bones. I gritted my teeth, straining against the pain, until I shook all over. My hand suddenly let go without my permission. Amanda grabbed my fingers and used her dagger to lay open the skin nearly to the bone. Blood slowly welled in the cut, and the first throbs made me mewl. Amanda grabbed an ornate silver goblet and motioned Barbie to hold my hand over it. They milked blood out of my hand. Ashamed of myself, I screamed each time they put pressure on my wound.

“Ok. I think we’ve got enough,” Amanda said. “Tie her wrists so she can’t get away and come help me with the rest.”

“You said we were going to end her so she couldn’t interfere.” Barbie, eyes wild, stood over me holding another length of nylon rope. “Why not kill her this second? You’ve got the blood to unlock the curse.”

Kill her this second.
I went cold at Barbie’s words even though they shouldn’t have surprised me. She wanted to kill me when I was a little girl. I tried to swallow and almost choked.

“Because I want to collect her spirit. Use it like I have her daddy’s. She’s much more powerful than he was.” Amanda handed the goblet to Barbie, leaned forward and pulled the black opal necklace over my head. She kissed it and put it on herself. Then she winked at me. I wanted to kick her teeth in.

“Perfect,” Barbie muttered and looped the nylon rope around my wrists, pulling it way too tight. My fingers began to tingle almost immediately. The pain from my hand wound and the discomfort from my bonds swept some of the fog out of my head. I waited until she had some tension and yanked my arms, throwing her off balance. She kicked me in the stomach twice. I brought my knees up too late to deflect the kicks and shuddered as the pain spread through me, aching in my bowels. It felt like she’d implanted a fiery ball in my belly, and it weighed six hundred pounds. Barbie wrapped my wrists with the precision of a rodeo barrel racer and sneered in my face. “You ain’t the only one who can win a fight, Peri Jean.”

I sneered right back and said, “We ain’t done…
Mom.
”

She raised her eyebrows in challenge.

“Leave her alone.” Amanda walked across the homesite to the path where I’d entered. “I have to draw these dimming symbols in the road and on the path so people’ll drive on by.”

“I’m not helping you do magic. That’s not the deal we made.”

“I’m not asking you. I’m telling you this is what we have to do—and fast—if we want to take care of our business here. If we don’t remove the curse, we’ll never find the treasure, and we’ll both die penniless. Sound fun to you?”

Barbie followed Amanda grumbling and the two of them used sticks to draw something in the white sand, Amanda speaking in a low voice and sprinkling water on the drawings. They came back to where they’d tied me, and Amanda began setting up a spelling area. I recognized some of the things she did from the night I helped Mysti.

“You two murderers are still looking for the treasure after all these years?” I struggled against my ties, letting them grind into my skin as I tested their strength and wilting when there wasn’t any give at all. There had to be a way out of this. Had to.

“Your mother only found out half the story before she killed your daddy. She never has the patience to plan things out. Everything’s done on impulse.” Amanda rolled her eyes at the heavens.

She returned her attention to her altar and set a worn, leather-bound book next to the mini treasure box she’d stolen from me. Priscilla Herrera’s spell book. I recognized it from my vision. Amanda must have managed to remove the glamour making it appear to simply be a book of folk remedies. She opened it and ran her finger down the page. She placed the cup of my blood and the dirty dagger on the opposite side of the makeshift table. Then she turned to me, crossing her arms over her chest. “Your father was looking for Priscilla Herrera’s spelling stones the day Barbie killed him, not the actual treasure.” Amanda paused to glare at Barbie, disgust pulling her mouth down. “Paul told me he thought Priscilla buried them here on the home place before she was taken to town and hanged.”

I didn’t have to ask if my father’s theory had been wrong. I knew the answer. The stones were wherever Priscilla Herrera’s body rested unless someone had cut them out of her stomach.

“What was under the tree then?” I remembered my insistence the lady in the cabin wanted us to see what was buried under the tree.

“A big-assed dead bird,” Barbie said. “Soon as we dug it up, a bunch of crows—”

“They were ravens,” Amanda said.

“Who gives a shit?” Barbie yelled. “A bunch of big, ugly black birds came down on us like the wrath of God.” She pulled up her three-quarter sleeve and walked over to me. “Bit me here. Still got the scar. See?”

I turned my head to look and she popped me across the cheek with her open hand and hissed her sour breath into my face. “I know you made it happen somehow.”

I kicked out at her, wanting so badly to do her harm. She danced away and used her foot to sling dirt in my direction. It peppered my face, and I spat, which did nothing to clear the grit from my mouth.

“You’re not going to remove the curse without the spelling stones. I saw Priscilla Herrera do the curse in my vision.” I knew I might have been telling too much, but I’d do anything to stall the proceedings. I didn’t want to see what would really happen if Amanda managed to separate the dark spirits from the mini-treasure chest.

“
You
accessed a vision of what happened the day she died?” Her gaze sharpened and fastened onto me. She shook her head. “If you weren’t so stubborn, we could work together instead of this.” She clicked her tongue and shrugged. “I don’t think I need the stones. The spell book says she used blood to seal—or protect—the spell. I’m going to use your blood to unseal it.”

“What do you think is going to happen once the curse is unsealed?” I heard the tremor in my voice as I imagined every kind of hell breaking loose.

“The entities Priscilla Herrera attached to the treasure to carry out the parameters of the curse will be detached from it.” She paused to light her candles.

“You’re forgetting I saw her attach them. She gave them instructions to destroy Gaslight City and everybody in it if anybody but her detached them. You’re going to kill us all.”

“No.” She turned to me, and the expression on her face chilled the August heat away in an instant. “Just you. I can use your blood to detach them from the treasure
and
to attach them to you all at once.”

Vertigo spun me. If the ropes hadn’t been holding me up, I’d have fallen. I hung there, ropes holding me up, and a wild hope hit me. Maybe I could lie my way out of this.

“It’s not going to work.” I said the words like I believed them. “The curse Hezekiah Bruce wrote about left out one big detail that I saw in my vision. The person who removes the curse has to have Priscilla Herrera’s blood. Mace blood might be needed to find the treasure, but Herrera blood is needed to remove the curse.” I widened my eyes for emphasis. “My blood isn’t going to help you.”

Amanda smiled at me, eyes crinkling at the corners. “It really is too bad I’m going to kill you. You think fast under pressure.”

“I figured out you were the Herrera heir when I eavesdropped on your conversation with Julie at the antique store, you nitwit.” Barbie pursed her lips and shook her head at me. “That’s why I asked about your ugly fucking tattoo.”

Her words washed away the last of my hope. I bit my lip because I didn’t want to cry in front of her.

“Look at this way, Peri Jean. You’re not dying in vain. Amanda and I’ll have access to all the clues Reginald Mace hid around town—I’m talking about the real clues, not the false paths.” Barbie clapped her hands and hurried into the cabin. Amanda watched her go, the expression on her face wary. Barbie came back out holding a small piece of glass in her hand. As she got closer, I saw it was a mirror, and not just any mirror. It was the missing mirror out of my compact. She held it out to me. I winced away, not understanding what it was or what she meant to do with it.

“So your daddy can watch what happens to his precious baby.”

Her meaning sank in. My lost hope came back as red fury. My jaw clenched. I wanted to put my hands around her throat and squeeze the life out of her. Both of them.

Just as Amanda had used one part of the butterfly compact to imprison my memory, she’d used another part—the mirror—to trap my daddy’s spirit. Barbie, the poisonous bitch, perched the mirror at the fork of two branches and angled it to reflect my face. She studied her work, almost smiling, and nodded. The ice in my veins melted and boiled. I would not die without a fight.

“You might kill me, but Rainey and Hooty and Hannah are going to want to know who did it. Eventually, they’ll figure out it was you two losers.”

“We’re going to make your death look like the work of a certain group of motorcycle riders,” Amanda said. “I’ve gotten better at framing people over the years and no longer need the cops to look the other way.” She smirked at Barbie, who glared right back.

While they fought their silent fight, I focused on the black opal hanging around Amanda’s neck. It was my only hope. Most of the time, it followed wherever I went. I used my will to pull at it. Nothing happened.

“Your friends will be furious over your death.” Amanda slipped me a wink, as though she knew exactly what I had in mind. “They’ll forget all about the Mace Treasure long enough for us to find it and be gone.”

“I know why Barbie wants the money. Her husband finally figured out he married the human equivalent of a black widow spider and got away while he still could.” I knew my time was running out. I had to stall things. I screwed up my face at Barbie. “Why do you want to mess with the treasure? You’re rich.”