Spell For Sophia (3 page)

"Mam'zelle?" Terror cycled through me. The match scorched my finger. I blew out the flame, sank to the bed, and clutched her lifeless hand. My eyes burned from unspent tears.
No phone. No Internet. No way to contact the police about a dead body or vengeful drug dealers. No way to tell Ainslie how sorry I am I didn't listen to her. No way to tell anyone how Mam'zelle had rescued me from my parents.

And now —
may the Merciful Mother help me
— she was dead.

Chapter Two

A warning Mam’zelle had once given me shifted to the front burner of my brain as her spirit rose from her body.

"Never show affinity for a spirit lest it slips into you slick as melted butter on shrimp. It'll seep right into one your vortexes."

"Vortexes?" I had asked, pressing my knees together.

"Chakras, child." Mam'zelle had shaken her head. "Didn't your foster maman teach you anything?" She had whistled through her teeth. "And you being born and raised in California."

Fear spiked my blood. I slid from the bed as silent as a serpent. My bottom found the throw rug and I pressed my chin to my knees and wrapped my arms around my legs. I envisioned a silver egg-shaped shield enveloping me. I forced myself not to dwell on how grateful I was to Mam'zelle or how much her kindness had meant to me.
Show no empathy, no connection.

Mam'zelle's spirit waited, testing me.

Well, kick it.
I swiped away the tears trickling down my cheeks. "I know you have people to see on the other side." The house swayed and creaked as I stood. I sidestepped to keep my balance.
Show strength. Spirits behold weakness as an invitation.

"Don't stay on my account. I'll be fine." The bayou gurgled to life three feet beneath the floorboards. My heart stuttered. I strained, listening for alligators. Nothing. "I'll make my way back to California."
Somehow.
"I'll find my friend Ainslie. She'll take me in."

A star spiral appeared around Mam'zelle's spirit and her soul ascended another foot toward the ceiling. The star path brightened, bathing me in wondrous light. My skin tingled. I tipped my chin up and my heels rose off the floor. My lungs inflated. Part of me wanted to float upward to join Mam'zelle in a place without pain or struggle or parents who dismissed child endangerment as a cost of doing business.

Just let go.

A golden beam of light angled down. My chest lifted to embrace it. My toes left the throw rug. I rose an inch, then two.
Joy awaits me. No one will miss me — no one but Ainslie.

Ainslie. As soon as her name entered my thoughts, a montage of her played like a movie inside my head. But she appeared older, hollow-eyed, and broken.
This isn't how I remember her.
The vignettes made no sense. Why was Ainslie pleading with my foster mom? And why was Ainslie dirty-haired and curled up on a hospital bed?

Another scene flew past. Ainslie appeared healthier, but her aura was jagged and jittery. She walked to class at what appeared to be a small private school, not rowdy Jefferson High.
This wasn't what we had planned. It's all wrong.

I must find her.

Weight returned to my body. I thudded onto the throw rug, my worn-out sneakers barely cushioning my fall. The beam of golden light, Mam'zelle's spirit, and the star path vanished.

I gaped at the dark room and patted my torso. It didn't feel as though Mam'zelle had breached my magical shield. I hugged myself.
I think she passed into the light.
A fresh worry hit me.
What happened to Ainslie?

My stomach whirled again. A puzzling new scene played before me. An audience sat in folding chairs, their collective gaze fixated on a teen boy and an elderly couple on a makeshift stage. Off to one side of the audience, Ainslie chased after a large book that appeared to propel forward of its own accord. She wasn't quick enough. The tome splintered, morphing into handwritten letters and faded postcards, all flying toward the stage. The air in front of the stage rippled like a protection spell. I had a bad feeling the letters and cards were about to knife through the magical ward.

Acting on instinct, I ducked and covered my head and face with my arms. With a whoosh, the dozens of candles in the hut ignited. I rose from my crouch, encircled by flames. My stomach lurched. The room rushed upward and I shrank. I shrieked — an otherworldly, hyena-like sound. The ring of flames intensified. My skin heated. My hand flew to the skin graft on my throat. For a terrible moment I was three again, standing in the kitchen my parents had converted into a makeshift lab, and unbearable pain seared my throat and arm.

No, no, no.
I calmed my younger self.
You're okay. This is now. That was then. We're not on fire. The hut isn't on fire. This is a vision or weird dream. Wake up!

My muscles remained rigid; my feet rooted to the floorboards. A glass dome shimmered above me. Startled, distorted faces — the elderly couple from the stage —stared down at me as though I were a tiny figure trapped inside a fiery snow globe. Without thinking I yelled, "Find me!"

The old woman's jaw dropped. The elderly man gawked, then retreated. The dome vanished, sounding like a spacecraft whisking off into the clouds. The candles extinguished as abruptly as they had flared.

"Oya-Yansa?" With another lurch my body shot up to its full five feet, two inches. My hand flew to my speeding heart and my fingers fanned over my breastbone. Disoriented, I blinked into the darkness. The three-year-old still shaking within me wondered where we could hide.

Merciful Mary!
My heart sounded like a train
click-clacking
over tracks.
Find me? Why hadn't I screamed, "Help! I'm trapped in a Louisiana bayou!

I stooped and groped until my fingers closed over the matchbox. Fumbling, I removed a match and ignited it. Acrid sulfur seared the air. My hand trembled as I tilted the nearest jam jar and thrust the flame at the candlewick. On the second shaky jab the wick flared. "Ow!" I dropped the match and withdrew my hand. I sucked on my burned finger while the flame consumed the match. The jam jar warmed as I raised it. I dropped my gaze to the bed and fear bumps tingled my arms.

Mam'zelle's body had vanished. In its place, a snake coiled among a scattering of magnolia leaves.

Chapter Three

Please don't swarm at night.
My prayer to the alligators replayed in an endless loop in my mind. I packed just in case. Mentally, the act hurled me back to foster care when each knock on the door had set the fine hairs on my forearms standing on end.
Why is my caseworker here? Am I going to have to move again?
At least this time I had been warned change was coming. Having my backpack and Breaux's old valise instead of a plastic garbage bag didn't make my stomach less queasy. I was still headed for the unknown.

Please hurry, Breaux. I need your help.
I'd never be able to navigate the maze of back channels on my own — day or night. And getting lost was not an option. The tide could strand me. My provisions could run out. My skin prickled just thinking about the diamondbacks and gators slithering in the water. Part of me argued,
they'll be hibernating; you don't have to worry.
Well, I wasn't going to bank on anything in voodoo country.

I knew the land route, but only because there was so little of it. The footbridge was tethered to a small island. On the far side, a rowboat waited. We usually kept the boat tied to a small dock near the footbridge. But Mam'zelle's wasting disease had birthed flashes of paranoia and she had insisted I move it.

Moonlight slid through the windows, illuminating the smudges left by the dragonfly assault. I huddled on the sofa in the sitting room.
Say I got away. Then what?
I couldn't go to the police and tell them my parents had kidnapped me.
Mamá
would say
I
had contacted
them
. I had willingly entered the car.

I had stolen their drug money.

I had lit the match.

The hut swayed and creaked. I clutched the faded floral quilt to my chin and prayed Oya-Yansa wouldn't blow away the salt I had spread across the thresholds and windowsills to ward against evil. I had coated a candle with cinnamon and cayenne pepper. It burned low, but having grown up in earthquake country, I had a strict rule against falling asleep with a candle lit. I compromised and placed the votive in the kitchen sink near the plaster statue of Black Mary.

I drifted into an uneasy slumber and dreamt the police arrived by airboat and questioned me about Mam'zelle's disappearance.
What did you do with her body? Feed it to the gators?
I awoke at daybreak, sopping with sweat and terrified Breaux would believe I had done in his
grand-mère.

"Mam'zelle? Are you still here?" Not sensing her spirit, a wave of grief and abandonment washed over me. I released a ragged breath, then moved her photo to the altar. "Be at peace with the ancestors, Mam'zelle." I struck a match and the white candle sizzled and flared.

Stay busy. If I stop, I'll cry. If I cry, my heart chakra might open. If my heart chakra opens, Mam'zelle's spirit might sneak in. Then whatever hex got her will get me too.

I fetched a bucket and vinegar from the side of the stilt hut and dried yarrow and rosemary from Mam'zelle's magic room. I knew she would have wanted the hut to be spiritually and physically cleansed. Though I wasn't sure what to do about her bedding. The serpent had slithered off during the night, but fear and worry prevented me from washing the sheets. I left them undisturbed, smelling of floral perfume and illness, and scattered with magnolia leaves.
Evidence.
I needed Breaux to see the bed just as Mam'zelle had left it. Maybe if he passed his hand over it and read Mam'zelle's energy residue and her thoughtforms, he'd believe me.

If the police showed up, surely the blood on the bandana would raise suspicion. I left the orange cloth for the moment, lifting it only long enough to scrub the nightstand with a flannel cloth from the rag bin. Mam'zelle would have been anxious about the dried stain. An enemy could use it to hex her past or her future. I'd have to dispose of bandana at some point. Maybe when the alligators swarmed.

A sense of urgency drove me. At any moment Breaux might materialize, or the police, or Mam'zelle's ghost. My bowels rumbled with the unending fear my parents or their drug boss from the pancake place would find me. I listened for alligators congregating beneath the floorboards.

When hunger threatened to topple me, I stopped long enough to eat. Afterward, I washed the windows and then cracked them open to release Death. The mild December air raised goose bumps on my skin. Breaux crept into my thoughts. I owed him so much. Someday he was bound to collect on the debt. Or he'd leave, like everyone else.

Darn it, Breaux.

I closed the windows and reinforced the protection spells. Mam'zelle's broom beckoned from the corner. I sprinkled bay rum on the tips of the bristles and brushed each corner from top to bottom. After an anxious glance out the glass, I swept the scuffed wooden floor, then filled the bucket with fresh water, vinegar, yarrow, and rosemary. Dropping to my hands and knees, I scrubbed away everything but the salt strewn across the threshold. I kept my ears pricked for the sound of a powerboat. Part of me hoped Breaux hadn't spent the extra money to get here more quickly. The selfish, scared, and motivated-toward-self-preservation side of me prayed he had.

The sharp scent of vinegar filled the stilt hut. Sweat pooled under my arms. The hut wasn't the only thing in need of purification. I needed a hot shower in the worst way. My gaze wandered to the small bookcase where Mam'zelle had given me a shelf for my prized possessions — Breaux's old textbooks. My heart constricted as I thought about the hefty school fines he must have paid for "losing" his books. Homeschooling myself hadn't been the same as finishing Carter Middle School and graduating on to Jefferson High, but it meant a lot. I didn't want to think about how far behind I had fallen. Maybe Ainslie wouldn't like me anymore if I weren't the brightest kid in class.

Right. Ainslie would ditch me over schoolwork, not lying, not living with meth heads, not burning down—

My hand with the wet rag paused above the bucket. I sensed a change in the bayou flowing beneath the floorboards. Then the roar of a motorboat reached my ears. Adrenaline flooded my system like a double dose of caffeine. No time to fetch my backpack and valise from their hiding place behind the sofa. No time for anything. If I ran for the footbridge, whoever was in the boat would see me.

Wake waves slapped the house piers. The boat motor chugged to a stop. I slid the bucket behind the rattan chair, silently cursing the telltale streak of water it left on the floor. Crawling to avoid being seen through the windows, I snaked into the closet-sized magic room and closed the door. My pulse skyrocketed. Had I locked the front door after I fetched the bucket? Heart sinking, I waited for my eyes to adjust to the dark, windowless room.

Where was Mam'zelle's knife for chopping herbs and carving symbols into candles? She would hiss through her teeth if I used a magical tool as a weapon.
Kick it.
I would not go down without a fight. Not this time. Never again.

Minutes passed. My heart boomed in my ears. Whoever had arrived must be tying their boat to the pier. Heavy footsteps — too heavy, I feared, for Breaux — clomped across the footbridge. Each step grew louder as the newcomer neared the front door. I groped among the herb jars, shells, nails, twine, mirrors, and feathers on Mam'zelle's work altar. Finally my hand closed around her blue-handled scissors. Remembering the silver knife at my waist, I unsheathed it.

The footfalls on the wooden bridge halted. The doorknob rattled. I tightened my grip on the scissors in one hand, the knife in the other. The stranger kicked the front door. My body jerked. It didn't sound like kick-it-down blows. More like he knocked with his feet. Weapons in hand, I cracked open the magic room door.