Not Quite Right (A Lowcountry Mystery) (Lowcountry Mysteries Book 6) (25 page)

She struggles into a seated position in response, her dark eyes snapping with delight. “Ain’t played in a long time, hansom. Good idea. It’ll take mah mind off things.”

The satisfied look on Leo’s face says that’s exactly what he was going for, and to be honest, I don’t mind. If we’re going to be sitting here waiting on this so-called root doctor for heaven knows how long, then a distraction is exactly what I need, too.

It takes me awhile to remember how to play—it’s been years, and my family always went more for cards than dominoes—but the summer Sundays spent visiting my great-grandmother in the nursing home come back to me soon enough. Who would have guessed playing dominoes is like riding a bike?

We haven’t been playing long when the sounds of voices and laughter outside cease. The silence is so unexpected—their chattering has been the ambient noise the entire time we’ve been here—that I notice it right away. Odette goes still, her hands freezing over our growing and complex board.

“He here,” she whispers.

Leo and I exchange a glance that says neither one of us knows whether to run away, clean up the game, or sit still as statues so that maybe he won’t notice us. It turns out there’s no time for any of those options, because a second later, a tall, reedy man steps over the threshold.
 

He’s dark-skinned, with the whites of his eyes almost luminescent as he surveys the three of us. His long, thin fingers wrap around the handles of a boxy, old-timey suitcase that’s frayed in spots. He grips it tighter, then releases the case onto the floor before straightening back up.

“Odette, I sure was sorry to hear you were under the weather.” His proper English and pronunciation takes me off guard after listening to Odette for the last hour or so, and also because he looks the part of the creepy voodoo doctor. “Who are your friends?”

I swallow as his gaze burns into my face. “I’m Graciela Harper.”

“Leo Boone.”

Neither of us offer a hand, but he doesn’t extend one, either. There’s no animosity radiating from him, no dislike. I don’t get the impression that he’s wondering why there are outsiders here, but he’s not making an effort to be friendly, either.

He doesn’t introduce himself, simply crouches next to Odette and begins an examination of sorts. I’m not sure what he can diagnose with his eyes closed, but he’s sure trying to figure out something. His hands hover over her body, lingering at her chest, stomach, and again at her head as he hums quietly to himself.
 

After a moment, his black eyes pop open and he nods. “We’ll fix you up, darlin’. No need to fret. Not that you’re the frettin’ type.”

She waves a hand at him. “Yah know I ain’t.”

The root doctor sweeps the long tails of his dark suit coat out of the way and lays his case open flat. My eyes go wide at its contents. The case is packed full of bright green herbs, vials filled with different colored liquids and crystals, what look to be scraggly roots, and a dozen other things too foreign for me to identify.
 

We watch him work in silence. He pinches off herbs and dumps them into a small, wooden bowl that looks handmade, then uses a matching pestle to muddle them with drops from the vials. Scents mingle and fill the hut, too tangled together to parse out, but it’s not pleasant. Odette seems unconcerned, not even watching the man. She’s staring at me, her bottom lip caught between her teeth and worry in her gaze.

I hope she’s going to be the one to ask him about helping, because I’m not sure I can find my voice.

“Here you go.” He transfers the paste into a plastic bag and ties it at the top, then hands the concoction to his patient. “Rub that on your chest twice a day, sunrise and sunset. I’m leaving you some bark to make tea, as well.”

“Thank yah, Doc.”

He nods, then casts a glance over his shoulder at me and Leo. Like the women outside, his gaze lifts to my head, then moves to the air around me. A frown follows quickly in its wake as he turns back to Odette. “I don’t like the look of that curse the girl’s carrying. I can’t be sure, but it could have gotten stuck to you. Or someone gave you something similar.”

I gasp, my heart pounding into my ribs. If my coming around has hurt Odette, I won’t forgive myself.

“Ain’t found nuthin’ strange lurkin’ ’bout.” Odette frowns now, too. “But could be. The child’s got a bad one, Doc. She needs help, and no way tah get it.”

He closes his eyes, hearing the request in her voice, but only for a brief moment. When he opens them again they’re on me. “Do you mind?”

“Mind what?” I ask, wariness pursing my lips.

“If I take a look?”

“Um…I guess not? Everyone else has been checking me out and not even asking,” I joke. It tumbles and smashes its nose when no one laughs, not even to humor me.

I resist the urge to move closer to Leo or grab his hand as the intimidating man stands and comes over to me, reaching out to put one hand on my shoulder to steady me. The other goes over my heart and then drifts upward to my head, his frown deepening with every pause.

“It’s old. One of the oldest I’ve seen, and one of the tighter bound. It’s wrapped right up in your DNA.”

It takes my breath away, how easily he guesses, what he can see.
 

I nod. “Yes. Is there a way to break it?”

“Once it’s broken, it will break.”

It’s the same frustrating advice Odette gave me the first time we met—that the only way to break a curse is to see it fail.
 

“So the only thing to do is for my cousin to have her baby and then wait thirteen years, hoping he doesn’t die?”

“Not the only way. The only
sure
way.”

“What’s the
un
sure way? Because your first suggestion sounds like hell, and I would know. I’ve lived in the suburbs.”

That makes him chuckle, and for the first time since he entered, he seems to relax. He paces over to the wall and then leans against it, crossing his legs at the ankle. “I’m a powerful man.”

“S’true,” Odette adds, bobbing her head up and down.
 

“I’m not powerful enough to lift this curse, not on my own. It’s possible that if you give me a few days, however, I could round up help.”

His readiness to assist me, a girl he only just met, sets my wariness on high alert. “Why would you do that? You don’t even know me.”

“First off, you’re friends of Odette’s, and that goes a long way in my book. Second, I don’t know how much you understand about our religion, but like all forms of voodoo, juju, and root magic, Gullah is beholden to a balance between dark and light.”

He pulls a pack of clove cigarettes out of his pocket and lights one. My skepticism returns. What kind of root doctor doesn’t know that inhaling smoke is unhealthy?

“There cannot be light without dark, you understand?” he goes on. “We cannot eradicate it, but we can make sure it does not gain too strong of a foothold in this world.” He takes a long draw, then turns his face toward the opening to expel the smoke. When he turns back, the passion in his eyes freezes me in place. “That curse on your family, it’s born of pure evil. Seething malice. Hatred and jealousy. All things that do not belong in this world, not after so long and not in such abundance. That is why I will try to help you banish it back to the spirit world where it belongs.”

A lump forms in my throat. It must be the thousandth one I’ve swallowed since Amelia disappeared two nights ago. “Thank you. If there’s anything you need from me or my family, just let me know.”

“I will require your assistance, and most likely more than that. Be ready. I will contact you soon.”

With that, he gathers up his herbs and his case and bends to accept a kiss on the cheek from the patient he came here expecting to treat. Leo and I stare at each other as he steps out of the hut and the sound of his footsteps disappear. Then we leave, too, saying good night to Odette, who obviously needs to get some rest. Our night has tired her out, and I feel worse than ever for not thinking to bring her something.

At least I’ll have another chance, because it sounds like I’ll be back. I don’t know what to make of this root doctor, or what he meant when he said he would require
more than
my assistance, but there’s no hesitation on my part. Whatever he needs, whatever it takes, we’ve got to get rid of this curse.

Chapter Fifteen

I
’m startled awake in a pool of sweat, my hair stuck to my face and neck, and my body in the grips of a massive chill. My first thought is that I’ve somehow entered early menopause in addition to all of my other awesome issues, but then the unmistakable feeling of being watched has me wide awake and searching the room for Henry.

It’s not him. The little boy from Drayton Hall, the one who says his name is Charles, stands near the bed, his big eyes inquisitive.

My fingers clutch the sheets to my chest, even though I want to cast them off and stand in front of an open window to dry up my sweat.

“Hi,” he says, as though he’s been waiting for me to wake up for a while now.
 

Children are not known to be patient, and neither are ghosts. A hard combination to bear.

“Hello.” I cock my head to the side. “Why can I hear you?”

“I don’t know. Some of us are better at getting through than others. Or maybe…” He trails off, fear widening his eyes as he peers into the dark corners of the room. “It could be because of Mama Lottie. She does spells at Drayton Hall, where I live most of the time.”

“How old are you?”

“Nine.”

Older than I’d guessed. He’s small for his age. “And your name is Charles. Which Charles?”

“Charles Henry.”

Part of me wants to relax, to ask every question I have about the things that happened at Drayton Hall over the past two hundred years, but the rest of me is scared he’ll disappear. Terrified that whatever is allowing us to communicate with such ease will flutter away, as impossible to catch as it was with Anne and Glinda, then Henry and Dr. Ladd. I can’t afford that. I need to ask the right questions.

“Are you Charlotta’s father or younger brother?”

He makes a face. “I will be her father. Right now, I am only a boy.”

“You know Mama Lottie. She’s your friend. Would you tell me about her?”

“I knew her my entire life. She came to the plantation when I was this age, and she wasn’t old, either. That’s why we still play together like this, sometimes now.”

It’s odd, talking to a boy about the life that he would lead when he grew up—how he would deal with his daughter, what he thought about her affair. He’s my best shot right now at learning more about Mama Lottie, though, so I’ll take it.

“She has her,” he says. “Your kin.”

My heart stops beating, and a second chill seizes me. I stare at him for several seconds before words stutter out past my lips. “Mama Lottie has Amelia?”

He nods. “You made her angry. She wants to take something from you that you love more than anything else, so you’ll understand how she feels about us.”

“About the Draytons?” I keep repeating what we already know like some kind of idiot, but my thoughts are numb and sluggish as I struggle to wrap my mind around his statement.

“She’s wrong, you know. She doesn’t want to see the truth.” He bites his bottom lip, and in his childish gaze there is a sorrow so deep it twists my insides until I want to cry out. “My parents…they did know about her. They knew she was different. So did my wife, and she made sure Mama Lottie would be free.”

“They knew she was abducted?”

He shakes his head. “No, I don’t think so. My family was better than most. They treated her and the rest of the workers pretty well, all things considered. They knew she was different, that’s all.”

Shockingly, I feel the desire to defend Mama Lottie rise inside of me. “You mean they didn’t ask questions because they didn’t want to give up a woman who had such valuable abilities.” This time it’s not a question.

“Maybe.” He looks worn out in that moment, and in his child’s face I see a man who lived a full, long life and appears desperate to lay down his troubles and move along. He’s the oddest ghost—aside from the two Mama Lotties—I’ve ever come across. “Maybe, but we don’t deserve her wrath. She doesn’t know everything. I keep trying to tell her, but she won’t listen to me.”

I recall how he screamed the same thing at her the night of the reunion when I’d run into them both—that she was wrong, that she doesn’t understand and doesn’t know everything. But what information is she missing?

“What doesn’t she know, Charles Henry?”

“That she’s the one who killed James.”

The words hit me like a load of boulders crashing down a mountainside, gaining strength as they go through me. It’s as hard to believe as it is to deny—I’ve seen her fly into rages myself, and she forgets even her own objectives in the process. Charlotta said in her journals that even James feared his mother above anyone else, that he worried more about her finding out about his relationship with Charlotta than her father, the boy standing in front of me.

He waits, shifting from foot to foot with impatience, as I consider the possibilities. There must be more—the expectant expression on his face says there’s more—but what?