Not Quite Right (A Lowcountry Mystery) (Lowcountry Mysteries Book 6) (35 page)

“I can help you. And I’m not the only one.”

Chapter Twenty

B
eau and I meet Mel and Will at Debbie’s Diner. Beau looks exhausted and stunned, an odd combination on a face that’s typically so composed, but it’s been a hell of a night. Too much talk about curses and voodoo with a man who definitely looks like he knows a lot about both. I voted for Pete’s and booze, but everyone else gave in to Mel’s pouting so we agreed to meet for pie, instead.

The seats of the booths are covered in light blue vinyl, still ripped in the same places it was when we were in high school. Foam pokes through here and there, and the benches are sticky where duct tape has been applied more than once, only to peel off—or be peeled off—by the new, younger versions of us running loose in Heron Creek.

Thankfully, the pie hasn’t changed, either. I order a piece of apple and request a couple slices of American cheese on top, a tradition inherited from my gramps. It never fails to gross out my friends, so double bonus for ordering it whenever possible. Will orders blackberry, probably because he knows I want a bite, while Mel goes for chocolate and Beau earns odd looks by opting for strawberry rhubarb. It’s November, so the pie won’t be as good as it is when fruit is in season, but it’s better than nothing.

“I’m glad you guys could come,” I confess, so happy to have my friends sitting across from me on a crazy night like tonight. I need things to stay the same, at least some of them, no matter what the root doctor said about static lives and the effectiveness of curses. “Who’s watching Grant?”

“He’s spending the night at LeighAnn’s,” Mel answers. “She’s got at least one kid around that age and the woman refuses to say no to more of them—her own or other people’s. God bless her.”

“She’s been a godsend these past several days. We owe her at least one kid-free night when this is over.” My eyes skim the menu I know by heart.

“Agreed.” Mel grins. “You can do it. I’m pregnant.”

“She uses that excuse for everything now,” Will grouses, spinning his straw around in his cup. “I’m not allowed to protest because I don’t have to give birth in a few months. But you could fight her on it.”
 

He looks hopefully in my direction, but I hold up my hands to block any attempt at alliance.
 

“No way, buddy. She squeezes a watermelon out of a lemon-sized hole, she gets to say whatever she wants, and I guess I’ll have a toddler sleepover.”

“Traitor,” he mumbles, then shoots a scared look at his wife.

I can’t help but laugh. “Don’t be mad because I’m smarter than you.”

“Yeah, you should be used to it by now,” Mel retorts.

The pie arrives, sitting on plates in front of us like the prettiest piles of sugar in the world. Beau grabs his fork, shaking his head at the banter he couldn’t find an opening to join. “You know, I still can’t decide if I would have liked y’all if we’d known one another as kids.”

“Definitely not,” Mel decides. “We were assholes.”

“You would have been on Leo’s team,” Will observes.
 

I’m glad he said it so I didn’t have to.
 

The pie stops us from talking, and my worries crowd back in with the silence. As good as it is to see my friends and act like we’re all hanging out without cares beyond pie and discussing where Beau would have fit into our childhood gang wars, the knot in my gut won’t let me ignore it any longer. In fact, I only get down two bites of pie—one of mine and one of Will’s—before I set down my fork and sigh.

“I found someone to help with the curse on our family,” I start, “since Mama Lottie has run off. Probably with Amelia.”

My conversation topic kills everyone else’s appetite, too, and I wonder if this will be the first time an entire table of patrons doesn’t finish their slices of Debbie’s homemade pie.
 

“Who?” Mel asks, swallowing.

“A friend of Odette’s. He’s a root doctor, which I guess is some kind of voodoo priest or something.” I shrug.

“He’s creepy, whatever he is,” Beau chimes in, still looking like less than himself. “I wouldn’t mess with him.”

“I took Beau with me to ask if Mama Lottie already put the curse on his family. They say she hasn’t, which is good. It gives me hope that she’s at least thinking about what I told her.” I push chunks of pie around with my fork, the smell of cinnamon and sugar making me nauseated. “I just can’t wait on Mama Lottie to keep her promise if someone else can help.”

“What did he say? I mean…are you sure he’s not trying to pull one over on you?” Will’s blue eyes have shifted from curious to suspicious.
 

The ease of the shift makes me wonder why no one suggested he look into law enforcement as a career before now. It’s such a perfect fit.

“I don’t think he’s pulling anything over on me.” I bite my lower lip, searching for a way to explain the inexplicable. “It’s like Beau says. You just know. Besides, we’re not giving him anything. There’s nothing in it for anyone but us.”

“Then why help?” Mel asks.

“According to him, because their religion hinges on dark and light staying in balance, and this curse is so old and so evil that it could throw the whole world out of whack. Or something.”

“I’m not sure you should talk so flippantly about what they believe,” Beau murmurs, looking around the diner as if he suspects Dr. Rue might be eavesdropping to make sure we don’t talk any shit about him.
 

It would be funny if Beau’s nerves didn’t bounce right over to me. I press my lips together, wishing I could take it back, even though I didn’t mean to be disrespectful. The sad truth is, after all of these months talking about curses and voodoo, my vocabulary hasn’t expanded enough to be able to articulate better.

“I didn’t mean it that way, but that’s essentially what he said,” I amend. “He wants to help, and other practitioners want to help, because what’s happening is bigger than our family.”

Mel and Will seem appeased by the explanation, but the way they both sit forward, their shoulders hunched and their hands flat on the table, suggests they want more details.

“What do you have to do?” Mel’s eyes are wide. “You don’t have to sacrifice an animal or anything, right?”

“No.”

“You don’t know that.” Beau nudges me, his eyebrows raised. “He didn’t exactly spell out this whole ceremony thing he’s planning.”

“Okay, fine, I don’t know if any animals will be sacrificed in the breaking of the curse.” My stomach lurches at the thought. God, don’t let it be something cute. “All he said is that we’ll need to gather at the site of the original curse, which, thanks to Anne, we can find. Or at least, I can.”

I’m hoping I can find it again without her. I was pretty banged up and out of it when I left there last time, but my memory is younger than the rest of me, thank goodness.
 

Mel and Will are watching me expectantly, waiting on the rest of what Dr. Rue said, because that obviously can’t be all. The words stick in my throat. I glance helplessly at Beau, and his eyes soften. One big, warm hand covers mine and squeezes.

“He said
all
of Anne’s living descendants need to be there in order for the ritual to work,” Beau fills in, saving me from breaking down in the middle of town. Laurel and Dorothy are already pretending not to listen to us from the bar, where they’re bent over a single piece of pie and two steaming mugs of decaf coffee.

At least, I assume it’s decaf. They’re too old to realize caffeine can and should be consumed any time of day.

“So you can’t do it until we find Amelia,” Mel states, her jaw set in a determined line.

I know she doesn’t want to admit the same thought tearing away chunks of my heart every time it sloshes through my chest—that we might not find Amelia. Or if we do, we might be too late.

B
ack at home, there’s no way to tempt sleep, no matter how little I’ve had lately. I settle in the living room with Charlotta’s journals, my mind fixed on getting answers.
 

Now that I know what has to be done about my own curse, the only thing left to do is figure out how to get around the problem of Mama Lottie. If she’s holding Amelia, or has stashed her somewhere to get back at me, the problem of the Drayton curse and my own are now entwined too tightly to be separated. It should make me glad, to realize that if I can pull off a miracle, both Beau’s and my family will come out free on the other side of this.
 

That’s one big
if
, though. I have no idea if I can convince Mama Lottie to stop throwing me around, never mind decide to dismiss the desire for revenge that’s gotten her through a hundred years of being dead and leave us all alone.
 

Deep breath, Gracie. First things first.
 

A smile tips one side of my lips, because even though I’m talking to myself, it sounds like something Amelia would say if she were here.

I can’t shake the feeling that she must be nearby, that we must have missed something. I keep coming back to the fact that she had to have walked and wouldn’t have been able to get that far before we started searching.
 

Unless someone picked her up, but that would mean another living human was doing Mama Lottie’s bidding. Is that even possible?

The journals, Gracie. Focus on the problem at hand.
 

None of the rest of it matters if I can’t find everything there is to know about Mama Lottie and her son. I hope that Charlotta wrote down what happened, that she wasn’t too traumatized by losing her first love to work it out on paper. Or that she wasn’t too scared of what Mama Lottie would do if she caught Charlotta….

21 March 1900

We’re planning to leave in less than a week. James has been saving money for a while, everything he can without his mother getting suspicious, and has gotten us tickets on the train to Philadelphia. I’ve decided we might want to go farther north, perhaps to New York, because Philadelphia is an old city full of people with old ideas, and I fear we’ll face the same sort of troubles we might if we stayed in Charleston.

James worries that we won’t have the money to go farther, so we’ll see. I know that we both want the baby to be safe—the baby I cannot continue to hide if we don’t leave as planned. Even Mama has noticed I’m getting fat and has cut my portions at supper. I get no breakfast so James brings me his, but we can’t go on like this. Father and Charles haven’t noticed, of course, but they’re men. My sister has started to look at me with a suspicious gleam in her beady, bossy eyes. It won’t be long until Bessie guesses.
 

Then there’s no telling what will happen. I’m too far along to try any of the remedies that might have flushed the baby from my womb months ago. He would be tiny, still, but might survive. He’s a fighter.

James often asks me in an excited voice how I’m sure it’s a boy, and there’s no real answer. I just know, and that’s the truth—the same way I’m positive he’s strong, that he’ll have James’s eyes but my lighter coloring, and that he’s special.

Perhaps all mothers think that about their children, have the same hopes and dreams, but I’m not sure. My parents wish nothing for me but to marry well, and I think that’s partly so that they’ll be relieved of the burden of caring for me throughout my life.

Either way, James Jr. is healthy. That will be his name. We’ve both agreed.

I’ve been packing all day, little bits here and there. It’s difficult to accomplish with Bessie lurking around, and this time, not even Charles can assist. He’s been wonderful about helping us sneak around and meet, and about keeping our relationship from Mama and Father, but he loves us both—especially James—so much that I know he would do anything to keep us from leaving.

I’ve got some things packed in a potato sack and I hear Bessie downstairs haranguing the cook about something, so I’m going to run and hide it in the old cabin where James and I have kept up meeting even though the weather has started to turn nice. No one goes in there except us, so it’s perfect. The rest of the workers think the old slave quarters are haunted. My parents say that’s nonsense, but I notice they don’t go in there, either.