Not Quite Right (A Lowcountry Mystery) (Lowcountry Mysteries Book 6) (43 page)

“I think we’re using a sliding scale for that word these days,” I mutter, following her. It is weird that my Gullah root man is using some kind of divination to find the place where a curse originated. Whatever. As long as he gets here.

I hear the sound of drums before I see the group of people dancing around a bonfire. We’re pretty near where Anne buried her diary, but in the middle of the clearing instead of on the edge. I don’t see Anne anymore, but she never shows herself to people who aren’t family, and besides, after how voodoo affected her life, and her death, it’s hard to blame her for not wanting to stick around.

Aunt Karen and Amelia stop on the edge of the group, my aunt gaping while Amelia’s eyes seem to widen a bit. Everyone is dressed, thank goodness. There are probably a dozen practitioners—two are drumming, one is the root doctor, who stands over the fire and stares down at the hot coals, and the rest are dancing.

Dr. Rue sees me and beckons me over, and when I get closer, I see two cages holding a snake and a chicken. My stomach turns, remembering my conversation about animal sacrifice.

“We are ready to begin.” His eyes drift over his people, then to my family. “That is all?”

“Yes, only three of us. And the baby,” I add, as an afterthought. He counts as a person to me, of course, but I’m not sure for purposes of the curse.

“He will need to be included. Because of his link to his mother, it will not be complicated.”

“Okay…so what do we have to do?”

“You must only be open to the spirits and in tune with your soul.”

“Oh, is that all?”
 

Dr. Rue frowns at my sarcasm. “You are not practitioners. The Gullah ways are not in your blood, and without understanding, the spirits will neither help you nor protect you. We can do that. We will ask the light ones to come and untangle your blood from this curse, to free you from the sins of your ancestor.”

His words take a moment to sink in, and when they do, my stomach hurts. “What do you mean,
free
us? Like, you’re going to remove the bits of Anne from our blood? How?”

“There is no answer to how, only who. The spirits will help if we give the correct sacrifice and explain our desire to thwart the will of dark spirits on our world.” He pauses, looking into the flame. Without warning, he unlatches the cage containing the chicken and pulls it out, breaking its neck and tossing it into the flames in one fell swoop.

At least he killed it first. That’s something.

I try not to throw up, but I feel all of the blood drain out of my head. “Jesus.”

His head snaps up. “Jesus is Lord, but he will not assist us tonight.”

“You didn’t answer my question about Anne Bonny,” I remind him, trying to distract myself from the oddly enticing smell of the chicken.

“In order to unbind you and you family from the curse, we must remove the blood of the cursed. You understand?”

“But…she’s part of our DNA. Won’t we be different? What if something important changes?”

Dr. Rue studies me for a moment, then looks at the snake. When his gaze lifts back to my face, I breathe a sigh of relief. I don’t need a front-row seat for
all
of the animal sacrifices tonight.

“It was long ago. Only minuscule amounts of her remain with you now, and the curse blackens all that is good. It will not change you in ways worse than the curse will, should it remain in your blood.”

That much is true. I can’t imagine losing anything that would matter if Amelia and her baby can be okay.

I nod. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

“You and your family will need to come and lie near the fire. You may hold hands. The dancers will surround you in a tight circle, and the ceremony will begin with a second sacrifice, after which I will invite the white saints to visit our circle and explain your plight. We hope that they will find our sacrifice worthy and our aim true, and agree that their help will bring balance back to this world.” He pauses, pursing his lips.
 

I get the feeling that there’s something more, something he’s not sure if he should say.

“It might hurt,” he continues. “It is not easy, drawing blackness from blood. Much like the venom from a snake, it must be sucked free.”

My head gets lighter, but I only nod. “We can handle it.”

I’m not sure Amelia will even feel it at this point, and he did say it wouldn’t hurt the baby any more than it hurts the rest of us. Aunt Karen can holler all she wants, but deep inside, I know she won’t. She’s too proud.

He nods, and I stand there awkwardly for another second wondering if I should thank him before deciding against it. Let’s see if all of this pomp and circumstance works first.
 

“What did he say?” Aunt Karen asks, her nerves showing in how tight she’s gripping Millie’s arm when I get back to them.

“He said we have to come lie near the fire. They’re going to surround us, and then he’s going to kill a snake and ask the spirits for their help.” I wonder how much to tell her about what else is going to happen, about the spirits sucking the blackness out of our veins or whatever, and decide against most of it. “He said it might be uncomfortable. If it works.”

Tears fill her eyes, surprising me. “I don’t care about that, Graciela, and I don’t care what they have to do. I want my daughter back, do you understand?”

I nod, trying and failing to swallow the lump in my throat. “That’s what I want, too.”

She straightens her shoulders and nods, my stern Aunt Karen again in the blink of an eye. I nod back, take a deep breath, and stand on the other side of my cousin. Together, the three of us walk over to the fire.

With Amelia still between us, we sit on the damp ground, then settle onto our backs. The chanting begins, and I hear the hiss of the fire grow louder. Dancers draw tighter and tighter around us until they obscure all but a sliver of moonlight and stars from my vision. The words don’t make sense, if they are even words, and ecstasy glows in the sweat on their frantic faces.
 

The sound of Dr. Rue’s voice, steady and booming through the clearing, finds its way over the top and between them, but the words slur together in my mind. I shut my eyes tight, wanting all of this to be over but, more than anything else, wanting to know that it worked.

“Spirits of light, we ask that you assist us this night to bring balance back to the world. Darkness has lived, safe inside this family for too many years, and we need your help to send it back where it belongs!”

Sparks fly into the sky from the fire, as though someone poured accelerant on it.

Amelia’s fingers lie inside mine, limp and cold, but they seize the same moment the pain hits me. It’s inside me and everywhere else, and my eyes fly open in shock. Above us are wispy clouds, swaying and tumbling in a breeze I can’t feel so close to the earth. The ground grumbles, as though upset, under my shoulder blades, and the pain gets worse.
 

“Be gone, dark ones! You do not belong here! Your presence is due to unnatural things!” Dr. Rue bellows, his words fading at the ends because of the unbearable agony inside me.

My cousin cries out, and I squeeze my eyes shut, biting my lip to suppress a groan. It feels as though my muscles are tearing away from my bones, as if my blood is trying to crawl through my skin. It gets worse, then worse again until there’s no way to stop my moan. Amelia lets go of my hand and curls her arms around her belly, turning on her side into the fetal position. Aunt Karen is screaming, but no one is stopping.

Not the dancers, whose gyrations and singing only increase.
 

Not Dr. Rue, whose voice gets louder and more insistent. “Take the darkness from inside them, suck it out like the poison it is! Leave that cursed ancestor in someone else’s grave, lest she be discovered and her transgression piled on another!”

He keeps talking, and alongside the pain, sorrow opens inside me like a deep well. Anne. He means Anne, that she won’t be a part of us, that she’ll be all alone. The bone-deep, ripping agony in my body slices violent and fresh, and I scream, sure it’s going to tear me in half. Then I feel the sweet, caressing hands of darkness reach up from the depths to make it go away.

My last thought isn’t my own somehow. It’s Anne, and she says that all she wants is for the boy to live. Nothing else matters.

I
wake up to the feeling of dew on my face, and an all-over dampness that racks my body with the kind of shivers that can only be thwarted with the hottest of baths. I wonder what happened to my quilt, or why I let Amelia talk me into keeping the damn windows open.

The thought of my cousin brings everything roaring back, and I sit up so fast, my heart racing, that I get dizzy. My fingers clutch at the grass, dirt jamming under my nails, until my vision clears.

Amelia is next to me, sitting up and shaking her head as though she’s having a similar experience. Aunt Karen is splayed on her back in the grass, snoring and shivering with a thick puddle of drool pooling on one side of her mouth.

“Are you okay?” I ask my cousin, then gasp when her eyes find mine.

She goes completely white and sways.

“Your eyes,” we say at exactly the same time, then gape at each other.

Amelia’s eyes, previously the same emerald green as Anne Bonny’s, have changed. They’re the color of sea glass now, a light, foggy green.
 

The eyes. They came straight from Anne Bonny. And now they’re gone.

Could it truly have worked?

“What happened?” she asks, then notices her mother. “Mom?”

“She’s okay. We’re all okay, I think.” I shake my head, dislodging the last of the cobwebs. “You don’t remember anything?”

“No. And I’m freezing, and so is my mom. Where’s the car?”

I make my way to my shaking legs. “Close. See if you can wake her up.”

Aunt Karen groans at our talking. “Can you girls be quiet? And turn up the damn heat.”

A giggle escapes my lips, manic and crazed. “Aunt Karen, wake up. We’re not at your house.”

She peels her eyes open, one hand on her forehead as though she’s got a splitting headache. I have one, too, but it’s more annoying than painful. My whole body feels lighter somehow, and Amelia’s smile is brighter than the sun peeking through the giant cypress trees.

“What in tarnation… Oh my god.” She groans, and I know she remembers. My aunt struggles into a sitting position, one eye closed as she squints at us. “Dear God, Amelia. What happened to your eyes?”

“I think it worked. The ceremony.” I can’t help but be the slightest bit miffed that the Gullah folks left us out here to freeze to death sleeping in the grass, but the smoke winding off the fire suggests we’d probably been toasty until it started to die. “Your eyes are different, too.”

“I guess I’ll have to make up some ridiculous story about contact lenses or cataracts at the Junior League,” she grumbles, pulling herself to her feet. I help Amelia up, still hiccupping laughter. Amelia catches it, and I know we’re tired and dazed but it’s also Aunt Karen worrying about how she’s going to explain things to the Junior League instead of dwelling on how we suddenly have new eyes to begin with.

“Graciela, would you please stop hooting like a loon and get me back home? My head is throbbing, and Walter will be expecting his breakfast.”

“Sure.” I snort, then dissolve into more laughter. Amelia clutches onto me, and I lean into her as we weave through the tall grasses and back to the lane.
 

By the time we’re in the car, heater blasting, the mirth has worn off, replaced by wonder and a little worry. Our eyes changed, sure, but how can we know if the curse is really gone?

Aunt Karen is silent in the backseat as we drive, and I fill Amelia in, thrilled that she’s actually listening this time.
 

“You don’t remember anything about being kidnapped?”

My cousin frowns. “I remember everything, but like…it was like I wasn’t really there. Or something? I don’t know. Like I’d been body-snatched.”

After the way Dr. Rue explained the curse, like a blackness in our blood, I wonder if it had started to take over Amelia, but keep my mouth shut. If it’s over now. There’s no need to go into it.

“Poor Mrs. Walters.” Amelia sighs, looking out the window. “But man, she wasn’t a very nice captor.”

“Did you expect her to be? Hell, if she were thirty years younger she’d probably have run off to join the Taliban just so she’d be able to torture people.”

“That’s a terrible thing to say, Grace,” Millie admonishes me.

I feel the slightest bit guilty but no more than that. If she’d still been alive, I wouldn’t have felt bad at all. People sure do get a lot of breaks being dead. I only hope she stays that way and doesn’t take to spying on me as a ghost.

We drop off Aunt Karen, who I know is out of sorts when she doesn’t offer us breakfast. Instead of heading straight back to Heron Creek I park down by City Market and pop open the car door, even though going back out into the chilly morning isn’t appealing.

“Where are we going?” Millie asks. “To get breakfast?”

“Ha! You’re almost back to normal already. No.” I rethink my answer when my stomach grumbles. “Well, we can get breakfast, too, but I want to see if Odette’s around.”