The Jumbee (28 page)

She had to be dreaming.

The last poster she found was her dad as Richard III at the Ashland festival, three months before his death.
Alan, your extraordinary intelligence is one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever been given. You’ve been through tremendous adversity; I can only hope that someday you make your peace.
She looked up from the signature, abruptly aware that Alan no longer moved around in the kitchen. He stood at the top of the stairs, watching her.

“Why didn’t I know this?” she said. “You never said he was your friend.”

“Legard was the best friend I ever had.” Alan stared at her, his eyes filled with yearning. “I too was grieving when you and I met, and I didn’t know what I should say. I didn’t want to upset you.”

Esti walked to the couch and sat down, shaken.

“I knew he hadn’t told you about me,” he continued, “and it seemed best to keep things that way. I had no idea that you would . . . That I would end up. . . .”

She studied him, trying not to tremble. His mask suddenly seemed frightening, his voice too surreal. “You’re not my half brother, or something weird like that.”

“No.” His expression softened. “Legard wasn’t my father by blood, only by his actions. He was the only family I truly had, but my blood is very different than yours.”

“But . . .” Esti floundered. “Why didn’t he ever talk about you? Did he tell my mom?”

“No,” Alan said flatly. “He was good at keeping my secrets.”

The Great Legard trumps his daughter once again.
Esti felt her hysteria circling beneath the surface. “How did you know him? Where did you meet?”

“He was my mentor.”

“Your mentor.” Her eyes narrowed in sudden understanding. “At your boarding school, during one of his seasons in London.”

“He taught me Shakespeare. He gave me hope when I had none.”

“You already knew everything about me, then. The first time you talked to me at Manchicay.”

“No.” Alan walked down the stairs and sat on the bottom step, placing his gloved hand against the rocky wall as if to reassure his lady cay. “Not everything. I had watched you perform Juliet with him. I sat in the audience during the filming, disguised with your father’s help by some complicated tricks of movie make-believe. I didn’t completely fall in love with you then. The dream was pointless, and it wasn’t until you came here . . .”

The dream?
Esti pressed her fingers into her temples to keep her head from spinning. She wasn’t sure what she should feel, either toward Alan or her dad. Anger? Fear? Love? “What did he mean about his most challenging performance?” she said.

“Legard wasn’t sure about acting with you.”

“He wasn’t sure?” Her heart stopped.

“He was afraid that Juliet would be too much for you, as his daughter. He tried to temper his performance, but in the end, the actor was stronger than the father. He never fully forgave himself when he lost your trust.”

“He never forgave . . .” Esti leaned back into the couch, reeling from a second bombshell, equally as unexpected as the first. She couldn’t meet Alan’s intense blue eyes. “Why didn’t he ever tell me that?” she said hollowly.

“It wasn’t his fault, Esti. He didn’t doubt your acting, not for a minute. I convinced him that he would have done you a disservice to treat you as anything other than a professional.”

“
You
convinced him?” She wrapped her arms around herself, trying to make sense of her frightened, churning thoughts. Her voice began to rise. “I thought you were my kindred spirit, but you were his friend all along, not mine.”

“Esti, it’s not—”

“You said you had only one other visitor here,” she added slowly. “Was it him?”

Alan slowly nodded.

“So what am
I
doing here?” She tried not to shake as shock and anger made her voice quiver. “What do you want from
me?
”

“You are here,” Alan said in a defeated voice, “because you insisted on it.”

As Esti buried her face in her hands, the crowing rooster outside fell silent. She rubbed her forehead, trying to erase the noise in her head, but the roaring slowly grew louder. When the house began to shake, she grabbed the couch in fear, looking at Alan, but he merely stared at her until the shaking went past them and disappeared.

“My lady shivers,” he whispered. He caressed the wooden stair rail with a gloved hand. “Perhaps the rooster has been warning me all morning.”

Esti shuddered. It didn’t help to know the Caribbean often had earthquakes; the timing of this one was outright sinister. “Warning you of what?”

“I am as mad as the Prince of Denmark.”

“Hamlet wasn’t real,” Esti said fiercely.

“Amleth was.” Alan sounded bitter. “Shakespeare’s source for
that
tragedy.”

“Don’t hide behind Shakespeare. All you ever do is hide.”

“I’ve spent my life haunted by my blood,” he snapped. “I shouldn’t have brought you here.”

“Take me home, then.”

“If it were dark outside, I would.”

Esti didn’t reply as she glared at the poster-covered wall. She couldn’t believe that her father, with his mighty control, had been telling lies for years. She was stunned to find Alan’s paranoid secrecy reaching deep back into her family, before she’d even moved to Oregon.

“You’re not in love with me.” She tried to control her breathing. “This is some kind of twisted hero worship.”

Alan abruptly rose to his feet. Crossing the room with the deadly grace of a panther, he crouched in front of Esti. He grabbed her hands before she could move, his eyes burning into hers. Terror crawled up her spine as she realized that no one would even hear her scream.

“One half of me is yours,” he whispered, “the other half, yours.” Before she could move, he rose again and moved away, silently disappearing through the porch doors.

Act Two. Scene Twelve.

Esti spent the morning fuming on the couch. She glowered at her dad’s posters for what seemed like hours, then finally turned her furious gaze to Alan’s nearby bookshelves. Even his collection of books aggravated her. She saw endless volumes of Shakespeare, and classic literature as timeless as Straparalo and Leroux. How could Alan be so scholarly and romantic and
perfect
for her, and yet so . . . so mind-bogglingly creepy? He’d devoted entire shelves to everything The Great Legard had ever written.

Despite her very strongest evil eye, however, not one volume burst into flames.

It was the call of nature that finally drove her from the couch. Tiptoeing nervously to the tall wooden doors, she peered outside. Alan sat at the far edge of the porch, slumped in the shade of the trellis with his head in his hands. Esti studied his black silhouette for a moment, then slowly turned back inside, confused and angry again. He didn’t look like a psychopathic stalker; he looked like a guy with a broken heart.
One half of me is yours . . .

Tentatively testing a light switch at the top of the basement stairs, she was relieved to see what was clearly a bathroom at the bottom. She raced down the steps, her feet heavy with anxiety, even though she knew her fear was idiotic. She had spent countless hours alone with Alan; his bathroom was no more dangerous than any other part of this freakish house.

When she returned upstairs, she forced herself back to the rock-covered wall. She read each inscription again as calmly as she could, trying to put herself in her father’s shoes. It was a strange, uncomfortable feeling to discover this side of her dad. She had never imagined him keeping an enormous secret like this from her or Aurora.

She wondered if her mom had ever feared the distant side of The Great Legard, the pure actor whom the world held in awe. Had Aurora known that he kept secrets from her? Or was it enough that the world loved him, and he loved her? Maybe all that mattered was that he danced with Aurora and treated her like a queen.

Wiping her hand across her nose, Esti turned away from the posters. Her dad was no different than she was; in fact, Esti was much worse. She had treated her mom like dirt lately, avoiding her and ignoring her grief, as well as keeping secrets and lying to her. Could she blame that on Alan? Could she blame her father’s secrecy on Alan?

She trailed her fingers over her dad’s rows of books, then pulled out one of his earliest works to read another heartfelt inscription to Alan on the cover page. As she slid the book back into place, she noticed a slim paperback volume beside it, its spine notched at the top in an unusual way. Before she could look at it, however, a noise from the porch made her spin around.

Alan stood rigidly in the doorway. “I’m sure it doesn’t help for me to say I’m sorry. I had hoped . . .” He sagged. “I don’t know what I hoped.”

“You hoped we might be friends?”

As his eyes widened, she decided that Alan’s feelings for her could no longer be tied to her dad, at least not completely. Alan had rescued her from The Great Legard’s shadow. He had given her . . .
her.
And now he’d offered her an enormous new insight into the man she had also spent her own life worshipping.

“I want to see you,” she said. “Have I already mentioned that?”

He looked at her like she’d spoken in Greek.

“Alan,” she said, “take off your mask for me.”

“No.” The whispered answer didn’t surprise her.

“Why not?” she asked.

He looked away.

She kept her voice as casual as if she were asking him the time “Is it because you’re deformed? I don’t care, you know.”

“But I do.”

“Alan, unless I know what you—”

“That is the one thing I cannot give you.” He strode across the room, his wiry body taut and powerful. “Please don’t ask me again.”

“Then tell me why people think this island is haunted,” she said in frustration. “Tell me how the jumbee stories started.”

“Jumbee stories.” He leaned against the wall, his eyes guarded. “Once upon a time in West Africa, the word
jumbee
meant evil spirit. But there are many kinds of spirits, each with their own way of haunting. For example, a baby who died before being named will move things around in the house where he died.”

“That’s not what I mean.” Despite her frustration, she almost smiled.

“Or you might find the spirit of a woman who died in childbirth, leaving her baby alive. She roams the island at night, crying mournfully.”

“Alan . . .”

She saw a flash of amusement in his eyes. “Now, if the moon-gazer catches you outside at night, he’ll suck out your brain through the palm of his hand, while the lady vampire sucks the blood of unsuspecting victims as they sleep.”

She couldn’t hold back a reluctant laugh. “Would you quit?”

“Fortunately, blood-suckers are relatively easy to catch. Leave a large pile of rice on the floor before you go to bed. As she enters your house, this jumbee is compelled to count every rice grain. Since her hands can’t hold much, it’s only a matter of time before the grains begin to fall back to the ground, and she has to start over. In the morning you will find a tired and very distressed vampire counting rice. Before she can run away, you quickly beat her to death with a special anti-jumbee broom.”

Still laughing, Esti shook her head. “And what about the jumbee of Manchineel Cay?”

“Now there’s a goblin damned.” Alan’s voice grew quiet again. “I don’t think the African legends cover that one.”

“Oh, but they do.” Esti studied his eyes. “He walks between heaven and earth to protect the girl he loves from evil spirits. I’m not sure if he uses rice, but I want to know if he’s as
moko
as he is
loco.
”

He gave an unwilling chuckle. “Moko was an African god. A tall one, apparently. The moko jumbee foresees evil from his high vantage point, striking terror into the hearts of those who plan any wrongdoing. But you see, Esti, I’m no taller than you are.”

“I’m sure I’ll find your stilts hidden somewhere on the island. How about a hike after lunch?”

“You don’t hate me, then?” His voice was almost inaudible.

“You infuriate me.” Esti scowled at him, then sighed. “I’m so confused right now, I don’t know how I feel. But no, I don’t hate you, and since our lives seem to be tied together, I should probably get to know your lady cay. You brought me here to meet
your
family, right?”

When they returned from their trek into the island, she was sorry she’d asked. The manchineel trees were the icing on a deadly cake of stinging nettle and caustic milktree, needle-sharp ketch-n-keep and razor grass. In addition to dozens of new scratches, Esti had twisted her foot in a hidden rocky crevice, then finally been stung by a wasp.

“Your cay does
not
like me.” She leaned against the couch, rubbing her aching ankle and wincing as Alan smeared a paste of baking soda and vinegar over the fiery sting on her forearm. “I’m not usually so clumsy.”