Gathering Deep (23 page)

I knew what his answer would be before he said it:

“I'm leaving in the morning, before daybreak,” he said, placing his fork next to his plate. “That doesn't give us much time.”

I flinched as I received the words, but still, I wouldn't let myself go to him.

“I'll always come back to you, Thisbe. Always. You believe me in that at least?”

I nodded, but in that moment, I hated him for it. And I hated myself for letting him wrap me up in his life only to leave me behind.

His voice was soft and low when he spoke again. It was the voice he'd used to tempt, the voice he used when he wanted agreement without a fight. “Thisbe—”

I stood abruptly from the table. “More wine?”

He frowned. “Yes, please,” he said finally, as though he understood the wine to be some sort of peace offering.

My thoughts raced as I went to fetch the pitcher. If he went, he would die. It was as simple as that. All those stories of the revolution in Saint-Domingue were nothing but tales. There, the maroons had outnumbered the whites on a small island. The plantation owners hadn't believed defeat was possible, and so they'd not realized the danger until it was too late. But the men in
this
place, the men who owned this land, would have learned from those mistakes.

Yet still Augustine was blind to the risk. He insisted on plotting and planning. On putting himself into more danger than this life already held
.
Because he thought no one would suspect him. Because he had been loaned out for work on neighboring plantations for years, and because he had loaned himself out for just as long, he thought he could trust those he spoke to.

Because he wanted to walk through this life like a man, and how could I blame him for that?

But people will turn on anyone if they're scared or desperate enough. Even a cat only had so many lives. A man had far fewer, even a man such as he
.

I could let him go. I knew well enough that what was between us wasn't bound to the bodies we wore in this life.

But I
wanted
those bodies. Even as worn and tired as mine often felt, it was the only one I knew, the only one that Augustine had ever known me in. And the wanting I felt, the urgent need for us to be together in
these
bodies, to be with him in
this
life was so powerful, I could barely breathe past it.

Resolved to save him, I slid a small vial out of my apron.

Resolved to save them all from their folly, I put some of the powder into his cup before pouring the wine over it.

The valerian and poppy worked quickly. Not more than a few minutes later, his eyes grew soft, his speech slurred.

“Why don't you come lay yourself down for a spell,” I crooned, leading him to the bed. Then I set about preparing the things that would be needed—the knife and the red candle, and the small star-shaped man I'd cut from the great oaks.

With a strange sense of déjà vu, I went through the motions I'd seen in that first vision—the bits of hair and wax, the blood and thread. Until the charm was complete and Augustine would have no choice but to stay by my side. Where he'd be safe. Where we could be together. Where he couldn't lead anyone else on a fool's mission.

When I was done, I pressed a kiss to his lips, satisfied that they were bound by the charm for as long as I lived.

I stayed with him for a while, watching him sleep, but when a rough knock came at the door, I scurried to the front of her home in time to see Roman come through the door.

The girl's fear clawed at me. Roman couldn't find Augustine here, not helpless as he was under the power of the draught I'd given him. “Get out of my house,” I demanded.

Roman simply smiled. “Now, now. Is that any way to treat a guest?”

“A guest is someone you've invited,” I spat. “This isn't your property, and neither am I. Get out.”

“But it's my property that I'm looking for,” he said, making himself at home. “Where's Augustine?”

“I'm not his keeper,” I said stiffly, keeping myself positioned in the doorway between Roman and the sleeping form of Augustine.

“No, of course not.” Roman gave a smirk. “That would be me.” Then his expression went tight, serious. “I need to speak to him.”

“I don't know where he is,” I lied again.

Roman cocked his head, as though he was amused. “Oh, I'm sure he'll be back soon enough.” He took another step toward Thisbe.

“Get out,” I said again. “You don't have any rights here.” I knew it was a feeble statement in the face of my reality, but I held myself as still and straight and fearless as I could.

He took me roughly by the arm and gave me a sharp jerk as he spoke. “I'd like to see you try and prove that,” he said, taking up the challenge. He leaned in until I could smell the reek of onions and stale beer on his breath. Then a slow smile crept across his thin lips and he leaned in and pressed his mouth to mine.

Anger flashed through me, hot and wild, and all at once, Roman surged back. He released my arm to reach for his own throat, his eyes wide with panic and fear.

“You'd best be leaving, Monsieur Roman,” I said pleasantly enough. Inside of me, the anger pulsed dark and satisfying, even as I felt the panic of what I'd done. Of what I was revealing to him.

Roman's eyes were furious, but his lips were already starting to go blue around the edges.

“Be angry as you'd like, but until you cross back over that threshold, you won't have a breath of air to call your own,” I told him, forcing myself to exude a practiced calm.

He struggled for a few moments longer before he shot me a look of such hate, even I flinched somewhere deep inside her skin. Then he backed through the door, one staggering step at a time, until he'd crossed completely over the threshold of the house and was standing on the porch. Only then did he take a long, gasping breath.

“You think because you have some papers, you're safe? You think a parlor trick like that will save you?” he seethed. “I'll kill you.”

“I'd like to see you try,” I said. I folded my arms across my bosom as much to steady myself from the overwhelming feeling of the power that surged through me as to show my defiance. “You can't touch me.”

Still gasping for air, Roman smiled, a horrible twist of his mouth. “You have no idea what I could do to you.”

Despite his words, I saw fear in his eyes, and something about the uncertainty lurking in those cold, blue irises eased something in me. I laughed then, because the power that I'd let loose was still curling around me as comforting as a warm blanket, secure and heavy and
mine
. And I knew he could never touch me.

“Tell Augustine I'm looking for him when you see him,” Roman said, and there was something in his voice that made me go still. Something in the look he gave me made all that confidence I'd had just a second before drain away, leaving me cold.

“If you touch him—” I warned.

But Roman was already walking away.

I watched to make sure he was gone for good before I shut the door against the world outside and pressed my back against it. Just moments before I'd felt so secure, so calm in the power I'd taken to hand, but now, that knowledge left me cold and unsettled.

In the back room, Augustine slept on, still and peaceful, and I curled up next to him, resting my head against his strong shoulder and pulling the covers over us both.

In the morning, when the sun woke me, I turned over to find him gone. And the knowledge of that loss came crashing down on me, pressing me into myself until I couldn't hardly breathe.

Twenty-Eight

My eyes flew open, and all at once I was back in the empty cabin, but I'd collapsed on the floor and the girl was standing over me. She was inside the circle with me now, and her face flickered from the young girl who gathered moss to my mother to a wrinkled old version of my mother back to the girl my age. Over and over, the surface of her face cycled through the versions of Thisbe as the girl's mouth made the shape of angry words I couldn't hear.

She wasn't touching me, but I couldn't breathe. I couldn't move.

I was stuck there in that circle, somewhere between consciousness and sleep, between living and dying. And that feeling of being so stuck, so trapped and immovable, was about the most excruciating thing I'd ever felt. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't die. I couldn't even feel myself be.

For a moment, I thought about letting go. I thought about giving up and surrendering myself back to the soul I'd summoned. Something about the girl's expression told me she wanted me to let go, to let her back into myself. Maybe because she had more she wanted to show me.

Maybe because she just wanted more.

But in the distance, I heard someone calling my name, calling me back to myself. That distant voice was enough to pin me to this world until Ikenna could break the circle.

As soon as the salt line was broken, the candles snuffed themselves out and the girl disappeared. I finally pulled air into my burning lungs, but even then, it took me a while to come back to myself. Even then, I couldn't help but feel that something had changed within me from what I'd just experienced. Something still felt like it was gathering deep inside me, something that had maybe always been there. But it had grown stronger when I'd accepted the girl and let her in.

I wasn't sure what to do with that feeling, but it scared me. Ikenna had seen another power layered over my own, and part of me worried that the experience of walking in Thisbe's skin had helped to give that other power more strength than it otherwise would have had. I wondered if I'd ever be able to shake free of it.

Still, I was too weak to do much more about that fear than lie on the floor curled up into myself until Odane knelt beside me and made me look him in the eye. Little by little I calmed myself until I could breathe almost normally. Then, in halting breaths, I told them what had happened, what I'd seen.

“What do you mean, he was gone?” Odane asked.

“I don't know,” I told them. “Maybe he realized what she'd done or maybe the spell went wrong. But when she woke in the morning, he was gone, and she was devastated by it. It felt like she was breaking in two when she found out he'd left her anyway, and it was the pain of that, I think, that brought me back.”

“Sure didn't seem like you were coming back,” Ikenna said, still pacing the boards. “I ain't never seen nothing like that. You lit up like a glow worm when you touched that there girl's soul … ” His voice trailed off. “Power filled up this room like the fourth of Ju-ly, and we could hardly get close to the circle. For a minute there, neither one of us thought we'd be able to stop her.”

“You couldn't get to me?” I asked.

Odane shook his head. “For a while there, it felt like the whole place would go up in flames at any moment.”

For a minute or two, I hadn't been sure I'd get back either, but I didn't tell them that. “She must have realized I was slipping away,” I told them, “and tried to grab on again. She almost got me, too. She didn't want to let me go,” I realized, shuddering.

“Seemed like she got stronger the longer you were with her,” Ikenna said. “Strong enough that she managed to cross through the circle.”

“How long was I out?”

“More than an hour,” Odane told me.

“An hour?” It had felt more like a couple of minutes.

Ikenna was shifting nervously, gathering up his supplies, spreading the salt so no trace of a circle remained. “We best be going, son.”

Odane looked at him, the frown he'd been wearing turning to confusion. “Best be going where?”

“Anywhere that's not here,” Ikenna said, packing the last of his stuff into the rucksack and hoisting it over his shoulder as he moved toward the door.

“I don't think Chloe's ready to go anywhere yet.”

“She'll be fine,” Ikenna said, his eyes darting nervously toward the open door. “But I'm not going to be around here if someone comes looking.”

“Comes looking for what?” I asked.

“You think what happened here was a small thing?” he said, shaking his head. “Whatever that was, whatever connection you have with this Thisbe person, it's going to leave a trace. Energy as bright as that don't disappear, and I don't want to be anywhere near here if this Thisbe you all keep talking about comes around to find out what went down.” He pinned me with his eerie, uneven eye. “If she don't already know, that is.”

Odane looked like he was about to punch something. Or someone. “So that's it? You're going to up and leave her here? Helpless?”

“I did what I said I would—”

“I don't know why I'm surprised you're running off. Seems like I should be used to it by now.”

Ikenna frowned. “Our bargain was to help her access her dreams, not to get me tied up with something as big and bad as this Thisbe seems to be. I've upheld my end of the bargain. I'll expect you to do the same.”

“Don't worry,” Odane ground out. “I will.”

“You coming?” Ikenna asked, taking a couple steps toward the door.

“Naw. I'm going to get Chloe home safe,” Odane told his father, and the disdain in his voice made me realize that as easy as Odane seemed to be, he wasn't someone to cross.

“Suit yourself,” Ikenna said with a shrug. “I'll be looking for that paperwork soon, son. Good luck with this mess you got yourself into.”

Then he was gone—out the door and across the field and back to the relative safety of the life he had before I came along.

“You feeling any better yet?” Odane said softly.

I nodded, though I didn't really. “I think I can get up now, if you'd help me?”

He threaded an arm around my middle, the heat from his skin brushing against me like a flame. I flinched away and slid back to the ground with a thump.

“Maybe just grab my clothes?” I asked. I was feeling way too unsettled to be that undressed, especially around him. What I'd just gone through had left me feeling exposed in more ways than one.

Odane helped me turn my shirt right-side-out so I could slide it over my head. Once I was more covered, he tried to help me up again, and this time I managed to stay upright on my wobbly legs.

“You think you can walk?” he asked, his warm breath near my ear.

“I don't know,” I told him honestly. I brushed off the gentle concern in his voice. “I maybe need to go lay down, I think.”

“Which way's home?” Odane asked, so I pointed the way back as he helped me—across the field, back around the pond, and up to the warm little cottage with its lights all aglow.

“Thanks,” I said, feeling more like myself by the time we mounted the steps to the porch. “I couldn't have made it back without you.”

Odane grinned. “Yeah?” He turned me in his arms so we were chest to chest. His eyes were intent on me. They were dark as night, but that close I could see they were ringed in the same gold as his father's.

My skin felt warm all at once, but then guilt rocketed through me so strong and absolute that I jerked back.

“So that's how it is?” he asked, his voice gentle as the hands that still rested on my waist.

“I'm sorry—” I started.

“Don't be,” he said, cutting me off. “Nothing at all to be sorry for.” He gave me a soft, sad smile.

I couldn't help but smile back, but then I thought about Piers and the smile slid from my face. “We'd better tell Lucy what I found out—and that I'm still alive.”

Odane raised an eyebrow in my direction. He was pretending that my rejection hadn't bothered him, but it was awkward between us now in a way it hadn't been before.

“She didn't exactly approve of me
making any deals with your dad. No offense.”

“None taken,” he said easily, and I knew he meant it. He meant most of what he said, I realized then. Maybe everything he said. It was a singular quality—a rare quality—to be that sure and true to yourself, I thought.

“You want to come in for a minute? I can give you a lift back to your car after I talk with Lucy, if you want.”

Inside, we found Dr. Aimes sitting in the front parlor, deep in concentration over a pile of papers. He looked up when we stepped in.

“Oh, hey, Chloe,” Dr. Aimes said absently, his focus turning back to the stack of paper in front of him.

“Hey,” I said. “This is Odane, a friend of mine.”

The two men did that thing men do when they meet—shake hands, eye each other as they size the other up. Didn't matter that there was nothing to compete over.

“Have you heard anything more about Piers?” I asked him.

Dr. Aimes frowned and shook his head. “The police assured me they're doing all they can … ” But from the way his voice trailed off, I wondered if he believed that any more than I did.

Or maybe there was something else Dr. Aimes was thinking about. He was studying those papers in front of him again, a deep frown drawn across his face.

“What's wrong?” I asked.

“What?” he said, looking up like he'd already forgotten I was standing there. “Oh, sorry.” He took off his glasses and rubbed at his eyes. “I was reading over this, and … well, it's not what I expected.”

“What is it?” I asked, stepping closer to look over the papers laid out before him on the low coffee table.

“You remember that book we found? The one that's gone missing.”

“The one you sent with Piers, you mean,” I said, trying to keep the irritation out of my voice.

Dr. Aimes nodded.

“What book?” Odane asked.

“It was a journal that belonged to the mansion's original owner,” Dr. Aimes explained.

“Roman,” I whispered, a shudder running through me at the memory of the younger Roman's cold eyes and stale breath. And of his promise.

Dr. Aimes gestured to the papers on the table. “I kept a copy, and one of my graduate students was working on translating the French and the symbols in it when we heard the news about Piers and the car.” He let out a ragged sigh.

“Couldn't they translate it?” I asked, sensing his frustration.

“Oh, they could,” he said, shuffling through the pages with a frown.

“You don't seem overly excited … ” Which was weird, because Dr. Aimes was
always
excited when it came to old things.

Dr. Aimes looked up at me then, his gentle eyes—eyes that were so much like Lucy's—uncertain. Gone was the professor whose eyes lit up at the mention of anything historical. This man was a different person, a more somber and serious one.

“It's skin,” he said finally.

“What?” I didn't follow right away.

“The covering on the book wasn't leather. It was skin. Human skin.”

My body registered the shock of those words—my stomach flipped, my skin went cold, my mouth went all dry and rancid at once as I remembered the vision of human heads piked along the River Road. “But how do you know that? I thought the book was gone.”

“It is, unless the police find it,” Dr. Aimes said as he sorted through a couple of the loose papers. “But it's all in the translation—the way the journal was made, the reasons for it … ” His voice trailed off and we sat in an uneasy silence, with nothing but the sound of the whirring air conditioner to fill the space between us. “Roman Dutilette had secrets no one discovered. He made the book made from the skin of one of his slaves because he thought it would give the book power.”

You have no idea what I could do to you
.

Roman's voice echoed in my memory, as clear and stark as it had been while I was in Thisbe's skin. I knew it could have been any of the Dutilettes' many slaves, but something told me it wasn't. Roman might not have been able to hurt Thisbe, but he could hurt Augustine, and that amounted to the same thing.

I stepped back from the photocopied pages, my stomach turning at the thought of what might have happened to Augustine. Maybe he'd woken in the middle of the night and realized what Thisbe'd done. Maybe he'd woken and hadn't known he couldn't leave her. He would have tried to go back to his own plantation, but he wouldn't have been able to go far—not with that binding charm she'd put on him. He would have been an easy target, and Roman had already been looking for a way to hurt Thisbe, to get back at her.

That journal hadn't been the book of a rich man, I thought. It had been the book of a monster.

Odane shifted uneasily next to me. I glanced at him, and the unspoken look we shared told me he was probably thinking something along the same lines.

Dr. Aimes let out a hollow sigh. “There's more, but I don't know that I have the stomach for it tonight,” he said, shaking his head.

Another uneasy moment of silence passed between the three of us, and then Dr. Aimes scooped up the papers and put them into an envelope. “I guess I should take this back to the office. I don't even want the copies sitting around here anymore.”

“Is Lucy around?” I asked, realizing suddenly that it seemed like the house was empty.

“She went into town—wanted to tell Ms. Legba about Piers in person, she said.” Dr. Aimes frowned. “I thought you'd gone with her.”

“No,” I told him, but when he looked confused I explained that I'd gone for a walk to clear my head. “I was supposed to meet her in town later,” I lied.