Gathering Deep (3 page)

She didn't seem to pay any attention to the way my cheeks flamed.
A life on the edge of chaos
. That didn't sound like my past, not as I'd lived it or experienced it. My life had always seemed so steady. Boring even. But Mama Legba wasn't wrong—I just hadn't understood what a lie the surface of my life had been.

“Let's see … ” She flipped over the next card. “Your present.”

My stomach went tight. “The Devil?” The card was painted in monotone shades of crimson and black. A monstrous horned beast stood over two naked lovers. Around their necks, each wore collars attached to chains held by the beast's claw-tipped hands.

Mama Legba made an impatient noise in her throat. “You know better than seeing the surface of these cards for the truth.” She tapped the card. “These ain't meant to be taken as gospel, else anyone at all could do a reading. No, Chloe-girl, this here card ain't no more evil than you are.”

That bit of information didn't exactly make me feel any better. Not after the bottles had shattered the last of my illusions about what my mother was. About what I might be.

“We all got some darkness inside us, child,” Mama Legba said gently, “but we each gets to decide what to do with it. You try to deny that natural part of what's in you, it means you giving it too much power. Look here, these shackles ain't no real bindings,” she said, pointing to the chains that the creature was holding in the card. “These two lovers could throw off they chains any old time. They don't because they is blind to the truth. This card is about freeing yourself—about making that choice to see past the things that most weigh you down and choosing otherwise. This card is about accepting the truth of our own selves. After all, ain't no shadow without the light, and ain't no devil but the one you create and let rule you.”

I glanced at Piers, but his face was solemn and still, not giving away even a hint of what he was thinking. I hated that mask-like expression he'd taken to wearing in the last couple of weeks. I hated that I couldn't read him like I used to. He glanced up, meeting my eyes for a moment, but then he went back to studying the three cards.

Mama Legba turned the final card face up, and I couldn't stop the strangled gasp that escaped me. If the Devil wasn't bad enough, a man hanging from a tree like some sort of inverted lynching was the card I'd drawn for my future.

“Hmmm,” Mama Legba murmured, her brows bunched as she considered the card. “You drew some mighty interesting cards, Chloe-girl.” She tapped a finger against the man's body. “This here card is powerful enough on its own, but along with the Devil? Might could be something dangerous.”

“Dangerous?” I whispered, thinking of the broken bottles. Because wasn't that exactly what I was afraid of—that
I
was something dangerous? That I was my mother's—Thisbe's—daughter in every sense of the word?

“Now don't be misunderstanding me, child.” Mama Legba studied the card, frowning. “Look closer.”

On the surface of the card, a man hung completely naked from a tree by one foot. A thorny vine anchored him to the branch above, and his arms were outspread at his sides. His face wasn't the face of a condemned man, though. Rather than agony or even the lifeless expression of the dead, the hanged man's eyes were clear and steady, his expression alert and almost hopeful. As I looked at the card, the vine seemed to twist farther down his leg and the sky seemed to undulate in blues and golds.

“This card is all about giving up your control to get something more, Chloe-girl. See here how this little man is? He ain't
been
hanged. He put his own self up on that there tree. His hanging there is a quest for knowledge.” She frowned again. “But this here card is also about sacrifice. For what you seeking, you got to be ready to give something else up. We can't carry everything from our past into our future, child. That's what this card is telling you.”

“You mean I need to give up on my momma,” I said, not taking my eyes from the card in front of me.

“Maybe so,” Mama Legba agreed. “But I don't know that life's ever so easy to understand as that. Might could be some other sacrifice you'll need to be making before you can move on into your future. But that sacrifice will bring you something better. Something greater than what you was.”

I twisted my hands in my lap, afraid to meet Mama Legba's eyes. I could feel them all watching me. Waiting for something.

“Chloe-girl,” Mama Legba said gently. When I didn't look up, she tipped my chin up so I had to meet her eyes. “Ain't nothing wrong with you. These cards sure enough look like trouble, but I promise they don't have to be. You got choices to be making, but what these cards tell me is that those choices is gonna be
yours
. That's a good thing. A
powerful
thing.”

“I'll get to choose?” I asked, barely able to form the words.

“Ain't that what you been worrying about all along, child? You think that because your momma done took you over once that she could do it again. But we took care of that for you, didn't we? You already made one sacrifice. You already on your path.” When she saw my look of confusion, she gave my chin a gentle nudge. “Most women would have needed to be tied down to have they hair taken from them like that, but you didn't so much as shed a tear. You did what needed to be done. You made a sacrifice, and in return you gained your freedom. Now you got to decide what to do with that freedom.”

She took my hand and slid the card into it. “You need to start learning again, Chloe-girl. We've given you some space to grieve, but the rooster on your door should be telling you time is up. You need to be ready for what's coming.”

I tried not to think about the way my heart had squeezed like it would stop when I went to my own house. “I think I've had enough of magic to last a lifetime,” I said, pushing the card back toward her. “I'm surprised you'd even want me to get wrapped up with the spirits after everything that happened.”

Mama Legba frowned down at the card. “None of that was your fault, Chloe-girl. And don't you be worrying that the cards on this here table mean a dark future for you. We gonna stand by you until this is done. But you is going to have to stand for yourself, as well.” Mama Legba glanced up at Piers. “By the sounds of things, though, nothing sounds near to being done. Sounds to me like it's only getting started. Thisbe ain't gone after all, is she?”

Piers shook his head and begin filling in Mama Legba on the details of what happened at my house.

“Did
you
feel anything?” Lucy asked. “Or was it just Chloe that couldn't go in?”

“I didn't feel much but a general sense of unease, but Chloe couldn't even move. The color drained from her face, and she looked like she was about to fall over until she took a step back,” Piers explained.

“Would take a mighty powerful bit of magic to do that,” Mama Legba agreed. “Most warding charms I know of would only turn a body around. You might not even know why you decided to leave a place you meant to go, but you certainly wouldn't feel pain or harm. That's magic darker than any I know. But that don't necessarily mean it's Thisbe's doing.”

“I can't imagine why anyone but Thisbe would want to keep Chloe out of her own house,” Piers said.

“Is there anyone else around that even
could
?” Lucy asked.

Mama Legba considered the question. “Not many, and of those who could, I don't know why they would.”

“Then we need to assume it is Thisbe's doing,” Piers confirmed. “And if we assume that, we should be prepared. She's going to be getting more and more desperate, so we need to be ready for anything … ”

They kept on talking while I stared at the cards laid out on the scarred table before me—the Two of Pentacles, the Devil, and the Hanged Man. Nothing about them looked safe or peaceful. They were cards filled with energy—mostly violent energy that spoke of changes I didn't feel ready for.

“It's a starting place,” Piers was saying, when a loud thumping sounded from the front part of the building—out by the shop.

Mama Legba glanced up but didn't pay it no mind. “Probably some tourists too drunk to read. They'll get the message soon enough.”

But they didn't. After a moment, the thumps came again, louder this time, and Mama Legba made a disgusted sound and lifted herself from the chair. “Let me get rid of them.”

“Are you okay?” Lucy asked me after Mama Legba disappeared down the hall that led back to the store. She was watching me with dark eyes that glinted with gold when the light hit them. Cat's eyes. Old-soul eyes.

There was still something different in them, though. Some new sort of knowledge. I'd been so consumed with my own losses that I hadn't noticed it until now, but I knew it must have been because of what had happened.

From what Piers had told me, Lucy had lost someone. To keep herself alive, Thisbe had been drawing energy and youth from the body and soul of a French boy named Alex, a boy Lucy had known and loved in another life. When Lucy's family had moved to the area earlier this summer, she'd found Alex again—or what was left of him. For more than a century, his soul had been stuck on the plantation where Lucy's daddy now worked as the museum director, and when she'd finally freed him, body and soul, from Thisbe's hold, she'd been forced to let him go.

Lucy's Alex wasn't coming back. Not in this lifetime at least.

I had to admit, skinny as she was, she had a sort of strength I hadn't noticed in her before. To lose a love like that? To know you have to set someone free to let them be whole? That's a hard thing, a brave thing. But Lucy had survived it, just like she'd survived everything else, and she'd survived it with a sort of grace I wouldn't necessarily have predicted.

She could have hated me or curled up away from the world, but she'd somehow managed to make herself go on. And for the last two weeks, she'd been right there, trying to bring me back to the world. She'd acted as though none of what happened had been my fault—not losing her Alex, not me almost killing her brother. Not even me threatening her life.

Even now, her face was open and expectant. Like maybe she still wanted to be friends after all. The thought made me feel a little better, even though my own guilt still pressed on me.

“I don't know that ‘okay' is how I'd describe things,” I told her honestly. “But I'm here.”

“Yes, you are.” Lucy gave me a small, almost relieved smile. “I'm glad. I've missed you.”

In that moment, something shifted a bit between us, like some of my guilt lifted its heavy bottom and scooted itself over enough to give something else a little bit of room.

Mama Legba's footsteps sounded in the hallway, and when she appeared in the doorway, her face was pinched with worry and anger. She held up her hand before any of us could talk and shook her head, and then lowered her voice to a near whisper. “Stay here till I'm gone, then get yourselves home and stay there.”

Piers stood up, ready to act on whatever threat had been pounding on Mama Legba's door. “What is it?”

She raised her fingers to her lips. “Police,” she said. “They want me to come take a look at some crime scene—a body in one of the cemeteries. I don't need them finding you here and asking questions.” Her dark eyes rested on me.

Because if they asked who I was, they might follow up and figure out that my mom was missing. And if that happened, there might be questions we wouldn't want to answer.

“We can wait,” Piers said.

“Go on home before it's full-on dark. We'll talk tomorrow, when I know more.”

Piers frowned, but he gave her a tense nod and didn't argue any further as Mama Legba grabbed a patchwork bag and her keys before hurrying back to the front of the shop and the waiting police.

None of us said anything until we heard the chimes on the front door go silent, but the quiet between us was filled with an unsettled energy. Like all the questions we wanted to ask and things we wanted to say were already there, waiting for us to call them to life by naming them.

Piers spoke first. “Well, if there was any doubt … ” He looked at me. “There's no way you're going back to that house again,” he finished.

“Excuse me?” It wasn't what I'd expected to come out of his mouth, and my hackles rose at the unexpected bluntness in his tone. I knew Piers meant well and all. I knew he was just worried, but the declaration of what I would or wouldn't be doing—on top of everything else that had happened that day—had my temper getting away from me.

“You heard what Mama Legba said, Chloe. Someone is found murdered in a cemetery after we find that spell on your house? This has Thisbe written all over it.” He ran a broad hand over his smooth head, frustrated. “Even if we do figure out a way to break the charm on your house, I'm not going to let you stay out there by yourself if that witch is on the loose.”

“You're not going to
let
me?” I asked, my voice rising right along with the fear. But fear felt too dangerous, and the anger was easier to hold on to.

“He has a point,” Lucy admitted.

I turned on her. “It don't matter if he has a point. He doesn't get to say. Not without at least asking me.”

“I don't get to say?” Piers snapped.

“No. You don't get to decide what happens to me.
I
do. You're not my mother,” I snapped, the words lashing out before I could think better of them.

“Thank god for that,” Piers said, his temper finally getting the better of him, too.

His tone silenced me, and we kind of glared at each other in the uneasy stillness. Lucy shuffled uncomfortably, like she didn't know whether to jump in or leave and give us some privacy.