Beneath the Black Moon (Root Sisters) (20 page)

“Why
would someone try to kill Cam?” Helen couldn’t quite seem to move past the fact
that someone had intentionally hurt her sister. Her eyes were wide with horror.
“She doesn’t have any enemies. Well, apart from Marianne,” she admitted. She
glanced at Cam, but Cam shook her head.

“While
I agree that Marianne is capable of murder, I suspect she would choose a more
traditional method.” Cam said.

“It’s
not funny,” Diana snapped. “None of this is funny.” She lowered her voice as
there were footsteps outside of the drawing room door.

Aunt
Beth bustled in. She appeared to have regained her composure a little while she
was fetching the clothes, and she quickly began giving orders.

Cam
didn’t have a chance to speak to Brent again. He left just as the doctor was
arriving, and with all of the people in the drawing room she barely caught a
glimpse of him as he let himself out.

The
physician concluded that Cam was to be kept warm and dry, and that she should
rest for at least a week. “You were very lucky,” he told her. “The average
layperson doesn’t know what to do for a drowning person.”

“What
do you mean?” Cam asked.

“There’s
a method used to breathe into the mouth of a drowned person,” the doctor
explained. “It’s also been used with babies who are born not breathing.”

Grandma
nodded knowingly, and Beth looked characteristically horrified at the thought
of Brent and Cam’s lips touching.

If
she only knew…
Cam thought as her father carried her
upstairs.

She
was in warm and dry clothes by then, but the horrible chill remained, and she
was shaking worse than ever.

“How
do you feel?” Aunt Beth asked as Cam’s father left, leaving her in her bedroom
with her grandmother and aunt. It was late by then, and Helen and Diana were
likely already in bed.

Cam
tried for an enthusiastic lie, but she didn’t have the energy. “I’ve been
better,” she said finally.

“It’s
the shock,” Aunt Beth said knowingly to Grandma, before leaving and closing the
door behind her.

“
It’s
the shock
,” Grandma mimicked as Aunt Beth’s footsteps echoed down the hall.
“It’s the damn conjure, that’s what it is. Is that woman a fool? No matter how
complex the problem, she always accepts the simplest explanation.”

“It’s
not her fault,” Cam said, smoothing her blankets with shaking hands. God, she
felt ill. She had been sick before, but nothing compared to the frightening weakness
that had settled over her.

“No,
it’s Brent Anderson’s fault, that’s whose fault it is,” Grandma said, setting a
tea tray on the bed.

“Grandmamma,
I’m sure that he has nothing to do with it,” Cam said, with surprising
conviction, given that she really wasn’t sure at all.

“That’s
your heart talking. I don’t care what your heart says; it’s a deceptive organ
that will get you killed if you let it. What does your mind tell you? What are
the facts?”

Cam
leaned back and adjusted her pillows so that she could sit up without feeling
the headboard.

“You
have a head for a reason, child,” her grandmother said. “Use it.”

“I
do sense conjure at his house,” Cam admitted. “Nasty work. I think that’s
what’s making Hattie and their Great-Aunt ill. But that doesn’t make any sense.
Why would Brent or his brother make their own family members ill?”

“And
he has been asking questions,” her grandmother said, patting Cam’s hand. “Too
many questions, you said so yourself.”

“But
not the right ones,” Cam said quickly. “And I still don’t think that he’s
behind the conjure that I sensed at their manor. I don’t think he knew anything
about conjure before I visited Mattie Devereux in the woods that day.”

Grandma
leaned back in her chair and shook her head. “I don’t know, child. He and the
bad conjure arrived at the same time. It’s centered on his house. He’s asking
questions about Kat Varennes. He was in the woods tonight when you were nearly
killed. It all sounds damning to me.”

“But
Grandmamma, he dragged me out of the water. Why would he do that if he was the
one who tried to kill me in the first place?”

“To
make you trust him? To make you tell him what he wants to know?”

“If
he’d planned it all, why not come sooner?” Cam persisted. “It was almost too
late. If he’d come just a minute or so later I wouldn’t be here right now. Why
would he take the risk of almost killing me, if all he wanted was my trust and
information?” She sat up straight, nearly upsetting the tea tray in her lap.
She was almost frantic. She couldn’t deny that there had been a moment, a terrifying,
heart stopping moment after he’d dragged her from the water when she had
suspected him. Then that moment had faded, and now she couldn’t bear to think
that he wanted her dead. She’d prefer to suspect almost anyone else.

“Cam.
Cam!” Her grandmother’s voice pulled her from her thoughts, and she realized
that her grandmother had stood and was rubbing her back soothingly. “Be still.
You’re probably right. He probably wasn’t the one who tried to kill you
tonight.”

“You’re
only agreeing because you’re worried about me,” Cam said, laughing nervously,
but she felt a little better, and ventured to take a sip of her tea.

“I
am worried about you,” Grandma said, brushing Cam’s hair from her eyes, “but
I’m not just agreeing to agree. It
doesn’t
quite make sense. If he
wanted to kill you, why rescue you? If he only wanted to scare you, why wait
until it was almost too late?”

“Exactly,”
Cam said, taking a deep breath and then another sip of tea. It was a little
cold, but very sweet. She wished she had drunk it while it was still hot. She
was still chilled, so cold that she felt she’d never be warm again.

“But
Cam,” her grandmother continued, once Cam had finished her tea and set the tray
aside, “he is involved somehow. He is not an innocent.”

“He
could be, you don’t know,” Cam argued, but her grandmother just looked at her,
until Cam finally bowed her head in defeat. “Yes. He is involved, somehow.”

“And
even if he wasn’t behind the attack on you tonight, he could still mean you
harm.”

“Grandma-”

“Have
you ever felt threatened while in his presence?” Her grandmother asked. “Have
you ever seen him with anything used for rootwork? Has he ever tried to
separate you from your protective charms?”

“No,”
Cam said. “I’ve never felt threatened, and . . .” She broke off, frowning.
There had been that day in the forest. That kiss that still brought heat
flooding to her cheeks. Then her coin had vanished. He had returned it when she
asked, but he hadn’t attempted to give it back before then.

“Cam?”
Her grandmother was watching her closely, a knowing expression in the dark eyes
that were almost identical to Cam’s, and Cam turned away before her grandmother
could see her tears fall.

“I
still don’t think that he means to hurt me,” Cam said, turning her face into
her pillow and hating how weak her voice sounded.
Tomorrow I’ll feel better
,
she told herself. Tomorrow she would pick up her mask and continue dancing
through the masquerade ball that was her life. Tonight she wanted to clutch
someone and cry until sleep claimed her. Earlier she had clung to Brent and
sobbed into his chest and he had been more comforting than anyone Cam could
remember. She shifted, rubbed her wet face. “He wouldn’t do it. I know he
wouldn’t.”

“You
have no idea what that man would do, sister.” Cam flinched, the surprise of
hearing her sister’s voice nearly snapping her already frayed nerves.

Diana
stood in the doorway. She had undressed for bed, and her shining black hair
fell over one shoulder almost to her waist. She had always been paler than Cam,
but tonight she was whiter than usual, and her eyes looked too big and too dark
for her face. Cam hadn’t even heard her open the door.

“Brent
is not like Edgar,” she told her sister defiantly, wiping the last of her tears
from her face. Diana wasn’t someone you cried in front of.

“No
man is like Edgar,” Diana said, “until, suddenly, he is.” Unexpectedly, she
stepped forward and took a seat at the end of Cam’s bed. She looked younger for
some reason, like a beautiful, black haired child. “I am not a fool, Cam. I
would not have allowed things to go so far with Edgar if I didn’t trust him
entirely.”

“Diana-”
Cam broke in uneasily. Diana rarely mentioned her ill-fated affair with Edgar,
and never discussed it. It was unsettling to Cam to see her sister so humbled
and vulnerable, and she wondered what had come over Diana.

“Hush,”
her sister commanded her, and Cam obeyed. “I would have trusted him with my
life, so it didn’t seem a gamble to trust him with my heart. But it was a
gamble, and I lost. I’ve since recovered my heart, but we both know that my
reputation can’t be repaired.” Diana paused, walking her hand up and down Cam’s
blanket, lost in her own thoughts. After a moment she stirred, fixing Cam with
her piercing gaze. “I will never make the same mistake again, but now here is
my little sister, ready to make a gamble of her own.”

“I
am not—” Cam began, but Diana shook her head.

“You
are, Cam. You’re risking your life. If you are wrong about him, and it is so
easy to be deceived, you will die.” Diana’s expression was calm, but her voice
trembled.

Suddenly,
Cam remembered her sister’s expression when Brent had carried her to the door.
How very white Diana had been and how terrified. If Cam hadn’t been
half-drowned at the time, she would have been shocked to see so much feeling on
the face of her stony older sister.

“I
won’t die,” she told her sister softly, suddenly aching with guilt. Had she
remembered to embrace Diana when she had clung to each of her family members in
turn? When she had been drowning in the creek, she had worried about her
grandmother, Helen, even her father and Aunt Beth. It hadn’t even occurred to
her what her death would do to Diana, who of the three of them missed their
mother the most.

“No.”
Diana told her, equally softly. “You won’t. Because I will cut out that man’s
heart myself before I will let him take you from us.”

Cam
shook her head, “he’s not going to take me from you.”

“You
nearly drowned tonight, Cam!”

“No,”
Cam said, fixing her sister with a level gaze. “I did drown tonight, Diana. I’m
not a child. I’m not about to take my own life lightly after what I just
experienced. But I have to trust my own judgment.”

“If
you have any,” Diana snapped, some of her old fire sparking back to life.

“That’s
enough,” Grandma interrupted. “We will discuss this again in the morning.”

“But-”
Diana protested.

“Enough,”
Grandma said. “I don’t want to make Cam ill. In addition to drowning she was
also the victim of very black magic, which is even worse.”

“What
does that mean?”  

“It
means that a little of the conjure will probably linger in you, at least for a
while. Not enough to harm you, but enough to make you feel very bad, depending
on how it manifests itself.”

“Oh,
isn’t that nice,” Cam said sarcastically.

“Caro
and I will see what we can do,” her grandmother said. “There is likely a way to
combat it. In the meantime, you should sleep.”

“Yes.”
Cam agreed. She did want to sleep. But when her sister and grandmother left,
and she was alone in her room, she felt far too terrified to sleep. Every
shadow looked like a person, and every creak sounded evil. Eventually Cam was
able to find comfort by remembering the way that Brent had held her when he
pulled her out of the water. He had been warm. He had been gentle. She had never
felt so safe.

And
with the memory of him warming her, Cam finally fell asleep.

Desperate
times call for desperate measures
, Brent reminded
himself as he rode down the driveway of the Hadley plantation. Mr. Hadley was a
portly middle-aged gentleman with a mean disposition and fondness for liquor.
He was also an incurable gossip, and the Johnson family was one of his favorite
targets. The rumors he spread were varied and vicious, and Brent despised the
man, but he needed information.

Discovering
Cam’s body floating in the creek last night had shocked his system in a way
that nothing else had. Hattie and John weren’t the only ones hanging in the
balance now. Brent was done tip-toeing around the issue. If he had to go to the
slime of the earth to hear the things that no one else was willing to say, then
that was what he would do.

Maybe
it won’t be that bad
.

Half
an hour later as he sat on Mr. Hadley’s porch, watching the man get roaring
drunk, Brent decided that it was every bit as bad as he had expected— and then
some. Hadley was disgusting, and so far he hadn’t given Brent anything useful.
All he did was spew one far-fetched rumor after another.