Beneath the Black Moon (Root Sisters) (6 page)

As
a child Cam had thought it was terribly clever and exciting, and she had envied
Mary her gift. Now, she pitied the girl. Mary didn’t see everything, but she
tended to see the bad first, to sense tragedy before joy. When she had her
visions she experienced them as if she were inside the body of whoever she was
seeing. If she saw a murder, it was not as an observer, but as either the
murderer or the victim. It was chilling.

“What
did it mean?” Cam asked Mary.

“Nothing
good.” Grandma frowned.

“We
don’t know that,” Caro disagreed.

“Watching?
Waiting for the right time?” Grandma repeated. “The right time for what? I’ll
wager it’s not to bring over a jar of preserves.”

Cam
looked up, her eyes narrowing as she remembered the strange events at the
barbecue. “Someone was watching me today,” she told them.

All
three of them turned to stare at her.

“Mr.
Anderson?” Grandma asked.

“No.
Well, him too. But someone else, not a guest at the barbecue. There was someone
standing in the forest. At first I thought it was one of the Charmon boys, but
whoever it was didn’t want to be seen. I think he was watching me. Me or
perhaps Helen.”

“Helen?”
Grandma asked sharply.

“She
wandered off into the forest to work on her diary. Aunt Beth wasn’t pleased. I
suppose whoever it was could have been watching her.”

Grandma
shifted in her seat, her brow wrinkled with worry. “That can’t be good.”

“How
long was he watching?” Caro asked.

“I
don’t know,” Cam said, “I was talking to Mr. Anderson.”

“Are
you sure that the man knows nothing?” Mary asked, making one last stitch and
biting the thread. She was sewing a charm bag and had used blood red thread.
“There is a threat. I can feel it. It is new and dangerous, and so is he.”

“New
or dangerous?” Cam asked

“Both,”
Caro answered from the window. “What is he doing at the barbecue when his
brother's wife is dying?”

“She’s
dying?” This was news to Cam. “I thought she was just sick. How do you know
that?”

Caro
shook her head. “Everyone knows. You’d know if you spent more time with people
your own age.”

“I
don’t have anything in common with most people my own age. What’s wrong with
her?”

“No
one knows that,” Caro said, “not even the Doctor. She’s just wasting away. Or
so I’ve heard. Maybe some kind of fever.”

“But
we have nothing to do with that,” Grandma said, and then she glanced at Cam.
“You don’t, do you?”

Cam
made a face, “why would I curse a woman I don’t even know? No, whatever is
wrong with her, it’s nothing to do with us.”

“Yet
that Mr. Anderson is looking for something. Are we sure that he’s not kin to—”

“No,”
Cam said quickly. “As far as I know he never knew Kat Varennes. And I don’t
think—”

“Ssh!”
The hiss was Mary’s, and the girl suddenly twisted in her seat to stare at the kitchen
windows.

Cam
stood immediately, prepared to hide. “Someone’s coming? Is it Aunt Beth? It’s
not father is it?”

“No
one’s coming,” Mary said solemnly, “but someone’s watching the kitchen.”

“Watching
us?” Grandma also stood. “Who?”

“Are
you sure, Mary?” Caro was already filling a shallow bowl with water. “Hand me
an egg, Daphne,” she said to Cam’s grandmother, in a moment of informality that
came naturally between the two of them but would have shocked and horrified
Aunt Beth or Cam’s father.

“I
felt it for a minute before I said anything,” Mary whispered, and with the
candlelight playing upon her face, there was something haunting about her face,
something almost ageless. She didn’t look like a young woman. She looked like
an oracle, a prophet of old, seeing things in the flames that mere mortals
could only guess at. “You won’t be able to see him now,” she said as Grandma
cracked an egg into the bowl that Caro had filled with water. It was an old
divining trick that was used to allow people to see that which was unseen. “I
think he’s leaving.”

“Who
is it?” Cam asked. Mary closed her eyes to concentrate, several fine lines
appearing on her brow while Caro and Grandma studied the contents of the bowl
carefully.

“I
don’t know,” Mary said finally, her eyes opening again. “I’m sorry.”

***

Every
time Brent began to feel guilty for his prying, the same conscience that was
torturing him reminded him what was at stake: his sister-in-law’s life and his
brother’s happiness. Still, he couldn’t help but feel disgusted with himself as
he stood in one of the many shadows on Cam’s beautiful, moon-flooded lawn, and
watched the kitchen into which she had vanished. There was a strange scent in
the air, sharp and spicy, and smoke billowed from the chimney. What were they
burning? What was Cam doing in the kitchen at this hour? Why had she said that
she was indisposed?

He
remembered some of the rumors he had heard, whispers about some odd religion, a
sort of superstition or witchcraft. It had all sounded quite ridiculous at the
time. Now, standing there watching the candlelight flicker behind those tightly
closed curtains, catching the faintest of murmurs from inside of the kitchen,
and smelling those strange herbs, he wondered.

There
was another scent in the air, too, he realized, one that could only be scented
softly beneath the odor of the herbs, but was there nonetheless, thick in his
mouth and his throat. Ash. Old ash. Not from whatever they were burning inside
of the kitchen, but from a greater, more powerful fire. The kind of ash that
remained on a landscape long after the flames had claimed their victims. He
hadn’t smelled it when he’d first walked across the yard, but now, now it was
inescapable. The wind must have changed, he thought, because suddenly all he
could smell was the harsh scent of a fire long quenched.

Where
is it coming from?
He wondered and glanced down. The
ground glowed silver beneath his feet. He shifted, and when his feet moved they
raised a cloud of white ash that dusted his boots and trousers in fine powder.
Now entirely uneasy, Brent glanced all around him. Somehow he had walked into a
field of ash without even realizing it. The stuff surrounded him, gleaming from
beneath blades of grass, smoking in heaps at his feet. How had he not seen it
when he walked into it? And what was it from?

Then
a chill ran down his spine, because he remembered. The carriage house fire, the
fire that had killed Sam and Solange. The fire that had claimed two lives. It
had been so many years ago, surely he couldn’t be standing in the ashes from
that night. But as he stared at the yard around him, so very different at night
than it was during the day, as barren and windswept and moon-pale as a white
desert, he could almost taste death in the air.

He
was standing on the ruins on that carriage house. He was standing on the grave
of Cam’s mother. What was he doing on this lawn, spying on a woman who had
already known such darkness? How could he intrude on a family tragedy like
this? Suddenly, Brent wanted nothing more than to leave Cam in peace, to stop
his desecration of this place and return to the ball where he belonged, away
from the scene of such sadness.

So
he left. He had intended to wait until Cam or someone else emerged from the
kitchen, but he no longer had the will to. He felt unnerved and ashamed, as
though he were a grave robber plundering caskets for information rather than
jewels. Brent walked gingerly across the ash until he reached the soft green
grass that he remembered from the barbecue earlier that day, and then he quickly
crossed the lawn to the house and the brightly lit gathering within.

One
of the young local husband-hunters found him and pounced on him before he had
taken too many steps within the door. “Mr. Anderson!”

Brent
managed to smile at her. It took him a moment to remember her name, only
because there had been so many young women trying to win his favor since he had
moved into the neighborhood. This one had a pretty face, but her personality
and conversational skills were altogether unremarkable, so he couldn’t quite recall…

Ah,
yes, Carreen Williams
. “Good evening Miss Williams.”

“Good
evening Mr. Anderson,” she returned with a wide smile.

“Tell,
me, Miss Williams,” he said, before she had a chance to start chattering about
something that he would undoubtedly have absolutely no interest in. “What are
those ashes outside from?”

Carreen
blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“The
ashes,” Brent said, trying to keep his voice even so that it sounded like an
idle curiosity. “The field of ash on the Johnson lawn, outside. Do you know
what those ashes are from?” They had to be from the fire, he was almost certain
of it. Hell, he had practically felt the flames licking at his own skin. Yet it
wasn’t possible. It had been fourteen years, and the ashes should have been
washed away.

“I
don’t recall any ashes,” Carreen said, looking perplexed.

It
took a little doing, but Brent finally coaxed her out onto the porch. She
blushed more than once, perhaps because she expected he was luring her out
there so that he could take liberties. No. He just wanted to know about the
ashes. It had been damned unnerving. “There,” he said finally, pointing at
where he had stood just a few minutes earlier. “Do you know anything about the
ash?”

Carreen
squinted in the moonlight, a slight frown on her face. “I don’t see anything.”

“Right
there,” Brent said, turning to point out the exact spot where the ghost-white
shadow of the ash had fallen. Inexplicably, he could not find it. The yard was
dark and where the moonlight shone it hit thick grass and tall, well-tended
trees. There was no ash in sight.

“Mr.
Anderson, what are we doing out here?” Carreen said, in a tone that suggested
he had been overcome by her feminine wiles and had tricked her in order to
spend some time alone with her.

Brent
took a step away from her, putting several feet between them so that she could
have absolutely no doubts about his intentions. “I thought I saw something,” he
said, his mind whirring.

Now
Carreen looked irritated. “You haven’t been drinking, have you, Mr. Anderson?”

“No,”
Brent said, rather irritably. “No I haven’t.” She seemed miffed when he led her
back inside and immediately excused herself to go talk to someone else. Brent,
meanwhile, stared down at his own shoes, searching for the fine white ash that
had powdered his boots not five minutes earlier.

There
was nothing. His boots gleamed back at him, black and perfectly unmarred.

Brent
closed his eyes once and then opened them again. Nothing. No sign of the ash.
He stood there for a moment, vaguely aware of people dancing around him. When
he glanced up his eyes were hard, and he had the look of a predator that had
just scented blood. He cast his gaze carelessly over the assembled guests and
caught sight of a young blonde who socialized frequently with Helen. She would
do. He moved towards her, shouldering his way powerfully through the guests to
ask her to dance. She stared up at him with the doe-like eyes of a little girl
and couldn’t say no. And when they had danced for a few moments, wasted time on
all of the small-talk topics that he could stand, he ventured to ask what he
really wanted to know.

“What
do you know about Cam Johnson?”

The
question was asked in earnest, but it had a second purpose. By the last dance
of the evening, everyone in the Johnson ballrom knew that Brent Anderson was
showing a marked interest in Mr. Johnson’s second daughter. Young women
despaired, their mothers schemed, and the gossips could barely contain their
delight.

Cam
snuck back to her room that night undetected and oblivious to the fact that she
was now at the center of a firestorm of gossip which Brent had deliberately
sparked.

***

By
the time Brent returned home that night, he had almost convinced himself that
he had somehow imagined the strange episode on Cam’s lawn.
Almost
. But
it was too vivid to be dismissed. He still remembered the smell of the ash,
just as he couldn’t quite forget the way that Cam’s face had gleamed under the
moon.

Cam
.
He hadn’t counted on her being so oddly captivating. He was investigating her
family for his brother’s sake. John’s wife Hattie had fallen ill a few weeks
before their arrival in Gaynor County, and she worsened with every day that
passed. At first it had seemed like an ordinary fever, but her symptoms puzzled
every physician that examined her— and John had consulted quite a few.

She
had persistent, recurring nightmares. She dreamt of fires, of charred bodies
and screaming people trapped in an inferno. She dreamt of murder, of the
stabbing of a young mother in her own home. At first John and Brent had assumed
that the morbid tales she told were figments of her own imagination, products
of the high fever that she ran all day, every day. Then Brent had heard some
elderly matrons gossiping about the murder of Katherine Varennes, who had been stabbed
in her own dressing room by an unknown assailant fourteen years earlier. After
a little digging, Brent had learned about Solange Johnson and the mysterious
fire that she perished in.