Birthright (Residue Series #2) (18 page)

“She is not your concern, Jocelyn.” He said this in the
same manner
a wise teacher might talk to a student, as if he was counseling me.
The candor of his demeanor
continued when he added, “Only you can save Jameson now.”

My breath caught as
his implication threatened to expose me.
“What do you know about him?” I took another step closer.

“You show quite a bit of concern for someone deemed your enemy,” Theleo pointed out,
openly
hinting that my behavior wasn’t consistent with our efforts to
insinuate that we
remained
at odds.

Picking up on this, Vinnia cautioned to my left, “Jocelyn.”

“What do you know?” I seethed, never
breaking
my focus from Theleo. If he was my link to finding a cure for Jameson
,
I wasn’t going to back down.

My behavior didn’t seem to faze Theleo, who replied courteously, despite our tense interaction, “I know that seventh century nomadic curses cannot be reverted. They must be overcome.” He
offered this while
keeping his voice so low only I could hear him.

I paused
,
thoroughly confused
at the moment
. He’d just confessed that he knew what
afflicted
Jameson
. Now,
I
had
to determine whether he was earnestly giving me a hint or simply taunting
me.

The rumble of a motorcycle told me that Maggie was back
,
but I didn’t turn around, keeping my eyes pinned to Theleo, until Oscar’s hand gently pulled at me.

It took another two yanks before I
moved,
and when I did
,
my glare remained unyielding,
until Theleo and I were several feet apart. Oddly enough, there was something in
his eyes
that
seized
me. It took a second
,
but I finally determined what it was I saw.

Pride.

He
watched
me like I was a child of his own
,
demonstrating courage for the very first time.

That should have repelled me
and
disgusted me,
making
my anger flare again
,
but it didn’t. Instead, I was baffled. A Vire sent to spy on us,
and
very likely kill us, had just passed
along
vital information
,
the kind that, while
seeming mysterious,
might save Jameson’s life. I simply couldn’t
wrap my head
around
why
the man who had been sent to take our lives may have just helped save one
of them
.

Discarding
an
effort in trying to
decipher his motives
, I met up with Maggie and Eran, as Oscar and Vinnia stopped at my side.

“Friend of yours?” asked Eran, though h
e wasn’t smiling
,
which told me he already knew the answer.

Because of this
,
I chose not to
waste
time answering him and
,
more readily,
turned to Maggie. “What…” Involuntarily, I stopped to swallow back the constriction in my throat. “What did my father say? Did he have a cure?”

The Vires were at a distance where they couldn’t hear
, but
still, I kept my voice low.

Her initial response was
shown
in her expression
. It
sent a sickening chill through me, an emptiness
so vast, it
started in the depths of my stomach and
ravaged
its way through
out
my body.
I was
left
feeling nothing but weak
and
desolate
.

Maggie saw
this and answered delicately.
“He said there is no cure. It must be overcome.”

I must have looked
stricken,
because Oscar’s hand
gently grasped
my elbow
,
and Eran circled around Maggie, ready to help.

I felt as if the world was collapsing around me. The buildings seemed to pulsate toward us and back out again. The ground below my feet shifted, testing my balance. Even the night sky seemed to be vacant of oxygen.

I was so entrenched in working through
this intense
reaction, trying to get a grip on myself, that I didn’t hear
my own reply.
“Overcome?” That was the same
word
Theleo had just
used…

“I asked him the same thing,” Maggie replied,
obviously
perplexed. “He said there was only one way
,
and it involved you.” She paused
, glancing
at her boyfriend tensely. “Now this is where it gets a little strange. He referred you to someone else…someone named Battersbee.”

“Okay,” said Vinnia
,
approvingly. “Now why is that weird?”

Maggie snickered under her breath. “Because I know him and he’s a…what did you call me earlier?” She answered her own question
, finishing
her statement. “A channeler. Battersbee is a channeler.”

I stood a little straighter. “Where do I find him?” I sounded shockingly renewed, even if the feeling wasn’t quite there yet.

“I can bring you,” she offered
,
but I put up my hand.

Sneaking a glimpse at Theleo and his Vires, I shook my head. There was no way I was going to drag her into this. “You’ve done everything we needed and we are really – really – thankful. If you’ll just tell me where he is…”

Only when she launched into directions did I breathe a sigh of relief
.
One less person to worry about, possibly two if her boyfriend had insisted on going.

The directions she gave
sound
like something written on the back of a napkin in a broken down hovel of a roadside bar
,
but
I committed them to memory, anyways.

“You’re going to need to hurry,” she said
,
as I shoved the payment into the palm of her hand. She didn’t seem to care about it. Her message was much more important at the moment
,
and it left an uncomfortable premonition with me.

“Why?” I asked hesitant.

“Because your father said your boyfriend will be dead by morning.”

If I hadn’t left Jameson so pale
,
shivering,
and
mumbling my name to himself, her caveat alone would have been motivation
enough to do what I carried out next.

Avoiding the Vires, I raced to find a vacant alley, having to turn down several streets in a zigzag to outrun them.
As I reached the
first
alley
I came to, I was already several feet in the air, levitating myself from the ground, before Oscar and Vinnia
could catch up.
They followed
suit
, with Vinnia and me both lifting Oscar through the air. His arms flailed
,
until he finally submitted and embraced the ride
,
but by that time
,
we were already over New Orleans and heading for the bayou.

I followed Maggie’s directions specifically and found a corroded
shanty,
seemingly dropped on the bank of the
swamp.
Leaning
to one side
,
and overgrown with moss, it didn’t immediately strike me as a storefront. In fact, the peeling paint and corroded windows made it seem like an abandoned shack. But by the time our feet were on the first step leading to the porch
,
a woman wearing a red bandana wrapped around her
full
head of dreadlocks
,
and carrying a pipe in her mouth
,
waddled to the screen door. Bracelets jingled down both forearm
s announcing
her arrival
,
and the lantern she carried cast an ominous glow across her distinctly large features.

“He don’t want no help,” she said with a thick Cajun accent
,
as if she already
concluded
why we’d come.

“We didn’t bring any,” Vinnia called out.

“Why you hea’ then?”

I felt
, both,
Vinnia’s and Oscar’s eyes on me. We hadn’t been given a reason. Going with my instinct I called out, “We came for his help.”

That seemed to appease her. A plump hand swung the screen door open, ushering us in. “Well’s ya betta hurry. Not much time ta go.”

We moved quickly up the stairs and through the door where we were greeted with a fragrant aroma of fish. Within the boundaries of the lantern’s light, I saw that Maggie had described the place perfectly
,
“a place you would go to find fish that you would never willingly eat.” There was a refrigerator or freezer every three feet and not a single one was
devoid of
rust or seeping some type of fluid.

The woman led us to a back room small enough that she had to stand outside
, holding
the lantern up
,
for us to find Battersbee. He was lying in bed, pillows propping his torso so that he sat up
,
but his head fell forward. An unlit pipe hung limply from his mouth.

“Hearts about to give out,” explained the woman
,
but
his head rose just enough to find he had visitors.

“What we got hea’, ‘Livia?” asked the man, his voice gruff, his pipe bobbing but never slipping from between his pinched, wrinkled lips.

“Best ask them,” said Olivia,
now
leaning against the doorframe like she was leisurely watching a soap opera unfold.

I slid a rickety chair from the wall
then
and set it beside the bed.
When I reached
eye-level
with
him, he tilted his chin to the side
, giving
me a candid evaluation.

“Northeastern girl, eh?” he asked. “Long way from home…”

I didn’t realize this was so obvious
,
and then I remembered that he was a channeler. They had ways of knowing things I could never expect to understand. Nonetheless, I corrected him. “This is my home now.”

“Becomin’ so…” he slowly agreed.

“Mr. Battersbee-” I started but
halted
as soon as
he began waving a weak hand at me. Surmising what he was trying to communicate, I started over and he looked pleased. “Battersbee, do you want to be healed?”

His head shook aggressively, leaving no room for confusion.

“I understand,” I soothed him
,
and his head gradually
relaxed
. “Battersbee, I love someone. His name is Jameson
,
and he’s very sick.
We
were told you could tell us how to overcome…”

Apparently, he’d decided he had heard enough because his hand – the same one that mot
ioned at me a moment ago – slid
across the covers and found mine.
His
fingers
felt
cold but firm
,
as he closed his eyes.

Breathing down the back of his throat, he seemed to be concentrating
. This quickly became
the only sound other than the quiet slapping of water against the
edge of the house.
And then he spoke.

“Your father…”

“Yes,” I said
,
expectantly. “He’s the one who sent me.”

“…died at a young age.”

“Right after I was born.”

Next, Battersbee said something
I was completely unprepared to hear. “He knew what you are.”

My
limbs
went rigid, making it impossible for me to move.

Then
he said something that threw me entirely. “Knew what Jameson is…”

I exhaled sharply. “Do you know Jameson?”