Circle of Secrets (6 page)

A key. I wonder if it’s just a charm — or if it actually opens a lock.

I try the key in the wardrobe but it doesn’t fit. I try my bedroom door, but it doesn’t fit there, either. There aren’t any keyholes in the nightstand or the bureau. No jewelry boxes or latches or padlocks that I can see.

Setting the bracelet on the dresser, I put the drawer back together best I can, then crawl into bed and flop my head
down. Grandmother Phoebe told me to bring my own pillow and I’m glad I listened to her.

The rain drums against the roof and I jump up again to retrieve the bracelet from the bureau. The charms slip around my wrist, tickling my palm. A flash of lightning illuminates the ruby-red birthstone against my pillow’s white slipcase and the stone seems to glow like fire.

My fingers dart out from under the sheet and I reach for the note from the blue bottle. I unfold it and look at the words in the dark.

Don’t forget! Tonight’s the Night!
Come to the bridge — and hurry!

It’s a message to someone. But who? And what bridge is the note talking about?

A funny tingle crawls up my legs.

A sense of ancient history seems to float on the night air. The bedroom grows stuffy so I jump out of bed to crack open the window.

I can’t believe my eyes when I see the figure of a girl move out from behind the blue bottle tree. She’s wearing shorts and a blouse and she’s barefoot.

A moment later, she starts dancing under the silvery half moon, whirling in circles, leaping around the yard.

Who is that?

When I press my nose against the glass the girl stops dancing and looks straight up at me. I freeze, not daring to breathe. We stare at each other and then she disappears behind the trunk again.

The mysterious shadowy girl looked at me, saw me.
Watched me!

I can hardly gulp down a decent breath, but I have the crazy notion to run right out the back door in my nightgown.

There’s a girl out there, and I get the strangest feeling that she’s waiting for me.

C
HAPTER
F
IVE

A
SPLIT SECOND LATER, QUIET AS
I
CAN,
I’
M RUNNING DOWN
the hall, slipping through the kitchen and down the porch steps. My feet sink into the soft, wet grass, mud sticking to my toes. At least it’s not raining any longer.

Ducking under the bottom branches of the blue bottles, I peek around the tree trunk and my breath rushes out like a gust of wind. The yard is empty.

The shadows of hundreds of cypresses circling the house seem to watch me. A breeze lifts the dripping moss and I watch it float in the air like invisible hands are running their fingers through it.

Had I fallen asleep and dreamed the girl? Was it only a trick of the moonlight and the bottle tree? No, I’d swear I saw her. But where’d she go?

Shivers of excitement run up and down my neck, and raindrops keep plinking down from the blue bottle tree onto my head. I run fast as I can back to the safety of the kitchen, the sound of the bottles clinking together like they’re talking to one another behind me.

When I jump back in bed, I wrap the hem of my nightgown around my damp toes, thinking about the girl, the note, the charm bracelet, and lie wide awake for hours.

The next morning I huddle on the bank and wrap my arms around myself while Mirage bails three inches of rainwater from the bottom of her boat. Mist rises from the surface of the bayou. Rain drops from the cypresses and oaks, plopping on the metal boat, the elephant ears, and the metal roof of the swamp house.

My stomach clenches and the grits I ate settle in my gut like concrete. The fog is eerie, and it feels like the real world is a million miles away.

“Is the boat going to sink?” I ask.

“We’ll be jest fine. Long as no gators got lost after that rain last night and ended up in my cove.”

“Gators? We’re going to be followed by alligators? Do you have a gun? Grandmother Phoebe says you shouldn’t live in the swamp without a gun.”

Mirage glances up at me, her hair hanging wildly in her
eyes. “Jest teasin’, Shelby Jayne. Actually, me and alligators have a Mutual Admiration Society out here. We admire each other and stay as far away as possible. Only critter you might see is Harvey.”

“Who’s Harvey?”

“Well, looka there! He’s speeding past right now.”

I watch an animal, sort of like a big beaver, beelining through the water, ducking under a spread of hyacinth, and then popping back up again. “That’s Harvey?”

“Yep. He’s a nutria and he knows his name, too. Looks up when I call to him. Nutria are pretty smart.”

“You’re not going to call him over here, are you?”

“Nope, not today. Now jump in and grab that oar.”

I can’t believe we’re going to town in a boat. I know there’s no road out here, just water, but still. It’s the principle of the thing.

“Is anybody going to see us when we get there? To town, I mean.”

Last night she was barefoot, but today she’s wearing homemade socks inside a pair of hiking boots and a crazy-colored skirt with a man’s windbreaker to keep off the rain.

“You look like a swamp witch wearing those clothes.”

She purses her lips and gives me one of those pinched mother looks, like Grandmother Phoebe does when I don’t hurry fast enough or comb my hair for dinner.

“Thought we’d gotten that whole swamp witch thing outta the way last night. I may live in the swamp,” Mirage says quietly, “but that don’t mean I’m uneducated, Miss Smarty-Pants.” Her face is red as she gets busy untying the rope around the dock piling while I gnaw on my cheek.

Folding my arms across my chest, I look down at the boat.

I look at the water.

I don’t look at her.

Mirage leans over to pick up the oars, not looking at me, either. “Jump on in,” she finally says.

I sloooowly count to five, then put one foot inside the wobbly boat and perch on the damp seat, then the other foot, trying not to tip the boat and fall into the murky water. Everything’s wet and muggy, and the moisture seeps through my jeans in ten seconds flat, making me feel all sticky.

Mirage pushes off from the dock and pulls her paddle through the flat brown water.

I glance behind to see which side she wants me to paddle and find that Mirage is staring right at me. Her dark eyes hold mine, but she doesn’t say anything. A breeze moves through her long hair like invisible wings.

I turn around, pulling my windbreaker closer, then touch the folded note deep inside my pocket. The blue bottle note was real, not a dream. Was the girl from last night real, too?
Where did she live? Why didn’t she stay and talk to me? Why’d she run away? She must have had a boat. A boat I couldn’t see on the other side of the cove.

Mirage’s boat cuts through the water with a slurping noise. Herons and egrets rise from the rushes. Wind tickles the hanging Spanish moss and breathes down my neck. Seems like there’s not a soul in sight for a hundred miles.

Finally, I dip my own oar into the bottomless water. “You ever get lonely out here?”

When Mirage doesn’t answer, I sneak a peek over my shoulder.

She gives me a shaky smile. “I’m only lonely for you,
bébé.”

“Don’t seem like it to me,” I mutter, still feeling hurt over her calling me a smarty-pants. I’m not the one who moved away and stayed away. I never left. I’d stayed right at home where we’d always been.

“It’s true, Shelby Jayne,” she goes on softly, almost cautiously. “I miss you terribly. I know you don’t believe me. You got a lotta stuff in your head. Stuffed in there by other people. Maybe some of it’s true, but some of it ain’t. I did some stupid things. Like staying away for your grandmother Phoebe’s sake. It was easier for her if I wasn’t around — easier for me, too — but that don’t excuse the fact that I got chicken and didn’t come visit you enough or send for you after your
grand-mère
passed.”

My face flushes and I squirm when she says that. I don’t want her talking pretty about her feelings for me. I don’t want to believe her. And I don’t want her to be right, either — about Grandmother Phoebe, whom I love, but who does have a hankering for gossip.

My ears burn thinking about all the things Grandmother Phoebe has said since Mirage left. Her voice keeps filling my head fatter and fatter, so I think about the mysterious folded note instead and the words written on the lined paper:

Don’t forget! Tonight’s the Night!
Come to the bridge — And hurry!

Mirage said people put blue bottle trees in their yard to keep away bad spirits. Was one of those evil spirits trying to lure me into the swamp?

I’m sitting in a canoe in the middle of the bayou, too far from shore, and I start sweating. Maybe those blue bottles were actually working! The note had been inside the bottle, trapped, but I’d let it loose by taking it out. Had I let out an honest-to-goodness haunt or ghoul or imp?

What would that evil phantom do — tip the boat over and dump us into the water? I just
know
there’s gators roaming right underneath us, crawfish snapping their claws, nutria, and all kind of fish I can’t even see.

My brain starts running wild as I keep rowing in the prow while Mirage steers. Feels like all the rowing will never end, but I’m eager to get somewhere safe — and the faster the better. I start counting how many times I pull that oar through the water and lose track after a hundred. My muscles ache something fierce and the burning makes me want to cry, but I suck it down.

By the time I finally see the edge of town I can hardly lift my arms they’re trembling so bad. All kind a houses are set back inside groves of oaks and cypress. The streets are lined with older buildings and storefronts, Ozaire’s Laundromat and the post office and Sweet Ellen’s Bakery.

Mirage ties up at one of the city piers on the edge of the bayou. I crawl up the elephant ears and try to catch my breath.

Mirage stares down the main streets of town, not saying a word. Finally, she says, “Head on this way, Shelby Jayne.” She tramps up Main in her boots, turning a couple of corners until a weather-beaten three-story frame house comes into view.

A wide, cluttered porch runs the length of the house. Nailed across the front hangs a board that had once been painted white. The name B
AYOU
B
RIDGE
A
NTIQUES
is cut into the sign, the letters edged in archaic, flaky paint.

“Let’s find us some Christmas lights,” Mirage says as we climb up the wooden steps.

“But it’s August!”

She either doesn’t hear me or ignores me.

Two floors and an attic bulge with old furniture, tools, and clothing. The place smells musty with a moist, earthy scent. A few people browse racks of baby clothes and dig through boxes of outdated
Life
and
National Geographic
magazines.

A man in overalls sits in a rocking chair in one corner smoking a pipe, with a baseball cap stuck on his head. I figure he must be the store owner from the way his hawk eyes watch the customers.

A woman with plain black clips holding back her flyaway hair stands behind a counter ringing up a sale on an old-fashioned cash register.

Never seen a place like this before in my life. The antique stores Grandmother Phoebe goes to have fancy, polished furniture and paintings in gold frames and statues and figurines.

I wander down the cramped aisles, past wooden barrels and ancient farm equipment. There’s even one of those monstrous sugar pots they used to use on plantations in the olden days to cook the cane syrup.

I leave Mirage digging through some old chests for
secondhand women’s clothing and climb to the second story. When I reach the landing, there’s a set of open suitcases, filled with dirt — a garden of wildflowers planted right into the dirt.

Grandmother Phoebe would probably laugh and roll her eyes, but I think the garden suitcases are pretty, like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I can imagine Mirage doing something like this. I wonder if she’d let me dig up some of her flowers to put into a suitcase. Then I wonder what’s wrong with me. I’d never plant flowers in a suitcase at home!

I skirt around some antique furniture, a bin full of old bedding, and a bookcase stuffed with ancient paperbacks, their covers dusty and ripped.

Behind a massive cherrywood wardrobe, I stop walking and just stare and stare and stare.

A glass case has been pushed into the corner, almost forgotten, and it’s overflowing with dolls: rows of chubby baby dolls, rag dolls, antique porcelain dolls, and old stiff-legged Barbie dolls.

In the center of the case, a little apart from the rest of the dolls, sits the most exquisite porcelain doll I’ve ever seen. She’s got perfect features in a heart-shaped face and big blue eyes with super-long black eyelashes.

I get on my knees to look closer, amazed at how beautiful she is in her rose-colored lace dress and a feathered hat tied under one ear with pink ribbon.

She’s got a tiny chip on her chin, but otherwise the doll is in perfect condition. A piece of cardboard sitting in her lap states that she’s about one hundred years old and not for sale. How could they have a doll sitting in a case and not let anyone buy her?

I crouch on the floor, my nose almost touching the glass.

For one crazy second, the doll’s crystal-blue eyes seem to look right into mine. A funny tickling runs up and down my arms and I glance around, wondering if someone is watching me.

Finally, I tear my eyes away and go look for Mirage. It’s hard not to get lost as I end up winding my way through heaps of stacked chairs and tables, and bumping into a blackened woodstove just like the one Mirage has in her kitchen.

I find her next to an oval-shaped bathtub with huge claw feet, an inch of dirt and dead bugs covering the bottom. Then Mirage holds up a box of white and blue Christmas lights like she’s just won the jackpot. Her hair is messy and there’s dirt on her face.

I gnaw on my cheek and try not to tell her how crazy she looks.