Compulsion (15 page)

Getting out seemed to be a popular refrain. First Eight, now Cassie. Still, the desperation of Cassie’s tone was undeniable, and how was Barrie supposed to turn her cousin down?

“Sure,” Barrie said. “When?”

“You see? I knew we were going to be good friends.” Cassie flashed Barrie an approving smile. “I have to work the lunch shift at Bobby Joe’s tomorrow, but my theater group and I do
Gone with the Wind
at night, in front of the ruins.”

“I thought that was set in Georgia.”

Cassie gave a graceful wave. “Doesn’t matter. The tourists pay money and lap it up. Still, it’s a good production. Please come. You can feel around, do your Watson thing, see if you sense anything. My sister, Sydney, is dying to meet you, and Daddy has the photographs for you. You can bring Eight, too, if you want.”

Barrie had plenty to say to Eight. About his gift and everything he hadn’t bothered to tell her. An invitation wasn’t in there anywhere. Unless it was an invitation to his own funeral, because she was going to have to kill him.

The least he could have done was warn her that her cousin was going to ask her to trot out the Watson gift like some kind of freak in a circus sideshow. But he’d been too worried about keeping his own secret to consider how she would feel.

In the parking lot outside the Resurrection, Eight opened the passenger door of his car for Barrie. She slammed it shut again. She wasn’t going anywhere with him just yet.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about the Beaufort gift! And you used it on me. That’s cheating.”

Eight leaned back against the fender. “It might be cheating if what you wanted and what you think you’re supposed to want were remotely the same. But reading you is like trying to pitch a no-hitter blindfolded.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

His body was too close to hers. He was so present and
alive
, he threatened to suck her in. Even out in the open, he made it hard to think straight, to be as mad as he deserved. Needing
distance, Barrie headed across the parking lot toward a clump of pines beside the beach.

Eight trailed after her. “You know what your problem is? You’re the least self-aware person I’ve ever met. What you actually want is buried under so many layers of what you think you’re supposed to do, I’m amazed you can ever make any kind of a decision. And when you do decide something, it’s usually at your own expense. You’ve got no sense of self-preservation.”

Barrie spun to face him. “Are you done telling me what’s wrong with me yet?”

“You’re the one who seems not to know it’s okay to be yourself. To want something for yourself.”

And what was there to say to that? Everything Barrie wanted was impossible.

She and Eight both fell silent. The moon hung so low over the ocean, it practically touched the water, as if it were wading in to wash itself clean.

“So what did you tell Cassie about helping her?” Eight asked, looking grim.

Barrie stopped and braced her back against a tree. “I said I would.”

“Pru will pitch a fit when she finds out. Come on. Admit it. Even you don’t think it’s a good idea.”

Maybe not, but Barrie wasn’t about to say so. Anyway, how could she avoid helping Cassie? “You’re going to come with me,” she said. “You owe me.”

“Do I?” Eight took a step toward her and then another.

Barrie was surprised at how brave she felt, how close he was, how aware she was of him, how his eyes shifted from anger to intent. She tipped her chin up and glowered at him.

“You don’t scare me,” he said. But then he smiled. Bracing his arm above her on the tree trunk, he held her gaze and leaned in, his head angled for a kiss as he bent closer and closer—

And Barrie chickened out.

“We’d better get back,” she said, ducking under his arm. “Pru will be expecting me.”

Eight stood very still. “Fine,” he said.

In the awakened silence of the long ride home, Barrie went over the moment, that almost-moment, ten, twenty, a hundred times. She wondered whether she had wanted Eight to kiss her. Whether she had wanted to kiss him. Maybe she just wanted to know why
he
wanted it.

With a hurried “Good night” she rushed out of his car as soon as he pulled up to the house, and she didn’t look back when he called her name. Even sitting in the kitchen while Pru prepared miniature quiches to serve the next day in the tearoom, Barrie thought about that almost-kiss.

Pru, on the other hand, was focused on the fact that Barrie was going to Colesworth Place even after hearing Cassie’s story. She stopped chopping green onions at the kitchen counter and pointed at Barrie with the knife.

“Are you even listening to me, sugar? I understand you mean well, wanting to help Cassie and all, but it’s Colesworth property, and Wyatt is going to be there. Seven suspects Wyatt is going to do something about trying to get custody of you so they can get their hands on Lula’s money. Colesworths always have some kind of an agenda. Believe me, Cassie isn’t telling you even half the truth about whatever she thinks is buried over there. And why on earth would she expect you to want to help her?”

“She’s my cousin. Why wouldn’t I want to help her?”

“Because the gift is evil.”

Barrie’s eyebrows shot up into her hairline. “Evil?”

“That story Cassie told you is a fairy tale. Nothing good’s ever come of playing with voodoo and witchcraft. Cherokee or otherwise. Look at Lula.”

“What about her? She didn’t think using the gift was evil—”

“Look what that got her! Look at her life.” Pru stared down at the knife in her hand as if she didn’t quite know what to do with it. Carefully she set it on the cutting board and came to join Barrie at the table. “Growing up, I was the twin who
sat and waited for things to happen. Lula was the wild one, the curious one. She went out and made things happen—and dragged me along with her. Right up until the year before she left. That year the gift made her strange. We’d both had a little of it all our lives. Daddy insisted we ignore it, and since neither of us liked it when he punished us, we stopped reacting to the pull of lost things. After a while the gift became background noise. For me, anyway.”

“But not for Lula?”

“No. For her the gift was impossible to ignore. It gave her headaches if she didn’t do what it demanded.”

Barrie went very still. “You’re making the gift sound alive. As if it thinks. Decides.”

“Maybe. I know Lula tried to tell Daddy what she felt. He only preached more fire and brimstone and said she would burn in hell if she used the gift.”

“Cassie’s story didn’t make it sound evil either.”

“Cassie’s story is a Colesworth story. She told you what she wanted you to know.”

“What’s the Watson story?”

“Daddy never said. Seven Beaufort once gave me the Beaufort side. I don’t remember many details, but I know there wasn’t anything about trapping the Fire Carrier. It was an out-and-out bargain. A deal with the devil.”

If the devil had a painted face and carried fire.

Barrie waited for Pru to go on, but her aunt returned to the counter to distribute diced onions among tiny muffin cups lined with dough, and when Pru spoke it was with her back still turned so that Barrie couldn’t see her face.

“I’m sure you think I should have told you all of this,” Pru said. “But we’ve barely had any time to talk, and I wanted to wait to see if you needed to be told. I wasn’t even sure you had the gift. If you didn’t, what would have been the point of bringing it up?”

“Because everyone in town knows more than I do? I had to hear about it from Cassie.”

“That’s exactly why you need to reject the gift. Don’t you see? All it does is make people like Cassie want to use you.” Pru came over again and put her hands on Barrie’s shoulders. “I know you want to help your cousin, sugar, and I know you already agreed to help. Just promise me you’ll think about what I said. There’s still time to change your mind about going over there.” She waited until Barrie nodded. Then she kissed Barrie’s forehead and went back to cooking.

Barrie sighed. “Good night, Aunt Pru.”

“Good night, honey. Sleep on what I said.”

Barrie wasn’t sure there would a lot of sleeping going on that night. As she got into her pajamas, she found she couldn’t think about the gift as being something evil. The ability to find things had been a part of her for as long as she could remember.
She paced the room, and her mind kept going back to Eight and the Beaufort gift.

What would it be like to know what people wanted? She couldn’t imagine it. Eight was right: half the time she didn’t know what she wanted.

She should want to help Cassie, for instance. Yet deep down she didn’t. It had been hard to drum up enthusiasm to argue with Pru and Eight and pretend that she did.

Her reluctance had nothing to do with evil or even the story Cassie had told. It wasn’t because Wyatt made her nervous. It wasn’t a rational objection. Presumably there would be a crowd of tourists at Cassie’s play, and helping her cousin’s family get their fortune back was the perfect solution to end the Watson-Colesworth feud. There wasn’t a downside, really. Barrie knew what it was to feel trapped by walls and by expectation.

Downstairs the grandfather clock chimed midnight. She listened to the last knell and let herself out onto the balcony. She walked toward the farthest point, half-hoping, half-dreading the sight of fire lighting up the trees in the woods. Already an orange glow lit the trunks of the knot-kneed cypress trees, casting macabre shadows that raced along the line of trees.

The Fire Carrier emerged into the open marsh. He was a silhouette, more of a suggestion than a shape as he waded
hip-deep into the water beyond the marsh grass and spilled threads of fire across the water.

Flames rushed gold and red, upriver and down. Remembering Cassie’s story, Barrie imagined the fire circling the island, hugging the shoreline, blazing up the creek that separated Watson’s Landing from the rest of Watson Island.

How long had the witch performed this same magical ritual here, night after night? Three hundred years at least.

The burning globe in the Fire Carrier’s hands grew smaller as he released the last strands of fire onto the water, leaving only an orange glow in his hands and occasional purple-blue spits of flame crackling across his palms. He turned to face the balcony where Barrie stood.

She squeezed the railing, grasping for something she knew was real. Clinging to the hope that it was all a hallucination. It had to be. But every detail of the scene was clear. Clearer even than it had been the previous night. There was the scent of sage-thickened smoke that she hadn’t smelled before, and details she shouldn’t—couldn’t—have seen across the distance between her and the witch. The glistening war paint on his naked chest, the feathers in his cloak and headdress stirring in the breeze created by the flame behind him.

The red-and-black mask painted across his features, that was still the same. Behind it the Fire Carrier’s eyes bored into
hers. Barrie
felt
him watching, wanting, waiting for something from her.

Each beat of her heart thudded in her ears. Every ragged, shallow breath seared her lungs as if she were breathing fire. And still he watched her.

“What do you want?” she whispered.

He turned away. Hands cupped in a receiving gesture, he stooped toward the water. Where the fire had spread across the river, it raced back to him in strands of flame, and he spooled them up like a ball of yarn. Without giving Barrie another glance, he carried the burning orb back into the woods.

She took a shuddering breath when he had vanished among the trees. Her chest ached and her eyes blurred. At the edges of her vision, streaks of shadow raced behind the Fire Carrier, leaping and darting away toward the woods so fast, she couldn’t be sure they were there. But abruptly she knew they
were
.

She had seen shadows like that before. Had noticed them without
noticing
. Shadows moving among the trees and beneath the bushes in the garden.
Yunwi.
That was what Cassie had called the spirits the Fire Carrier guarded on the island. The
yunwi
were still here too.

Shivering, Barrie went back to her room and latched the balcony doors behind her. Quietly, she crawled into bed. Curled on her side beneath the quilt, she lay awake going over
everything Eight, Cassie, and Pru had told her about Watson Island, and coming up with five questions for every answer.

She hadn’t asked if any of them had seen the spirits or the Fire Carrier themselves. She hadn’t asked nearly enough questions. What if the Fire Carrier or the
yunwi
were the real reason Lula had run away? That made more sense than the romantic elopement Barrie had been envisioning. After all, if Lula and Wade had planned to run away together because they’d been in love, wouldn’t Lula have confided that to Pru? Or to Julia? Maybe Lula hadn’t planned to leave at all. Maybe something had scared her enough to make her run away in the middle of the night.

Sleep eluded Barrie most of the night. She woke bleary-eyed in the morning, with a bitter taste, like overbrewed tea, inside her mouth. Already the air was hot. The balcony doors she had closed had popped open again, letting the jasmine-infused humidity seep inside. She got up to shut the doors, only to have the latch come off in her hand. And the bedpost, which had been perfectly sturdy the day before, wobbled in her grip while she slipped into her shoes.