Compulsion (26 page)

The envelope on the very bottom had been mailed months after the fire, the same month Lula had finally been released from the hospital. Every letter had a return address.

Barrie felt like the room was spinning around her, faster and faster, and she didn’t know how to make it stop. Someone—Barrie’s grandfather?—had known exactly where Lula had been all along. And who else could it have been, aside from Emmett? It was his library, his locked drawer. Barrie couldn’t imagine Pru ignoring Lula or pretending Lula were dead if she knew it wasn’t true.

Pru had never seen these letters. She hadn’t known her twin was alive, because Emmett had hidden that knowledge from her, the same way he had hidden it from everyone else on Watson Island.

What kind of father did that?

Barrie’s hands shook. The yellowed paper rasped as she pulled the oldest letter from the envelope.

Daddy,

I understand what you said, and I’m not questioning. I’m not accusing. I haven’t told a soul, I swear. I never will, because I’m a Watson as much as you are. There’s also Barrie to think of now. She looks exactly like me. Like I used to look. I didn’t realize how important family was until the first time she looked up at me from her bassinet. The doctors say I should be able to hold her soon. Maybe I will.

You can’t mean it about not letting me come home. Tell everyone the funeral was a mistake. Tell them you didn’t know I survived. Yes, it might be safer if Wyatt thinks I’m dead, but it’s killing me to be away from Watson’s Landing anyway. There are medical bills, too, and I have at least three surgeries left to go. How am I supposed to get through that and manage to take care of a baby?

Don’t keep hanging up on me. Please! Please? Let me talk to you, or at least to Pru or Mama. You have to help me.

The letter wasn’t signed or dated. Barrie dropped it onto the table and flipped through all the postmarks again, hoping
the letters were simply out of sequence and she would find the first part of whatever discussion Lula had already had with Emmett mixed in somewhere. But the letter she had read was the oldest correspondence. She picked up the next one and pulled it from the envelope with fingers that felt too clumsy. This one was even shorter.

Daddy,

Thank you for the money and instructions. No, I can’t prove Wyatt was here, but if you would just tell the police on Watson Island, I’m sure they could find a reason to arrest him. Then maybe the police
here
would believe me, and I could finally come home. If you won’t do that, at least let Pru come to me. You know how it hurts to be away. I’m in too much pain to bear it. Please! You have my promise. I swear I will keep your secret. What more do you want from me?

Barrie’s throat burned as she tried to swallow her rage and frustration. No signature again, and no real information.
What secret?
And what kind of secret would have anything to do with Wyatt?

She rammed the letter back into the envelope and threw it onto the desk as the
gong
of the grandfather clock sounded
in the hall. Her blood quickened with each hour it counted.

Midnight.

Already flames lit the trees, and the sky outside the library window was brightening. The fire called to Barrie, drew her to her feet. She gripped the top of the chair and told herself to be sensible, but a moment later she was hurrying down the corridor into the kitchen, tearing the chain off the jamb again in her rush. In the night air, the pull grew stronger, more compelling.

She raced across the terrace and down the steps. The gravel and shells on the path bit through her socks, tore into her skin. But the Fire Carrier had reached the river already, and Barrie’s feet swept her forward as if she couldn’t stop. She entered the maze and kept running, approaching the fountain and the point where the path drew closest to the trees.

The woods had a pull of their own. Just past the fountain, the competing sense of loss hit her like a fist and slowed her long enough for sanity to intervene. She stopped to rub her head, to catch her breath.

What was she doing? She hated stupid horror movies where the characters did things like this. In what universe was it a good idea to be out here at midnight? Alone? Chasing after a ghost—worse, the ghost of a
witch
? Except she
felt
the Fire Carrier wanting—needing—something from her.

Sure he did. Her skin maybe. Wasn’t that one of those voodoo legends? That dead things could steal a person’s skin?

At the farthest edge of the marsh grass, the shadowy form of the Fire Carrier bent low over the water, fire spilling from his arms across the river. He hadn’t seen her yet.

He straightened. Any moment he would turn and catch her watching, the way he had every night at this part of the ceremony. Barrie backed toward the house. But she tripped over something—the ceramic bowl Pru had left out beside the fountain. It clattered against the stone. She fell, and caught herself on her hands, slicing the heels of her palms.

The Fire Carrier spun toward her. His dark eyes searched for her, eyes she felt more than saw.

She made herself stand up. For Pete’s sake, all she needed to do was start screeching as she ran away, and she would qualify as the heroine of some horrible B movie. The kind who inevitably died.

The Fire Carrier watched her, neither threatening nor advancing. Barrie’s hands stung where she had cut them, and they were sticky and caked with grit. She rinsed them in the fountain.

In the glow of the river fire and the moon, her blood sent red ribbons unfurling in the water. Ribbons that eddied in the current and sank slowly toward the bottom.

Barrie’s head swam. The edges of her vision blurred. The fountain grumbled, gurgled, then flowed faster and higher, as if more pressure had rushed into the pipes.

Everything around her surged with intensity. The babble of the fountain, the susurrus of the river, the crackle of the fire, the screech of frogs and insects—they were all too loud. The air throbbed with a war-drum chant, words Barrie couldn’t understand, and sage-scented smoke assaulted her nose, mixing with the loamy earth and the briny tannin odor of the river. All around, the night glittered as if she were looking at it through a prism. Even the knee-high shadows darting around her were clearly human-shaped. Their eyes left fiery contrails of orange behind them.

Fiery eyes. Wasn’t that what Mary had said?

Barrie reeled from the onslaught of noise and scent and light. She felt, too, as if something watched her. Not the Fire Carrier. He still stood like a rock in the river, the fire and the current eddying around him. He was clearer than he had been, almost solid enough to be a living man. Beneath the mask of war paint, his features were proud and somber, flickering in the light of the flames he held in his arms. But as Barrie met his eyes, he raised his hand and pointed behind her at the fountain.

Reluctantly Barrie turned. The movement itself took a hundred years, long enough for the hair on her arms and the back of her neck to rise, long enough for all the air to squeeze out of her lungs.

From the top basin of the three-tiered fountain, a figure
stared back at her. Not a person. Another spirit of some kind, a woman with translucent hair cascading around shoulders that melted into water drops and the moonlit dark of night. Her fingers were rivulets pouring into the basin, her legs and hips and torso a streaming column of water. She watched Barrie with ancient eyes, evaluating her. Judging. Yes, that was the word. Barrie felt she was being judged.

“W-what do you want?” Barrie croaked.

The voice that answered was a whisper of water and a breath of wind. It came from inside Barrie’s mind and from everywhere around her. “You have given blood,” it seemed to say.

“Given?” Barrie swayed on her feet. She grabbed the edge of the fountain to keep from falling.

“We accept the binding.”

The pronouncement echoed. Before it had fully faded, the woman collapsed in a froth of water. Then the water calmed, and the fountain was only a fountain again.

Had the woman been there at all? Barrie wanted to believe the spirit had been an overdose of emotion or imagination, but she’d spent days wishing Lula’s death and Mark’s announcement had been a nightmare from which she could wake. Wishes didn’t come true. Not for her.

She rubbed her arms as if that could warm up the chill that had taken root inside her. Her palms were slick with blood
again. The sweet copper taste of it sprang to her tongue as if she had licked her skin, which she hadn’t. Which she wouldn’t . . .
She
wouldn’t.

But the fountain had. The water had. The water that probably came from the river, where the magic of the Fire Carrier created a barrier to keep the
yunwi
confined to Watson’s Landing.

Barrie stared at the smears of blood on her arms. She grabbed the bottom of her shirt and scrubbed at the drying streaks until she had scoured off every trace from her skin, and then she wiped her hands, too, over and over as if she could get rid of the water and the taint of whatever she had done.

Stories of water sacrifices crowded her thoughts, lessons learned in history class, on museum visits, in books of mythology. So many stories about sacred wells and objects dredged up from lakes or rivers: swords, knives, daggers, bowls. Things that might have once held blood.

Blood magic. The oldest magic.

Barrie’s heart threatened to pound through her ribs. She met the Fire Carrier’s silent stare. “What did I do?” she whispered.

His features didn’t change. He didn’t say anything. Yet Barrie got an impression of a deep and weary sadness as he nodded and turned his back. Bending low, he spooled the flames back into a ball.

Barrie wrapped her arms around herself. She glanced around again, half-dreading, half-hoping to see the woman there again, but she found plain water splashing into the basins as usual. She bent and righted the ceramic bowl that she had tripped over, setting it back beside the fountain, where Pru had left it.

Sleep, that was what she needed, she told herself. She needed to burrow under her covers and forget. Maybe she would wake up and find it had all been some crazy nightmare inspired by frogmore stew and an overdose of Colesworth dramatics.

She limped toward the house. Her feet stung where she had cut them on the shells, now that the first flush of adrenaline was fading. Her socks were damp, and she was leaving pinkish footprints on the gravel. Shadows swarmed behind her as if the blood attracted them. Barrie felt their curiosity, their need, their
want
. That was even more appalling than the rest.

Oh, what the hell, why not?

“Have these, too, then.” She peeled off her bloody socks and threw them down. “Enjoy. Eat up.”

But then she had a thought and snatched the socks back off the ground. She felt a chorusing howl of outrage. Felt the howl as if it tickled her skin instead of her eardrums.

“Ours. Ours. Ours,” it seemed to say.

“I’ll give them back to you.” Barrie forced the words past cracked, dry lips. “But you’ll have to trade for my phone and anything else you’ve taken.”

The vibration of silent voices shivered through the air, making Barrie’s skin erupt in goose bumps. Burning eyes and flashes of shadow rushed toward her from all directions and then sped away again. She waited, fingers curled tightly into her palms, not sure what kind of reaction she was expecting. It was silly to think they would listen or even understand what she had said. Ridiculous, really. Clearly they didn’t understand, because one by one they all milled around her in a circle some fifteen feet in diameter.

So, that was it. Barrie turned and started back toward the house—and nearly stepped on her phone, which lay on the path. Her shaving razor was there too, along with her copy of
The Night Circus
, her sketchbook, two pens, and the cap to her hair gel. She hadn’t even realized any of that was missing. The pile of knobs, nails, wooden pegs, and shiny screws was at least more expected, though larger than she could have imagined. She didn’t even want to think where all those had come from. The stairs and shutters, the broken chair leg.

“No more breaking things!” she yelled. “No more taking my stuff. Anyone’s stuff.”

She threw down the socks, scooped up her belongings, and made a makeshift bag to carry them in by doubling up
the bottom of her bloody shirt. She left the rest of the items where they lay gleaming in the moonlight. “And put those back where you found them,” she added more quietly.

With as much dignity as she could muster, she stomped toward the house on her lacerated feet. The shadows provided her an escort, running alongside, racing ahead, and doubling back as if she were moving too slowly for them. Barrie squashed down a small thrill of triumph. In the scheme of things, getting them to listen to her was a very small victory, and she wasn’t sure exactly what it meant.

Something had changed tonight, of that she was certain. She had changed something. But she had no way of knowing if she had changed it for the better or made it worse.