Dark Lily: Shadows, Book 4 (18 page)

He is also dangerous
, Gaby thought. Canard had failed. He’d murdered CJ Best and allowed Leshad’s prize to be, for all intents and purposes, killed. His mission was a bust, meaning that, in theory at least, one very direct link to Madeleine was gone. The real Leshad would be pissed.

“If we’re lucky, that’s all he’ll be.” A soft voice emerged from the darkness ahead. “Unfortunately, the monster who murdered Madeleine is more adept than many might think at blowing away smoke and avoiding mirrors.”

A shadow, undefined and mysterious, formed near the bramble patch. Gaby saw it. Fred didn’t. He tugged on her hand. “Shouldn’t we be going after Mitchell?”

Gaby kept her eyes on the shadow. “I can’t, Fred, I’m dead. But you’re not.”

“You’re a ghost?” Frowning, Fred lifted their joined hands. “I can touch a ghost, and it feels real?”

Gaby pressed two fingers to his forehead. “It’s complicated. I need you to plant a thought in your mind, Deputy Ficket. The murderers are running for their boat. Take the shortcut to the old ferry dock. Follow Mitchell, but don’t reveal yourself unless he needs you. I’m dead. You saw my ghost. You believe. Do you understand?”

Fred gazed into her eyes. “You’re dead,” he repeated. “I saw your ghost.”

Nodding, Gaby slid her fingers sideways over his forehead until he blinked. “Go,” she said. And with a dazed nod, he did.

“Not bad,” the female shadow murmured. “But then you always did have more of Madeleine in you than I did.” Amusement tinged her tone. “On the surface at least. It’s my turn now, Gaby. Go deep into your mind. You were three years old when you were sent into hiding. It was different for me. I was the ungifted child. Not someone Leshad could use. We had different fathers. Mine took me away when I was six.”

Gaby’s thoughts tumbled down and back, to a time before the night on the train platform when Tallulah had whisked her off to California. Back to a secret room where she’d held an older girl’s hand and helped her see the ghost that lived there.

Instead of being amazed, the older girl had squeezed her hand tight and told her not to say anything to anyone about what she could do.

But the warning had come too late. Gaby’s mother had already known what she could do.

“Yes, remember your mother.” The shadow faded until only the woman’s voice remained. Wood from the abandoned shack hissed and crackled in the background. “Your mother’s name was Phoebe. I know that because Phoebe was my mother too.”

Chapter Twenty

“Leshad’s not on Bokur, Mitchell. He might not have been on the riverboat either. The man you’re chasing is Jubal Canard.”

The words came into his head so clearly Mr. Spock might have melded them there. Mitchell would have been amazed if he hadn’t been so busy navigating the nearly impossible terrain of Gaby’s shortcut.

So Jubal Canard, a dabbler in many things and master of few, had become a cog in Leshad’s faltering wheel of death. Leshad hadn’t sent an army of gunmen to Bokur. Therefore, he must have believed that Canard, Emily, CJ and a sniper—the name Python had come to him earlier, possibly courtesy of Gaby’s mind—could pull off a tidy little kidnapping, no fuss, no muss. No Crucible either, a fact that Leshad had undoubtedly been aware of before he’d dispatched his tidy little team.

The last thought implied there might be some discord in Crucible’s camp. Although he let it go for the moment, the possibility of a leak, or worse, was an area Mitchell intended to revisit when this nightmare concluded. If it concluded, and he hadn’t veered off the path to the old ferry dock.

Weeds multiplied, grew taller. Spanish moss slathered long, wet fingers over his face. Stagnant pools rose to muddy knolls, and the ground mist seemed to be thickening.

He heard a sound ahead and slightly to his right. At first he thought rodents, but then Emily’s exasperated voice rose above a chorus of insect and amphibious life. “It’s a vine, Jubal, not a snake. It’s wrapped around your ankle. Give me your knife.” She grunted several times. “It’d be easier to cut off your foot.”

“If necessary,” Canard retorted.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Emily said crossly. “Stone’s one man, not an army.”

“He killed Gaby. I saw him do it. Bastard’s working for Crucible.”

“That’s an assumption, not a fact.”

“Is it? Can you feel her? Have you gotten even a glimmer from her since he shot her? Crucible and his directors are at odds these days, Emily. They’ve split into factions. Part of the whole on the surface, but each with his or her own bag of voodoo tricks and secrets underneath. Stone shot Gaby. She bled. The blood was right there. It seeped into your mind. You said it was hers… And will you hurry the hell up?” he finished in a hiss.

She grunted again. “There, you’re free. I’m visualizing the boat, Jubal, so I know it’s less than fifty yards away. I can’t see Stone, which means he’s more than fifty yards away. Relax, we’ll be fine.”

“Anywhere else in the world, I’d believe you, but I’m hearing drums, and we both know I’m not easily spooked. Are you sure your perception hasn’t been psychically altered?”

“By whom? You insist Gaby’s dead, and ghosts have limited powers. Now pull yourself together and let’s move.”

A smile stole across Mitchell’s lips as he gripped his gun tighter and started quietly after them. No way to miss the low, undulating throb of voodoo drums and the scent of dying calla lilies. He let Emily and Jubal get well ahead before he circled wide into a grove of hickory and cypress trees.

Thick roots bumped out of the water like arthritic knees. Through them, and thanks largely to the moonlight, he spotted a sleek black motor boat with a ton of horsepower. Not that those horses would help them in the constricted byways leading to and from Bokur, but Mitchell supposed it was easier on their minds to have them than not.

He detected a small slosh to his left. A second later, the barrel of a rifle appeared through the gnarled roots.
Shit
, he thought and halted.

“Drop it or I’ll drop you,” the man holding the rifle ordered.

Mitchell watched as Emily and Canard, out of earshot and momentarily oblivious, boarded their sleek boat. “You must be the contingency portion of Leshad’s team.”

“Good guess for a doomed man. Name’s Cobra. Lose the gun.”

Mitchell let his weapon fall into the mud. “If you have a brother named Python, he’s dead.”

“Tough for him, but I hated the dick brain’s guts, so no loss for me. Start walking. Hey!” Cobra brought his head down. “What the fuck was that?”

“Are you standing in water?”

“Like there’s a way not to in this swamp?”

“I’d step out if I were you,” Mitchell suggested.

“You’d scream like a girl if you were me, but you’re not—and what the fuck is that?”

The alligator surged out of the weeds. Clamping its mighty jaw around a muscled thigh, it took Cobra down so quickly he barely had time to shout. Until the gator brought him up and out of the roiling river. Then the bastard screamed like a girl.

Blood spurted, his arms pinwheeled, and Mitchell swore the gator chuckled with its mouth full. Taking pity on the guy, he grabbed his gun from the mud and put a bullet through Cobra’s forehead.

The screaming stopped. The gator thrashed its prey from side to side. Then it adjusted its grip and glided off into the black.

“Okay, that was gross.”

“He would have killed you in a heartbeat.” Gaby came soundlessly up behind him. “From where I stand, that was just. And unfortunately noisy.” She indicated the power boat, roaring away from the old dock. “Catch one, lose two, it seems.” She offered no resistance as Mitchell pulled her tightly against him. “This has been a strange and horrible night. I’m still processing the strange part. I wonder how Leshad will react when they return minus me.”

“If they return, Gaby. In their shoes, I’d head for the Gulf and hitch a ride to South America. Live on bananas, read palms. Lay low.”

Tipping her head onto his shoulder, she smiled that lovely guileless smile of hers. “Whatever they do, it won’t work, and I can’t help wondering who’ll be the one to mete out punishment. Leshad and his deadly calling card, or Billy and his dying black calla lily.”

* * * * *

They found Fred on the path. He was tangled in briars from the knees down and caught in a thorn bush from the waist up. He still wasn’t sure if Gaby was a ghost or not, but the thought of her having passed over seemed to hold a certain morbid appeal for him. It meant he could see ghosts too.

At Celia’s plantation house, with the moon riding high in a starry bayou sky and two kerosene lamps burning on the tiled garden table, Gaby sketched Emily Dillard’s face while Mitchell made multiple phone calls to people in New Orleans.

CJ Best’s body had burned in the fire. Both state and federal officials needed to be notified and, of course, his remains would have to be removed for burial. Gaby wasn’t sure how she felt about the loss of a father she’d never known. However, in her usual forthright way, Celia insisted on delving into the subject while Mitchell dealt with the legal side of things.

“You want my opinion, Gaby doll, your daddy wasn’t a bad man, all in all.” Her ghost friend rocked on the swing she’d loved since childhood. “Not good in his heart like your natural mama, but not evil like Leshad either. A spoonful of sad’s enough to feel for him.”

“A spoonful’s all I’ve got right now,” Gaby admitted. “Maybe later I’ll find more. When the shock wears off and I finish putting everything Phoebe did for me in perspective. I know she hid my older sister from me, although apparently, that older sister knew quite a lot about me.
Knows
quite a lot about me. I’m still really confused there.”

“It’ll come clear to you when the time’s right. As for Phoebe, she tried.” Celia shrugged. “Best any mama can do for her child.”

Gaby regarded her half-done sketch. “I wonder if Emily’s a mother? I couldn’t read her, not at all. Jubal Canard either. It was unsettling. But I suppose it makes sense. Leshad wouldn’t send an easy read to act on his behalf, and a sleeper would need to shield herself very well.”

Celia’s shrewd gaze slid sideways. “Can you read that Mitchell Stone? He’s got feelings for you, no question about it. They’ve been smoldering inside since the first time he laid eyes on you.”

Gaby firmed up her emotional walls. “Mitchell has obligations and responsibilities, Celia. His grandfather— What? What was that sound you just made?”

“That was disgust for a man whose name always used to appear in the newspapers with a truckload of bad attached to it. You haven’t been in these parts long enough to know how many good folks old man Stone’s wheelin’ and dealin’ hurt, but the knowledge’ll come to you by and by. Mitchell, he’s gonna have a time straightening out some of the messes that devil created.”

Gaby refused to let her heart sink into her stomach. That would be self-pity, pure and simple. From the start she’d understood he’d go back. Mitchell couldn’t rectify the messes made by his devil grandfather while he was sequestered on an obscure island in the Louisiana bayou. And if she went with him to New Orleans—if he even wanted her to go—at some point Leshad would hear about it and come after her again. Leshad feared Bokur. She didn’t think he feared her. And so the circle closed.

She felt Celia’s stare but ignored it and worked on refining Emily Dillard’s face.

“You gotta confront those demons inside you eventually, Gaby doll.” Very slowly, her friend began to fade away. “The bright ones, the dark ones and all the ones in between. Do it while you can in life, because ain’t a whole lot you can affect and not a damn thing you can change when you’re dead.”

“Always a parting shot,” Gaby murmured. But she twitched a shoulder in Celia’s wake. “I guess it really could have gone either way tonight.”

“What could have gone either way, I’m sure I shouldn’t ask?” Mitchell tossed his phone onto the garden table. “The porch swing’s moving. Did you have a chat with Celia?”

“Briefly. She’s been advising me on how to run my life. Before I die for real and lose my options.”

“Knew I shouldn’t have asked.” Tugging her forward, Mitchell straddled the lumpy chaise longue behind her. “CJ Best’s unfortunate death has been reported and logged. For all intents and purposes, he drowned when Delacroix’s paddle wheeler went down. Cremation of his remains to take place here, prior to his return home.”

“Thereby deflecting any sticky questions regarding his demise. Did you tell Crucible the truth?”

“Some of it. I said you were dead as well, and planning to stay that way. He got the message. Didn’t like it, but I had a little help from Ryder, who knows him, and some unexpected support from one of the directors, Tom Cutter. Evidently, Cutter relishes subterfuge, webs of intrigue and crossing swords with Crucible at every opportunity. CJ’s death will be covered up, never to resurface if we’re lucky. Five people, not including Jubal Canard, CJ Best and Phoebe, who wasn’t an actual guest in any case, are currently unaccounted for after the sinking of the Delta Belle. Delacroix’s debacle of a masquerade party is making national headlines. He’ll want to stay out of the limelight for a while. Crucible feels confident that Leshad will take a page out of his book and do the same thing.”

“Yes, because obsessed, crazy people tend to be prudent when one of their more elaborate plans falls apart.” Gaby made an unbelieving sound. “Leshad won’t hide under his rock for long. Maybe we should have gone after Jubal and Emily.”

“Honey, Jubal Canard’s been racing high-speed power boats since he was a kid. Unless you can make one of the island outboards fly, we weren’t going to catch him. Even if by some miracle he’d crashed and we’d caught up, he wouldn’t have talked. You told me Leshad kept someone alive for eight days once before the poor sucker finally died. Canard’s a lot of things, but I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t want to end his life like that.”

“Do you think Leshad was on the Delta Belle, or was it Canard who murdered Phoebe? My instincts say it was Canard.”

“With Leshad’s full knowledge and blessing.”

Leaning back against him, Gaby stared at the night sky. At length, she said, “I saw Phoebe, or rather her ghost, earlier tonight. She said she was sorry, but sending me away seemed like the best way to keep me safe.”

“She did what she had to do when you were three, Gaby, and what was possible for her near the end. She never pretended to be a saint.”

“You sound like Celia.” Gaby poked an absent finger into his leg. “I asked Phoebe about a female shadow I’ve been seeing lately. At first I wasn’t sure who the shadow woman was, but the word ‘sister’ came to me more than once. I finally had a conversation with her outside the burning shack.”

Mitchell went silent for a moment. Then he coiled her ponytail around his hand and gave it a gentle tug. “Run that by me again. Slowly and with details. You have a sister?”

“Apparently. In the short time we had together earlier, Phoebe was very reluctant to talk about her. I sense her name starts with an S. Sarah or Sophia or Serena. I’m leaning toward Sophia. She claims she’s not gifted, but that can’t be true because she—my sister—came to me, not the other way around. So quite strongly gifted would be my assessment.”

After turning her to face him, Mitchell slid a knuckle along the curve of her jaw. “You can’t let any of this get out, Gaby. Only you, me, Phoebe and your sister can know about her heritage. Anyone else has to be at her discretion. If she’s smart—highly probable—she’ll be very discreet.”

“We have different fathers. Hers probably knows she’s Madeleine Lessard’s grandchild. CJ knew I was.”

“Honey, for all you know, her father and yours were one and the same.”

“Maybe.” But Gaby didn’t think so. “I won’t look for her, Mitchell. I could, but I won’t. My sense is that she’s not anywhere near Louisiana or the bayou anyway. I’m thinking Europe for some reason, possibly even farther away than that. As for Leshad, I don’t know if he believes I’m dead or not, but I do know he’s still out there searching for a solution to his curse problem.”

“And you don’t want him searching for a sister you just discovered you have.”

She bumped a light fist on his leg. “I had to go really deep to find any snippet of memory involving her. I think Phoebe, or possibly Madeleine—another person I don’t remember—wiped certain vital pieces of information from my mind. I’d resent that if I didn’t think they had my best interest at heart.”

“Be grateful they loved you enough to make those tough decisions. Be even more grateful your grandmother was nothing like my grandfather. The only interests he ever cared about were his own.”