Not Quite Clear (A Lowcountry Mystery) (19 page)

“Trust me, that woman has pointing down to a science.”

We drive in silence, except for the devils on my shoulders. There’s not much to say once we’ve exhausted the obvious questions of why and what, but by the time we get off the highway in Charleston the air in the car is hard to breathe. I roll down my window despite the patter of rain
on the windshield, which also helps relieve the overpowering smell of brine wafting from the backseat.

It’s a good thing Amelia’s morning sickness finally passed or we could add vomit to the list of things ground into the floor mats.
 

Anne sits up, paying closer attention as we drive into the city. As promised, she uses her finger to navigate. Also as expected, she points to some of them so
late that I nearly kill us, a couple of pedestrians, and at least one dog before we pull into a parking space alongside Battery Park.

The rain comes down harder, combining with wind to lash at the old trees obscuring our view of the harbor. It pings off the roof of the car, runs in rivulets down the windshield. For her part, our family ghost sits contentedly in the backseat as though all she
wanted was a short drive down the coast to stare at the park.

I’m tired. It’s been a long couple of days and nothing in my life is going right. I’m failing to come up with anything on Travis, which leaves Clete breathing down my neck. Millie and I are blanking on ways to prove the Middletons were crappy parents and unfit to raise Jack, and in a few days, I have to steal hair from my boyfriend’s
cousins during friendly lawn games.
 

Not to mention, I am a freaking archivist. Not Nancy Drew, no matter what Mel says. Not a professed and active medium like Daria. I came back to Heron Creek wanting nothing more than to find peace after my engagement to David ended, and maybe a way back to the simple world that made me feel as though anything was possible.

But it feels like drowning, all
this responsibility. The water keeps rising and rising, and all I’ve been doing is treading water, not making any headway toward the shore. If land doesn’t come into view soon, my strength is going to run out.

“Grace,” Amelia pokes me, then points out the window once she has my attention.

“Not you, too.”

But I look and see that Anne’s out in the rain. No one else is in the park, probably because
of the weather, which works in her favor. You never know when you’ll come across someone who can see ghosts. Apparently.

Anne waits, radiating the kind of impatience that makes my muscles jump in response. A responsible adult might have an umbrella in the car, but clearly, that rule doesn’t apply to me. If we’re getting out, we’re getting wet, and Anne doesn’t seem to want to wait.

Whatever
she came back to show us, or tell us, it must be important. It had better be worth the pneumonia.

“You don’t have to come if you don’t want,” I tell my cousin, who is squinting out at the rain with a resigned expression.

She gives me a look. “Are you kidding? Anne Bonny’s back! She’s the only ghost I’ve ever seen, and if you think I’m going to miss the chance to see what your life is really
like now, you’re even nuttier than I thought.”

“Fine. Let’s get on with it, then.”

Anne’s face lights up this time when I reach for the door. It’s unlocked, and she’s halfway across the park before Amelia and I make it onto the nearest concrete path. It’s raining harder now, and it’s chilly. My skin is a landscape of water and goose bumps as we hurry, trying not to lose sight of her wispy figure,
though she definitely stands out with her pirate-style pants, pistol, and sword—never mind her cherry red hair.

We pass the cannons that face out to sea and keep going, following her until there’s nowhere left to step. She’s led us to the southernmost tip of Charleston, with the city hunkered down at our backs and the sea lapping at her shores at our front. There’s nothing to see…until there
is.

On the edge of the seawall, wooden gallows sprout from the rocks. Half a dozen nooses swing in the storm, the wind and ocean spray twisting them this way and that. A story crawls from the recesses of my mind in fits and starts, covered in cobwebs and influenced by a hundred other tales told on dozens of historical tours through this city. It’s something about pirates, I think, and Charleston
making an example out of a crew they captured off the coast. I don’t remember who they were, just they were hung here, their corpses left until they rotted so that other pirates would see and know this was not the place to drop anchor.

As though on cue, the smell hits me. I retch, smashing my forearm against my nose to try to block it, but it’s impossible. Amelia looks unfazed, except for the
way she’s staring at me like I’ve gone mental. I can’t concentrate on anything but not throwing up from the stench of rotting flesh, oozing wounds, and maybe a few more things so gross I can’t even imagine them.
 

Then, I see the men—the pirates. Instead of swinging on the business end of the nooses down below they’re scaling the seawall, climbing over onto the pristine Charleston sidewalks and
striding with purpose toward Anne’s ghost. Toward us.

Their presence backs me up a few steps. They’re all dead, must be dead, but I’ve never been in the presence of this many ghosts at one time. It’s unnerving, being outnumbered. Not knowing why they’re here or what they want.

One look at Anne, who has moved as close to Amelia as she can get and adopted a protective stance, makes me feel better.
We can trust her. She saved our lives once, and if she’s back, it must mean she’s going to help us again. We certainly need it.

The pirates stop in unison, as though controlled by a single source. Anne walks toward them, leaving my cousin and me to watch. Except Amelia still can’t see anything but Anne Bonny.

“What’s she doing?” Millie whispers, gaze fixed on our fiery ancestor.

“She’s talking
to a bunch of pirates that just un-hung themselves and crawled over the seawall,” I reply.

“They’re here right now?” She peers through the rain, but no amount of squinting can help her see through the veil between worlds the way I can. Amelia makes a frustrated noise at my affirmative nod. “What are they doing?”

“It looks like she’s talking to them, but I can’t hear anything.” I close my eyes,
crawl along the link toward the mental door to Anne’s world, nudge it open. I slam it shut just as fast, scared to open myself up without following all Daria’s rules first. Scared I’ll mess it up.

Especially with the way Mama Lottie always feels so close by.

The conversation between the pirates and Anne ends before my lack of courage becomes an issue, and she returns to us with three of the
pirates in tow. The smell is overpowering with them so close, and my stomach jerks like it’s trying to run away once I get a good look at her cohorts. My new allies, perhaps, haven’t exactly survived the afterlife in one piece. Pieces of skin peel away in strips, revealing bleached white bone in spots on their legs and arms, on one of their cheeks. Most of them are missing eyeballs and chunks of hair,
bloody and torn scalps bared to the rain. It has to be the way they died, left to the elements and wildlife, but why on earth they would want to appear that way now baffles me.

They can’t smell themselves, obviously, and maybe mirrors aren’t a thing where they’re hanging out these days. Or they could just enjoy looking creepy as hell.

“What? What are they doing here?”

Anne raises a finger to
point, and I have to stop myself from reaching out to snap it in half.
Calm down, Gracie. It’s not her fault you’re a substandard ghost communicator at best.

She points to the pirates, then to me and Amelia. Again. Again.

I put up a hand, losing patience faster than I’m about to lose my lunch. It’s raining. We haven’t had dinner. I’m standing in the rain staring at rotting corpses, completely
missing the point on how they’re going to make better any of the myriad problems in my life.

“She’s saying we’re going to do something together,” Amelia guesses. “I assume she’s pointing between the dead pirates and us?’

I nod. “Yes. But I don’t know
what
she wants us to do together.”

Anne hears me even if her words would fall on deaf ears, and she nudges one of the rotting pirates forward.
She points to me, to him, to me, then gives him a jerk of the chin toward town. He walks off; she gives me the same look.

“You want me to follow him?” Resistance rises, hot and fast. “I’m not leaving Amelia out here alone.”

This time, the exasperation in her expression is easy enough to interpret. She motions to the two remaining men, then pushes them toward Amelia, then points to herself.
 

“You’re going to take care of her? For how long?” The ghost shrugs, then pinches two fingers together. “Not long. It had better not be.”

“Go, Grace. I’ll stay with Anne, or go wherever she goes, and we’ll meet back here when we’re done. We both have phones and wallets. Nothing is going to happen.”

“If anything happens to her…” I trail off, and Anne gives me an uncharacteristic grin. She and I
both know there’s not a damn thing I can do to her, but our ghost has no interest in hurting my cousin.
 

“Fine,” I grumble. “I don’t suppose any of you are hiding an umbrella?”

I get no response and heave a sigh, wondering if Anne gets her kicks watching me get drenched. The last time she led me on a wild goose chase—which, to her credit, didn’t turn out to be
that
wild—it took me exactly where
she needed me to go. All well and good, and I’m happy to have her back if it means direction in this hopeless plight, but damn. Why does she have to send me slogging around in another storm?

The pirate I’m supposed to follow has paused by one of the restored black cannons. He watches me as I approach, and I take a moment to study him. With his sloughed skin, the sores pockmarking the pieces that
are left, his missing eyes and lips, it’s hard to say what he might have looked like in life. His hair is fair, his body toned and lithe, but beyond that, I couldn’t pick him out of a lineup if he had been my twin brother.

“Where we goin’, Handsome?”
 

He waggles his eyebrows, which are startlingly mostly intact. It’s suggestive in a gross and hilarious manner, a combination that earns a laugh.
It seems to disappoint him.

“Nothing against you, I promise. It’s just that I have a boyfriend.”

That seems to satisfy him, and he makes a come-along motion, setting off across the soggy grass. Unlike my feet, which sink half an inch with every step, the mystery pirate floats just above the ground. He stops every twenty yards or so to check on my progress, then waits patiently for me to catch
up. We’re both thrilled to trade the park for the sidewalk a few minutes later. As far as I can tell, at least.

The streets are empty, streetlights and the glows from the living rooms of people who are nice and dry and sane tumbling out into our paths. The ghost skirts the yellow pools, choosing the shadows of trees, when they’re there, or to skulk out of sight. It’s interesting that he seems
concerned that people might see him.

There is still so much about this gig that I don’t understand. He and the others might have been wandering the sea, or the point, or maybe they just showed up because Anne put out a call to her fellow pirates that begged for help and haven’t been this close to the living for a long, long time. Centuries, even.

He does seem a little stunned by the little things
we pass along the way—cars, electricity, dogs barking from behind wooden fences—but if it’s new to him he does an excellent job blocking it out in favor of our mission. Which is still a mystery to me.

The paths are familiar. Worn, even. We slink past churches and graveyards, historical monument after historical monument, big stately houses, turning corners and skirting overgrown shrubbery for
seven or eight blocks. The rain doesn’t slack off, not for an instant, and my hair drips into my eyes so that when he finally stops outside a wrought iron gate, I almost run into him. Or through him, rather.

My hands go out instinctively and sink into his shoulder. The bones freeze all the way to my wrists no matter how fast I jerk away, and I stick them in my armpits in an attempt to thaw them
out. My teeth chatter. “What are we doing here? Who lives here?”

He points to the house. Looks at me with an expectation of…something.
 

“Do you want me to go in?” I look down, surveying the damage. “I doubt anyone is going to take me seriously, unless I’m auditioning for the part of Drowned Rat in a play no one’s ever going to see.”

He doesn’t seem to get the joke, just cocks his head and returns
his gaze to the house. I get out my phone, trying to shield it from the rain while I open up my notepad and type in the address. Then I hold the device up so he can see it. Not that he’ll have any idea what it is; hell, there’s no way to know for sure whether he knows how to read. Anne was an exception; the majority of pirates didn’t fall from grace and well-to-do families.

“I wrote down the
address so I can figure out who lives here and come back,” I explain, just in case. “Okay?”

The ghost looks frustrated, his hands balling into fists. The next thing I know he’s disappeared through the white picket fence and stomped up to the front porch, where he settles like a sentinel next to the front door.

“Hey,” I hiss, trying not to draw the attention of whoever lives here. Or the local
cops, who are bound to get sick of my antics sooner or later. “Let’s go.”

The dead pirate is stubborn, which shouldn’t surprise me since he’s a friend of Anne Bonny’s, but there’s no way I’m knocking on anyone’s door looking like this. If they’re trying to show me people who might be able to help, either with the custody case or the curse—it could be either, I figure, since Anne has a vested
interest in Amelia’s baby boy—then dripping all over expensive hardwood floors isn’t going to get me into anyone’s good graces.

“What are you doing, Gracie? Get the hell out of here. He’s a ghost. He can’t stop you.” I turn and leave him, reconsidering the truth of my muttered self-pep-talk when I reach up to wipe my face and wince. My nose still hurts from where Mama Lottie smacked it the other
day.