Resisting Samantha (Hope Parish Novels Book 10) (19 page)

Overhead thin clouds
wisped and curled their way across the blue sky, sweeping northward
on a balmy Gulf breeze. The quintet ended, and the lively Cajun
zydeco music, with its toe-tapping beat, was jarring after such soft,
cadenced strains of classical music.

Collette Gervois
lived in a pink cypress home that was more than a hundred years old,
with a front porch complete with swing, looking out over the
Vermilion River. She owned the rustic and popular Mumbo Gumbo, and
served up Cajun food and was touted as “The Best Gumbo This
Side of New Orleans.” Many locals thought it was the best
gumbo. Anywhere. Period.

“She’s
a character,” Chase mused as we crossed beneath the fragrant
trellis in the faded picket fence, and on to the pink porch with
white railings, posts, and trim around the windows. Chase knocked on
the aqua blue door.

The music was
immediately muted and Chase knocked again.

The door opened, and
a slim, tall woman stood behind the mesh of the screen. Her iron gray
hair, in a long, thick braid over her shoulder, reached to her waist,
and matched her sharp, charismatic gray eyes. She had aged
gracefully, one of those beauties who retained an aura and glow of
youth, something that came from within. She wore a pair of designer
jeans and a simple white tank top, a pink apron tied around her small
waist. She pushed the screen door open and said, “Chase
Sutton?” She pronounced his name like Chaise Suttawn, her
accent thick. “And ’dis
jolie
petite chose
?
Samantha Wharton?”

I knew enough French
to be flattered that she called me a pretty little thing. “Thank
you for seeing us, Mrs. Gervois.”

“Oh, non, ’dat
jusˈ won do,
cher
.
Collette,
sˈil
vous plait,
”
she said with a booming laugh, so surprising for such an elegant
woman. “Come in, you are so welcome.”

The interior of the
cottage was charming and quaint and very cozy, with a small living
room with antique touches and Southern flair. She brought us back to
a kitchen with slatted walls in cream, nice touches with a plowshare
over the white cabinets and old, colored bottles on the windowsill,
wooden shelves with decorative plates and glass oil lamps, a wooden
table with tulips in a clear glass vase, and a wooden floor with a
black checkerboard look.

“Dat gumbo is
fini
.
Sit down for someˈting dat is out of dis world. I say with no
trace of pride and witˈ complete honesty dat dis may well be the
best darned gumbo you’ve ever did had.” Chuckling, she removed
the lid off a stainless steel pot, steam rising with a mouth-watering
aroma. “I call dis my ‘everˈting’ gumbo. It’s
a bit unusual, in dat de chicken stock is also infused with seafood
flavor from de shrimp shells and heads, and dat it contains chicken,
sausage
and
seafood. Richer and complex flavors for dis here gumbo, for sure.”

She served up two
steaming bowls over rice.

“Dig in, you.
No need to do the waitinˈ ˈting.”

I took a bite and
almost lost my mind. I made some banging gumbo, but this was nirvana.

She went to the
fridge and got out a pitcher of lemonade along with mason jar-style
glasses. Pouring us each a glass, she set a slice of lemon on the lip
and placed them in front of us.

“
Mais,
yeah
.
Is dere agreement, you or what,
chѐre
?”

“
Le
meilleur
,”
I murmured as I unabashedly spooned up another bite.

“
Oui
,
the best.” She clapped her hands once and let out that booming
laugh. I was determined to get the recipe out of her, and was already
plotting how to butter her up sufficiently.

When the meal was
over, she took us out to the glassed-in porch, and we settled in
rattan chairs with a view of the channel beyond, just as several
snowy white egrets took flight.

“So, you have
dis problem. Dish it up. Aunt Evie, her was light on the details.
It’s about da voodoo.”

“Yes…I…hope
you don’t think I’m crazy.”

“Oh,
mais
no, not around here.” She waved her hand. “Dere is much
we donˈ know about dis world and the bumpy ˈtings in the
night. You spill with no judgment.”

I gave her the
lowdown about seeing the apparition of AnnClaire and the gris-gris
bag.

“What was in
dis bag?”

“Eucalyptus,
acorn, and a sigil, and…my silver star necklace. One I never
take off, and was wearing when I went to bed the night before.”

“Oh, dat is
interestin’. Hmmm, four items? Dat is strange. AnnClaire, her
adhere strong to the practice of odd-numbered items.”

“I’m
carrying it with me.” I pulled it out of my purse and set it in
the palm of her hand.

She jolted and her
eyes widened. “That is some powerful mojo.” She sniffed.
“Frankincense, a protectinˈ oil.” She opened the bag
and dumped the contents onto her palm, shivering in the warm
afternoon. “Ah, I see. This is a protectinˈ voodoo charm.
Very powerful. This sigil is a protectinˈ symbol, and written on
parchment strengthens the intent of the amulet. The eucalyptus is a
plant dat also increases defense. Acorns represent several magical
intents, creativity, fertility, and health and longevity. I say de
intent was health and longevity, another way to protect you. The star
is perplexinˈ.” She frowned. “Ah, dere are five
items or five intents. The silver star is both a personal item, and a
mineral, and has five points, clever dat. The fact dat it also came
from a sweetheart adds more power to the spell. Wear dis arounˈ
your neck, you, at all times.”

“Protection
from what?” I asked. Then I remembered the sighting of Kyle,
but dismissed it. Theresa said he was still locked up in Rikers. He
couldn’t be the threat. He was serving several life sentences.

She touched the star
and immediately stiffened. “Oh,
cher
,”
she wailed, with a gasp, her voice high pitched and distressed. “Your
grief has been immense. There is danger, and it’s close. An
evil dat means to end you in violence and blood. You must git at dis
threat. Your blood has already been spilled.”

I gaped, stunned by
her response, left almost speechless by Collette herself. What could
she possibly mean? My blood hadn’t been spilled at all. I had
come here to heal, start new. “What? How? I don’t
understand.”

Collette’s
voice was urgent while she put everything back in the bag and drew it
tight. Placing it in the palm of my hand, she closed my fist around
it, squeezing hard to emphasize each word. “Wear dis always.
Never take it off. Never.”

She covered her
face, which was as white as if someone had just walked over her
grave. “Madness strips away control, pulls even the soulless
over its edge and into the maelstrom,” her voice was barely a
whisper, her lips bloodless.

I looked at Chase’s
stricken face, and he moved closer to me, setting his arm around my
shoulders. “I had a dream…more a nightmare,” he
said, he explained AnnClaire’s position and how she got in his
face. “Every word she uttered to me in the dream is in this
passage.” He handed her the journal, open to the page we’d
read last night that still chilled me to the bone. “There were
a mass of fireflies at the window.”

Still white,
Collette read the passage and looked up. “You said fireflies?”

“Yes, flying
repeatedly into the window.”

“Fireflies are
a symbol of illumination…messengers.” She closed the
journal and handed it back to Chase, her dark eyes carefully fixed on
me. “AnnClaire, she was sendinˈ you a message, her. This
passage is ˈbout intent. For the gris-gris to work, you must
believe it will.”

“AnnClaire?
Isn’t that Imogene’s?”

“No, it’s
her daughter’s voodoo handbook. She was an even stronger
practitioner than her momma.”

On the way back to
Suttontowne, the recipe for the gumbo tucked into my purse, Chase
slipped his hand over mine. “Everything is going to be fine.”

I tightened my hold
on his hand and appreciated his concern and protective instincts. But
I’d been a cop, and I knew exactly what I had to do.

No one was going to
take anything away from me again.

I wasn’t going
to put my faith in charms and amulets alone.

I would use whatever
means necessary to protect myself and the people I cared about, and
deadly force was…only the beginning.

CHASE

A week later, I came
out of Outlaws, my last delivery of the day. So far nothing out of
the ordinary had happened, and I was beginning to think this whole
ghost and voodoo thing was just plain off base. All that was on my
mind was trying to coerce Samantha back to her place for some
rollercoaster time. After that harrowing meeting with Collette
Gervois, she was spooked, and I was worried she would pull away,
isolate herself again. I didn’t want to lose her.

I had tried
resisting her, but it was time to make things right with my family so
I could move on. We could all move on. My dad and I made a good start
during the fishing trip, but there was so much more to be said and
done before I would be able to see my way clear to not only forgive
them, but forgive myself.

I heard the scuff of
a bootheel on gravel as I headed for my truck. “Big brother?”

Jake hadn’t
spoken to me very often since I left. Ten years of silence and bad
blood between us. I would have thought he was too bitter or hurt to
care one whit about me, but I’d seen him hovering in the
hospital when Brax and I were being treated, me for my concussion,
and Brax for a gunshot wound.

Maybe Jake hated my
guts, and maybe he didn’t.

I turned, keeping my
voice light and my arms loose. “Jake. It’s good to see
you. I was thinking we should have a talk.”

He set his hands on
his hips and laughed, but it had nothing to do with comedy or mirth.
“Talk? That’s not your MO. You run away and hide. Leave
the heavy lifting to someone with the shoulders and the guts to do
it.” There it was, the regally cool tone of voice only a
Harvard-educated, privileged, rich boy could pull off.

Jake had a
commanding presence. My little brother had grown into a solid man,
the veneer of Southern gentleman with more bad boy than manners. He
swaggered in high school, and he still did swagger. His sense of
entitlement was even more pronounced than mine had been. But his
attitude was too challenging to continue qualifying as regally cool,
a degree too heated to maintain even the illusion of icy calm.

My gaze went to his
sides, the backs of his hands were broad, powerful-looking, the veins
prominent beneath his skin, and I caught ink on his forearm but
couldn’t make out what it was. When had Jake gotten a tattoo?

I bet our daddy had
a fit about that.

Jake’s long
hair, part of his early rebellion against my dad, was shorn a couple
of years ago, now spiky on top, short in the back, and the color had
deepened into a dark coffee brown. My brother had filled out, but
he’d always been big and strong, wide through the shoulders. He
could probably have gone all-American; he certainly was the best
defensive tackle on our high school varsity team.

And second only to
Braxton Outlaw, he was fond of women, the more the merrier. I think
he’d dated a Buffy or Muffy or someone by that name at Harvard,
but he never brought her home, not even for holidays.

Now it was more of
the same with Anna Kate.

“Jake, I want
to talk.”

“Why, because
Daddy can’t stop praising you to his friends about your plane,
your skill, and that you named your boats after mom and River?”
He stepped closer. His eyes menacing. “I think you made a
mistake,” he said and flicked something at me.

I kept my eyes on
him, but he said nothing. Did nothing.

I glanced down to
find the response envelope, its flap unsealed, in the mud and gravel.
I took my eyes off him for a second and bent down to retrieve the
envelope. I felt the tension in the air between us shift, going
steely taut just before he punched me. Pain exploded along my jaw and
cheek, lights flashing behind my eyes.

I flew backward and
hit the gravel hard, the wind knocked out of me. My brain rattled
from my brother’s brutal right hook, I shook my head.

“What the hell
is going on here?” Brax said, his voice hard and angry. He
hated any kind of fisticuffs near Outlaws, worried it would ruin his
family-friendly reputation. And now the Huckleberry Chef had even
more to protect.

“Mind your own
business, Brax,” Jake growled. His fists were still clenched.
“You might be able to placate Momma and Daddy with your
success, but I know you’re a gutless coward. Go back to the
bayou, Chase. I can’t be bought.”

“I’m not
trying to buy you. I just want to talk, Jake. We’re brothers!”

Anger and something
else seethed in his voice. “I don’t have a brother
anymore.”

Brax helped me up
and I wiped the blood from the side of my mouth, working my jaw.

“Jake!”
I called and started to go after him, but Brax held me back.

“Chase, it’s
not going to solve anything. Give him time to cool off. Nothing is
going to change overnight.”

Jake marched away
and threw himself into a sleek, red sports car, gunned the engine,
and the powerful machine fishtailed before he hit the paved road and
evened out. He roared off. I rubbed my jaw, figuring that there was
going to be more of this before Jake and I came to terms. It might
not be in a couple of days, or weeks, not even in time for my
parents’ anniversary party, but I wasn’t going to give
up.

He was wrong. I did
have a brother, and he was inside that big shell of a man. Eventually
we would get to the meat of the problem between us, and then we’d
both need some ice, probably stitches, and definitely first aid. And
I was damned determined he wasn’t going to misdirect and then
coldcock me like that again.