My pulse raced. It was time to destroy the doll. Even now, in the twilight, the icy blue eyes fixed their stare on me. I’d have sworn on a Bible her eyes were moving all on their own. Anna Marie was waiting to see what I would do. No, she was laughing at me.
I needed to destroy her for the evil she’d wreaked for a hundred years. The wickedness she’d inflicted on me.
Wishing I had a flashlight, I spread out the small blanket. I laid Anna Marie on top and wanted to tear her to pieces. Rip off her hair. Rip off her arms and legs. Tear the beautiful clothes and lace and ribbons into shreds.
“I hate you,” I told her calmly.
Anna Marie’s face was deceptively serene, while her eyes stared daggers into mine.
“You need the doll.”
“It’s your lucky day,” I said in a cold voice. “Guess I need you in one piece.”
“Not where you can see it …”
Slowly, I undressed her, searching for the final clue.
Finally, I found it slipped under layers of lace and chemise, down inside her petticoat.
“Got it!” I cried, glancing around to see if anyone heard me. There was a single streetlight over by the trees, but I still felt vulnerable.
I unrolled the tiny piece of paper, relief washing over me. Here was the final clue.
But the very instant I began to read the words, the letters twisted and turned on the page. Each letter became a black-eyed red snake that writhed and wiggled, shriveling up on the paper. Then the clue caught on fire. Yellow-and-blue flames licked straight up the paper.
“Ah!” I screamed, dropping it as heat burned my fingers. The clue turned to a heap of black ashes in the grass. A sob wrenched from my throat. “No! I need that note!”
I picked up Anna Marie and shook her, hard as I could. The perfect ringlets flew around her head. Her eyes rolled back. I wanted to throw her as hard as I could, but I knew if I hurled the doll against the angel’s wings I’d smash the porcelain. “Stop it, stop it!” I yelled at her. “You destroyed the clue! You — you!”
Tossing her onto the blanket, I paced the grave site. I’d been outwitted by a doll.
Stiffly, I walked around the angel wings, fuming and frustrated. “Oh!” The words I’d read before they started to burn hovered before my eyes. My instincts had been right. The doll is cursed — and you must figure out how to break the curse.
Picking Anna Marie up again, I smoothed down her rumpled dress. “You wanted me to smash you because you didn’t want me to find the note. But I’d already figured it out. I didn’t need that note at all.”
The doll smiled at me, unflustered. She was cool and harsh to the end. “Crushing you won’t destroy the curse,” I said with a groan. “The soul you have inside you is alive and well.” Eerily, she seemed to nod at me, and her eyelashes fluttered.
“Even if your beautiful porcelain body is shattered and gone, the soul is still alive,” I said. “You’ll continue to torment my family. Because we stole you over a hundred years ago.”
It wasn’t enough to find the doll or the hidden clue. I had to find another way to banish the soul. When I figured that out, I’d truly save my mamma and my unborn sister.
Cursed dolls, magical fireflies, time slipping. The whole thing was insane. I had to talk to someone — and Alyson Granger was not it. She might turn me in to her sheriff daddy, who’d put me in a jail cell. Or a mental hospital.
Wrapping the doll back up in its blanket, I rushed home. I needed a telephone bad.
More streetlights flickered on. Down a couple of the side streets, I caught sight of searchers waving flashlights in the distance. A knot of tears stuck in my throat. “Where are you, Mamma? Where did you go after the graveyard?”
I tried not to picture Mamma falling into the bayou where the bridge was broken. I’d been right about her going to her old house and to Gwen’s grave. I just had to figure out where she was now.
As soon as I walked in the door, Grandma Kat seized me in her arms. “Where have you been, Larissa? We’ve been frantic. After Sheriff Granger let the search parties loose, we turned around and you were gone!”
“I’m sorry,” I apologized. “I — I went looking for Mamma, too.”
The lines running down my grandmother’s face made her seem ancient and sad. Some of them, I finally recognized, were burn scars. I’d never known. I’d always thought she was beautiful. My Grandma Kat had always been cheerful and loving. She never let her scars make her angry or miserable like mine had. I couldn’t help staring at her in wonder.
“Don’t know what I’d do without you, Larissa. You’re my only grandchild.” Her voice broke as she hugged me tight. Her cheek was soft next to my face, a balm against my own hot white scar. “I’m so relieved and grateful you’re here. Now why in the world would you go looking for your mamma? There’s a whole search party out across town.”
“I went to the cemetery,” I said slowly. “To Gwen’s grave.”
Grandma Kat’s face crumpled and she took my hands in hers. “You are a very wise girl, Larissa. Oh, Maddie,” she added, staring through the window of the store. “What are you thinking? Why don’t you let us know where you are?”
“I haven’t figured it out yet, but I know she was at the cemetery.”
“How do you know that, and what have you got in that blanket?”
“It’s the doll, Anna Marie. She was buried next to Gwen’s grave.”
My grandmother blinked. “You’re absolutely right. Maddie must have been at Gwen’s grave. Which means she can’t be far off. But why do you suppose she left the doll at the graveyard?”
I didn’t say anything, but I was pretty sure Mamma had figured out that there was something wrong with Anna Marie. She left the doll for us — for me — to find. So that I would know she was okay, wherever she was.
“I’m going to put this doll back in the case and lock it up again,” I said, lying straight out to my grandmother. I didn’t want her taking Anna Marie away. Not yet. I still had to figure out how to break the curse, and that was going to be the hardest part of all.
“I’m not letting you out of my sight, either. You’re grounded to the house.”
“But —”
Grandma Kat put up a hand. “No buts. Now go into the kitchen and eat something. We got all that good food the Grangers brought. A few of your kind neighbors dropped off some decadent desserts. It’s a good thing I’m pacing miles across these floorboards.”
“Can I at least make a phone call?”
She gave me a quizzical look, but nodded. “Yes, but come back down in ten minutes.”
Gripping the doll, I sprinted upstairs and went straight to the wall of phones.
“Ring!” I commanded. “You have to call me. I don’t know where else to go to find Mamma. And I don’t know how to fix the doll. You have to help me.”
I stopped, staring at each old-fashioned phone in turn. The voice on the phone had started all this. She’d given me hints all along, and now she’d deserted me. The girl knew the history. She knew the antique store. She knew my family. And the girl on the phone knew about the doll. Why else had she told me to trust the fireflies and follow them?
“Ring!” I said one more time. My voice died out. The second floor was so quiet I could have heard a pin drop. The girl on the phone had also told me that she could only say so much. She couldn’t tell me what I had to do. I had to figure it out on my own.
The past and the present were going on all around me. All the time. Maybe the future was, too. The girl said she had to be careful not to change history.
I held the doll up again. “It was you all these years. And you’re more alive than ever. Heck, you even burned up the note right in my fingers! Which means you won’t let me destroy you … which means that isn’t the answer.”
I paced the floor, one slow step at a time, the doll’s cold blue eyes following me. “Something else is the key to fixing this. To stopping your soul from cursing us forever.”
I dropped into one of the armchairs, placing Anna Marie on my knees. “If someone put a sick soul inside of you on that island, then that means I have to cure you,” I whispered. “And curing takes healing. Like a doctor.” Even as I said the words, I knew it was true. I knew that was the answer. “But how? You’re so strong and you’ve been so vicious for so long. So who can heal — Miz Mirage!” The answer came to me like a gasp of air. Why hadn’t I already thought of the traiteur? Shelby’s mamma, Miz Mirage, the healer, was exactly what I needed.
I wrapped up Anna Marie in the blanket again. I couldn’t stand to see her face any longer. Especially not her eyes. They were too real, too human.
My next problem was getting out to Miz Mirage’s house in the swamp without a boat. Shelby always met me at the town piers and we rowed out together. I slapped my forehead, feeling slow. “Alyson Granger.”
Heat raced along my scar as I left the bundle that contained the doll on the bed. I was afraid of her. I wanted to bury her in one of our old chests. Lock it up and throw it away. But I needed her.
My fingers dropped from my cheek to my neck. Rubbing the skin along my throat, I felt the hard beat of my pulse. Something was missing. The gold heart necklace! It wasn’t there.
“Oh, no!” I cried, clutching at my shirt. Quickly, I stripped down, shaking out my top, searching the floor. The necklace wasn’t here. I’d lost my grandmother’s heirloom. She’d trusted me, and I’d been careless.
I went up and down the stairs, searched my parents’ room, the entire second floor, but there was no sign of it. Perhaps I’d lost it at the graveyard when I was digging up the doll. Or it might have fallen when I was on the island earlier today. I thought about all the places I’d been: tramping across the lawns, down to the water, inside the groves of cypress, along the dirt path. It could be anywhere!
My throat tightened as pounding footsteps came up the stairs.
Grandma Kat flew into my room. “Just got a call from Sheriff Granger. He put out an all-points bulletin on Maddie. A few hours later, they found your mamma at the airport in New Orleans. She tried to buy a ticket to go to Martinique — one of the islands in the Caribbean.”
My jaw dropped and I almost fell to the floor.
That meant that Mamma did know about the doll, just as I suspected.
Grandma Kat sank down onto the bed next to me. “Why in the world would Maddie want to fly clear down there?”
I bit my lips and shook my head, playing ignorant.
Grandma Kat reached over to pick up the bundle lying on my bed. “What’s this?” she asked, removing the folds of the blanket to reveal the doll hidden inside.
I swallowed, watching my grandmother study Anna Marie. “That’s how I found her at Gwen’s grave.”
“What an exquisite creature she is. My grandmother told me the doll had come from the Caribbean from her Uncle Edgar. Maddie probably heard me say that when she was growing up. But how strange that she would try to fly there on her own — now? Five weeks before the baby is due. How strange!”
The doll at the grave — the airport — it meant that Mamma knew. I didn’t know how she knew because I’d only figured it out myself, but there was no doubt in my mind.
“Oh, my,” Grandma Kat said sharply, holding a hand to her chest. “Look at her eyes.”
Anna Marie’s cold blue eyes were watching us, the pupils turning first to me, then to my grandmother. The black lashes closed and opened again.
“Okay, that’s enough!” Grandma Kat snapped. She folded the blanket around the doll again and plopped it on the dresser. “We’re letting our imaginations get away with us. We just moved her — or her eyes got broken sitting in the graveyard. Maybe somebody stepped on her accidentally.”
I knew that wasn’t true, but my grandmother was trying to be sensible and realistic. She didn’t believe in time slipping or magical dolls. But that’s also why I loved her. She made me feel safe.
“Katherine!” my daddy yelled, stomping up the stairs. “Kat! Larissa!”
We rushed out of my bedroom and down to the second floor.
Daddy lunged across the top step of the stairs, and his face was positively wild.
“What’s going on, Luke?” Grandma Kat said. “Surely they didn’t let Maddie on that airplane!”
“No, an ambulance transported her to the hospital in New Orleans. She’s gone into early labor. I’m leaving now.”
“I’m coming, too,” my grandmother said firmly. “Maddie needs her mother.”
“But what about Larissa?” Daddy said. “We’re more than three hours away and could be there all night. Especially …” His voice trailed off and I knew what he was thinking. The baby was coming five weeks early. What if something happened to Mamma or the baby — again? He didn’t want me there.
I gulped back a wedge of emotion. Daddy was worried because the baby was coming early. But I knew they were in a danger even greater than that. Mamma had just spent the last thirty hours or so with the doll. The doll knew the baby was coming. Maybe this dratted doll had caused Mamma to go into early labor. I had no time to lose in breaking the curse.
“I’ll call Alyson and stay with them,” I said. “Mrs. Granger offered.”
Relief swept over Daddy’s face. “That’s right. A perfect solution. Pack a few things real quick, Larissa. Your grandmother and I will drop you off on the way out of town.”
Within twenty minutes I was on the front porch of the Granger house with a backpack of clean underwear, a toothbrush, my pillow, and Anna Marie tucked inside a fresh blanket, out of sight.
Daddy kissed me good-bye, and Grandma Kat held me tight. “Everything’s gonna be all right,” she said in my ear. “We found her. We’ll call you soon as we get there.”
Mrs. Granger led me inside. The house was hot, stifling. I broke into an instant sweat. “I’m sorry to say that the air conditioner broke down right before dinner. All the kids are sleeping outside on the back lawn tonight. Hope you don’t mind, Larissa. We got a tent set up and sleeping bags all ready to go for you girls to have some privacy. Plus, my famous potato salad and corn fritters for supper as well as homemade ice cream to cool everyone off.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” I said, feeling self-conscious while Alyson flitted nervously about.
It felt strange to be here. Archenemies thrown together during a crisis. Nobody but me knew how bad the crisis actually was.
Beau came up and started licking my hand. I crouched down to pet him, smelling his doggy smell as his wet nose sniffled up my arm.
“He likes you,” Alyson said.
I liked him, too. He was big and solid and would knock me over if I let him. After a minute of him nudging at my hand to keep stroking him, I crouched down and put my face into the fur along his neck. Someday, maybe I could have a dog like him, too. He sniffed along my cheek and his tongue sandpapered the ridge of my scar. I sat back, startled, but it didn’t hurt.
“You can come visit him any time,” Alyson added. “Let’s go set up our sleeping bags.”
“Popcorn and a movie coming!” sang out Mrs. Granger. Alyson’s two younger brothers started horsing around, throwing pillows at each other.
Alyson rolled her eyes. “They’re showing off for you, Larissa. They do that every time company comes.” She took my hand and led me out to the back lawn. “We got us our own private tent.”
After we unrolled our sleeping bags, I asked, “Alyson, do you know the way out to Miz Mirage’s place?”
“Yeah, I think so. I canoe in the bayou all the time, actually.”
“I was surprised when I saw you with a boat that first time.”
“Well, Tara isn’t really an outdoor girl, so I don’t go out on the water too often. It’s sort of a secret thing I like.” She busily straightened her pillow, her voice dropping. “You’d probably rather be out there with Shelby Jayne than me, huh?”
I shrugged. “She’s with her grandmother in Paris for a couple of weeks, actually.”
“Then why you asking?”
“Because I have to go out there. Tonight. And I need you to take me.”
Alyson blinked her pale eyes. “You crazy? Like now?”
“Does your daddy have any lanterns?” I asked.
“Yeah. We go camping a lot out at Lake Fausse Pointe State Park.” I could see her mind going. “I guess it’s not that late. Not completely dark yet. And since I live on this side of town, I’m closer to Miz Mirage than where you live. We could probably be back in an hour.”
“We could put the boat in at the broken bridge, right?”
“Why do you want to go out there?” Alyson asked.
“Because of her.” I pulled the bundle from my backpack and pulled back a corner.
“Oooh, she’s beautiful!” Alyson reached for her, but I snatched her back. Alyson looked startled. “I’m not going to hurt her.”
“I know,” I said. “But she might hurt you. I can’t take that chance.”
Alyson raised her eyebrows. “What in the world are you talking about?”
I didn’t answer, just said, “We’ve got to hurry. My mamma and my baby sister might die before I can get to Miz Mirage’s house.”
Alyson widened her eyes. “I can’t believe you just said that.”
“I’m serious. It’s a matter of life and death.” Everything the girl on the phone had said had come true so far. The realization made me terrified.
“You’re serious, huh?” Alyson stepped outside the tent and I followed, waiting while she zipped up the flap door. “I’ll go talk to my mamma and meet you at the side of the house.”
I returned the doll to my backpack and slipped my arms through the straps. Took Alyson forever to come back. Finally, she returned and led me out to the side yard, handing me an oar to her brother’s boat. “We both gotta row. We’ll get there in half the time.”
Within minutes, we were at the bayou banks. Alyson had two lanterns lit, one for each end of the rowboat. A bright yellow moon was rising slowly above the cypress on the far shore.
“I’m glad the moon is almost full,” Alyson said. “I can see the lay of the land, and the lanterns will help us steer clear of branches or gators.”
The Time of the Fireflies Page 18
