by Lyla Payne
He closes his mouth, waits thirty seconds or so, and then opens it again. “I don’t know. She doesn’t know, I don’t think, but I’ve seen it. She’s had enough success that the military has brought her in to find POWs, weapons stores, all kinds of things. It’s how she makes a living.”
“Amazing. And what’s the story with her and Birdie?”
“Oh, no. That’s my sister’s story to tell, if she wants to. Consider me Fort Knox.”
“Fine.” I’m still pouting when Amelia comes back in the room, her face pale. Even more so than it was.
“What’s wrong?” I demand, shooting to my feet and grabbing her arm. “Do you feel okay?”
“I’m fine. Nothing’s wrong. You ready?”
Agent Warren stands in the doorway behind my cousin, the innocent twist to his lips so fake I want to claw it loose. I manage to restrain myself, but one look at Brick’s tense facial muscles tells me he’s still fighting his own inner battle.
We somehow manage to get out of the station without getting arrested or making things worse by attacking a federal agent, and Brick walks us all the way to our car at a pace that’s at least two times too quick. It’s not until we’re far enough away from the building that there’s no way anyone’s listening that I find my voice.
“What happened?” I ask.
Amelia tears her frightened gaze away from Brick and turns it on me. “He said they know you did it, Grace, and all they need to prove it is the DNA you gave them today.”
Henry Woodward’s ghost is waiting for me in the bedroom when we get home. Amelia’s words are balled up in my stomach, sitting there like an anvil—heavy and made of poison. My long-suffering spirit friend has gone back to sulking in the corner instead of hovering over me and knocking shit off the nightstand, accusing me of murder and such. He is watching me with something bordering on reproach, which gets my hackles up inside of a couple of minutes of collapsing on my bed.
“Henry, I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to get in line. Apparently I’m going to be accused of murder any day now by living people, not to mention that my boyfriend’s dead ex-girlfriend is insisting I help her. I’m swamped.”
He doesn’t make any kind of response to my tirade, though he does roll his eyes. I guess it’s legitimate; compared to a man who survived Native American attacks, hungry cannibals, pirates, and probably some very serious seasickness and dehydration, my problems wouldn’t seem like much.
“Yeah, well, I get that you’re not impressed by my woes, Henry, but the world has changed a bit since you traipsed around conquering it and all.” I watch him for another minute, attempting to win a staring contest with a man who doesn’t have to blink. I lose.
“I couldn’t even work on your stuff right now, anyway. I haven’t heard back from the editor. He probably thinks my revisions are crap, because that’s the way my week is going.” I get out my phone and open my email, intending to wave the proof in his face. My heart stops when an email from Clara is waiting for me instead.
Another Carlotta translation.
The discovery wakes me up immediately, even though all I’d wanted when I’d flopped on the bed ten minutes ago was to disappear into blissful sleep, where nothing and no one could bother me. Or arrest me. Now, all I want is to uncover another piece of the Fournier family puzzle.
That understanding Frank and our family legacy could somehow help me figure out who killed him and wants to pin it on me is too much to hope for. But it can’t hurt. Even if it’s a distraction and nothing more, it’s worth an hour of my time.
Henry looks somewhat mollified as he sinks into a cross-legged position, but since he’s chosen his Native American garb for today’s visit, I wish he would have chosen a more dignified pose. I’ve seen way too much of the man over the past several months, and as none of it can be cited in any of my academic work, it’s supremely unhelpful.
The ghost doesn’t seem to notice my discomfort over his exposed anatomy. I’m already grabbing for my laptop, anyway, anxious to use the bigger screen to read the email and the newest file from Clara. Her email is brief and intriguing.
Hey, G.
Weird, weird stuff. So I’m sure you’re going to enjoy it.
-C
Knowing Clara as well as I do, whatever she read must be pretty strange, since like most Midwesterners, nothing really seems to shock the woman. It’s one of the things we always had in common.
I open the file attached to her email and plunge headlong into the past.
Languedoc, France, 1831
I never imagined that I would lose my mother before my twenty-first birthday, but as it happened five days ago now—a lifetime, it seems, and also a moment—and the clock has just chimed midnight on the anniversary of my birth, there is no longer any denying the reality.
Thanks to my mother’s protection, I also had no reason during these twenty-one years of life to suspect that her death would come at the hands of one of the members of her very own family, whom I barely recall having met as a child. I’d forgotten about them, nearly, since my mother never spoke of any family other than my father and, of course, my baby brother, who arrived as a sweet surprise ten years ago.
Philippe should be my responsibility now, of course. Father passed years ago, his heart weakened after years of traveling abroad without the constitution to do so, so Philippe is all that I have left.
Except Philippe is gone, too. The uncle who murdered my mother, his sister, stole my baby brother from me, too. They almost killed me. They would have, without a doubt, if my strongest spirit had not arrived and somehow crossed between worlds to come to my defense. I do not know what I have done to deserve the friendship or visitation from Jeanne d’Arc, but I am grateful to her.
I think that after I located the treasures she’d lost all of those years ago, she is grateful to me, too.
It is odd, this gift of mine, but I have never found it frightening or inconvenient. That is largely due to my mother, who taught me from my first visitation to watch, to listen, and to follow the tug in my soul that asks me to help the restless spirits who need my help to gain peace.
It seems now that there is no denying that my mother has lied to me, and even if she thought her untruths were protecting me from the ugliness lurking in my very own body, it has been to my detriment.
For now, I am on my own. With her final, gurgled words, my mother told me to run. Leave Orleans and hide, she said, and never tell anyone who you are. Never utter a word about what you can do.
I came to Languedoc, a region that has snaked its way into my heart during our years of traveling across France and the world. No one knows me here, as we’ve always passed through. I told no soul I was departing from Orleans, where I grew up. We moved there from Paris shortly after my seventh birthday—now, I suspect, to hide from the same family who have found us after all of these years.
It’s quiet now, and late. All I’ve brought is a trunk with some clothes, money for food and lodging, and in the false bottom, the small, leather-bound book my mother has written in her entire life. I hope that in it, I will find some answers about what to do next. Where to go, who to trust.
Why this uncle of mine has killed his sister. Why he wants to kill me.
In the meantime, I will mourn a great woman, and take solace in the knowledge that her blood—and her talent—runs in my veins. It will connect us forever, and as long as I see ghosts, they will be a comfort to me for that reason, and so many others.
I sit back and blow out a deep breath, wondering just what in the hell was going on in France in the early nineteenth century. The second journal—or accounting or family history—was written fewer than twenty years after the first. This must be the first woman’s daughter, the one she mentioned had started to see spirits at the early age of seven. Her language and her sentiments are beautiful. The younger Carlotta, or the next one, as the case appears to be, is more level-headed at twenty-one than I am at twenty-si
x, no doubt about it.
And she’d just seen her mother killed, presumably in front of her. By family she never knew existed.
Clara’s right; this story is bizarre. It’s also disconnected, in some ways—neither woman talks about why this uncle, or great uncle, is after them. They allude to the fact that it has something to do with our abilities, but there’s nothing concrete. As interesting as they are, the stories also ball frustration in my gut. They’re not helping me figure anything out yet.
Calm down. You’ve only read two and you’re reading them out of order; there are probably fifty more to go through. I’m sure the Carlottas will explain it eventually.
I hope that’s the truth. I hope I don’t chew through all of the cryptic stories about family members and death and hiding without ever getting to the meat. The why of it. I could ask Clara to go back, to start at the beginning and translate straight through, but decide against it.
Maybe none of it matters, anyway. Even if Frank did give me the books and papers, even if he did tell me that the reason he came to find me was to impart our family’s legacy, what does that really mean? That somehow, the things that happened two hundred years ago, a continent away, are going to solve the mystery of his death? Or keep me safe from whoever is trying to frame me for his murder?
No. As odd and intriguing as the second entry is, it has left no doubt in my mind that if I’m going to get out of this mess, if I’m going to figure out what happened to my father, my ancestors aren’t going to help me.
I’m going to have to throw my lot in with Travis, and do it myself.
Chapter Seventeen
I wake up to a ghost in my face once again, but this time it isn’t Henry.
It’s Lucy.
I shoot into a seated position and scramble backward to the headboard, anxious to put some space between her and me, but it doesn’t do any good. The ghost follows, walking forward until she’s cut in half by the bed. She reaches out to put a hand on my face and my heart thuds from fear. No matter how hard I flinch away, there’s nowhere to go, and her cold, dead skin brushes against my living flesh.
A freezing chill sweeps over me, but when the bedroom around me transforms into another scene, the ripping pain in my bones and the chattering of my teeth recedes.
We’re in a filthy room with bare white walls. Deep cracks run like spiderwebs across the chipped plaster, and the overwhelming stench of human waste pushes bile into my throat. The space spins around me, giving me a different view.
Lucy lies shaking on a threadbare, disgusting mattress atop the dirt floor. Her hair hangs in limp mats and her clothes look stiff with filth. The bucket in the corner seems to be where the majority of the smell is coming from, but there’s also blood and vomit trailing on the floor near her body.
She’s still alive in the vision. So was Henry when he showed me the scene of his death in that Charleston alley, and my stomach twists at the realization that Lucy is about to show me how she died. I don’t want to watch. Don’t want the burden of the knowledge, of having to pass it on to the people who love her, but she’s not giving me a choice. I feel another pang of kinship, of shared horror, for Travis, but there’s no time to dwell on it.
Even if Lucy were giving me an option, my heart wouldn’t have let me look away. Despite how horrifying it is, it feels right, too—as if part of my calling, if that’s what it is, might be to bear witness to things that otherwise no one would see. No one would remember.
In that moment, across the centuries, I connected with the woman whose story I read earlier today, too.
So I watch Lucy Winters shake. Tears drip from her eyes and off the end of her nose, slide down her chin to disappear into the thin mattress. No one comes. There is no food in the room that I can see, no water. A small amount of weak light comes through the tiny window that’s set flush with the uneven ceiling—the room must be underground, the sliver of daylight all that’s allowed to enter.
She closes her eyes and sighs. Her fingers curl around the edge of the mattress, holding on for dear life. There are no more tears as the light disappears from the room. I can’t hear her breathing anymore, but I can’t see to verify that she’s stopped.
Still, no one comes. It’s impossible to know how long I stand witness—there’s no time in this strange place in between worlds. In terms of outside time, it could have been ten minutes, or ten days. All I know is that I’m seeing a woman who has been utterly forgotten by the people who stole her, the very people who are responsible for keeping her alive or letting her die.
And there’s no doubt in my mind that the latter is exactly what has happened—is, in this place, still happening.
The connection between us breaks. Blessed heat floods my body and my own beloved blue-and-white bedroom bleeds back into existence around us.
Nope, just me.
Lucy’s gone again. She’s definitely been the flightiest of any of my spirits, even more so than Anne Bonny, who never bothered sticking around after she thought she’d given me enough information to get shit done on my own.
I shake my head and burrow back under the covers, wrapping the quilt tight around me until the shivers recede. I’d like to stay there until the images of that awful, disgusting room fade from my mind, but that seems unlikely to ever happen.
The alarm on my phone goes off a few minutes later, letting me know that it’s time for me to move my ass since Leo and I are going for a run before I have to be at the library and he has to be at the high school for his first winter workout with the baseball team. It’s Friday again, which means only one more morning before a much-needed day off. The prospect of cooling my head in the winter air gets me out from under the covers and into the bathroom.
Amelia’s not awake. We haven’t talked much since returning from the FBI building yesterday. She’s scared of losing me, and there’s not a darn thing I can say to make it better.
I have a few minutes, so I call Travis despite the early hour.
“Hello?” he answers, sounding wide awake.
“Lucy showed me where she died, but I don’t…I don’t know how to tell where it is. Have you seen her, yet?”
“I tried again this morning, but she didn’t show up. Maybe she came to you, instead?”
“Maybe.” I swallow, trying to dispel the stench of her forgotten room. “Well, I guess keep trying. She’s doing everything she can to communicate.”
“I will. Maybe we should be together next time, since she obviously feels connected to you.”
“Yeah, okay.” I take a deep breath, feeling a little comforted by his suggestion. Maybe Mallory will find her before then, anyway, and the point will be moot. “Did you get anything on Frank for us to read through yet?”
“I’m expecting a few things today. I’ll let you know.”
“Okay. Talk to you later.”
We hang up and I grab a jacket, stretching my thighs and swinging my arms around a few times to warm up in the foyer. Leo’s on the porch, one hand raised to knock, when I pull open the front door.
“How do you do that?” he asks, blowing into his reddened hands.
It’s not the cold so much as the wind, this morning, a fact I notice when it stings my cheeks the second I step out the door. “Do what?”
“Sense when I’m about to knock.”
“I don’t know. We must be spending too much time together. It’s like how women’s cycles sync up—our running clocks are sliding into the same rhythm.”
Leo looks away, his cheeks ruddy. He clears his throat a few heartbeats later and then cocks his head. “You set?”
“Yeah, let’s go. I’m going to need a shower before work, and I thought maybe we could get pancakes if there’s time?” I never did get breakfast the other day, not that the eggs would have sated my sweet tooth, anyway.
“Ah, so it’s a short run today in favor of sugar and carbs.”
“I mean, it is Friday.” It’s on the tip of my tong
ue to complain about my day yesterday, but I decide it will be nicer to simply have a run with Leo. Use it to wash away the stress of the FBI attention, and the horror of what Lucy’s ghost showed me this morning.
“I think pancakes sound like a good idea,” Leo replies, studying me with those blue eyes, far too perceptive. “Let’s just do two miles, then.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
We run in silence, puffing out a question here and there about weekend plans, or whether I’ve talked to Beau. Nothing serious, nothing heavy, and as always when I’m with Leo, the hard parts of my life stay safely outside a bubble of relief.
It makes me realize that it has been a few days since Beau and I have talked, and I resolve to text him as soon as I get home, even if it’s just to say hi. I don’t want to say anything about Lucy and what she showed me, not until I know more.
We stop at the diner and grab our favorite booth. I order chocolate chip pancakes just to switch it up, and Leo orders French toast, which immediately makes me jealous. When the food comes, we split the plates so that I get some of his and he can have some pancakes, then eat happily for several minutes.
“I heard you and Amelia went and talked to the FBI yesterday,” he says, watching me carefully. “How did that go?”
“Sheesh. Are you always the first person to know when something happens in this town?”
“I mean, I don’t know if I’m first, but generally. I have spies everywhere.”
I glower at him over a sticky forkful of French toast. “You always were good at the espionage portion of our childhood war games.”
He holds up his hands as though in surrender. “It’s why we Boones always won.”
I want to argue with him, to keep up the friendly, relaxing banter of the early morning. But I also want to ask, point blank, what happened between him and his family to leave them in pieces. In the end, I do neither. It’s too paralyzing to think about upsetting the boat of our friendship—I couldn’t take that, not with everything else that feels as if it’s slipping through my fingers.
