by Jolene Perry
I love you, Dean.
Love you, too.
We’re headed up the street now, but it’s really quiet here this time of year. Way too hot for tourists, and we’re in the middle of hurricane season.
I don’t know where Landon gets his information, because this guy we’re looking for flies under the radar like no one’s business. But like Landon said over and over—those are the people who actually know their stuff. The other guys are all smoke and mirrors and we need the real thing.
Yeah. The real thing. Two months ago Voodoo was a joke and part of Addison’s love of Scooby-Doo. Now Voodoo changes lives, gives people gifts, and locks shadows into a world that shouldn’t exist.
“There’s a guy I want to talk to,” Landon explains as we stand at the foot of the stairs inside a small trinket shop. I figured we’d either be headed to some hut in the middle of nowhere or a back alley filled with rats. Not a random shop filled with crap made in China for the tourists who aren’t really here this time of year.
“A guy.” Micah shifts to one leg as she crosses her arms and gives Landon exactly the kind of look I knew he’d get for leaving the girls out of this.
“Just.” He glances toward me for help, but I stand silent, not wanting to be kicked out of bed tonight.
“Fine.” Micah steps back. “Go. We’ll stay here like good little girls.” Her smile is ridiculous, wide and full of pent-up anger.
Addison gives me a thin smile and I don’t have to touch her to know that she’ll talk to Micah while we’re up there.
“Well, hell,” Landon whispers as we start up the stairs.
“Told you, man.”
“I really didn’t think we’d be followed this closely by The Middle Men and thought I’d be able to run to the grocery store or something and check this guy out alone.” Landon gives the “Office” door a quick knock.
“Come in!” A soft, low voice seeps into the dingy hallway.
I’m expecting some withering old Bahamian man surrounded by smoke and shrunken heads, but instead the guy can’t be more than a few years older than we are. He’s broad with a smile almost as wide as his face and skin like black coffee. His dreads hang past his shoulders and his shirt looks like the cheesy ones in the shop below. Definitely not what I was expecting.
“Tevin?” Landon asks.
“Sit young friend.” Tevin laughs. “And don’t look so scared. You have money. You have questions. I might have some answers. This is what I do.”
His Bahamian accent is so thick I have to concentrate to understand but Landon doesn’t seem to have any trouble—though, he apparently has spent a lot of time in this part of the world. This is my first time outside of New York or Jersey.
“So. I can just ask away?” Landon takes a seat in one of two worn out grey chairs, but I stay standing. The office looks totally normal—bulletin board, file cabinets, family pictures, but the feeling in here is heavy. Dark. Sets me on edge.
“Ask away.” The wide smile again. Crookedish teeth. Like Morgan Freeman’s younger, broader, more Bahamian cousin, and now that the thought has gone through my head, I feel like an idiot for even thinking it.
“What do you know about the shadows?” Landon asks.
“That’s too broad a question. Try again.” He sits back a little smug, but then his dark eyes are on Landon as Landon struggles to come up with another question to get us where he wants to go.
“I was wondering…” Landon starts but Tevin is leaning over his desk toward Landon now, staring into his eyes.
Perfectly creepy.
I’m trying to disappear into the back wall, but Landon’s holding his gaze.
The man reaches his thick fingers out and touches Landon on the forehead, never breaking eye contact. They sit there for a minute, maybe more, without either of them moving. It feels like a small eternity as the walls close in around us.
“Stupid boy. You went in there, didn’t you?” He sits back in his chair, looking at Landon with curiosity. “With the shadow people.”
Landon nods once. “I want…” But he stops again, which is very unlike him and they continue staring at one another.
I’m suddenly wondering if I should be in here at all, but at the same time, I just met Landon and am still not sure if he knows at all what he’s doing.
“You don’t know if you can trust them,” he says.
“Yes.” Landon nods. “I guess. Yes.”
“They’s jus’ like people. Some you can. Some you can’t.” His massive shoulders relax into a loose shrug as he leans back in his cheap office chair.
If it wasn’t so damn creepy feeling in this normal looking room, I’d think this guy was full of shit.
Landon clears his throat a couple of times before speaking again. “Is that shadow place somewhere that anyone who burned as a doll would go? Or…”
“Jus’ from da woman who put em there. Her world she build without pro’bly knowin’ that she did.” He pauses with a smile. “But maybe she did. No matter, it was hers. The door to open it died with her, unless you got enuff of her magic.”
Landon and I both pause for a moment, because Landon got in and out.
“Let’s just say for argument’s sake that they were trustworthy, and I tried to free them. Would they come back to this world or go beyond?”
Now Landon’s really getting into the heart of it because now I know what he’s after. He wants to get rid of those shadow things, only he’s not afraid of them. Less so after joining them for a day. I’m not sure how I feel about it. My brain keeps going back to the idea that you keep your friends close and your enemies closer and that’s why his trip to where the shadows live went so well. But I guess that’s why we’re here. Like Landon said, we don’t know if we can trust them.
Tevin laughs, a full-on belly laugh. “Boy, you know nothin’ about Voodoo.”
“No.” Landon shakes his head. “Only what I saw when I was there.”
“How long was you there?”
The man’s dark eyes shift almost imperceptibly, but it’s like he’s trying to look inside Landon. Through him. And not just at him. I’m grateful again I’m the one standing and not the one questioning—or, I guess, being questioned.
“Micah says a day. About 24 hours.”
He waves a hand between them. “Eh… You probably didn’t lose too much off the end of your life, then.”
“What?” Landon half jumps out of his chair.
“Sit down.” Tevin waves as he chuckles again. “Pullin’ your leg.” He shifts a few times in his seat. “Dey can’t come back. They got no bodies to come back to. They need a little somethin’ to move on. We talked about that on the phone.”
“How do you know?” Landon asks. “How do I trust you?”
“Your gut. I have no magic to show you so you know to trust me. I could be playin’ tricks anyhow. I know the legend. I know it’s real. You not the first ones a comin’ to see if they can undo this change.”
“When were the last ones?” Landon asks.
“You really wanna know?” His brows go up as he presses his fingertips together and leans back again. It’s a little “criminal mastermind” kind of a move, but I’m not about to crack a joke.
“Yes,” I say.
His nearly black eyes shift to mine. Hard. “Seven years ago, and the time before that was before you was born.”
I’m afraid to ask, but do anyway. “Were you here?”
There’s an odd glint in his eye before he nods once. “And the time before that, too. Best not ask how old I am, son.”
Right. Every cell in my body is tense, just waiting for this guy to grow horns, or for Landon and I to disappear in a puff of smoke.
“What happened?” Landon asks, and if I didn’t know him as well as I think I do, I wouldn’t know he’s nervous, but Landon’s definitely on edge.
Tevin laughs again. “It didn’t work, fool.”
Landon and I give each other a glance but I can’t read him well enoug
h to know if he’s buying any of this or not.
“You got to learn to control energy if you wanna do what ‘dey ask.” Tevin folds his hands in his lap like we’re talking about ordering a hundred ridiculous shirts from his shop. “If you do it well enough, I think da good ones would help ya keep the bad ones away, but it’s magic and strength and timing and specifics you won’t be able to get.”
This whole thing sounds riskier by the moment, and I’m wondering how far I’ll follow Landon before I go home. But even as the thought passes through my head, I know I won’t. There is something in me that I can’t make myself ignore, telling me I need to be here. To be doing what we’re doing, even if I want the hell out of this creepy too-normal looking office.
“And do you think I should?” Landon asks.
Tevin shakes his head. “I’m not here for advice, only to tell you what I know.”
“Let’s just say that my group decided to help these shadow people.” It’s Landon’s turn to lean forward now, holding Tevin’s gaze.
“Okay.”
“How would we even begin to know what to do?”
“Your smoky friends will tell you.”
“But I can’t trust them all.” Landon waits for confirmation.
I’m waiting, once again holding my breath, for Tevin to say something that I might not even believe.
“Nope.”
“So…”
“You will know.”
Landon sighs and I’m sure he’s feeling as frustrated as I am.
“Okay.” I step forward. “What can you tell us? Give us something concrete. Anything.” Because there’s a girl I can’t lose, and I have to know how to keep her safe.
Tevin smiles. “You will need one of each gift. At least. More could be better. But at least one of each to make what she gave complete. You will need a way to focus energy so they can get it from you to move on. Unless they mean and use your power against you.”
Oh, hell. Now I wish I was back in New York dealing with Addison’s father and the shadows on my own.
Tevin pulls open a few desk drawers, muttering. “Here.” He thrusts what’s obviously a photocopy of a page from what looks like a witchcraft book—something I’d definitely make fun of if we were somewhere other than this guy’s office.
“Pentagram?” Landon stares at the design, and his mouth is turned as if the word felt dirty going across his tongue.
“Fool.” Tevin shakes his head. “Don’t let semantics bother you. This is just to direct energy. The rest, you do by instinct. If you can’t figure it out, then you not supposed to be doing it.”
“I’m gonna check on the girls.” I move toward the door.
“They’s pissed at you boys, but they fine.” He chuckles again.
“Thanks, Tevin.” Landon puts a wad of hundreds on the desk, and I try not to stare. I’ve never been around people who have money.
I’ve hoarded a twenty for a month before, counting quarters at the end, but still managing.
“Can I call you if we get stuck?” Landon rests his fingertips on the wad of cash.
Tevin shrugs. “If ye want. But you know it’s not science, Landon. You gotta do what you gotta do. And you gotta trust yourself. But if you want just a few of you to set all them people’s free? You gonna have to focus some energy. And you gonna have to find the place where it happened.”
“How am I going to do that?” Landon asks.
This is getting more complicated all the time. Direct energy, find the location, hide from The Middle Men, do we trust the shadows…
“Long Island, Exumas. You’ll know.”
If this guy calls us fools or tells us we’ll have some great instinctual revelation and know how to do some creepy magic we didn’t know existed a few days ago, I might strangle him. I glance at Tevin’s broad frame again. Or, maybe just leave.
“But aren’t there a million ways this could go wrong?” Landon asks as he folds the paper in his pocket.
“Prob’ly. An’ I don’t know the answer there. I’m not one of you. I don’t have energy that comes from the same place as yours.” Tevin shrugs. “You two know more than me about your kind of energy. Mine is diff’rent. Come from a diff’rent place.”
“Great,” I mutter.
Landon gives me another slap on the shoulder, trying to show maybe that I should shut up, but that we’re still okay. “Thanks, Tevin. We’ll be running, and thanks again for your time.”
Tevin picks up his bills with another too-wide smile.
I half scramble down the stairs, just wanting out of that room.
“That was…” Landon starts.
“An experience,” I say.
“Yeah.” Landon throws his arm over my shoulder again. “An experience.”
I’m half tempted again to try and make Landon “do” something. We played with it on the boat a little, but I’ve never gotten through.
“Dude. I can even feel it when you’re thinking about doing it.” Landon grins and drops his arm.
I chuckle with him and glance over at him again. Landon and I wouldn’t be friends in a million years if it weren’t for this. I’m the kid with the shaggy hair in the back of the classroom drawing the teacher with horns and a pitchfork. Landon’s the kid who walks in ten minutes late and the teacher apologizes for starting without him instead of sending him to detention.
But here we are, and in a way trusting one another with our life. I thought I’d be spending this summer looking for work and getting ready to take some art classes at the community college, not running through The Bahamas on a boat that costs as much as a house with a senator’s son and sleeping with the daughter of Mr. Prince.
Wonder what’ll happen next week?
Micah and Addie are sitting on a bench just outside the shop talking, both a little rigid, and maybe they shouldn’t have been left out of the conversation—though, I don’t love the idea of those two girls in a small room with creepy-guy either. I half-expected him to pull off a mask that looked like his face.
“One more thing.” Tevin steps up behind me, making me jump. He’s well over six foot, something that was lost when he was sitting.
“Yeah?” Landon turns around, and I feel Addie walk into the room and step behind me.
Landon reaches back to take Micah’s hand, and I guess we’re all right.
“Tha woman whose Voodoo dolls turned those people is legend. No one knows how to re-create that magic. You be car’ful. All of you with talents from her are connected, whether you see yourself that way or not. Whatever you decide to do—you’ll be decidin’ for everyone. All that power and all those people. You could be making a whole big mess.” Tevin doesn’t grin or tell us we’re fools for trying, which I sort of wish he would.
With that said, he turns and walks back up the stairs.
Landon frowns.
Anger stirs up inside me. “We all have to be in the loop Landon. You’re not happy he came down and said that in front of the girls.”
“I’m not happy he said it at all. I’m the one who can cross into their world. I’ve seen where these people have been living for hundreds of years. It’s like hell there, Dean. We’ve got to change it.” At least he believes what he’s saying, and I guess that’s something. Now I have to decide if the shadows are smart enough to pull one over on him—or just keep going with my gut, which keeps telling me to do things I’m not sure I want to…
“But what if the things we do just make a big mess?” Addie steps forward.
“And what are we in now?” Landon snaps as he throws his arms to the side.
“Hey.” I step between them. Landon doesn’t need to talk to Addie that way. “Why don’t we all meet on the boat later.” I glance outside. “Looks like we might be stuck weathering another storm anyway.”
Tensions between everyone are high right now and maybe we all need a little space. With Landon being the owner of the boat, he’s really been the one driving the train, and it’s not that we haven’t agreed
on where we’ve gone or what we’ve done, but at the same time, it is different when one person is so distinctly in charge—even though he swears he’s not.
“I thought we came here to get caught?” Micah nudges Landon with her arm, and Addie leans into me further.
“We’ll have a chance.” Landon pulls her close. “Don’t worry.”
I’m not sure whether I’m annoyed or relieved at Landon’s relaxed attitude about the whole thing. But we definitely need some de-stress time.
ELEVEN
Kara
“We’re in Nassau, Kara. Almost nothing but locals this time of year. Loosen up.” Ocean touches my shoulder just long enough to give me a little shake as we walk down the half-deserted sidewalk.
“But—”
“We’ve talked to like ten people at the harbor to watch for that boat and the people on that boat. They haven’t been there all day. Please. Come eat with me. Come dance with me. Let’s use our mad skills and just find them.” His eyes are so open and pleading, and our task feels too huge to think about, and instead of trying to stay away from his energy, I grasp his hand as we walk up the street and just enjoy feeling him. Also, I would sort of like to prove to myself that I can be around him and touching him without my brain fuzzing out.
It’s not working.
I’m not supposed to feel this until I feel it with Landon, and he’s so close now that I’m running through all the millions of scenarios I dreamed up as a kid as to what it would be like. How he would react. How it would feel to touch him.
So many of the shops are closed this time of year, and it’s almost like walking through a town that’s half-asleep. We fall into step, the hot sun blazing down on us and not a breath of air—though, I can see the storm clouds from here so it won’t be long. I let my eyes close and try to ignore how perfectly our hands fit together.
“Hmmm.” He breathes out.
