Compulsion

by Martina Boone

  Eight stopped the car before turning out onto the road. Leaning across her, he opened the glove box and tossed a new bottle of Tylenol into her lap. “Here. You’ll be miserable at the Resurrection with a headache.”

  Barrie took it without comment. She had probably winced or rubbed her temple without realizing it—she was beyond questioning how Eight always knew what she was thinking. He didn’t even need to be clairvoyant to know the Resurrection would be hard for her.

  When they got there, music vibrated through the flame-painted walls. Barrie got out of the car in the parking lot, and with her mouth dry and her head pounding, she mumbled a thank-you and a good-bye and walked toward the entrance. She expected Eight to drive away.

  Instead he followed her inside. Laughter, music, and the clack of pool balls knocking into one another bounced off the floor and ceiling, but conversation hushed and heads turned as she paused inside. Eight scanned the room. After catching her hand, he led her past the bar area and a dance floor where a graying grizzly of a man danced with a woman in a ruffled denim skirt, fishnet tights, and combat boots.

  Barrie heard Cassie’s laugh before she saw her. Flanked by two pretty girls, her cousin leaned against the pool table closest to the wall, but she might as well have been dead-center in the room. She commanded attention as if it were hers by right. In a white shirt with the collar flipped up, tight fawn-colored pants, and sky-high black suede heels, Barrie’s cousin missed being a Vogue cover model by ten pounds in all the right places.

  The bottom of her own cue stick resting on the floor, Cassie watched a muscled twentysomething wearing a camouflage cap turned backward line up the two ball with the corner pocket. She bent to speak into his ear, but her voice was loud enough to carry above the music. “You might as well quit, Grady. You’re going to overthink that shot. You know you are. Any second now, you’re going to wonder if it isn’t a hair to the left, and knock it too hard.”

  The guy straightened and gave her a pleading look. “Have a heart, Cassie. Would you just let me play?”

  “Am I holding you back?” Cassie looked around for support, her expression innocent except for the smile playing around her lips. “Do you see my hands on the boy, y’all? Or am I simply telling him what we all know is the gospel truth?”

  Laughter rippled across the room, and a woman from the next table over called: “She’s got you there, Grady. Course, she’s got you in all kinds of different of ways.”

  Cassie raised her head to laugh and caught sight of Barrie. She straightened away from the table. “Well, there she is. Hey, y’all”—she waved and glanced around with a smile—“come and meet my pretty little cousin, Barrie Watson.”

  Every eye in the room turned toward Barrie, and she wished she could head right back out the door. Most of the kids in Barrie’s junior class at Creswell Prep had been together since the first day of middle school. They might not have been her best friends, but they knew her.

  She didn’t know anyone here, but after Cassie’s introduction, every soul in the poolroom gathered around. Cassie’s friends, Grady and his friends, other kids, older guys who reeked of beer. The crowd itself attracted attention, and soon the waitress and the hostess from the dining room came in, along with older people from the bar.

  “Hold on,” Eight whispered to her. “It’ll be over soon.”

  It was. Maybe because the crowd was younger, they hadn’t known her mother, and so Barrie wasn’t as much of a curiosity. She breathed easier when it was only Cassie, Grady, and the two pretty blondes, Beth and Gilly, left standing with her. And Eight, the solid bulk of him forming a foundation at her back.

  Both Beth and Gilly seemed more interested in him than Barrie. “So when do you have to leave for school?” Beth asked.

  Eight cut a glance at Barrie. “Not sure yet.”

  “You have to be excited, I’ll bet. Imagine being out in the middle of everything. Hollywood. The beach.”

  “We’ve got plenty of beaches around here,” Eight said.

  “That’s right.” Cassie threaded her arm through the crook of Barrie’s elbow. “Beaches and cookouts and all sorts of things.” She gestured to include Beth and Gilly. “We are going to have so much fun! And the best part? Summer’s barely started. We’ll have loads of time to hang out before school starts.”

  “I don’t know.” Beth looked Barrie up and down. She was taller than Gilly and less round, and she looked both elegant and casual, dressed all in white. “Barrie doesn’t look like she gets to the beach much. We’ll have to get some color on her first.”

  Barrie glanced at Eight. She couldn’t help thinking of his cheek against hers while he’d pointed out turtles in the water. He wasn’t always aggravating.

  “I like the beach,” she said. “I’ve just never been one for lying out.”

  In the background the jukebox had clicked over to Lady Gaga’s “The Edge of Glory,” the heartbeat opener with its simple voice building up to sax and soaring hooks. The song was one of Mark’s favorites. Barrie had sung it with him so many times, karaoke style, hamming it up and laughing like crazy by the end. The notes flowed through her, loosening her shoulders. The plastic smile she’d been wearing started to feel more like her own.

  Beside her Eight stepped closer, his breath hot and chill-inducing against her skin. “I’ve got to get going, but you’re okay now, aren’t you? You’ll be fine on your own.” He leaned in even more. “Just don’t let Cassie bully you.”

  He pulled away, and Barrie felt it like a loss.

  Cassie’s lips slid into a potent curve aimed dead at him. “You sure you can’t stay, love? Come on. Cancel your dinner or whatever. Get out of that jacket, and stay. I promise we’re a whole lot more fun than whatever you have planned.”

  “I can’t. Sorry,” Eight said, not sounding it. He caught Barrie’s gaze, and hesitated, then leaned in as if—

  As if what? What was Barrie even thinking?

  “Say hello to your father for me,” she said sweetly.

  A muscle worked along Eight’s jaw. He opened his mouth, but Cassie tugged Barrie toward the dining room before he could speak. “His loss, right, Barrie? We won’t worry about him. You’re going to be fine with us. We’ll go eat, and then maybe we’ll dance. Or shoot some pool. You play, don’t you?”

  Barrie pretended she didn’t care as Cassie led her and the other two girls away, but she was aware of Eight standing and watching them go.

  Beth waited until he was out of earshot before catching Barrie’s shoulder. “What is the matter with you, girl? Eight Beaufort was about to kiss you, and you sent him away looking like a dog without its supper.”

  “I’ll be happy to take him off your hands, if you don’t want him,” Gilly said.

  Beth frowned at Gilly with an ugly little twist of her lips. “As if.”

  “You want him, you can have him,” Barrie said, but the thought carved a small pit of emptiness inside her. She studied the scratched wood floor. “Not that he’s mine to hand over.”

  Not that she wanted him to be.

  Cassie led them to an empty booth and gestured for Barrie and Gilly to slide in first on either side. Gilly gave Barrie a slight eye roll as she wedged herself in against the wall. Despite being plump, she was beautiful. Like Cassie, she had the magical kind of beauty that had little to do with individual features. Technically, proportionally, Gilly’s mouth was too far from her nose, and her eyes were too wide apart. Studying her across the booth though, Barrie wished she had brought her sketchbook. Taken as a whole, Gilly’s features transformed into a paintable and intriguing face. Had Cassie not been in the room, it would have been Gilly turning heads.

  Gilly was pleasantly unself-conscious too. Leaning over the table, she shouted to be heard above the music spilling from the bar. “You have to try the barbecue, Barrie!”

  Barrie nodded, her head throbbing in time to the beat. “The Edge of Glory” had faded into a set of Springsteen songs, as if someone had a thing for saxopho
ne. Cassie plucked four menus from the stand at the edge of the table and passed them around. “They make a mustard sauce here that’ll make your mouth want to dance.”

  “Is it spicy?” Barrie asked as a song ended. The words came out too loud.

  Cassie smiled broadly. “You can use a little spice, sugar. Heat to bring out some color on that porcelain skin.”

  “Seems to me she’s doing fine in the heat department.” Beth tipped her head at Gilly. “Better than some of us, and she’s barely been in town a day.”

  “Well, it wasn’t like either of us was ever going to have him.” Gilly buried her face behind a menu.

  “Stop it, you two. It’s not like the boy can help himself. It’s the Beaufort-Watson thing pulling them together. Watsons and Beauforts are always together,” Cassie said.

  Beth turned to gape at her. “What are you talking about? I’ve never so much as seen a Watson and a Beaufort in the same building.”

  “Not now, maybe. But that’s not the way it’s always been—Watsons and Beauforts used to run this town together and to hell with anyone else.” The waitress had come to take their order, and Cassie glanced around the table. “Y’all are ready, aren’t you?” She lowered her menu but didn’t wait for anyone to answer. “I’ll have the Boil and my cousin will have the Barbecue and—” She broke off and let the menu fall to the table, her expression wary and at the same time closed-off, as if the shutters had slammed on a house, hiding whatever lived within. “Daddy?”

  “Hello there.” Wyatt ignored his daughter and focused in on Barrie. “You’ve got to be my niece.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Wyatt Colesworth was a big, forbidding man, and his dark hair and dark clothing melted into the shadows of the dim restaurant lighting. “Don’t get mad,” he said to Cassie. “I’m not going to crash your girls’ night out, but I had to come by and say hello to Wade’s little girl.” He stopped beside the booth, and his slack skin and craggy features turned warmer as he smiled at Barrie. “Come here and give your uncle Wyatt a big old hug. Get up now, Beth. Let her out.”

  Barrie rose, but even from a yard away Cassie’s father smelled of fish, with undertones of some beverage stronger than beer. His teeth were stained and all the same size, like little squares of yellow gum. Barrie wanted to stay right where she was, but Beth slid off the seat and left her without a choice. In the booths around them, people had turned to watch as if this were part of the evening’s entertainment. Barrie gave Wyatt a quick squeeze and pulled away.

  “It’s nice to meet you—”

  “You call me Uncle Wyatt, you hear? We’re family, aren’t we? Your mama and Wade and me went back a long way together. I imagine she probably mentioned me to you?” His eyes were hooded, but beneath the heavy lids he watched her sharply. “She probably talked about me a lot. She always liked telling stories.”

  Barrie’s pulse and the throb in her temples hammered together at the undertone in Wyatt’s voice that didn’t match up with the friendliness of his words. Was he going to say anything about following them to the beach that afternoon? Should she say anything about it?

  Maybe it had been someone else, or maybe he was embarrassed about it now. He had lost his brother. Of course he would hope that Lula had passed on some final message.

  “I’m sorry.” What was Barrie supposed to say? “Lula didn’t really talk about living here.”

  “You see, Daddy? You’re making Barrie uncomfortable.” Cassie threw him a stare, then smiled at Barrie. “Excuse us a second.” Grabbing her father’s arm, she marched him away so that her furious whispering wasn’t audible.

  “Don’t worry,” Beth said. “They’re always like that. The man’s a piece of work, but Cassie knows how to handle him.”

  Wyatt pointed back toward Barrie. Cassie shook her head. Wyatt started to step forward, and she put her hand on his arm and spoke to him with the kind of body language a parent used with a child who was about to do something unreasonable. It was an odd exchange, stranger still because Barrie couldn’t hear it.

  Cassie must have won. Wyatt waved at Barrie and strode toward the exit, and Cassie returned to the table.

  “Sorry about that.” She slid back into the booth with a blinding smile. “Your daddy was his only brother, so he’s been anxious to hear all about you and Lula. I told him I wanted you to myself for tonight. There’ll be plenty of time for you to come over and catch up on family history. Daddy’s got lots of photographs of Uncle Wade to show you.”

  Wyatt probably knew a lot more about why Lula and Wade had run off than anyone else in town, and Barrie should have jumped at the chance to see photographs of her father. She should have wanted to say she would love to go to Colesworth Place. But her warning radar was stuck in the on position. Which was stupid. Wyatt had been more than friendly. The wrongness in the pit of her stomach had to be a leftover effect from the afternoon and the things Pru and Eight had told her. It didn’t make Barrie proud to realize she had bought into their paranoia about the Colesworths.

  She leaned back as the waitress brought their Cokes and passed them around. After scrunching the paper wrapper down her straw as tight as it would go, she eased it off and dribbled a few drops of water over it. The paper unwound like a snake, as unruly as Barrie’s tongue, which still refused to cooperate. She couldn’t make herself say she wanted to spend time with Wyatt when she didn’t.

  “You’re not worried about my daddy, are you?” Cassie eased forward on her elbows, watching Barrie. “I can tell you didn’t like him. Please don’t let him put you off! You’ve probably heard stories about him, haven’t you? The only people you’ve spent real time with so far are Watsons and Beauforts, so you’re bound to have the wrong impression of us. Daddy can be a little odd sometimes, I’ll admit. But the thing is, we’re all dying to know.”

  “Know what?” Barrie asked.

  Cassie made a face that stopped just shy of an eye roll. “Which family trait you ended up with. What did you get? The Watson gift or the Colesworth curse?”

  Goose bumps ran along Barrie’s skin. Cassie mentioned the gift so casually, out in the open, in front of the other girls. And they only looked at Barrie with idle curiosity. As if of course everyone knew about the gift.

  Or maybe the shiver came from the other word.

  “What curse?” she asked.

  “You don’t know? Really?” Cassie’s expression hovered somewhere between scorn and disbelief. “Didn’t your mama tell you? Or Pru—or Eight?”

  “Why don’t you tell me?”

  Cassie seemed to surge with energy, as if someone had turned a three-way bulb up a click. She jumped to her feet. “Let’s move outside. I can’t shout over the music.” She winked at Barrie. “Plus we need better atmosphere.”

  Gilly and Beth gathered up their silverware, so Barrie did the same. Cassie tossed a five-dollar bill onto the table, paused to tell the waitress they were moving, then hurried out to the back deck that overlooked the water.

  A fire crackled in a circular brazier, like a campfire on the beach. Old sails draped from end to end created a canopy overhead and fluttered in the wind, while music filtered at a more bearable volume from the windows.

  They settled onto a bench at a table in the far back corner. The fire painted Cassie’s face in a blend of shadow and light that made Barrie’s fingers crave a sketchpad, and when everyone was seated, Cassie leaned forward with the air of someone about to tell a secret. She spoke in a theatrical half whisper that carried over the noise. Even so, Barrie found herself tipping close to listen.

  “It all started,” Cassie began, “with three younger sons of good English families: Thomas Watson, Robert Beaufort, and John Colesworth. They went to the Caribbean to make their fortunes, and since piracy was legal then, as long as you had a letter of permission from the king and you only went after England’s enemies, they became privateers on a ship called the Loyal Jamaica. They collected a huge treasure before the ship ran aground near Charleston on a
supply trip. With nice manners and plenty of gold, they weren’t unwelcome, and the governors of the Carolina colony gave them grants to settle in the area. Then one night before the land deals were official, Thomas Watson had too much to drink and lost half his share of the gold while gambling with one of the governors.” Cassie raised her eyebrows at Barrie. “Are you following all this?”

  “The man who built Watson’s Landing was a pirate, a drunk, and a gambler. Yes,” Barrie said dryly, “I think I’ve about got it.”

  “Now, don’t take offense, sugar. They were all pirates. I’m sure they all drank and gambled, but Thomas Watson had a bad night, and he accused the governor of cheating. Robert Beaufort and John Colesworth saved him from pistols at dawn by apologizing, but the governor was still plenty mad. He gave Thomas Watson land on a haunted island to get revenge.”

  “Haunted?” Cold etched itself deep into Barrie’s bones. She thought of the sphere of fire and the dark figure by the river. Maybe what she had seen last night hadn’t been a dream or a product of her imagination.

  Did that make her feel better or worse? She wasn’t sure.

  The waitress came with their food, but Cassie talked on as if she didn’t care that the woman would overhear. As if everyone already knew the story.

  “Yes, haunted. Thomas Watson’s island was inhabited by the Fire Carrier, the ghost of a Cherokee witch who had cleared his tribal lands of malicious spirits, yunwi, and pushed them down the Santisto until they’d come to the last bit of land surrounded by water on every side. The Fire Carrier bound the yunwi there, and kept them from escaping, with fire and magic and running water.”

  “Excellent,” Barrie said. “Pirates, gold, and evil spirits.”

  “You can laugh. Thomas laughed too. At first. Until every brick of the mansion he tried to build disappeared every night, and every field he plowed or seeded was flooded or trampled. He spent most of his gold on the plantation, with nothing to show for it. He was about to give up, leave his friends, and go home to England, when John Colesworth offered to get one of his slaves to trap the Fire Carrier and force it to make the yunwi behave.”