Gathering Deep

by Lisa Maxwell

  The interior of the bar was dark except for the glow of amber-colored bulbs hanging from the ceiling, and it took my eyes a minute to adjust. The bar was the definition of a dive. Dark, scarred wood lined the walls. Most of the booths had rips in their red vinyl seats, some of which had been repaired with silver duct tape. The windows were darkened, and the barroom was empty except for a couple of older men huddled over their drinks. The baseball game playing on the big, old-fashioned TV kept fuzzing in and out as they ignored it.

  “Can I help you?” an older woman with a sagging bosom and a missing eyetooth asked as she leaned against the bar and dried a hazy glass.

  “We’re here to see Ikenna,” Odane said.

  “Are you now?” She looked us up and down, but then something like recognition lit in her yellowed eyes. “Go on back, then. You know the way?”

  Odane gave a tense nod and grabbed my hand. “Come on,” he whispered, pulling me along gently.

  We made our way through the narrow place, which seemed to only get darker the farther back we went. At the very back of the main barroom was a hallway, and at the end of that hallway was a room with only a beaded curtain for a door. We weren’t even halfway there when a tall, wiry man stepped through the beads.

  Odane’s dad didn’t look as old as I’d expected him to be. He looked more my momma’s age—or what I’d thought her age was—than Mama Legba’s. Tall and lean, he wore his hair plaited in braids close to his head, and he was dressed—head to toe—in black. A gold ring flashed on his right pinkie and a diamond stud winked in each ear.

  When he saw who it was, he smiled, a flash-of-teeth kind of grin that exposed a crooked front tooth.

  All at once, he was someone else—deep-set, empty eyes, hair like snakes, bones for fingers, and a crooked-toothed grin that said I was about to meet my fate. But then the vision from my dream faded as quickly as it had come, and he was just a man. Just Odane’s father.

  “My boy!” He opened his arms, as if in welcome, and Odane moved in front of me.

  “Hello, Ikenna.” There wasn’t any greeting in his voice.

  The man’s smile never faltered, but his eyes found me. “And who’s this?”

  “A friend,” Odane said. “Can we talk?”

  The man laughed, a deep, hollow-sounding laugh that was all cold amusement. “That’s how it’s gonna be? I like it. All business. I like it a lot.” He pulled back the dark wooden beads and gestured us in. “Come on back then, and let’s get to this.”

  I followed Odane, his hand still securely wrapped around mine, into the room behind the curtain. Ikenna didn’t so much as move to give us more room to pass, and I had the feeling he was taking my measure as I brushed by him.

  There was something oily about him. Something that reminded me of a snake creeping or an eel sliding away. I couldn’t look right at him—not without him looking right back and seeing more than I wanted him to. So I kept my eyes busy taking in the room.

  The walls were washed in a deep burnt ochre, and there weren’t any windows at all. On one end of the room, incense burned on a small altar lined with the kind of glass-jarred candles you’d find in a church. It made the air hazy with its too-rich, too-spicy scent.

  The bench-like altar was piled with trinkets and roughly carved statues. It reminded me a little of the one Mama Legba had in her shop, but these small effigies looked twisted and bent compared to hers.

  On the other side of the room, a desk that looked like it belonged in an old-fashioned detective show was piled haphazardly with papers and folders. Behind the desk was a wall of shelves holding different pictures, more of the strange, gnarled statues, and a leathery-looking alligator head, its mouth open to expose its sharp, yellowed teeth.

  Ikenna settled himself in a large leather chair on one side of a round table that stood in the center of the room and gestured for the two of us to take the other seats.

  “Y’all want something to drink?” he asked, leaning back in his chair.

  “No,” Odane answered. “This isn’t a social call.”

  “I can see that plain enough,” Ikenna said with a grin that seemed more like a leer. “Your mama okay?” He didn’t really sound like he cared.

  “Mama’s fine,” Odane ground out. “She’s not why I’m here and she’s not up for discussion.”

  Ikenna’s mouth went tight, and his eyes flicked to me for a second and then back to Odane. “What about this one? Can we discuss her?”

  I bristled at the tone in his voice, but as I opened my mouth to say I wasn’t up for anything with him, Odane squeezed my hand tightly and beat me to it.

  “She’s a friend, and she’s not for you. That’s all you need to know for now.”

  Appreciation gleamed in Ikenna’s eyes. “She’s more than a friend, or you wouldn’t be so jittery right now.”

  Odane tensed, but he didn’t respond.

  “And she’s more than that, too, isn’t she?” Ikenna’s eyes focused on me, and my breath went tight. In the dim light of the hallway, I’d thought his eyes were dark, but that wasn’t the case. His eyes were actually more the color of honey, and they fairly glowed in the dim light. One of his pupils was almost completely dilated, so the iris was nothing but a ring of gold around the dark, empty center, giving his gaze an unbalanced intensity.

  Ikenna took a deep breath, his unnatural-looking eyes closing like he was savoring the moment. “Mm-hmm,” he murmured without opening his eyes. “It’s like she bathed in power and then sprinkled on some more, like powder.” His eyes flashed open, hungry. “Where’d you find her, son? And how much for her?”

  I started to get up, because no way was I sitting here being talked about like I was something to be bought or sold, but Odane’s hand tightened almost painfully around mine.

  “She’s not part of this negotiation,” he said, calm and easy.

  “Everything’s part of the negotiation,” Ikenna said with a sharp-toothed kind of grin that reminded me of an alligator just sitting in the bayou, waiting for its prey. “But you finally got to your point, so we’ll set the girl aside for now. Why don’t you tell me what you came here for—and how much you’re willing to give up for it?”

  Odane released my hand then and leaned his elbows against the table, like a poker player waiting for the deal. “I’m not giving up anything until I know what you can do for me.”

  Ikenna laughed at that. “If I was worried your mama was raising you soft, I ain’t no more. Nice.” Still looking more amused than anything else, he also leaned forward. “Start at the beginning, and we’ll see if we can’t come to terms.”

  I didn’t like any of this discussion, not one little bit. Not the intensity that seemed to hum between father and son, and definitely not the fact that Ikenna wasn’t looking at me at all, but still seemed to be focused on me.

  “I don’t think we should do this,” I whispered to Odane. “We can find another way.”

  “Ain’t no way but my way, sweetheart,” Ikenna said.

  I looked up and forced myself to meet those eerie eyes without flinching.

  “Good. She got a backbone. She’s gonna need it.”

  “Why’s that?” Odane asked.

  “You really can’t see it?” Ikenna said, and for the first time since we’d arrived, he looked confused. Maybe even a little disappointed.

  “See what?” I asked.

  Ikenna scratched his chin as he considered me, and I noticed that he had a ghostly tattoo in white ink covering the dark skin of his hand. It replicated the bones that lay beneath his skin, giving the impression that he was a living skeleton. “You don’t know either, do you?”

  “Why don’t you stop talking in circles, old man, and tell us what you’re playing at?” Odane’s voice was tight. Dangerous.

  Ikenna wasn’t pleased—not in the least—but his curiosity apparently won out over his irritation. He turned his full attention onto me—those creepy eyes bore right into my own. “Not all the power she’s dripping with
is her own.”

  Twenty-Four

  “What do you mean it’s not all hers?” Odane demanded.

  “I mean that she got an energy about her that don’t belong to her. It’s covering over what she might have underneath.”

  “But Mama Legba never saw anything like that,” I said, confused.

  “Odette might be good at some things, but there’s a lot she don’t know. She don’t know how to dance with the darkness. Not like I do,” Ikenna said with a slow, knowing smile. He wasn’t bragging on himself, I realized. He was simply stating his truth.

  “Can you tell whose energy it is?” Odane asked, trying to get back the control he’d had moments ago.

  Ikenna frowned, his eyes finally coming back to me, studying me. Looking at me and through me right at the same time. “It’s female in nature. Feels powerful, old. But connected to you somehow.”

  “That can’t be,” I whispered, reaching for the dreads that no longer covered my head. “We got rid of her control.”

  Ikenna shook his head. “I’m not sure what you think you did, but your power sure enough ain’t alone. In fact, whatever you have is buried so down deep beneath this other that it’s no wonder Odette didn’t see it, ’specially if she wasn’t looking for it. She probably thinks this other power is yours.” His eyes narrowed at me, appreciative and cunning all at once. “Whose power you carrying, girl?”

  “Don’t answer that,” Odane told me as I shifted uneasily under his father’s too-perceptive stare.

  Ikenna waved his hand to silence him. “Enough of this. What did y’all really come here for?”

  “We have some questions about Baron Samedi,” Odane told him, taking a different approach than I’d expected. Still unsettled, I sat as still and calm as I could and waited for their hands to play out.

  “Baron Samedi?” This seemed to intrigue Ikenna. “I didn’t think you were interested in that … what did you call it once upon a time? Oh, yeah—stupid dark shit I believe were the exact words you used. What’s got you so interested now?”

  Odane hesitated, but then he spoke. “Someone might be trying to summon him.”

  Ikenna couldn’t mask his surprise, or his apprehension. “Someone who? Better not be someone you.”

  “A witch named Thisbe,” Odane said.

  “Never heard of her,” Ikenna said, like he was dismissing the information. But his shoulders were still tight and his expression couldn’t hide his interest. “She from around here?”

  “You could say that. She’s been from around here for more than a hundred years.”

  “That ain’t possible.” Ikenna looked more impatient than ever.

  “It shouldn’t be, no. But it is.”

  “You say. Have you seen her with your own two eyes?”

  “No,” Odane said slowly.

  “Then you chasing fairy tales, son.”

  “He’s telling the truth,” I interjected, ignoring the look Odane shot me. “She’s my mother.”

  “Your mother?” Ikenna’s eyes narrowed. “Your mother is over a hundred years old?”

  “That’s what they tell me,” I said tightly.

  “Who’s they?” Ikenna asked, still suspicious.

  “Mama Legba. Others who saw what she can do.”

  Ikenna’s expression was filled with doubt. “You say Odette saw this?” His attention was all on me, and I suddenly understood why Odane had wanted me to let him do the talking. When Ikenna focused on you, I mean really focused on you, it felt like being caught in a hunter’s sight.

  “She did,” Odane said, drawing his father’s attention back to himself.

  “Well, then,” Ikenna said thoughtfully. “That is something, all right.”

  “Your turn,” Odane said. “We need to know what summoning Baron Samedi would entail.”

  Ikenna’s brow furrowed. “Why would you think I’d know a thing like that?”

  “You’re the most powerful bokor ’round these parts—anyone who knows anything knows that. You telling me you don’t serve Samedi and his Loa? You trying to tell me you don’t know the process of calling him?” Odane asked with more than a little disdain.

  A bokor? Odane hadn’t mentioned that his father was a bokor. In Voodoo, most priests were called houngans and priestesses were mambos. They served the light Loa—the spirits that dealt with life. I’d only heard tales of bokors, sorcerers who served with both hands—the light and the dark. Damballah and Samedi. If the stories were true, they couldn’t ever be trusted, but here we were, negotiating with one.

  “I know enough,” Ikenna said slyly. “I may serve, but I’ve never been stupid enough to mess with summoning him.”

  “But you know how someone might go about it?”

  Ikenna pursed his lips, but eventually he nodded. “You need an ointment—”

  “Aloe in black cat oil,” Odane said, to Ikenna’s surprise.

  He nodded with a concerned frown creasing his face. “Mixed with a few other things,” he said slowly.

  “What other things?”

  Ikenna looked distinctly uncomfortable, but he leaned back in his chair, pretending to be at ease.

  “If we don’t know what Thisbe’s collecting, there’s no way to stop her, now is there?” Odane said. “Unless, of course, you want Samedi showing up looking for you once he’s been called to this side of the divide?”

  Ikenna’s eyes narrowed, like he knew Odane was out-maneuvering him and didn’t know how to stop it. “You need the blood from a living body and graveyard dust. It takes a sacrifice, too. Samedi is the one who escorts the souls, so you need a freshly departed soul for him to come harvest. The rest involves trapping him for long enough to make the deal you want to make.”

  “What kind of sacrifice?” I asked, my throat tight at the thought of Piers gone missing.

  Ikenna narrowed his eyes at his son, but then he turned to me. “Depends on what you want from the Baron. If you only want to talk to him, any old thing will do—even an animal. If you want to do more, you have to give more.” Ikenna drummed a fingertip on the tabletop. “If you want to make a trade, to bring back your dearly departed, you’d need to trade in kind. A youth for a soul who departed young. A man for a male who left this world, and a girl for a female soul you want to bring back. ”

  “That’s it?” Odane asked.

  “Ain’t that enough? You’re talking at least two deaths to summon him, more depending on what he asks of you. Knowing Samedi, he probably would want more.” He pinned Odane with his golden eyes. “My turn now. What does this Thisbe want to summon the Baron for?”

  “We don’t know,” Odane said.

  “That’s a lie,” Ikenna said flatly.

  “You say—”

  “I more than say. I know. And you’d know you can’t lie to me if you’d come around more than once or twice in your lifetime.”

  “You never gave me a reason to.”

  “I offered to teach you … ”

  “You offered to use me,” Odane snarled. “That ain’t a reason.”

  The two of them squared off after that in silence.

  “What’d you really come here for, son?” Ikenna said. “I know it wasn’t just to ask about Samedi. Most the people who practice ’round these parts could have given you those answers.”

  Odane looked at me, as though asking for permission.

  If what Ikenna was saying was true—that I was carrying someone else’s power with me—that power might be my mother’s. It might mean that I’d been right—cutting off my hair might not have done anything at all but make me feel like a newly shorn sheep. But there was something worse—Piers was missing and Thisbe needed a sacrifice, a young soul for a young soul. I would pay any price I needed to if it meant finding a way to make sure Piers didn’t end up in Baron Samedi’s hands.

  I gave Odane a small nod, conveying my consent to go on.

  “You’re right. We didn’t come here just to ask about Samedi, though we thank you for the information.
We came because we need help breaking into her dreams.”

  “Breaking into dreams is easy enough. Child’s play, really. Dreams ain’t nothing more than the soul at play.”

  “She’s been dreaming about Thisbe, and we want to know why.”

  Ikenna pinned me with his uneven gaze. “If you want to see someone else’s life, that isn’t breaking into dreams. That’s channeling a soul, and with the other power you’re wrapped up in, y’all might want to think twice about doing anything stupid as that. There’s no telling what might happen.”

  A shiver went down my spine, but I forced myself to shrug it off. “I’m willing to risk it.”

  Ikenna smiled then, and this time the smile didn’t hold a hint of derision. “I bet you are.” The curve of his mouth

  faltered. “But I also bet you don’t have any idea what you might be stepping in to.”

  “I’m already into it,” I said, feeling the truth of those words more than ever.

  “You might think you are … ” Ikenna said, but he seemed almost unsure.

  “Can you do it or not?” Odane asked, before his father could back away from the negotiation.

  “’Course I could … for a price. You did say you came to talk business.” He gave his son a slippery smile as his gaze glided over to me.

  Odane’s jaw muscles ticked. “We did, but it depends on what it is you want.”

  Ikenna shrugged, easy like. “What don’t I want? Power. Money. The key to the city. You got any of those?”

  Odane stayed silent.

  “No. You don’t got nothing to give,” Ikenna said, the smile dropping from his face like a bad habit. “So maybe I don’t got nothing to tell.”

  “I got myself,” Odane said, and damn if Ikenna’s crazy eyes didn’t light with something that looked like eagerness.

  “Who says I’d want it?” he drawled.

  “You do.” Odane’s voice never wavered. “You’ve wanted a piece of me ever since you realized I could be your ticket to the Quarter. Must have chapped your ass some when I turned you down a couple of years ago.”

  Ikenna’s eyes narrowed.

  Odane shrugged and kept on talking. “Aunt Odette’s been hounding me to develop my gifts lately. She seems to think she’s the one who should help me.”