Gathering Deep

by Lisa Maxwell

  “That so?” Ikenna asked. His expression had gone thunderous. Deadly, even.

  “That’s what she thinks. I’m not so sure she’s right about that.” He kept his eyes steady on his father.

  No way was I going to sit there and let him talk about Mama Legba. She wasn’t supposed to be part of what we were doing, but Odane grabbed my hand tight and sure, and when he squeezed it, I felt a little jolt of warmth and peace that couldn’t have been natural.

  I looked up at him, trying to figure out what he’d done, but he was focused on Ikenna.

  “I’m sure she’s dead wrong,” Ikenna said, emphasizing the word dead like it was a wish.

  “You leave her out of this, and maybe we can work

  ourselves something out on the business side of things,” Odane said.

  “Why would I leave her out?” Ikenna asked, his brows flying up. “She’s the whole point.”

  “You leave her out because I won’t have my family involved. You do anything against her, and you won’t ever get what you want.”

  “And what do you think that is?”

  “Her shop. Her part of the city.” Odane leaned forward. “The Quarter is all you ever wanted. I was just the path you thought you’d take to get it.” The bitterness in his voice practically choked the air out of the room.

  Ikenna considered this. “That’s true enough, but how am I gonna get what I want if I leave that old bat out of this?”

  “Because you don’t need her to get it.”

  “No?” Ikenna seemed confused by this idea.

  “Not if you have me.”

  Ikenna frowned like he wasn’t getting it. I wasn’t either.

  “Who do you think is gonna take over once Aunt Odette is gone?”

  Now I did yank my hand away from Odane. “You can’t—”

  But all at once, the voice went out of me. It felt like my vocal chords seized up.

  Odane glanced my way, his eyes flashing in warning. “You wanted my help, so maybe you should settle down and take it.”

  My eyes widened and I opened my mouth to tell that double-crossing ass exactly what he could do with his deal, but I felt like I couldn’t move a muscle. Odane glanced at me with a lazy sort of confidence that let me know he was the one responsible. My anger spiked, but there wasn’t a thing I could do but seethe inside and hope he understood how dead I was going to make him when this was all over.

  He either didn’t understand what the look I was giving him meant or he didn’t care. Dismissing me, he drew his attention back to Ikenna, who was watching the exchange with amusement and appreciation.

  “Why would you think I want to wait around until she’s gone?” Ikenna asked. “I’d be an old man myself by then. I want my portion now.”

  “My mom doesn’t want her half of the shop. I could have her sign it over to me,” Odane suggested.

  Inwardly, I was screaming, but I couldn’t get my mouth to make a sound or any part of me to work. It was like something or someone was holding me down so I couldn’t speak or move. The holding was gentle enough, but it was impossible to break just the same.

  Ikenna scratched at his chin again, the skeletal tattoo mirroring the motion of his hand. “What are you saying, son?”

  “I’m saying that if I had my half, I might be inclined to welcome my father into the family business.”

  “And you’d double-cross your aunt like that?”

  “She double-crossed my mother.” Odane shrugged.

  I let out a huff of breath, the only sound I could seem to make, but I was so angry, so unbelievably furious that he’d play us like this. On the desk, the stacks of papers rustled like they were being stirred by some invisible breeze.

  Ikenna’s uneven eyes looked my direction and then at the papers on his desk that were starting to flap more violently now. The candles near his altar flickered in the unnatural wind.

  Odane squeezed at my hand and shot me a look. Give me a minute here, that look seemed to say. Trust me.

  But I wasn’t about to sit there knowing he was betraying Mama Legba. The more my temper spiked, the more I seethed, the more the wind rustled.

  Ikenna’s mouth curved up as his eyes lit in anticipation.

  “Chloe,” Odane snapped, and something in his tone made me go still. The wind went silent, too.

  “Well, well,” Ikenna said. “So she has a name.”

  Next to me, Odane flinched. “Don’t you—”

  “You don’t have to worry none,” Ikenna interrupted. “As long as you follow through on the terms we set, I’ll never have any reason to use her name.” He smiled at me, and my stomach turned.

  Odane glared at his father. “So you’ll help us?”

  Ikenna stared at him like he was making up his mind. “You get your mama’s half of Odette’s shop,” he said finally, “and I’ll help you with whatever you and Chloe need helping with.”

  I repressed a shiver at the sound of my name on his lips.

  “That’s it?” Odane asked, wary.

  Ikenna laughed. “That ain’t enough?”

  “It might take some time to get the papers in order,” Odane said.

  “Well, you come on back when you do, and we’ll talk more then,” Ikenna said, standing as though to show us out.

  “We don’t have that kind of time. Someone stole some aloe from Aunt Odette, and by our figuring it has a little less than a day left to cure.”

  “I see,” Ikenna said, looking more disturbed than I would have expected him to show.

  “So unless you want someone to summon the Baron here, to your city … ” Odane leaned forward. “Without the understanding in her dreams, we don’t know how to stop the witch from summoning your boss. You see our dilemma.”

  “I do indeed.” Ikenna scratched at his chin again, clearly unhappy to be pushed. “It’ll take some doing to round up all I need for the ritual, but I could do it later tonight.”

  “Where?”

  “We need to be somewhere that has some link to the person we’re trying to summon in her dreams.”

  “There’s a cabin that used to belong to the witch,” Odane said, giving him the location. “There’s a tomb, too.”

  Ikenna considered the options. “If someone’s about to summon Samedi, I ain’t in no hurry to be lurking around a graveyard. The cabin should do fine.”

  “What time?”

  “Right around sundown,” Ikenna said. “I’ll ask for your marker on the payment.”

  Odane gave a terse nod and unclasped his necklace. He gave it a long look, rubbing one of the beads between his fingers, and then tossed it across the table to his father, who took it up and tucked it away without even looking at it.

  “Thank you,” Odane told him, holding out his hand.

  “Don’t be thanking me yet,” Ikenna said, ignoring the outstretched offering. He remained seated, as if on a throne. “I’ll expect those papers soon.”

  “You’ll have them,” Odane said through gritted teeth.

  “Y’all can see yourselves out?” Ikenna smiled at me, his uneven eyes aglow. “It was very nice to make your acquaintance, Miss Chloe.”

  Odane didn’t say anything else until we were in his truck and already pulling away from the bar. I couldn’t say anything, so I sat and seethed, wishing I could punch him.

  He drove a ways and then pulled over. “Dammit!” he shouted, pounding on the already worn steering wheel. He threw out a few more curses, and then rested his head on the wheel.

  “What the hell was that?” I asked, my voice finally working as I slugged him in the arm.

  Odane’s head snapped up, his eyes wide at my sudden burst of violence. “Chloe, I’m so sorry—”

  “You didn’t seem so sorry in there while you were stopping my mouth and holding me back. And yes, I knew that was you,” I said, poking a finger in his direction before he could make any sorry excuses. “You ever lift a finger against me again and I’ll—”

  “I had to do it,” he said,
taking another blow without flinching.

  “I just bet you did,” I said, trying to slap at him again.

  He leaned away from my fists but didn’t try to stop me. “Don’t you see? He had to believe that I was selling out Aunt Odette. If I’d have warned you what I was going to do, there was a good chance he would have seen right through our act. But you fought me, and that made him think I was really willing to betray her.”

  I frowned. “So you’re not?”

  Odane rubbed the back of his neck and looked at me, his dark eyes giving away the worry I felt. “I wasn’t planning on it, no. We got information we needed, didn’t we? And he’s agreed to help you break into those dreams you’ve been having. With both those things, maybe we can stop Thisbe.”

  “And then what? You’ll hand over Mama Legba’s shop?”

  “That was never the plan. And it still isn’t.” He sighed and slumped down in the driver’s seat.

  “You think you can get out of the agreement?”

  “Deals are made to be broken,” Odane said with a playful grin. When I didn’t respond, the smile slid from his face, and he scratched the back of his neck, as though he was uncomfortable. “I’ll figure something out.”

  I just sat there, my arms crossed and my expression murderous.

  “We still have the threat of Samedi,” Odane offered. “See, Samedi usually operates on the other side of the divide. He don’t usually come on our side, but when he does, he has a bad habit of seeking out those who serve him and making them, well, serve. And if we have the key to stopping him from being summoned … We can renegotiate.”

  “Oh … ” I said, feeling a little better.

  “Yeah. It’s one thing to play at prayers and spells. It’s another thing to come face-to-face with the demon who happens to be your boss, and who you’ve pledged your obedience to. Ikenna doesn’t want Samedi to be summoned any more than we do. He might have helped us no matter what, just to stop it from happening, but then you started up with all the energy and the wind, and I slipped up.”

  “Because you told him my name,” I said, understanding.

  Odane nodded. “The marker I gave him would have only affected me, but then there was that wind, and I knew he was getting excited.” He hit the steering wheel again. “I was just trying to stop you before you let him know how powerful you really are.”

  The memory of how Ikenna’s eyes lit up when Odane said my name sent a shiver of unease through me. I’d heard tales of people being called out of their name—usually scare-me stories told around bonfires late at night. But I’d learned enough in the last few weeks to not dismiss something because I thought it was a story.

  “I’m so sorry, Chloe.”

  “What could he do?” I asked, studying Odane for some sign that he’d set this all up on purpose. But he seemed sincere enough.

  “I don’t know for sure, but he has more leverage now to get me to come through on my end of the deal than he did before he knew your name.”

  “He could force you to betray Mama Legba?”

  “He could try.” Odane’s jaw went tight. “But I’ll never let him, Chloe.” He hesitated for a second, then offered, “We could still call it off. I’ll figure out a way to get my marker back, and—”

  “No,” I said, cutting him off. “I need to go through with this.” And then I told him about Piers and how he’d gone missing.

  “You’re thinking he’s the sacrifice Thisbe needs,” Odane said when I was done.

  I nodded, unable to say those words out loud and hear their terrible truth. “Let Ikenna try to do whatever with my name. There’s more riding on this than just me now.”

  “So we’ll stick with the plan,” Odane said. “We’ll meet Ikenna tonight. And we’ll deal with whatever problems he brings as they come.”

  Twenty-Five

  By the time I got myself back to Le Ciel, my nerves were jangling, but I tried to put the thoughts of Ikenna out of my head and went to find out what Lucy discovered in the registers. She was in the main office building at the plantation, a small, plain-looking structure on the outskirts of the property.

  I found her in her dad’s office, sitting behind his cluttered desk. “Hey,” she said, studying a large ledger when I came in. “So how’d it go?”

  “It didn’t.”

  “What?” She looked up at me.

  “I didn’t go to the police station,” I told her, and then before she could ask why, I explained. “There’s no point. The police aren’t gonna be interested in a missing black man, not when they already think that Piers is the one who stole that stuff.”

  Her face pinched, like she wanted to argue, but she didn’t. Because she knew I was right. As long as he was a suspect, there was no way the police were going to care if he was in trouble.

  “But you’ve been gone for hours,” Lucy asked, a question in her voice.

  “I was with Odane.”

  “With Odane?” She didn’t bother to hide her surprise.

  “That’s what I just said.”

  “Why, exactly, were you with Odane?” Lucy asked, her brows drawn together in confusion.

  I sighed. “He offered to help the other day, and I thought it was time to talk to him about it.”

  She didn’t say anything right away. I could tell she was waiting for me to explain, but she wasn’t going to wait forever before she started pressing. But I wasn’t sure how much I should tell her.

  “Well?” She was staring at me expectantly. “Did he help?”

  “We went to see his father.”

  Her eyes widened a little, and I knew that she didn’t like what I’d said. “You mean the father that Mama Legba doesn’t trust?”

  “The very same. Turns out he’s a houngan over across the river in Algiers,” I told her. It wasn’t a complete lie. A bokor usually is a houngan first. “A Voodoo priest of sorts,” I had to explain, when it was clear she didn’t understand. “Like Mama Legba, but a man.”

  “Does Mama Legba know about this?”

  “No. And we’re not going to tell her. She and Odane’s dad have some sort of argument from way back—something involving her sister and the shop—and she doesn’t like him. You saw how she reacted to Odane’s suggestion—she wouldn’t want me to talking to him, much less having him help us.”

  “Then maybe you shouldn’t,” Lucy suggested. “I know you’re scared. We’re all scared for Piers, but—”

  “But what? We wait for the police to solve the murders and find Thisbe?” I gave a dry, hollow laugh. “The police aren’t looking for Thisbe. They don’t even understand what to look for when it comes to her.”

  “Chloe … ” Lucy warned.

  I sank into the chair on the other side of the desk. “Ikenna had a lot to say about summoning Samedi. Thisbe needs a sacrifice, and the sacrifice needs to be an equal for the person you’re trying to get back.” I looked up at her to make sure that she was paying attention so she understood. “Augustine was about Piers’s age, Lucy.”

  “Oh … ” she said, like that information was too much for her to process right away.

  “Did you find anything?” I asked, trying to distract her from trying to talk me out of the path I’d already chosen. I nodded toward the ledger.

  I watched a couple different emotions flash across Lucy’s face, but it was clear she’d found something and her desire to tell me what it was outweighed her desire to argue about Odane and Ikenna.

  “Actually, I think I did.” She flipped back through the oversized pages and, using a finger to track down a column, found what she was looking for. “There was an Augustine at Le Ciel. It looks like Roman’s father, Jean-Pierre, bought him when he was about sixteen, back in 1806.”

  Relief shuttled through me. “So my visions—they’re true.”

  “Maybe,” she said, but she was frowning down at the book.

  “What is it?”

  “I could be wrong about this, because it’s really hard to understand what I’m see
ing here, but from what I can tell, this Augustine was busy. Not long after Jean-Pierre purchased him, there are a whole series of entries to show where he’d received permission to hire himself out to other plantations.” Lucy pointed to some notations, then flipped to other pages and did the same. “I guess that was common enough. Sometimes masters would let their slaves earn some money to buy things for their cabins or extra food. But then, right around 1811—about the same time as that news clipping that affected you—the entries stop.” She glanced up at me. “That’s the weird part—there isn’t any other entry for him after that.”

  “Why’s that so weird? Didn’t slaves die or run away all the time?” I asked, trying to figure out what she was seeing.

  “They did, but Jean-Pierre kept records of everything. Every time he bought or sold something—or someone—he wrote it down, so every time a slave died or was sold off, it’s noted in here. See?” She showed me a couple of the records so I could understand what she was saying.

  “But there’s no death or sale note for Augustine?”

  “Nothing. I’ve looked through about a decade’s worth of ledgers for some sign of him after 1811, but there’s no other mentions or notes about what happened to him. It doesn’t say that he died. There’s no record of him being sold, and there’s nothing noting him as a runaway, either.” She looked up at me. “It’s like he disappeared.”

  “People don’t just disappear,” I told her.

  “I know, but he seemed to.” Lucy frowned and closed the ledger. “On paper, at least.”

  “So it’s a dead end?”

  “This is. But we know he was real now,” Lucy said with no little satisfaction.

  I sank into one of the chairs. “But we don’t know what happened to him.”

  She frowned. “No. We can probably assume that whatever happened, it wasn’t good. But it’s still a mystery.”

  “We have to solve it,” I told her. “Tomorrow that ointment is going to be ready. And if we’re right that Thisbe has Piers … ” But I couldn’t make myself finish that sentence.

  Looking up at the note of desperation in my voice, she frowned at me. “There’s still a little time left. You don’t have to go to this hangman—”