by Jana DeLeon
Mallory swiftly drew her hand back and started to back away from the table, but Silas placed one hand on her arm before she was out of reach. "Devereaux's your last name, right?" he asked.
Mallory nodded.
"I thought so," Silas said, and gave her a smug smile. "I knew your parents." That said, he dropped his hand from her arm and turned back to the table.
Mallory took two steps back from the table and stared at Jake, a frightened look on her face. Jake tried to blank his expression, tried to pretend that nothing out of the ordinary had happened. It took every ounce of willpower for him to pick up his cards and make the next bet.
What the hell had just happened?
Silas had intentionally touched her - he knew it without a doubt. But why? And why the comment about her parents?
Then there was that smile. That superior smile.
There was simply no reason for Silas to touch Mallory unless he was proving a point. And Jake had a sinking suspicion that the point Silas was about to prove was that Mallory's bad luck didn't affect him at all.
Mallory hurried home after the tournament, not wanting to talk to Jake before she'd had a chance to confer with Amy and find out what her friend had said about the voodoo situation. Because Scooter had eaten with them, they'd avoided the entire conversation at lunch, but Mallory had managed to slip in the fact that Silas had blatantly touched her and was winning almost every hand.
She could tell the information bothered Amy as much as it did her and hoped like hell her friend had found out something useful. Otherwise, this entire situation was about to fall apart and there wasn't a damn thing she could do about it. The only upside was that her uncle hadn't confronted her about the situation at her table at all, making her wonder if Glenda hadn't had a chance to mention their meeting the night before or was waiting for her to work it all out with Reginald before she said anything.
Either way, Mallory was grateful for the reprieve. There was entirely too much going on right now and the last thing she needed was a reminder from her uncle that her entire life was on its way down the crapper.
As soon as she arrived home, she went into the bathroom closet and pulled out the voodoo doll. It looked so harmless lying in the box - still creepy, but harmless. She felt her pulse start to quicken and placed the box on her coffee table, anxious to rid herself of its weight.
She was being silly. It was just a doll.
Granted, it was a doll that seemed to shift things within the universe, but how? And where the hell was Amy?
She was just reaching for her cell phone when Amy's car pulled into her driveway. Amy jumped out of the car, pulling a huge tote bag after her, and hurried toward the house, one shoulder slumped down from the weight of the bag.
"What the heck are you carrying?" Mallory asked as she opened the door for Amy to enter. "A body?"
Amy grimaced and dumped the bag onto the couch then rubbed her shoulder. "Yeah, I killed Patrick and brought him here in pieces. I thought we could feed him to the alligators."
Mallory laughed. Amy was definitely getting over Patrick in a hurry. "So I take it that's the voodoo research?"
Amy nodded and began to pull notebooks, binders and books from the bag. "Yeah, my friend loaned me everything she had. I promised her an exclusive on whatever we turn up with the doll." She looked over at Mallory. "She won't use names. I hope that was okay."
"I don't care. Let's just hope some of this research helps."
Amy pulled a pink notebook out of the stack on the couch and flipped it open. "I've been studying this stuff since last night and making my own notes. Basically, I think the doll was used to put a curse on you."
Mallory frowned. "That seems a strange conclusion to draw when you consider the way my life is naturally."
"I know. That's where my holdup is in moving forward, but essentially, there is no reasonable explanation for Silas to have a doll in your likeness unless he was using it to practice black arts. I mean, you're hot, but I hardly think men are going to run out and have dolls made in your likeness - especially men like Silas Hebert."
"Yeah, I guess not. But if there's a curse on me, what is it?"
Amy opened one of the books to a drawing and passed it to Mallory. "Before you say no, I want you to take a look at this."
Mallory looked at the image, a group of people sitting in a circle, a voodoo doll in the middle. A bright light was beaming down from the sky into the doll. "So?"
Amy took a deep breath. "Those people are drawing the curse out of the doll so that they can identify the purpose. There are instructions for conducting the extraction starting on the next page."
"Oh, no," Mallory shook her head and slammed the book shut. "I'm not doing any woo-woo stuff, especially voodoo."
"Mallory, I hate to point out the obvious, but what other options do you have left? Obviously this doll is a key to everything that's happening. Don't you want to know why?"
Mallory rose from the couch and walked over to the window, staring outside. "You know I want to know why, but voodoo? I mean, it was one thing to play with stuff when we were kids, but now that I know there's something to it ... well, it doesn't seem like such a great idea."
"Okay, then we'll put that on the back burner for now." Amy grabbed another book from the stack. "This book says that some of the strength of the curse is based on the precise measurements of the doll in relation to the person it's made in the image of." She pulled a tape measure from her purse. "Hold up the doll and let's get some measurements."
Mallory lifted the doll out of the box and held it out in front of Amy, who began to take measurements and jot them down in her notebook. She was just measuring the waist when Scooter walked through the front door.
"Holy shit!" Scooter cried, and took one step back out the doorway. "What the hell are you doing with that? You can't play with that shit, Mallory. It's not a joke."
Mallory shoved the doll back in the shoe box and threw on the lid. "For Christ's sake, Scooter, I'm not an idiot. I didn't make that doll and I'm not happy it's around."
He stuck his head back in the door and looked anxiously from her to Amy. When he didn't see the doll, he took one step inside. "Then if you didn't make it, where did it come from?"
"I took it from Silas Hebert's room," Mallory said. "That night we broke into the hotel."
Scooter stared at her. "Are you crazy? You can't go around stealing voodoo things. Good God, Mallory, if Silas is into voodoo no telling what he might do to you."
"Yeah," Amy said, "that's sort of what we're trying to figure out here." She waved one hand over the stacks of books and papers.
Scooter looked nervously over the book then back at Amy. "So what are you going to do?"
"Well," Amy began, "I want to try an extraction, but Mallory doesn't like the idea."
Scooter shook his head. "I don't even know what the hell that is and I don't like it either." He looked over at Mallory. "This is bad news. I say you put that doll at the bottom of the bayou and forget you ever saw it."
Mallory bit her lip and looked from Scooter's frightened face to Amy's excited one. "I'm sort of afraid to do that. What if it makes me drown or something?"
"Holy shit, Mallory." Scooter stared at her in dismay.
"Maybe the extraction isn't such a bad idea," Mallory said. "At least we might be able to find out if I can destroy the doll with no side effects."
"Now you're talking," Amy said, and clapped her hands. She grabbed the book from the coffee table and flipped past the extraction image to the instructions. "It says here that we need to do this on blessed ground. Does that mean a church or something?"
"How the hell would I know?" Mallory said. "But if I had to guess, I'd say no. I'd guess they mean ground blessed by a voodoo person."
Amy blew out a breath. "How in the world are we supposed to find voodoo-blessed ground?"
Mallory looked over at Scooter who shook his head, obviously hoping she'd put the idea out of her mind. "I think I might
know a place," she said before she could change her mind. "There's a place in the woods ... a voodoo woman used to live there."
Amy jumped off the couch, grabbed the book and shoved it into the bag. "What are we waiting for? Grab that doll and let's get going. You coming, Scooter?"
"Hell, no!" Scooter watched as Mallory lifted the box off the coffee table and took one step backward out the door. "This is a really bad idea, Mallory, really, really bad."
"As opposed to the stellar life I have now?"
Scooter shook his head. "Being unlucky is one thing. Curses are something else entirely. This is scary shit - like worse than losing a finger even. You should at least talk to Jake before you do this."
If her mind hadn't been totally made up before, Scooter's last statement had clinched it. "This has nothing to do with Jake."
Jake drove the couple of miles down the dirt road to Mallory's cabin with mixed emotions. He was still frustrated with the position she'd put him in, but the reality was that he would probably have done the same thing if he were her. Besides, he didn't like the distance Mallory had put between them all day. Even though it was obvious that at this point there was little she could do to help, Jake missed the feeling of him and Mallory working as a team.
He was going to get that feeling back - after all, they only had one more day left until the end of the tournament, and he didn't want things left this way.
Mallory's car was in the driveway when he pulled up, but a search of her house produced nothing. He looked out the kitchen window, squinting into the fading sunlight and saw Scooter sitting on his pier, a beer in one hand, a fishing rod in the other. Jake pushed open the back door and walked over to the pier, figuring Scooter probably knew where to find Mallory.
"Scooter," Jake said as he stepped on the pier.
"What?" Scooter jumped up from his chair, dropping both the beer and the rod into the bayou. Quick as lightning, he grabbed a net from the side of his chair and fished the beer out before it sank. "That was close," he said as he poured a bit of bayou water out of the top of the bottle.
He looked over at Jake and glared. "What the hell were you doing, man? Sneaking up on people like that?"
Jake glanced behind him, watched the tip of the rod and reel sink slowly into the bayou and shook his head. "I didn't mean to startle you. I was just wondering if you knew where Mallory was. I need to talk to her."
"It's a little late for that, I would say."
"What are you talking about?"
Scooter threw one hand in the air in obvious exasperation. "Those damn women - Amy and Mallory - I tried to tell them not to mess with voodoo, but they wouldn't listen. I tried to tell them to talk to you first, but Mallory said it was none of your business."
Jake felt his pulse quicken. What in the world had they done? "Where are they, Scooter?"
"They went to the clearing where the voodoo woman's cabin used to be-some shit about `hallowed ground.' Amy said they were going to ‘extract' the voodoo doll. I don't know what it means, but it sounds damn dangerous. But could I talk them out of it? Noooooooo."
Jake's mind raced with possibilities, none of them pleasant. He knew the place they'd gone-the place where he'd kissed Mallory. The question was, could he find it in the dark?
Gesturing at Scooter, he took a step off the pier. "C'mon, Scooter."
"Where are we going?"
"We're going to get the girls before they get into trouble."
"Unh-uh," Scooter said, his voice firm. "Not a chance."
"I thought Mallory was your friend."
"Damn it, why does everyone keep throwing that in my face?" Scooter grabbed his ice chest from the pier. "I'm not going without reinforcements."
Jake shook his head. "Whatever it takes."
Mallory watched as Amy drew a large circle in the dirt with a stick, not sure whether to be disturbed or amused. Surely they couldn't make things worse, right? And that was even assuming the two of them could muster up any voodoo magic at all, which Mallory had doubted from the beginning. Things like voodoo couldn't be learned from a library book-at least she hoped not.
Amy motioned to her to take a seat and Mallory stepped inside the circle and slid down onto the hard ground, thankful she wasn't wearing her new jeans, or shorts.
"Okay," Amy instructed as she sat cross-legged across from Mallory. "Put the doll in the middle, then I'll light the candle."
Mallory pulled the doll out of the box and placed it in between her and Amy, as close as she could figure to the center of the circle. Amy pulled a purple candle and a set of matches from her bag.
"Shouldn't that be black?" Mallory asked.
Amy gave her an apologetic look. "It was the closest I had. I didn't have time to stop by Wal-Mart on the way over.
Hoping the voodoo gods liked purple, Mallory watched Amy light the candle and wave it over the doll. When the wax began to melt, she tilted the candle to the side, waiting for a single drop to spill over the side.
The drop was just about to tip off the candle and onto the doll when a beam of light encased them, causing them both to jump up. Mallory felt her heart beating in her chest as she turned to ascertain the source of the light. A moment later, the light disappeared and she saw Jake's white rental car sitting in the moonlight.
Amy looked over at Mallory with a sigh. "Busted."
Jake jumped out of the car and strode over to where they sat. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" He waved a hand over the circle.
"We're doing an extraction," Amy explained. "To find out what kind of curse is on the doll."
Jake stared at her a moment then looked over at Mallory. "I am having a huge amount of trouble reconciling two women of your intelligence sitting out here in the dark, pretending to perform black magic on a doll, but then things have been more than a bit strange since I got here."
He blew out a breath. "Look, we have to talk, me and you," Jake said to Mallory. "If you want Scooter and Amy to hear it, that's fine, but we got big problems and only one day to try and salvage everything. I know you're mad at me, and I'm not too damned pleased with you, but this is never going to work unless we help each other."
"I'm not mad at you," Mallory said, staring down at the ground. "Not really. I shouldn't have taken the doll-I know that. But the way things look now, if I hadn't, you would have been out of the tournament yesterday."
"You're right on both counts."
She looked back over at him. "So you're okay with me stealing the doll?"
"I might as well be. What difference does it make now?"
Scooter, who had been standing just outside the car door, finally worked up the nerve to take a few steps closer to them. "Well, I'm not okay with it. They're trying to do voodoo, man. You don't mess with voodoo."
"What other options do we have?" Amy asked, her voice filled with exasperation. "Silas wasn't cheating today, was he?" she directed her question at Jake.
"No," Jake replied. "He wasn't."
"See," Amy said. "The voodoo doll is the only explanation. After Mallory stole this one, Silas probably had another made. That's why he was winning again today. If we knew what kind of curse was on it, maybe we could figure out a way to work around it."
Jake stared at Amy for a moment then looked back at Mallory. "You're okay with this?"
Mallory shrugged. "At this point, what could it hurt?" She and Amy sank to the ground, resuming their original positions across from each other.
Jake sighed and stepped into the circle, sinking down on the ground to form a third point. "C'mon, Scooter. Let's get this over with."
Scooter looked from one face to another, obviously waiting for someone to let him in on the joke but no punch line was forthcoming. "Oh hell," he said, and stepped into the circle across from Jake. "You owe me big time for this, Mallory. It's going to take way more than a six-pack to even this one out."
Mallory grinned at Scooter as he took a seat. "We'll work something out." She looked over at Amy and nodded. "Let's d
o it."
Amy drew in a breath and reached for the candle again. The purple wax was pooled heavily in the top and it only took a second for it to spill over the side and onto the doll. As soon as the drop hit the doll, Amy picked up the book, and began to chant, "Spirit of the doll, we call you out. Show yourself to us on the hallowed ground. Bring all that you are to light."
As the last words left her mouth, lightning struck the ground in the clearing, and they all jumped. Mallory was fairly certain they all yelled, at least she was sure she did.
The smoke and dust from the lightning strike whirled around not ten feet from them, a thick, cloudy haze that was impossible to see through, and the darkness seemed to close in on them until only the tiny sliver of candlelight remained. The night sounds went away, the insects and birds seeming to be on mute and even the gentle tide of the bayou faded from hearing.
Then slowly a light began to glow and, from the center of the haze, the voodoo woman stepped out.
Chapter Fifteen
Mallory sucked in a breath and stared at the woman, unblinking. She heard Scooter yelp and Amy gasp. Even Jake scooted a few inches back into the circle away from the woman. It was the voodoo woman, the same in every way as she'd been when Mallory was a kid.
She wore a long black robe with wide sleeves that hung to her wrists, and she clutched a black sack with one gnarled hand. Her skin was the deep, rich brown of the Creoles, and her hair, which at one time would have been a deep black, was now pure silver and seemed to glow in the light. Her dark eyes locked on Mallory's, seeming to look deep into her soul, and Mallory felt a rush of disbelief race through her.
It just couldn't be. Was it really possible that twenty years hadn't changed her at all?
"You're playing around with things you don't understand," the woman said.
Mallory glanced around at her friends, but it was clear from the looks on their faces that if anyone was going to keep the conversation going, it was up to her. "We were just ... there was this doll ... and we thought. . ."
The woman locked her dark gaze on Mallory, studying her as a hawk would its prey, unblinking and unreadable. "I know what you were doing, Mallory Devereaux. I knew the instant you stepped onto this ground."
