Illusion

by Martina Boone

  Barrie stretched out beside Pru on the grass. Above them, the sky was enormous, interrupted only by drifting wisps of clouds. Pru waved the Tupperware container at her, and Barrie dug out a bite of ice cream, her thumb leaving an imprint in the misted frost. The silk peach flavor slid down her throat like a minor sin, cold, tangy-sweet, and enticing.

  Pru pointed up at the clouds. “Other people go out to the ocean for solace, but up in the sky, there’s always something beyond the boundaries of what we know. The solar system is within the galaxy, which is within the universe. Maybe more universes. Who knows what’s out there? I’ve always told myself that tomorrow was like the sky, filled with possibility. That made it easier to stay here and wait for something good to happen. But I’ve spent my whole life waiting.”

  “You’re not waiting anymore,” Barrie said, feeling fiercely proud.

  “The hardest part of changing things is knowing how much needs changing,” Pru continued as if Barrie hadn’t spoken. “I went from not throwing away anything in thirty years to almost throwing away three hundred years of Watson history. We can live without furniture, but we can’t throw ourselves away without feeling the damage. I’m going to say this one more time, and then I promise I won’t bring it up anymore. You lost everyone and everything you loved when you moved here, and every bit of what you thought you knew about your family was snatched away and replaced with something else. That kind of change makes you want to retreat inward, but I’m realizing that you can’t have relationships if you’re not willing to open yourself up and lean on people as much as you want them to lean on you. That goes for me, and it goes for Eight as well.”

  Barrie stared up at the sky, and it felt too close, as if it were falling all around her. Because Pru was right. She didn’t want to do what Lula had done, push away the people she loved the most. Refusing more ice cream as Pru offered her the container, she folded her arms behind her head.

  “What about you?” she asked. “Do you feel like you can lean on Seven?”

  “I can’t help loving him, but I’m not ready to forgive him yet.”

  “I think what matters most about people is what they make us feel about ourselves. You and Eight both make me feel loved and special, like I want to be a better person. . . . Does Seven make you feel like that? If he makes you happy, then I’ll be happy for you.”

  The clouds above them shredded in an unseen wind, casting shadows over Pru’s face—the thin, aristocratic nose, the high forehead with fine strands of pale curls blowing against her skin. Barrie had an urge to reach out and push the hair away, tuck it safely behind Pru’s ear, tuck Pru safely where Seven and life couldn’t hurt her anymore. Where Barrie couldn’t hurt her anymore.

  A surge of love pushed through her, like a tangible rush of energy. She had fought Mark so hard about leaving San Francisco before he was truly gone—she’d been furious, but he had insisted that he needed to know she had someone who loved her before he died. Mark would have adored Pru, and knowing that Barrie was with her would have brought him comfort—maybe it still could. Maybe it did. It was impossible for Barrie not to believe in an afterlife when there were spirits all around her.

  If there was a world of the dead, and Ayita and Elijah had brought Obadiah back from it, did that mean there was a way other people could cross over from it?

  She would have traded years of her life to see Mark sashay across the lawn in his melon-colored Isaac Mizrahi dress with the bows at the elbows. Traded anything for him to lie here with her and Pru, eating cold, tart ice cream on a sticky Carolina night while she had a few stolen minutes to tell him all the things there had never been time to say.

  Across the river, Beaufort Hall crowned its slope above the mud and marsh and water. The sun was setting, painting the clouds in fairy-tale colors that reflected on the dark water separating the mainland from Watson Island.

  Barrie had been wrong. You didn’t find strength when you couldn’t live without it. You found it when you had someone or something you loved so much that it forced you to stretch the edges of yourself further than you thought was possible.

  “I don’t want a life that’s safe,” she said to Pru, interrupting their comfortable silence, “not if it means sacrificing other people. And I don’t want to look back on roads not taken. I don’t want you doing that anymore, either. Promise me something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Take Seven out for a hot dog at Bobby Joe’s and talk things through. I want to like him. But not if he’s going to turn out to be the kind of person who makes you feel smaller instead of better.”

  “I’ll take your advice if you’ll take it yourself,” Pru said. “Be careful with Eight, but don’t hold back. Don’t punish him for making the same kind of choices about the Beaufort binding that you feel you have to make yourself.”

  “Pinky swear.” Barrie held up her little finger and shook it when Pru hooked her own around it. “Also, while I’m thinking about Mary and Daphne and bridges that need building, I have an idea about how we can get Obadiah more energy without having to sacrifice the lodestones. I’d need your help, though. A lot of it.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  While she waited for Eight to come back over, Barrie finished setting up the entertainment center in the back parlor beside the kitchen. Crowded with the sofa, chairs, and flat-screen television from the family room in Lula’s house, the room looked achingly familiar, yet it was empty of the main thing that had made it feel like home. The oversize chair still smelled of popcorn and Mark’s perfume. One breath, and Barrie was back in San Francisco with him, the two of them watching The Princess Bride or singing along with Pitch Perfect for the forty-fifth time.

  Thinking of Mark singing was another reminder that life was too short for could-have-beens and should-have-beens and if-I’d-onlys. Every person was an unfinished puzzle, and if you spent too much time focusing on the missing pieces, you never got to appreciate what you’d already put together. Pru was right. She couldn’t fault Eight for making the same choices she had made.

  “Barrie?” Pru called from the kitchen. “Are you about done? Eight’s here.”

  Smoothing her shirt as she turned, Barrie found Eight standing in the doorway smiling at her. Her two worlds collided, the past of San Francisco and the present, and Mark’s voice sounded in her head so vividly that he could have been standing beside her.

  So this is your number boy? he would have said. Someone’s got the math all wrong, baby girl. He’s a ten and not an eight. Now, what the heck are you waiting for?

  Barrie ran the last few steps. Standing on her toes, she kissed Eight softly and then pulled back, giving him a chance to escape. The suddenness of it must have surprised him, because his eyes held hers, his pupils dark and wide, his expression faintly puzzled but unguarded enough to give her hope. Then he cupped her face, gently, as if she were fragile. Still watching her, his lips descended, moving over hers, claiming hers. Her eyes closed, and she let herself get lost in the sensation.

  He raised his head finally, and watched her before he pulled away. “This doesn’t change what I said about looking for a way to take the binding back. Real problems don’t get solved with kisses.”

  “So we’ll keep working at the problems until we figure them out,” Barrie said.

  Eight kissed her again, fiercely this time, and when he pulled back, he grinned. “So tell me this plan you called about.”

  “There are stages. I want to take a look at your library for information about the binding, but I assume that has to wait until your dad goes back to the office. The main idea, though, would involve Kate meeting Obadiah. I figure you and your dad will both hate that.”

  “If the plan makes sense, then Kate and I’ll either figure out how to get Dad on board or we’ll sneak her out of the house when he’s not looking.”

  Barrie raised an eyebrow. “What happened to honesty and disclosure?”

  “I’ll be the first one to meet Dad partway any time he’s
ready to roll up his sleeves and help us find a solution,” Eight said, “but this involves all of us. He doesn’t get to make all the decisions like he’s the only one who has a stake in it, and we don’t have time to wait for him to understand that, not with Ayita and Elijah putting people in danger. Right?”

  “As long as you’re sure.” Barrie took Eight’s hand and led him into the kitchen, where they talked things through with Pru, ironed out all the details, and made the necessary phone calls. Another hour passed before Pru managed to get Seven over to Watson’s Landing on the pretext of discussing a restaurant partnership agreement for Mary.

  • • •

  En route to Colesworth Place, Eight and Barrie collected Kate on the other end of the tunnel, and then they climbed the river path all together. They found Obadiah eating his dinner on the ruined steps of the old mansion. The postsunset sky had yet to bring out the night chorus of frogs and myriad insects, but the dig crew had already stopped work and sat in a half circle of camp chairs beside the overseer’s cabin. The dusky hush had an expectant quality, a sense of something coming.

  Like the ravens perched above him on the fractured columns, Obadiah had swiveled around to watch Barrie, Eight, and Kate approach. Kate walked nearly sideways, watching the dig crew and the patrol car parked beneath a tree.

  “Are you positive they can’t see us?” she asked. “The deputies, either? How does Obadiah know we’re coming to see him? He might assume we’re on our way to visit Cassie, and then he’ll have to make us disappear all of a sudden, right? Won’t people notice that?”

  “There are some kinds of magic he’s good at. The kind that would be great for robbing banks, apparently. He’s just not so great with curses. Or ghosts,” Eight said. His tone was light, but his arms hung stiffly at his sides, fingers clenching and unclenching.

  Barrie looped her arm around his. “Relax, would you? You’re supposed to be the one with the gift. Ham it up, or Obadiah will realize that it’s Kate who’s trying to figure out what he wants.”

  “But don’t blame me if I can’t,” Kate said. “I haven’t had a chance to practice on anyone except you two and Dad—and all that told me is that all y’all are dysfunctional. Also, being here is giving me a headache.”

  Barrie gave Kate’s shoulder a little squeeze. “That’s the downside to the binding, but you’ll get used to it. As for the rest, we don’t expect you to be perfect. You may not be able to read Obadiah at all, but like you said, even without the gift, you’ve gotten good at reading body language and figuring out how people feel. At the very least, see if you can read what he thinks about the idea. Figure out if it makes him scared or nervous. He might downplay the danger to us because he’s willing to risk it, but if he’s nervous about being able to protect everyone, then it’s probably too dangerous for us to try.”

  Obadiah appeared stronger, or at least less weary and heartsick, than he had the last couple of times Barrie had seen him. As they reached him, he set the half-finished ham-and-cheese sandwich he’d been eating down on a paper plate.

  Barrie introduced Kate and settled on the step beside him. The stone was still warm after absorbing a full day’s heat. “I’m glad to see Cassie brought your dinner.”

  “Not graciously, but at least she didn’t forget.” Having looked Kate over, Obadiah shifted his focus back to Eight. “You going to sit, or do you plan to stand there glowering at me until I lose my appetite?”

  “Glowering has a certain appeal.” Eight remained standing, his stance tense and ready, until Barrie crooked her finger and gestured at the step beside her. Then he sat reluctantly.

  “How positive are you that Ayita and Elijah can’t take energy from someone as long as that person stays outside the police tape?” Barrie asked. “Or hurt them some other way?”

  “Am I positive there’s no chance?” Obadiah wiped his fingers on a napkin, one at a time, and then folded the napkin over the remains of his sandwich. “There’s a chance the sky could fall and the earth could crack open. Anything is possible.”

  “Then can you do this in stages? Put Ayita and Elijah to sleep temporarily while they’re weak, bind them the way you originally planned, but then gather the energy you need to remove the curse, instead of trying to remove the curse right away?”

  Obadiah shifted his attention across to the dig site, where order had more or less been restored. The dig crew had relaid the stakes in neat rows, scraped away the torn soil from the grid squares, and hauled the soil away so that they could push it through the giant sifting screens. But around the perimeter of the buried room, yellow police tape still flapped in the wind, and plastic sheeting weighted down by sandbags covered the small hole in the arched brick ceiling.

  “I could try, but what’s the point? At best it would buy only a little time, and without the lodestones, it would take too long to gather the energy I need. Then, even if I managed to remove the curse, Ayita and Elijah would wake eventually, and they’d be even angrier than they are right now. Their vengeance could simply take another form—one even more dangerous than the curse itself.”

  “How is that different from what you intend with the lodestone?” Eight asked impatiently. “You’d still have to send them back to where they came from. Can’t you put them into a spirit bottle or burn the bones or something?”

  Obadiah laced his fingers together and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “I didn’t summon them, so I don’t control them. They’ll fight me if I try to force them to cross over, and that takes power and energy I don’t have without the lodestones. But if I can bind them and remove the curse, then convince them that they’ve had enough vengeance, they might cross over on their own. Or I threaten them and force them to cross over. As long as I have access to their bones, there are ways to release trapped spirits without destroying them. It comes down to how much power I have versus how much they have, which isn’t an exact formula—this much energy, versus that much energy. There are two of them, and there is skill involved, and magical aptitude—talent—not to mention that rage and the need for revenge fuels them and makes them stronger. But that’s not what you’re really asking, is it?”

  Barrie stared down at her shoes, which were more brown than pink now, after her dunking in the river. “I—we—have an idea, but we need to be sure you can protect people first.”

  “You’re still harboring the delusion that magic is precise, that it can respond to promises.” Obadiah’s smile was a feral gesture, a baring of teeth gleaming in the darkness. “Magic and spirits . . . what we’re engaged in . . . is a battle between opposing forces. Anyone who tells you there’s no chance for casualties is a charlatan, a fool, or both.”

  “Then I think we’re done here.” Barrie pushed herself to her feet.

  He caught her hand and held her in place, which brought Eight surging to stand beside her. Obadiah released Barrie with a sigh. “Tell me exactly what you have in mind, and I’ll tell you whether I can make it work. Or at least tell you the risks involved.”

  A burst of laughter from beside the overseer’s cabin carried across the expanse of grass, and several Coleman lanterns switched on. Obadiah was already doing his glowing thing again, making light emanate from his skin, and the area around him was brighter than the surrounding dusk.

  “You said that Elijah and Ayita surprised you yesterday when you were going to help Daphne communicate with them,” Barrie said, “but you’ve had some time to recover, and you have more energy now. What if you tried letting Mary talk to them? She’s the one who’s having to hold the family together. Daphne said she’d convince Mary somehow. Can you make that safe for them?”

  “My answer won’t change because you asked the question in a different way, petite. When it comes to spirits, there’s no such thing as completely ‘safe.’ Elijah and Ayita spent themselves bringing me back because they recognized me as family. That should offer Daphne and Mary the same protection, but there are no guarantees. And what happens later—if they won’t remove
the curse willingly, or if I can’t release them?”

  “What if we brought a lot of people here? If you can keep Mary and Daphne safe long enough to talk to the spirits, then it would be worth risking an open house, a chance for Cassie and her family to mend fences with people in town now that Wyatt’s gone. And we’d be bringing a crowd to you at the same time. Would that give you the energy you need?”

  Something hungry slipped into the look Obadiah gave her. “Depends on how many and who they are. But why not do everything at once?”

  Barrie held his eyes. “Because if Ayita and Elijah remove the curse on their own and cross over willingly, there’s no reason to do any more. Unless removing the curse and releasing the spirits isn’t all you’re really after. You keep saying the gold is only a means to an end—but Mary doesn’t want it.”

  “How many more times do you need me to explain my motives?” Obadiah’s muscles had tensed, and he stretched his neck first one direction and then the other and let out a breath, though whether that was an effort to calm his temper or to gather his thoughts, Barrie couldn’t tell. “Is it so hard to understand that I want to leave my family better off before I die?” he asked. “Leave them safer? I’d like to go back to my apartment in Paris and know they are taken care of. In the end, isn’t that what most people want?”

  “You would think so, wouldn’t you? But people seldom want what they’re supposed to want,” Eight said.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Supported by Daphne at her elbow, Mary stepped onto the Colesworth property with the air of a cat walking across wet carpet. Kate, Barrie, Pru, and Eight quietly shut the doors of Pru’s ancient Mercedes in the parking lot before following Mary and Daphne to the excavation site.

  Barrie’s head ached more than usual. And not just from the inevitable, unrelenting pressure of being away from Watson’s Landing. There were too many moving pieces to track.