“What kind is that?” Barrie asked, trying to decide whether he had actually been a bird, or whether the bird had only been an illusion of some kind. Or hypnotism, maybe?
Around her, the yunwi were converging from every corner of the garden, rushing as if they hadn’t had any warning he was coming, either. As they neared the fountain, they bent to scoop bits of gravel and oyster shell from the ground, which they flung at Obadiah before stooping to pick up more.
A shell pierced Obadiah’s wrist. Blood trickled and dripped to the ground.
When Barrie had dropped her blood-soaked socks on the night the water spirit had appeared in the fountain and bound her to Watson’s Landing, the yunwi had fallen on the blood like dogs in a feeding frenzy. Now their eyes grew dull in their faces.
“Who are you?” Barrie locked her knees to keep herself from running.
How could she have forgotten anything about this man? From the high cheekbones to the long dreadlocks and the expensive cut of his black silk suit, everything about him was memorable. His shirt was a dark, shining green instead of eggplant like before. That was the only difference.
“What is it you want from me?” she asked.
“A favor. A small one, and in exchange, I’ll give you what I offered you before.”
“Which is what?”
“Truth,” he said. “And freedom, if you want it.” Obadiah’s teeth slithered from behind his lips. “You wish to know if the Beaufort boy loves you for yourself. You want assurances and choices. I can give you all of that.”
Barrie’s brain lagged sluggishly behind his words. She caught herself about to ask how he could possibly know anything about her, but really, the answer was obvious, wasn’t it? If the man could turn into a raven and back again, listening to a conversation would be all too simple. If he could turn into a raven, what else could he do? What couldn’t he do?
Her world shifted on its axis with the force of a seismic quake. It was one thing to accept the Fire Carrier and the family gifts, to believe in Cherokee witchcraft and voodoo on an ancient level. Seeing magic standing before her in the shifting shape of a man who could turn into a bird and back . . . That was fierce and fearsome. And wonderful. It meant there was more magic at large in the world than she had ever imagined, and that opened up countless possibilities. If that kind of magic existed, what else was real?
“You’re not afraid anymore.” Obadiah watched her with open curiosity. “Why not?”
“Should I be afraid?” Barrie asked.
He cocked his head and walked around her slowly, and without his changing his expression at all, she had the impression he was laughing at her. She spun in place to follow his progress, but the alarm that had been growing in her subsided as fast as it had risen. She had no reason to be alarmed.
When he had walked all the way around her, Obadiah stopped and leaned back against the fountain. “Have you figured it out yet, petite?”
“Figured out what?”
“Honestly, I had hoped you would be more intelligent.” He trailed an idle finger in the basin. The water spat at him with a hiss of the pipes. He snatched his hand away. “Your handsome friend across the river might not be suited for magic. The gift is a responsibility, and he told you himself he doesn’t want it. Your problems would be solved without it. You would have answers about how he feels. He could come and go as he pleased. No binding. No restrictions.”
In the basin, the water level rose until it threatened to spill over the fluted marble lip, the way it had the night the spirit had appeared to bind Barrie to Watson’s Landing. Barrie eyed the water warily, expecting that any minute it would assume the liquid shape of a woman, but Obadiah passed the flat of his hand above the basin, then clenched his fist. The bubbling subsided in a low, rippling moan that was echoed by a screech from the yunwi as if they were in pain. The flurry of shell bits and gravel being pelted at Obadiah grew thicker.
Obadiah flexed his hand again, raised it in the air.
“Leave them alone!” Barrie yelled. She grabbed his arm in both of her own, and held on with every ounce of her strength.
He easily shook her off. “Enough of this. I’ll make the choice simpler for you. Choose whether you want to keep your gift or lose it.”
“My gift?” Barrie’s hands went numb and cold as if she were slowly freezing from the inside out. “We were talking about Eight.”
“We were,” Obadiah said, “but I’ve offered twice to remove the Beaufort gift. You don’t seem willing to cooperate.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Barrie’s ears rang with the silent screech from the yunwi in the wake of Obadiah’s words. “You can’t take the Watson gift away,” she said.
“I can’t?” His smile held no amusement. “Or I shouldn’t? Because it might require a bit of time, but I assure you, it can be done. You have something I need, so consider it a bargaining chip.”
“You haven’t even said what you want. Anyway, I can’t agree without asking Eight.”
“In your shoes he wouldn’t hesitate,” Obadiah said.
Remembering what Eight had told her the day before, Barrie wasn’t sure Obadiah was entirely wrong.
“What I’m asking is not so difficult,” Obadiah continued with the air of someone who had already won a bet. “There’s a lodestone buried on the Colesworth property that binds the curse to the family and the family to the plantation. I need you to find it for me.”
Barrie stared at Obadiah, taking in the too-steady way he watched her. It struck her as evasive. He was lying, or hiding something. “Did Cassie send you? Is that what this is about?”
“No one sent me. My ancestor laid the curse on the Colesworth family. Finding the stone would let me try to break it.” Obadiah sighed and shook his head. “Dark magic rebounds on the caster. What you wish on someone else, you reap in return. The same way the curse passes from generation to generation in the Colesworth family, the karmic price of casting it has passed from mother to child in my family ever since. I’m tired of seeing them suffer.”
A chill crawled up Barrie’s spine. “Why now?”
“Because you’re here with your gift. You can find the stone, and when the Colesworths finally pay their debt, I can break the curse.”
“What debt?”
“Blood and years and lives. Which isn’t the point.” Obadiah’s voice took on a soothing tone. “You have no reason to care about the curse as long as it doesn’t affect you or Watson’s Landing. Compared to the curse, removing the spell that created the Beaufort gift would be child’s play. If you want it removed. That would be your choice. You would only have to find that lodestone, too.” His smile turned oily and smooth, and he held his hands out, palms open, as if to show he was holding nothing back. “You see? I can be generous as well. I may not know where the other stones are buried, but the Scalping Tree is a landmark no one can miss.”
Barrie turned instinctively in the direction of the enormous oak at the center of the woods where the Fire Carrier emerged and disappeared each night. Local legend said braves had once hung the scalps of their enemies on it in tribute to the ancient spirit, and she had felt the pull of something lost emanating from it the moment she’d first arrived at Watson’s Landing. That had turned out to be from the keys to the tunnel, which Emmett had hidden in a recess beneath the trunk. But she and Eight had retrieved those already.
“There’s nothing else lost in the woods. I would feel it if there were,” she said, but even as she spoke, she acknowledged to herself that there was something. She had attributed it to the Fire Carrier himself.
“The Watson and Beaufort lodestones aren’t lost. Thomas Watson and Robert Beaufort buried the stones themselves as part of the Fire Carrier’s bargain. I may not be able to find the others, but the area around the Scalping Tree is not so large that I wouldn’t eventually find it myself. I’m not above a bit of revenge, petite.” Obadiah’s lips twisted, and he blinked a little too slowly, as if he were seeing something about himself
he didn’t like. “Given a choice between my family and yours, make no mistake which I’ll choose.”
There was something in the way his eyes shifted that made Barrie not entirely sure she believed him, but the yunwi seemed to have no such doubts. Their soundless shrieks of fury made Barrie wince. They rushed at Obadiah, and the handfuls of shell and gravel they had been throwing swelled to a barrage.
Several slivers of shell bounced off Obadiah’s cheek. His face shimmered under the onslaught, like a holographic projection losing power. For an instant, Barrie wasn’t sure what she saw there, a man Mark’s age, or someone older, different.
He put his finger up to wipe his skin, and it came away glistening with drops of red. Frowning at the droplets, he circled his finger in the air. The flurry of pebbles and white shards stopped and hung, suspended. Then in a rush of air they swirled and spun, faster and faster, climbing skyward until they vanished.
Barrie’s hair whipped into her face. All around her, the yunwi darted behind the low hedges of the maze, and whimpers sounded in the wind, barely audible and more felt than heard.
“You’re hurting them. Stop it!” Pivoting back to Obadiah, Barrie grabbed his finger, pulled it toward her, and let go only when the air stopped churning.
“They’re a nuisance. Now, are you going to help me?” Obadiah flicked a piece of shell from a crease in the dark fabric of his suit. There was a hard edge to the way he watched Barrie that turned the question and the motion into a threat.
It struck Barrie then how helpless she was. In the face of Obadiah’s power, how could she stop him from doing anything he wanted?
As if he’d heard the thought, Obadiah extended his finger and tilted her chin up to make her look at him. Her fear fled and left her blinking.
Why would she want to argue? She should want to help Obadiah. Feeling disconnected from the movement, she found herself nodding.
“That’s good. There, you see.” Obadiah smiled darkly. “I have no need or wish to harm your pets, little one. You come with me to find the lodestone. I remove the Colesworth curse, you keep the Watson gift, and everyone is happy. Then you can choose whether you wish to find the lodestone at Beaufort Hall.”
There was something off about the logic, something wrong. It niggled at the back of Barrie’s brain the way a tickle in the throat demands that you cough, even when you can’t. But it was hard, impossible, to think through the sludge of hot insistence that overwhelmed her objections. Of course she had to protect the yunwi and the Watson magic. That was her responsibility. Giving Eight the chance to live without the Beaufort gift was an added bonus.
Relationships never came with any kind of guarantee, but Barrie couldn’t imagine that she would ever feel indifferent to Eight. There would always be warmth or pain, and having to live with the Santisto between them would be either too much distance or too little.
“What if I—we, because this isn’t my decision alone—tell you to go ahead?” she asked. “If you remove the Beaufort gift, is there any danger to Eight and Seven?”
“Think of all the magic here like it’s a layer cake. It’s harder and more dangerous to remove the middle or bottom layers than it is to remove the top. I need to break the Colesworth curse before I can safely reach the Beaufort gift. Of course, I’ll also need the Beaufort lodestone, but it must all start with the curse.”
Barrie glanced across the river, first at Beaufort Hall, and then at Colesworth Place. “I’ll talk to Eight, but first you have to promise you won’t put anyone in danger. And no matter what happens, you don’t get to take my gift,” she said. “You don’t get to touch the yunwi or the Fire Carrier or anything or anyone at Watson’s Landing. Not ever. Those are the terms.”
Obadiah changed. Not a change of expression: a more fundamental, physical transformation of features into someone kinder and more familiar. Someone beautiful. He looked . . . not like himself.
Rationally, she knew it wasn’t real, but he looked like Mark.
Mark, who would never, had never, hurt anyone in his life.
“No harm will come to you or anyone you care for, but there is no ‘we’ in our bargain,” he said. “This is between you and me and the Colesworth girl. Leave Eight Beaufort out of it.”
Barrie looked up sharply. “You never mentioned Cassie.”
“The curse is bound in blood. It requires blood to remove it. A prick of the finger, no more than that.”
“Take mine, then. I’m a Colesworth, too.”
“That wouldn’t satisfy. You aren’t bound by their curse.” Obadiah’s smile dropped away. “Listen, petite. Nothing is sure in life except for death, and even that isn’t as certain as you might think. You don’t know me well enough to trust my promises, but I’ll give one to you anyway. Keep your bargain, and I’ll keep mine. The last thing I want to do is add more blood or pain to the burden my family bears.”
He spoke with such sincerity that Barrie couldn’t help believing what he said. And really, the choice was simple. If Obadiah took away the Beaufort gift, Eight would never need to know about the headaches and all the things his father had never told him. He would have his dream and the escape he had wanted all his life.
He could choose to go play baseball. He could choose anything, or anyone.
When you set someone free, they could choose to fly. But they could also choose to leave you.
“All right,” she said reluctantly. “I’ll help you. I’m not sure about the logistics, though. Even if I can get Cassie to agree, what about her family? Not to mention there are still ghost hunters and treasure hunters and reporters hanging around. Someone is going to see us and wonder what we’re doing. I can’t get over there unless Eight takes me—I don’t have a boat or a driver’s license—”
“I already told you to leave Eight Beaufort out of it.” Obadiah leaned forward, his nostrils flaring with a sudden intake of breath. “Tell no one about our bargain, or I’ll consider it the same as if you refused. As for the boat, I’ll take care of that and any unwanted attention. You just find a way to get the Colesworth girl to cooperate, or I will do it less pleasantly. And don’t wait too long to call me.”
“Call you how?” Barrie asked, thinking of the way he had appeared out of the blue.
He pointed toward her fist in answer, and something cold and hard dug into her palm. The green disk was back. At the center of it, the raven ruffled his feathers and blinked up at her, and she let go as if he’d pecked her skin. The disk clattered to the gravel. The raven stilled, became an etched image and nothing more.
Barrie raised her eyes back to Obadiah. “What does that have to do with calling you?”
“Pick it up.” He lifted his brows and regarded her with clear amusement.
She used two fingers to lift the disk, and found a phone number etched in gold on the other side. A laugh escaped her; she couldn’t help it. In one way, a phone number didn’t seem at all like Obadiah, but on the other hand, it hinted at a sense of humor.
When she looked up again, Obadiah was gone.
This time, though, she remembered all too clearly that he’d been there.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Pru wasn’t in the kitchen when Barrie rushed through the door. That relieved Barrie only slightly more than it disappointed her. She couldn’t mention Obadiah, but there was no alternative to confessing what she’d done at Cassie’s hearing.
After checking the butler’s pantry, she peered into the silent tearoom and found that empty, too. The shining glass of the windows caught the sunlight, but fallen petals and a dusting of pollen lay scattered around the cut-glass bowls on the starched white tablecloths, as if Pru hadn’t had the heart to remove the dying flowers yet.
Barrie turned away. She hastened through the kitchen and out into the corridor, where the door swinging shut behind her gave a deep and echoing groan.
“Is that you, Barrie? I’m in the library.” Pru’s voice drifted toward her.
Pausing on the threshold of the room a fe
w moments later, Barrie found her aunt rifling through the contents of several drawers, which appeared to have been emptied onto the surface of the desk.
“Are you looking for something in particular?” Barrie asked. “Maybe I could help.”
“You haven’t seen the keys that were in the top drawer here, have you?” Curled wisps of Pru’s hair had escaped her ponytail, and she brushed a hand back distractedly to smooth it. “I’ve arranged for a local auction company to come out to take what you and I sorted from the attic, along with the furniture that we’re going to replace with Lula’s pieces that the movers are bringing out from California. But there are bound to be things on the trucks that we won’t have room to keep. Walking past the stable building last night reminded me that it might be the perfect place for temporary storage. I’m pretty sure the key was on that ring.”
Barrie’s cheeks heated at the thought of how she and Eight had distracted each other while he’d still had the keys in his hand. “Eight must have forgotten and slipped the ring into his pocket after we put Mark’s ashes in the cabinet,” she said.
She and Pru both glanced at the blue-and-gold kintsugi urn on the shelf, and grief crept into the room. Then Pru rammed the desk drawer shut.
“You know, I’m tired of waiting for Beauforts. There’s bound to be a way to open the padlock. I probably have something in the toolbox that will break it.”
She carried the whole toolbox out, and Barrie followed her around the corner of the house, peering into the shadows for any sign of Obadiah and checking the trees for ravens. For the moment, at least, everything was quiet.
Even the yunwi didn’t seem concerned. They hung back while Pru tried to find a way to break open the heart-shaped iron lock holding the arched doors to the stables in place, but once Barrie simply removed the screws and threw it—hasp and all—into the toolbox, they cheerfully pushed open the door and surged inside.
Daylight swept in to flood the wide concrete aisle. A closed room on either side preceded neat rows of polished mahogany stalls with wooden doors carved into graceful reverse arches at shoulder height.
Persuasion Page 8
