Illusion

CHAPTER ONE

Bravery isn’t born. It’s forged in the nightmare places where fear tears the mind apart. For Barrie Watson, her cousin Cassie’s plantation across the river from Watson’s Landing had become such a place. There, it was all too easy to see how shards of past events could turn into weapons, until one bad choice led to another, and memories became prisons that trapped people as surely as any door.

Between the memories and the migraine that always formed when she was away from Watson’s Landing, Barrie fidgeted in the passenger seat of her aunt Pru’s old, black boat of a Mercedes. The sun-pinked skin exposed by her sleeveless top stuck to the leather in the sodden Southern heat and plastered her long, pale curls to the nape of her neck. Her traitorous fingers itched to grab the steering wheel and tell her aunt to turn around. Even the sun slanting low through the oaks that lined the winding drive seemed to whisper a warning, transforming the veils of Spanish moss into something ghostly and macabre.

But Barrie couldn’t change her mind. No matter how excruciatingly hard she had tried to make the right choices recently, she had kept hurting other people. She had to set that right, and the first step began here at Colesworth Place.

Pru eased the Mercedes to a stop at the edge of the visitor lot closest to where the lane continued on toward the ruins of the old plantation mansion and the smaller, modern house where Cassie and her family lived. Barrie adjusted the foil over the chicken casserole that Pru had hastily assembled and pushed the door open. Pru didn’t move. Sitting there with her hands gripped tightly at the top of the steering wheel, her fine, blond curls haloed around her in the fading light, Barrie’s aunt resembled a lovely and slightly demented angel.

Barrie hated what all this was doing to her. Are you all right, Aunt Pru?

Pru’s lips lifted wryly. Look at us. We’re a fine pair, aren’t we? I’m trying to talk myself into getting out of this car, and for all your determination, you look like you’d rather turn around and run. She reached out and touched Barrie’s wrist. Let’s just go on home, sugar. At least for tonight. You don’t owe it to your cousin to break the Colesworth curse, and you certainly don’t owe a thing to this Obadiah, or whatever that magician of yours calls himself.

I’m not sure ‘magician’ is the right word, exactly. More like a shaman, Barrie said, avoiding the question.

You know I ought to have my head examined for even considering letting you come over to look for him, don’t you? Not that I seem to be able to prevent you from doing anything. I wish you’d just forget all this.

We can’t forget. This isn’t about owing Cassie or Obadiah. We can’t walk away when the curse is hurting Mary and her family, too. And Obadiah promised he would break the Beaufort binding if I found the Colesworth treasure. If we don’t break that, Eight will be stuck at Beaufort Hall when Seven dies, and I’ll be across at Watson’s Landing, and we’ll have no chance of ever being together. Too many things all center on Obadiah being able to help us. At the very least, I have to know whether he’s still alive.

Can you call it living when someone is more than a hundred and fifty years old? I’m still not sure I believe that, but it’s one more reason why I ought to be grounding you for a month instead of bringing you over here and letting you get involved with that man again.

Switching off the ignition with an emphatic motion and a jingle of keys, Pru sat there a moment looking so small and defenseless that it made Barrie’s heart swell with guilt. But Pru was stronger than she looked. The more Barrie had come to know her aunt, the more she had seen the quiet core of steel that Pru didn’t even know she possessed.

Strength was a bit like courage, Barrie thought. She herself had found both only when she couldn’t live without them, and they had come to her when she had needed them the most. But fighting to protect the people you cared for was one thing. Trusting someone you loved to fight for themselves took a different kind of strength and bravery.

Leaning over from the passenger seat, she dropped a kiss on Pru’s smooth-skinned cheek. Thank you, Aunt Pru.

For what? Pru looked over, startled.

For not grounding me. For coming over here to help distract Cassie’s mother. For believing in me and not telling me that letting Obadiah take away the Watson gift like he threatened would have been the obvious solution.

Pru’s smile was misty-eyed and ephemeral, and she pushed the door open with fresh determination. Barrie, too, got out, and they stood on the brittle and cracking asphalt looking at each other across the top of the car. I’m sorry I yelled at you when you told me everything. The fact that I did that makes it harder for you to be honest with me in the future, I know that, and I promise you, I’m through with ignoring problems and hoping they’ll go away on their own. I’m done with letting life happen to me instead of living it. Obadiah’s already had plenty of opportunities to hurt you, if that was what he wanted, and anyway, if he can change himself into a raven and make himself invisible, there’s not much you and I are going to do to stop him coming to Watson’s Landing. I’m already having enough nightmares about—

Barrie looked over as Pru cut herself off. About what?

Never you mind. Pru pushed her old-fashioned white patent purse up to the crook of her elbow and slammed the door. My point is that you were right. As much as I wish we could, we can’t leave things the way they are.

They set off shoulder to shoulder through the trees that cut the visitor parking area off from the cemetery where Cassie’s father had so recently been interred. Pru’s expression was unreadable, but the kitten heels of her shoes clicked on the asphalt in a decisive rhythm. Barrie juggled the casserole, and as they rounded the corner, the shoebox house where the Colesworth family lived came into sight at the edge of the woods between the Colesworth property and Beaufort Hall. Farther on, toward the river, the ruined columns and crumbling chimneys of the old mansion cast long shadows over the kitchen, slave cabins, and other outbuildings that Wyatt Colesworth had been obsessed with restoring. Watched over by a dozen ravens perched at the top of the columns, the archaeological dig area that had recently been torn up by violence was surrounded by yellow police tape, and on the far side of it, two sheriff’s deputies sat in their cruiser beneath a thick-trunked oak.

A sickening wave of lostness pulled at Barrie from the dig site, a physical reminder that, regardless of what she wanted, her gift wouldn’t let her walk away. Along with the lodestone that anchored the Colesworth curse and the angry spirits who had cast the evil magic—not to mention eight million dollars, give or take, of stolen Union gold—Charlotte Colesworth’s skeleton was still buried down there. Somebody had to get her out, and the archaeologists had already made it clear they were going to continue the excavation.

That was the problem with Watson Island. There were too many secrets and dangers lurking beneath the surface, waiting for someone to stumble over them.

All three of the pirates who had founded the plantations—Watson’s Landing, Beaufort Hall, and Colesworth Place—had built secret tunnels and rooms so well hidden that they’d long been forgotten, the way unpleasant things in a family’s past were easier to forget when you shut them away. Their descendants had locked the doors, sealed the rooms, moved to the other side of oversize mansions, or let the grass soften the ashes and crumbled bricks of the families’ mistakes. They’d put statues of angels with fists raised against the sky over empty graves.

Hiding things was easier than repairing the damage that they had all left behind them. Barrie had learned the hard way that when it came to emotions, you couldn’t heal until you acknowledged what was lost. And thanks to the bindings that came with the magic in all three families, none of the eldest heirs could leave the plantations without suffering migraines that in the past had driven people crazy or moved them to suicide. There was no way to escape.

Thinking of the bindings made Barrie stop abruptly. Would you mind going ahead without me for a minute, Aunt Pru? I want to try Eight again before I talk to Cassie. I’m worried that he still hasn’t called me back.

Of course. Pru adjusted her purse and took the casserole dish Barrie handed her. Then she patted Barrie on the cheek. Don’t worry too much if he won’t talk yet, though. He’s got a good streak of the Beaufort stubbornness, but as mad as he may be that you didn’t tell him about the binding, you’d only known about it a couple of days. His father kept it from him his entire life. Those two have a lot of ground to cover, and I’ve no doubt that’s keeping Eight distracted.

Barrie wished she were as certain of that as Pru. She dialed Eight’s number while her aunt walked on toward the small brick house with its too-bright shutters and overly ornate front door.

The phone rang and rang. Then abruptly Eight’s voice was there, that soft drawl with a sultry hint of gravel. Stop calling me, Bear. I’ll call you when I can talk.

Eleven little words, that was all, but his voice was raw. Barrie wondered if she’d ever stop seeing him the way he had looked that morning at the dig site when she’d finally told him about the Beaufort binding. A salt-edged breeze from the Atlantic had swept up the Santisto River to stir his hair, and his lips had still been reddened from kissing her. But he’d hunched in on himself as if she’d hit him when he’d realized she had known he was going to inherit the binding that would confine him to the place he’d been wanting to escape from all his life.

Barrie’s breath hitched, and she felt stupid and lost all over again. In the time that she had known him, Eight had shown her weaknesses inside herself she would never have explored without him, shown her possibilities she had never even considered. Holding the phone to her ear, she looked out across the excavation area, where the evening sunlight glinted on the plastic sheeting that covered the hole that Ryder’s and Junior’s pickaxes had made in the arched ceiling of the hidden room that morning. The sight was a reminder of what happened when you tried to keep secrets buried.

Tell me we can fix this, Eight. Tell me what I can do, she said. At least tell me you’re all right.

How can I be all right? My entire life has been a lie, and the future I wanted isn’t going to be a possibility. You knew that, and you didn’t tell me. You made choices for me because you didn’t think I could handle the truth—

I never intended to make decisions for you. I was only going to help Obadiah break the curse before I told you—I wanted to be sure it was possible and safe before I got your hopes up about him breaking the Beaufort binding— Barrie cut herself off and sighed. It sounds like I’m making excuses for myself, and I don’t mean to do that. I was wrong. I know I was wrong. I should have told you. At first Obadiah’s magic was messing with my ability to tell you anything, and then I thought that if you and your father were ever going to have any kind of a relationship again, he needed to be the one to tell you, but that wasn’t fair to you.

You’re still making excuses. I don’t need you to protect me. You chose your gift over me, and you didn’t trust me to understand the choices you were making. You lied to me. Over and over again, and I always forgave you. This time, I’m not sure I can. All along, you’ve been worried about my gift making me want what you want and about whether I want you for yourself. I never cared about that, but I don’t want someone who can’t be honest with me. I don’t want to be with anyone who manipulates me. I get enough of that at home. And since my gift makes it harder for me to separate what I want from what you want, at least for now, I can’t be with you.

Barrie stared at the ground. There wasn’t anything she could say to counter that. All she could do was tell him how she felt. I should have explained. You’re right. I was afraid of losing my gift, and I should have trusted you to understand. I should have known you would. I don’t want to lose you, Eight. Don’t shut me out. I get that you need some space, but give me a chance to show you that I can do better. I swear I can. I want you to be involved in all the decisions from now on. I’m over here at Colesworth Place, and the archaeologists are coming back to start digging again tomorrow. We still have to get rid of the curse—

"We don’t have to do anything. I’m done caring about Cassie, her curse, or her stupid treasure. I have my father to deal with, and I have to go to Columbia tomorrow to meet with the baseball coach again and finalize things at the university for next semester. He paused, and his voice grew softer. I’m not sure I’m going to come back."

What do you mean? Barrie’s chest clenched, and for the first time since Eight had walked away from her that afternoon, she let herself consider the possibility that she couldn’t fix what she had broken between them. That he was really done. But she couldn’t—wouldn’t—consider that. Don’t leave, she said. Running away doesn’t solve any problems. You’re the one who taught me that. We have to talk—

No, Eight said. We don’t. My whole life is up in the air, and I need to figure it out myself.

He hung up before Barrie could say anything else, and she stood with tears burning her eyes and the phone digging into her hand, listening to the silence, as if by some miracle Eight would pick up again and assure her that he’d eventually forgive her. That they could find a way to work things out. But miracles didn’t happen, and no form of magic would let her rewind her mistakes. She couldn’t make him get over the way she’d hurt him or forget that she hadn’t trusted him with the truth.

She had to find a way to fix things. Hurting Eight was the very last thing she had ever meant to do. Losing him had shown her that she couldn’t bear to lose him.

She looked up as a bird fluttered out of the lower branches of an oak to perch on the upraised arm of the angel statue above Charlotte’s grave. Feathers ruffled and yellow eyes bright, it cocked its head to peer at her. Barrie’s heart filled with outrage and dread and hope in equal measure, because it was Obadiah who had pushed her into all of this with his magic and his threats. She reached out toward the bird with her own magic, but she was still too inexperienced, too uncertain of the way the Watson gift had been growing and changing since her mother’s death.

The raven wasn’t lost. It didn’t need returning. As to whether it was one of the ravens that often accompanied Obadiah or the man himself, on that subject, her gift was stubbornly unhelpful.

Taking a step toward the bird, Barrie held her hand out. Obadiah? Is that you?

CHAPTER TWO

The crunch of a footstep on the asphalt behind her made Barrie turn, and she found Cassie coming up the path alongside the cemetery fence. Like Barrie, she was watching the raven that stood hunched on the branch above Charlotte Colesworth’s grave with its head cocked toward them.

You think the bird is Obadiah? Cassie asked. On the phone, you said you thought he was down by the excavation area, where Ryder and Junior shot him.

The raven opened its beak, but no sound came out. He hopped once on the branch, then flew away. Barrie turned to watch him fly over the excavation area and land back on top of one of the columns that overlooked the mansion ruins. I’m not sure what I think anymore. All I know is that I noticed the police and the archaeologists walking around an empty spot on the grass where Obadiah was lying the last time we saw him, the way people walk around Obadiah when he’s hanging around not wanting to be seen. He may still be there soaking up energy from people and trying to heal, or he may have run off or flown off somewhere, or he may have crumbled into dust for all we know. I want to be sure.

A breeze lifted, raising the scent of tannin and pluff mud from the river and flinging Cassie’s tumbled black curls into her eyes. She wore none of her usual sass and bravado. Her beautiful face was bare of makeup, telling its own story about what she’d been through, and it felt wrong to Barrie to have even dragged her back outside after everything that had happened.

She caught her cousin’s elbow as Cassie turned back toward the small house where she lived with her family. If you’d rather not help with this, I can do it on my own. And if you need someone to talk to . . . I know we haven’t exactly been the best of friends, but I’m here if you need anything.

I don’t need your pity, Cassie snapped. She stared at the angel statue above Charlotte Colesworth’s grave long enough that Barrie began to wonder if Cassie was having another of the flashbacks that had started after her father’s funeral, but then Cassie turned abruptly and hurried down the path. Her long, flared jeans swished angrily around the outline of the ankle monitor the police had replaced after Barrie had smashed the first one that morning to summon help.

Barrie walked after her with an inward sigh. You and I need to find a way to get along if we’re going to figure out the curse situation. I was only trying to see how you’re holding up.

How do you think I’m holding up? Why do people even ask that question? Am I supposed to lie to make you all feel better? Pretend Ryder didn’t rape me? I hate that everyone knows. You. Berg. The police. My family. People in town. Half of them are wondering if I made it up. Even my mother. She keeps asking me why I hid it, as if I betrayed her by not confiding in her. But she and Daddy didn’t want to know. That’s why they never asked the question. Even with Ryder’s threats, I kept waiting for them to ask. I felt so different that— Her breath snagged on the last sentence, the way people sometimes struggle with a foreign language, as if it were still impossible to admit what had happened to her four years before.

Barrie’s eyes stung at the pain in Cassie’s voice. She searched for something to say. There were so many words in the world, so many ways to communicate, and somehow, too often none of them were good enough.

Cassie walked faster, her stride longer than Barrie’s so that Barrie had to jog to keep up. Beneath the oak tree at the far edge of the excavation site, the passenger door of the sheriff’s patrol car opened, and one of the deputies got out. Adjusting the utility belt that hung low on his hips, he ambled bowleggedly toward the area ringed by police tape, looped around once, stopped, and peered at Barrie and Cassie, before sauntering back to the car again.

Maybe your mother feels guilty, Barrie said when he had gone. Not only for what you went through, but for not having seen how you were suffering. She has to be thinking of all the ways she failed you.

I shot the man who raped me. I shot him, and she’s worrying about her own guilt, Cassie said.

Worrying about having failed you is probably normal—

And then she asked me why I shot Ryder, whether it was because of that or because he tried to steal the gold.

Barrie herself wasn’t sure that was an or question where Cassie was concerned. The police said it was self-defense, she said softly. They’re not pressing charges, after all, are they?

Not for now. Cassie reached the front steps of the house, and then she turned with her foot on the bottom stair. Anger crackled out of her every pore, but it was the kind of anger that was a form of armor, a way to hide her brokenness the way that Pru hid hers with quiet acceptance. Maybe everyone in the world was a little broken, pretending to others that they weren’t.

I just want this to be all over with! Cassie cried suddenly. Is that too much to ask? The curse, the archaeologists, all of it. If Obadiah’s still here waiting to steal the gold, then I want him gone. It’s mine. I can’t leave, and my family and I need the gold to keep this place. He doesn’t get to take it. But if he’s here, that means Ryder and Junior didn’t manage to kill him when they shot him. So how do we get rid of him? I couldn’t even tell the police that he was here. My throat felt stuck whenever I tried to say his name.

Barrie looked out toward the dig site where the police tape fluttered in the breeze that came up from the river. A single raven gathered its wings and took off from a broken column and flew a wide, lazy circle toward the woods.

I think we just have to take it one step at a time, she said. Let’s see if Obadiah’s even here. Most of all, we can’t jump to conclusions anymore. We don’t know what Obadiah was doing when Ryder and Junior interrupted him, she said. We don’t even know for sure that he was the one who tied us up and put us in the cabin.

God, how can you still be so naïve? Cassie’s breath was too loud as she climbed the remaining two steps toward the door. But then you can afford to trust him. It’s not your curse or your gold he’s after. You’ve never been poor. You’ve spent your whole life locked away in your neat little corner of the world where everything’s been taken care of for you, and you’ve never been unsafe or uncertain of anything for a single minute.

Given what Barrie had been through over the past few weeks, what Cassie and her family had put her through, a half-hysterical laugh bubbled up in Barrie’s throat. Not that there was any point in arguing. Cassie was never going to see past the preconception of the charmed life she believed the Watsons and the Beauforts led. Maybe that was another symptom of the Colesworth curse, or maybe it was Wyatt filling his daughter’s head with poison for too many years.

The door opened behind Cassie, and she stood back out of the way. Pru and Marie Colesworth came out with a pitcher of tea and a tray of sandwiches covered with a blue-checkered dishcloth, and a few minutes later, Barrie accompanied Cassie to the police car with the food. She stopped there only long enough to hold up the earring she had brought and to mumble an explanation about needing to search for its mate.

At the excavation site, the neatly measured squares cleared by the archaeologists had been obliterated by the illegal digging. The soil was a torn mess of dirt and brick chips, and the datum, the piece of iron rebar used to set the measurement standards for the dig’s grid layout, lay where it had fallen when the spirits of Ayita and Elijah had thrown it, thirty feet from where they had ripped it from the ground.

Circling around the police tape that cordoned off the circumference of the hidden room, Barrie concentrated on remembering exactly where she had seen the police and archaeologists deviate around a seemingly bare spot of lawn. She searched for a hint—some sign she didn’t even know how to look for. There was only the broken soil and the usual headache.

Then something grasped her ankle. Brittle finger bones ground against her skin with a touch so cold that it sank straight to Barrie’s marrow. She felt her strength ebb away.

CHAPTER THREE

Icy panic clogged Barrie’s veins, demanding that she run. But her body didn’t want to cooperate, and she wasn’t sure if that was fear or magic. Her heart beat too fast, too uselessly, and her chest clenched, her breath coming in and in and in, until she finally remembered she needed to exhale, too, or she wouldn’t actually be breathing.

Bitter cold spread through her limbs. She recognized the draining sensation of Obadiah taking energy, but this was nothing like what he had ever done before. Where he had always taken barely noticeable amounts, like sips through a juice box straw, now he was gulping from an open glass, greedy and insatiable.

She swayed and struggled to break his hold on her ankle. Stumbling, she fought to stay on her feet. Her head spun. Her vision tunneled.

And then nothing.

She woke to find Cassie shaking her and someone still holding her ankle. The sensation of energy draining away was gone, though, and the touch was warmer. She tried to kick free, but her limbs were heavy, as if each arm and every finger weighed five hundred pounds.

What happened? Cassie asked, her face pale and her eyes dark with fear. What are you doing? Did you pass out? Or did Obadiah do something?

Barrie tried to scream, but opening her mouth was too impossibly hard.

"Hold still, petite. You’ll have some strength back in a moment." The words came from the seeming emptiness beside her, and then the air shimmered and Obadiah flickered into sight.

He was himself and not. Himself but forty years older: the same dreadlocks that grew past his shoulders; the same dark, shiny silk suit and black silk shirt; but his skin and flesh had shriveled like a sponge wrung out of liquid. For once, his clothes were less than immaculate, and dried blood surrounded a hole in the fabric suspiciously near his heart.

Lying rigidly on the ground, he continued to hold her ankle and made no effort to get up himself. I’m sorry, he said softly. I had no right to take so much energy from you—I got carried away before I could control myself. I’m giving some back. Just wait a moment.

Warmth slipped back into Barrie’s limbs, and with it came the realization of how cold and weak she had really been. Panting and still light-headed, she lay unmoving until he finally released his hold.

Cassie shook her again. Talk to me, Barrie. Are you all right?

Barrie wiggled her fingers, and when that worked, she held her hand out for Cassie to help her up.

I’m fine. She sat up cautiously and stole a glance in the direction of the sheriff’s deputies, who were both climbing out of their car. Go over there and tell the police that I’m clumsy and stupid, would you? Keep them from coming over here. Raising her voice, she called out herself, relieved when her voice sounded relatively normal: It’s all good! I tripped on a piece of brick.

Cassie straightened and peered down at her. You should have seen yourself. You looked like a ghost. It was Obadiah, wasn’t it? He’s still here after all.

Don’t you see him now? Barrie shook her head. Never mind. I’ll explain later. Just go. Get the deputies back into their car. She waited until Cassie had gone before switching her attention back to Obadiah.

No matter what he’d done to her, seeing him lying there, Barrie couldn’t suppress a twinge of sympathy. Which made her six kinds of a fool. Cassie had been right—she kept trusting people she had no business trusting.

With obvious effort, Obadiah rolled to his stomach and climbed to his feet like an old, old man. Despite the energy that he had taken from her—and presumably from Cassie—his blue-black skin appeared gray and sunken. Barrie’s own limbs still felt heavy and lethargic as she wobbled several steps away from him. Not that he needed to touch her physically to take energy, but right now she felt like she imagined a battery would feel with its meter running low.

You owe me an explanation for what you did, she said, her voice sounding weak and thready.

He squinted over to where Cassie was exerting all her charm getting the two deputies back into their vehicle. I am sorry. It’s nearly impossible not to reach for energy when you’re desperate. I stopped as soon as I realized what I was doing.

Not just now! Barrie made an impatient gesture. "Everything. Tying us up and throwing us inside the cabin. Trying to steal the gold. Did you ever think you could break the curse? Or was that just another lie to get me to help you?"

Obadiah hobbled away toward the row of restored brick slave cabins that sat in the shade of the woods. Cabins where he himself must have worked as a slave before he ran away as the Union troops approached in search of the gold that Alcee Colesworth had stolen. Barrie shivered at the thought of going back there, remembering the horror of being tied up in the cabin even briefly, the sense of complete helplessness. She couldn’t even imagine the kind of memories the place held for Obadiah.

Stay here and talk to me, she said. All of this has gone too far.

I’ll talk, but I don’t have the strength to keep us hidden from the police. We’ll have to get out of sight. Where’s the Beaufort boy? You didn’t come over here by yourself, did you?

"Don’t