Nocturnal Part 31

The very air around us seemed to fill with shimmering, pulsating energy. I caught sight of something in my peripheral vision, something whitish, with blurred edges, but when I turned it faded away behind a neighboring gravestone.

"She's here," Eva said. "I can feel her."

"I can feel her, too," I said, as my skin p.r.i.c.kled with excitement.

Eva called out in a clear, bell-like voice, "Mama, if you can hear us, give us a sign."

Although the sultry New Orleans air was completely still, all the candles wavered. Two of them went out. Eva increased her effort, dropping to her knees, chanting louder and louder, shaking the herb bundle until its leaves fell into the neatly trimmed gra.s.s. Hope leaped in my chest, and I leaned forward with such joy and antic.i.p.ation that I could scarcely contain myself.

And that was when I noticed Eva snuffing out one of the flames with her fingers while surrept.i.tiously fanning the flames with her skirt so that they appeared to be wavering. I stood up, knocked over the remaining candles, and ran out of the graveyard.

The following fall, when high school started, I took every science cla.s.s that St. Mary's offered, surprising the nuns and offending the boys by getting the highest score on every exam. Four years later I left for Stanford. The incident in the graveyard was never mentioned again.

I turned to Derek and answered him as honestly as I could. "I think she's our only chance."

Derek crossed the room and grabbed his jeans, pulling them on impatiently. "Why are you doing this, Maggie?"

"Why? Because I want to help you."

He plucked my shirt off the guitar and sat back down on the bed. "I'm not sure there is a me anymore. Think of what I've become, Maggie. Doesn't it make you want to run the other way?"

"No! Don't say that."

"He could hurt you, you know." He spread his long fingers and held his hands in front of my face. The bandages on his wrists were dirty and starting to unravel. "He could use these to hurt you and I wouldn't be able to stop him."

I grabbed his hands and pressed them down. "Don't say that. That's not going to happen."

I leaned in and kissed him, long and hard, holding his hands tightly in mine. He kissed me back, but when it was over he wouldn't meet my eyes. Instead he looked at the floor, his expression distant and sad, as if he was looking into the future and not liking what he saw.

Chapter 6.

My sister had always entered a room like a...

Well, no one from New Orleans would ever use the word "hurricane" lightly. Let's say she came in like a force of nature. The years had done nothing to diminish her impact. If anything she was more impressive now, sweeping through the airport hallway, than she'd been at age twenty when I saw her last, waving goodbye as I boarded a bus for California.

A flowered scarf trapped the hair around her face, but irrepressible ma.s.ses of red curls flowed down her back. Abundant cleavage peeked out of a form-fitting purple silk blouse, but her lower half was disguised with several layers of lacy skirts, from which black lace-up boots peeked as she walked, pulling two wheelie suitcases. Almost everyone gave her a longer than usual glance as they pa.s.sed. The men's expressions were admiring, the women's were inquisitive, sometimes critical.

I waved and jumped, trying to clear the shoulders of a tall man in front of me. The crowd parted as if a truck had been driven into their midst, and Eva arrived, trailing clouds of perfume and jingling from head to toe with jewelry.

"Hey, y'all, I made it!" Eva grabbed me around the waist and twirled me in a circle, simultaneously charming and infantilizing me.

"Where's your man?" she asked, checking behind me as if I'd hidden him somewhere.

"He said he had a few things to do and he'd meet us at my place later."

I had tried to get Derek to come with me to the airport but he refused. His face had looked strange when he said goodbye, set and emotionless. I was trying not to let it worry me, but of course it was all I could think about.

Eva raised a shapely eyebrow. "Did you follow my advice about not being alone with him?"

"Of course not."

She snorted. "Well, you're still alive. That's a good sign."

"He doesn't seem to be interested in hurting me."

"Yet. We'll see when he feels threatened." Eva handed me the handle of one of her suitcases. "Pull that for me, would you, sweetheart?"

I eyed her bulging bags. "How long are you staying?"

"One's got my equipment in it."

Eva and I sat on the couch drinking wine and eating Chinese from my favorite take-out place out of the cardboard boxes. Every few minutes I checked my cell phone. I'd already left three messages for Derek. I folded a pancake filled with mu shu pork and plum sauce into a burrito shape, while suspiciously eyeing the contents of Eva's suitcase, which was spread over my floor.

"Can I look at that stuff?" I asked.

Eva nodded as she spooned hoisin string beans into her mouth. "This food is really good," she said.

I shoved the last bite of mu shu pork into my mouth and slid onto the floor. There was an abundance of odors coming from the suitcase, everything in the spectrum from sweet floral to rotting carca.s.s. I must have been very hungry to be able to eat with this in the room with me. I examined the items one by one, sniffing and then sorting them into piles. There were pillar candles of all different colors, beaded necklaces, silk drawstring bags holding substances that ranged from powder to plant leaves, and gla.s.s tubes filled with oil. The most disturbing items were several mud-encrusted roots that resembled mummified fetuses. Perhaps they really were mummified fetuses; it wouldn't have surprised me.

"When Derek gets here we have to put all this stuff away. He shouldn't see it or touch it," Eva said.

"Why are you letting me touch it, then?" I picked up a handful of peac.o.c.k feathers and tickled Eva's bare leg.

Eva didn't smile. "You're the sister of a voodoo priestess," she answered. "It's in your blood. Derek, well, I don't know what would happen if he got his hands on objects of power in his current state. Could be the ghost might take the power from them."

Eva had brought several small knives in leather sheaths. I removed one and tested it on my finger. A big mistake, it turned out, because I gave myself a nasty little cut.

"Ouch!" I shrieked.

Eva laughed.

I stood up to go into the bathroom and get a bandage. That's when I noticed them. At the bottom of the suitcase, under the stuff I'd dislodged, was a canvas bag that looked like it was filled with coils of rope. But the bag was trembling.

"Eva, what's in there?" I whispered, taking a cautionary step backward.

My sister sipped her wine as she peeked over the table into the suitcase. "Oh, my babies are waking up," she said. Her smile did look like that of a proud mother.

"Your babies?"

Eva opened her mouth to answer, but I held up my bleeding hand. "Never mind, don't tell me. Don't tell me how you managed to get this s.h.i.t through airport security. Don't tell me what you plan to do with it. Don't tell me anything. Just please, have this case closed up by the time I get back from the bathroom."

I turned to go.

"Sissy, look at me."

I turned around, holding the wound on my finger. "What?"

"Do you trust me?"

I looked at the floor. "Does that really matter?"

She set her gla.s.s down and walked over, and then she put her hands on my shoulders, forcing me to meet her gaze. My eyes were hazel: pretty, but nothing to write home about. Eva's eyes, on the other hand, were a light green that shone so brightly in her pale face they seemed otherworldly. When she fixed you with that stare it was impossible to look away, and ten years of being a voodoo priestess had only intensified the effect. I felt like she was burning twin holes into my face.

"I know you're thinking about what happened with Mama."

I shuffled my feet but returned her gaze. "Nothing happened with Mama."

"I was a child then, Maggie, I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know my power, just like you don't know yours."

"I know my power," I grumbled.

She raised her eyebrows, and then she gave my shoulders a little shake. "It is essential that you believe in what we're doing. Derek is in grave danger from this spirit. Spirits like this have an 'if I can't have him, no one will' att.i.tude. If, during the procedure, he perceives that we are winning, he will most likely kill Derek. It will take all of our strength to keep him from doing this."

I stepped away from her hands. "You're just trying to scare me," I said uncertainly.

Eva flicked back her long red hair, making her earrings jingle. "Do I give a s.h.i.t whether you're scared or not? This isn't play-acting for the tourists on Bourbon Street. This is serious, Sissy. Serious as a heart attack."

My phone buzzed. I scrambled back to the table to grab it. "Here's a text from Derek now," I said. "Probably telling me when he's going to meet us...Oh, s.h.i.t." My voice trailed off. Eva pushed her head close to mine so she could read along.

I don't want you in danger. Don't try to look for me. If I can get rid of him, I'll come back for you. If I can't, have a good life.

Chapter 7.

After a half dozen phone calls, starting with Derek and ending with Dr. Kay, I put down the phone and turned to Eva. "Dr. Kay hasn't heard from him," I said, "and neither have his parents. I don't know who else to call."

"Let's go to the castle," Eva said. "Maybe he's holed up there."

I couldn't imagine Derek staying there, given that the castle was the site of his most destructive encounters with the ghost, but then again, maybe he was there for that very reason.

"Okay, let's go."

I drove way too fast down Highway One, but Eva still had time to enjoy the view of silvery moonlight reflected in the Pacific Ocean.

"You sure live in a beautiful place," she commented.

"I can't make small talk right now," I said.

"Of course you can. Bet you do it all the time at your work. Comes with the territory."

"I guess you're right," I sighed. "Well, New Orleans is beautiful too."

I'd always thought so, although it was a different kind of beauty than California. New Orleans had an intimate kind of beauty, like peeking into the artfully decorated parlor of an eccentric doyenne, while California sported grand vistas and natural splendor. I slowed down a bit and took a quick glance at the ocean. "I don't get to see much of California besides the inside of Pacific University Hospital."

"You're working too hard. But do you like it?"

I hadn't stopped to ask myself that question since I'd started residency. No one asked themselves if they liked residency. That was like asking if you liked getting vaccinations. They were painful but necessary. But did I like psychiatry? That was a question that had been nibbling at the inside of my mind, trying to get my attention, while I avoided it with the business, and busyness, of the work itself.

"You haven't answered me," Eva prodded.

"I know. What about you, do you like your work?"

Even in the dim light I could see the glint in her emerald-green eyes. "My work is me, Maggie."

"So do you like yourself?"

Eva tossed her abundant red hair over her shoulder, setting her bracelets jingling. "I love myself, of course."

"Okay, now that we've dispensed with the small talk, I have a question."

I knew the tone of my voice had changed, and from my peripheral vision I could see Eva's shoulders tighten.

"Go ahead," she said.

"If ghosts are real, why have I never seen Mama?"

"I told you, Sissy, I couldn't call her that night because I lacked the knowledge-"

I held up a hand. "I'm not talking about that night. I mean in general, why hasn't she appeared to me?"

Eva was silent.

"How could she just leave us like that?" My voice was thick with tears.

Eva put her warm hand on my thigh. "I have no doubt that she watches over us, Maggie."

"Oh, that's religious bulls.h.i.t." I scrubbed a tear off my cheek.

"Not to me." Eva heaved a deep sigh. "I've seen her."