Garden of Bone: Book 6, page 21
Ten minutes later, they emerged from a quick round through the store and sat in the parking lot, on the back of the car, probably drawing attention to themselves, but rubbing alcohol wipes over individual spots, waiting for it to dry, and then slapping Band-Aids on. She'd looked to Donovan for advice on that, unable to see her own back, of course, and with him being a physician and all.
"Do we need any stitches?" she asked.
He shook his head. "Nothing too severe."
"Not even that one over your eyebrow?"
"Well, just to be safe, I think I'm going to ask you to put butterfly bandages on it. If we went into the ER, that's probably all they would do."
She laughed at the thought. If they went into the ER, the staff would definitely ask what they'd been doing. They'd either have to show their badges and admit they'd gotten in a fight or make up a story. Of course, the best one Eleri could come up with was that they'd been fighting with each other. She mentioned that to him, and Donovan shook his head, not finding it as funny as she did.
"Great. Get me arrested for domestic abuse," he commented.
She hadn't thought of it that way. Then again, she wasn't the physician, and she hadn't done a rotation in the ER, like he had.
"This is better," he said. "Honestly, they probably wouldn't have stitched me up. They'd just butterfly me anyway. Instead, you get to do it."
Now, at least, their T-shirts no longer had blood on them, and that was helpful. Eleri wasn't one for changing in the parking lot, like Donovan was already doing. Even though they'd parked near a small stand of trees that mostly covered things, she'd climbed into the backseat of the car, taking advantage of the tinted windows. As she headed forward into the front seat, she said, "Now, we have to find someplace that can sell us the kinds of devices we need to build a tracker tracer."
"We can go to the FBI branch and just ask," he said.
"I know." She'd already thought of that—but going to the branch and borrowing a sweeping device would mean admitting that they thought they were being tracked. "It would get cataloged, and Westerfield would know," she told him. "I'm really not in favor of pinging Westerfield on any of this.”
"Well," he thought. "This area is well enough off, there's probably a store like that. Do we just drive circles until we find something?"
"No," Eleri thought. "We ask."
She headed back into the store, going through the other doors and hoping no one recognized her as the woman who'd walked in with the bloody T-shirt thirty minutes earlier. She simply asked one of the cashiers, who pointed her down the street, said “three lefts,” then gave her some wonderfully New Orleans-based directions.
Eleri smiled, "Thank you," and popped back out to the car.
Donovan was sitting inside with the air conditioning running, and she was grateful to climb into the cold, enclosed space.
"I need food," she said. "But first, a sweeper."
They found burgers and silently ate them, along with fresh-cut fries, out of Styrofoam containers. As soon as they were fed and Eleri was starting to feel better, they assembled their device from the parts they’d bought and swept the car. After they’d done so three times, Eleri announced, "There's nothing on here."
"Nothing we can find, anyway."
They climbed back in the car and headed to Grandmere's. Halfway back, Eleri turned and looked at him again. She repeated her earlier question, but this time she clarified that she didn’t mean the Lobomau.
"What was that?" she asked. "I mean, the woman with the sais?”
42
Darcelle left the store at noon. Closing up early was the one piece of freedom she had found. She wasn’t sure if she’d created it or merely discovered it. She also wasn't sure how much freedom it was, given that she was only able to walk along the trail back home.
She had been angry when she woke up on time that morning, her body rising and unable to fall back to sleep. She'd wanted to stay in bed. She'd gotten up and gotten dressed, and she'd gone out the front door, aiming to walk down the street, away from her house—and away from Mystic Vudu. But as she'd gone farther toward the end of the block, the tightness had come in on her again. It happened every time she tried to stray. It squeezed. It pushed on her rib cage, her heart. If she walked any farther, it felt like a vice on her brain. Even on the evenings that she was allowed some kind of freedom, it squeezed her if she tried to leave the city limits.
Once, she'd been in the car with friends, not telling them what she could and couldn't do. They'd known of a bar with wonderful, home-style food. They'd driven her toward it, but apparently they'd crossed the city limits—or at least her mother’s limits.
They hadn't known, but Darcelle had. She started to have trouble breathing. She started to feel her heart rate slowing and slowing and eventually her blood pressure dropping. When the headache had started, and her friends had turned and said, "You look pale." She'd barely managed to reply, "I think I need to go home."
It was a shame, she thought, that she couldn’t tell anyone what was really going on. It was a shame to waste a free evening. She knew she'd feel better as soon as she was back in the city, and that's the way this worked. She was Darcelle. She had a job. She was not allowed to deviate. She was given exactly as many freedoms as her mother had seen fit to dole out, and no more. What good were freedoms when they were parsed out that way?
It appeared her spell of the previous night had not worked. She'd thought she would at least be able to get farther away. She'd known she was fighting against an inevitable force. Her mother had been all that her grandparents hadn't—all that the legends had told of, all that their ancestors had been. Tempeste Dauphine had been that and more.
Had her grandmother known what she was doing when she named her only daughter? Darcelle's uncles had left town long ago, not caring much about the family and thinking that her grandparents were a little bit crazy for the legends they told and the rituals they practiced. Tempeste had embraced it all—but not the way the family had wanted. As a child, Darcelle thought her grandparents had been reasonable, but now, as an adult, she wondered.
She'd grown up in a culture where the Dauphines circled their wagons and took care of their own, whether there was an outside threat or not. It didn't matter what was happening to anyone beyond that circle, either.
The Dauphine family had always stayed in that tight ring, but now … now that the ring was closed around her, and she had no chance to get out. Once she’d started thinking about it philosophically, she had realized she didn't like the way the wagons closed, the way the family sheltered each other, even when they hated one another. Even when they disagreed. Even when one of them was wrong.
Darcelle wasn't sure she had morals, per se. She understood the universe went round and that things changed. She believed death was release and not something to be feared. She'd watched many of the white folk shake in their shoes. She’d even seen a few dying on the streets, pleading for help, petrified of the other side. But Darcelle was beginning to think death might be the only way out of this prison. Her worst fear was that, even in death, she might walk this same path. So rather than die, she had to break the curse.
Unfortunately, today was not the day she’d break free. She'd spilled her own blood last night working the spell—but her own blood was apparently not as strong as the ghost of her mother.
She thought about heading into the back yard, to the stones at the far corner where they had buried Momma. She could rail at her grandmother's ghost in person, though she was well aware that the ghost did not reside there. The spirit did not linger with the bones, although the bones themselves had power.
She wondered if maybe she should dig them up. She started thinking perhaps she ought to. The bone-handled knife that she'd taken with her and used for her spell had not been as powerful as she wished—but perhaps one made of her mother's bone would suffice to break her mother's spell. In fact, her mother might be the only one who could do it. She thought about that a little further.
What would she need to crack this? She already had the spell work and the anger to drive it, but even together, it had not been enough. She thought about when her mother had cast that spell, how she'd offered the cut on the meat of her thumb. In movies and TV shows, people always slit across the palm of their hands, but that was stupid and dangerous and likely to leave you unable to hold anything with that hand for the rest of your life. The backs of arms, long ways, were a great place to get blood. But for simplicity, the meat of the thumb was optimal. Sliced with the striation of the muscle, a nick there would bleed heavily and avoid damaging tissues, Darcelle knew.
That's what she had done last night. Even so, it had not been enough, and the bandage across the lower part of her palm was a reminder of that.
Not knowing what else to do and not having many options, she'd walked to the store and opened it up. But again, this time, she'd taken her lunch break not for lunch, but to raid the shelves. This time she took poppets and tiny crystal balls. She rummaged through the knives they had on sale, each one unique. And, as she had told the Eleri woman, many of them were pieces of her family's history. She hadn't been lying when she said she wasn't that fond of her family. The spell that had been cast on her had been cast with her mother's blood.
Maybe, she thought, it would take her mother's blood to break it.
43
"Grandmere," Eleri said, trying to get the older woman to understand. "We've swept both cars. We can't find any tracking devices. It means that they're watching us carefully. I'm afraid they're watching you, too." She tried to emphasize the danger that all three of them were in. "I think it's better if Donovan and I leave."
Grandmere shook her head, much the same way she'd done when Eleri had been a child and had come home covered in mud or with a crawdad pinched on her finger. This idea appeared equally as stupid and possibly as inane. Eleri was working to convince her otherwise. Luckily, she had Donovan at her back.
The two tag-teamed Grandmere, trying to let the woman understand that something far more serious was going on than they originally anticipated. Now Grandmere turned that look to Donovan, and Eleri almost raised an eyebrow.
"Children," Grandmere began, with the same word she'd used when Eleri and Emmaline had run amok. “You can't find a tracker, because there isn't one—at least not physically. Think about who you've been up against. Do you think the Dauphine family is using toys from Radio Shack?"
Eleri felt the words like a smack. Grandmere was probably right, and if she was …
"Grandmere," she said, "Donovan and I don't know enough to deal with this.”
Grandmere had nodded at them sagely. "True, but I do."
Did she? Eleri wondered. If Grandmere had truly known enough, would they have been followed? Would they have gotten into a fight with wolves?
Grandmere tilted her head, as though she were able to hear Eleri's thoughts. For a moment, Eleri wondered if she might actually be able to. Her words didn’t quell that idea.
"I can't save you from everything. I certainly can't save you when you go looking for trouble," Grandmere chided. "You came out of your fight, at least relatively unscathed. Am I correct?"
Eleri nodded.
"You're better off than the other guys, aren't you?" Grandmere asked. Her tone was smug, something Eleri wasn't used to hearing. Again, Eleri had to nod and she noticed Donovan doing the same thing.
Donovan was quick to add, "That was because a woman came along with some sais and saved us."
"Hmm," Grandmere said. "The universe works in mysterious ways."
Eleri decided she could go crazy or be grateful, and so she opted for the second. Though sadly, she didn’t think she’d see the woman again. The stranger had not kept her card and would not be getting back in touch.
"If we don't leave, what do we do then?" Eleri asked. She wanted to sit at the table, but she remembered the beautifully carved chairs were also hard, and they pressed on the constellation of cuts on her back. She'd seen them when she'd looked in the bathroom mirror, pulling her shirt up. Donovan had done a good job at patching her, but tomorrow, she'd be black and blue. A few precocious bruises were already starting to bloom. Donovan looked much the same.
"Well, for starters," Grandmere said, "we need to do something stronger. They're still following us. We need to become invisible." Eleri wasn't sure about Grandmere's use of the word “us,” but she wasn't going to argue.
"What do we do that's stronger? Haven't you already cast spells on everything?"
Grandmere nodded. Her eyes turned solemn. "I haven't done everything I could do."
"Why not?" Eleri asked.
"I don't move easily into that level anymore, child. I haven't for years, or actually decades. I think we need to call Frederick.”
"Is he stronger than you?" Eleri asked, considering for the first time that perhaps her Grandmere was maybe not the most powerful woman in the universe. It was a belief that had lingered since childhood—Grandmere could rule the world if she wanted. Eleri had never seriously considered that it could be otherwise. Now that Grandmere wanted to call Frederick, it made her think the consequences through.
"No. He is not stronger than me. He has not practiced long enough to know what I can do, or to do what I can do. However, two is stronger than one. You can be our third, Eleri." Grandmere said it as an offer.
Eleri felt a lightning bolt go through her at the idea of finally becoming part of one of Grandmere's rituals. It was not something she had ever intended to do, but it was an invitation she could not deny. Eleri had no idea what she'd be walking into, or what would be expected of her. It was the great unknown, as far as she was concerned, but it was also clearly part of her history.
She nodded. If Grandmere asked, she would do it.
What Grandmere asked was for her to call Frederick, and to tell him to arrive at dusk. Eleri loved that her Grandmere did not use clock time to describe what she needed. In the meantime, she set them to work—though Donovan was of little help—as they dug specific herbs out of the garden. Donovan kept offering to do more, but Grandmere turned him away.
"We're the ones doing this,” she said. “We have to be the ones to dig. It builds the power.”
Donovan seemed to graciously accept the strange things that her great-grandmother was telling them to do. Then again, he knew he'd been followed in a car that had no known tracking devices on it, no GPS turned on, and cell phones turned off. Unless they'd swallowed trackers inadvertently, there was nothing that should be tracing them.
That idea had stilled Eleri’s hand when she’d first thought it. She'd told Donovan to sweep his own body, which he'd done. But that, too, yielded nothing.
When she stood in front of him for a few minutes and found no tracking devices were on her—or seemingly in her—it further solidified the idea that the way they were being followed was not something they could find with a tech sweeper.
Unable to help with the spells, Donovan got on the ground and crawled under the cars, though Eleri didn't like the makeshift lifts he had designed. He stayed underneath each car for only a few moments—for which Eleri was grateful, as it looked horribly unsafe—hoping to find something that was perhaps radio-invisible.
That kind of device most likely existed. The sweeper that the two had constructed should have swept for all kinds of frequencies. Still, he was looking for something newer and hoping only that he'd know it when he saw it. In the end, he shook his head. He hadn't found anything.
As the day wore on, Eleri thought about the things she'd been reading up on since Donovan had discovered her family history. Pure American Witchcraft on her father's side. Her Grandmere's side brought Haitian rituals, Voodoo, and Hoodoo into her bloodline.
She'd begun to wonder if she, Frederick, and Grandmere were going to wind up in the backyard, around a completely wooden altar, with water, salt, wine, chickens, poppets, and no clothing. Eleri wasn't really sure she was ready to participate in that. She was grateful when the sun started to set. Frederick had sent her to change—not into her bare skin, but into “cotton and natural fiber clothing only,” he said.
She'd wound up checking tags and looking for stray pieces of metal, like zippers and buttons and snaps. When at last she'd found two pieces that worked, she was dressed in red and brown. She looked reasonably ready for an afternoon strolling through New Orleans, but not for a powerful spell. Also, she was grateful that Grandmere did not plan to hold this ritual in the yard. She had cleared off the coffee table, pulling it to the center of the living room.
"Does it have no metal?" Eleri asked, thinking of the witchcraft reading she'd done.
"No metal." Grandmere smiled at her. "I see you've been reading up, little girl."
Eleri grinned. Then, things turned serious. Frederick had barely said two words to her, other than, "Hello cousin," offering her a hug and commenting how far she'd come. Eleri hadn't been sure how to interpret that, so she’d simply ignored it.
Pieces for the spellwork were laid out on the table—poppets, bowls of water and salt, and knives. Donovan had been banished to the back room. Eleri found herself grateful he wasn’t there to witness. Embarrassment was not the right emotion for a spell.
"Not to be rude," Grandmere started. Eleri almost laughed. When had Grandmere ever been concerned with such things? "But Eleri, my dear, you are our weakest link."
Eleri only nodded. It was the truth, no rudeness required.
Grandmere looked at her. "What prayers or spells do you know?"
Eleri shrugged. "I only know the one you taught us as kids, the one to Aida Weddo."
"Then you lead us in that," Grandmere said.
Looking to both of them to see what to do, Eleri watched as Grandmere took her hand and then Frederick's, and Eleri reached out to Frederick. Then she started speaking the one chant she knew.
"Bon Dieu, keep me safe. Bind me from trouble." The other voices joined in with hers at the first syllable. "Aida Weddo, protect me from this forest I walk."
