The Seventh Night Page 8

  As though more a voyeur than a participant, I felt myself respond. I tried to get up, only to discover I was no longer in my bed, but outside, lying on a large, flat stone—almost an altar. I was aware of the mist swirling around me and the sound of the ocean somewhere below me. I could see the flames of the fire now, leaping and flickering with a life of their own.

  Reid came closer, still gazing down at me with a dark, proprietary gleam in his blue eyes that was both thrilling and frightening. Only then did I realize my own clothing had been removed as well. I tried to cover myself, but I couldn’t seem to move.

  A strange symbol had been drawn on my stomach with red paint, and I stared at it in fascination. For some reason, I wasn’t scared.

  “What’s happening to me?” I asked. My voice sounded hollow and distant.

  Reid smiled. “I’ve come to claim what’s mine.” He lifted his hand, and light sparked off his gold ring.

  The fire crackled beside us, the mist tossed around us, and the drums beat their hypnotic, sensuous rhythm.

  And slowly, ever so slowly, Reid lowered himself over me….

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Third Day

  I shot up in bed like an uncoiled spring, as memories—or hazy impressions—flooded my mind. Last night…the wine…Reid…. Oh, God, what had happened?

  Looking down at the rumpled cover, I realized I still wore the dress I’d had on at dinner. And as my eyes took in the rest of the bed, I saw that I was alone. Thank goodness, it had all been just another, fantastic dream.

  My head throbbed with relentless precision. A hangover with only a few sips of wine? Just my luck….

  Swinging my legs over the side of the bed, I sat for a moment, clutching my temples while inside my head the illusory images that wouldn’t go away spun and whirled.

  Reid had kissed me. That much I knew to be true because even my dreams hadn’t conjured up anything that good. Even now the memory of his mouth against mine had the blood pulsing through my veins, and I could feel myself blushing.

  How could I face him now?

  A fresh wave of panic gripped me. How could I ever dare look him in the eye after I’d all but thrown myself at him? The wine—even so little—had completely lowered my inhibitions, my reservations, my doubts. I’d wanted Reid to kiss me, and done everything to insure that he had.

  But what else had he done that I couldn’t remember?

  What else had I done?

  Crawling out of bed, I staggered to the bathroom to douse cold water on my flaming face, then solemnly repeated my vow never to drink.

  The comforting promise made me feel a little better, but as I stared at my reflection in the mirror, I had the eerie sensation I was looking into the face of a stranger. My brown hair was loose and disheveled. Untamed. The light picked up golden highlights I’d never even noticed before, and my eyes, usually so very ordinary a hazel, sparkled with green. My lips looked bruised and slightly swollen, and as I remembered Reid’s kiss yet again, the color in my cheeks heightened.

  “Where’s Christine?” I whispered, touching a finger to the cool reflection.

  Men choose pretty women to fall in love with, but when a man pursues a plain girl like you, Christine, he always has an ulterior motive.

  It was my grandmother’s voice again, taunting me from her grave. I wished I could cover my ears and drown out the sound, but the destruction to my self-confidence had been done years ago.

  And I was afraid she was right. Why would a man like Reid St. Pierre want someone like me? He could have his pick of women—beautiful, desirable sophisticates with more poise in their little fingers than I’d ever have in my entire body.

  And if you weren’t such a coward, you’d admit—at least to yourself—that that is exactly why you married Danny.

  Poor Danny.

  He’d been a misfit, like me. He’d had an unhappy home life, like me. We’d been kindred spirits in a way, friends who never should have married.

  At least, it had never been any more than friendship on my part. Danny had been in love with me in his own gentle way, and I think that was why I’d always felt so guilty about our relationship.

  We’d been seeing each other for a few months when Reid and my father had come to Chicago for a week to visit me. My grandmother had just died, and I was a freshman in college. All sorts of new sensations were awakening inside me, but none that compared to the feelings Reid St. Pierre evoked.

  He’d frightened me. Badly. And yet just the memory of him had stimulated my dreams for a long time after he’d gone. I’d often wondered if my agreeing to marry Danny so shortly after Reid and my father’s visit had been a desperate attempt to forget a man who was as far out of my league as the man on the moon.

  So why had Reid kissed me last night? Just what was his ulterior motive?

  But as before, I could think of no logical explanation.

  I splashed my face again with cold water, dried it, then went back into the bedroom. It was still very early. The room was bathed with a misty yellow light that heralded the dawn.

  I drew on a robe and belted it around my waist as I slipped down the stairs and out the front door. The horizon to the east was stained with light, and the early morning air was cool and fragrant, a refreshing balm to my battered senses.

  Dawn had always been my favorite time in Chicago, an intriguing time when the soul of the city altered, when people materialized on the streets and the night shadows vanished. Here on the island, the shadows and sounds of night seemed reluctant to disappear.

  “So mote it be.”

  The disembodied words startled me, and I gasped and whirled. Standing at the bottom of the veranda steps, a heavyset, stooped old woman in a loud print dress slowly waved one hand over the contents of a red cloth bag that she held in her other hand.

  So intense was her concentration, she seemed completely oblivious to me.

  “With this ritual, I cleanse away all Evil. The powers of Evil are removed!” Her dark gaze lifted, and her eyes met mine. “So mote it be,” she said again.

  Slowly, her black eyes still on me, she climbed the steps of the veranda. I started to back away, but something about her held my gaze. For some reason, I didn’t feel threatened by her.

  “You are Christopher Greggory’s daughter.” It was a statement rather than a question, spoken in the lovely, lilting cadence of the islands.

  I couldn’t seem to take my eyes off her. Her gaze drew mine, but there was no coldness in her stare as I’d glimpsed in Captain Baptiste’s. There was no suspicion, no hidden animosity, merely endless, endless wisdom. She looked like a woman who might well know the secrets of the universe, who might even carry a miracle or two around in her pocket.

  So who was this specter that had appeared so suddenly with the dawn? Or had she remained from the night?

  As if reading my mind the old woman spoke again. “I am called Mama Vinnia.”

  “I’m Christine Greggory.” An inane response, seeing as how she already knew who I was, but I hardly knew what else to say. She came forward, her steps painfully slow. She seemed so fragile that, if it weren’t for her weight, a puff of wind might have knocked her over. Standing very near me, she peered at me through eyes that were almost hidden by ebony wrinkles, but were still clear and alert.

  “I’ve come to bring you a gris-gris.” She held the red bag out to me and I reluctantly accepted it.

  “What is it?”

  “A gris-gris is many things. Its power can work good or evil, depending on the serviteur’s heart.”

  “But I’m not a true believer,” I said quickly as I handed the bag back to her. “I don’t think I need this.”

  Mama Vinnia ignored my protests. “The contents are very powerful. Keep it near you at all times. At night, place it under your bed. The magic is strongest when you sleep. Your soul will be protected when you dream.” She placed her hand over mine and closed my fingers around the bag.

  The blood tingled in my hand, not
unpleasantly, but still I looked at her in alarm. “What’s in here?”

  “Mandrake, Saint-Johns-wort, devil’s shoestring root, lodestone, graveyard dust.”

  “Graveyard dust!” The skin at the back of my neck crawled.

  “The magic is in the charm,” she said. “Keep it near you.”

  It smelled a little like potpourri. Again, not an unpleasant sensation. I tried to smile graciously and not wonder too hard just exactly what graveyard dust constituted. “Thank you.”

  “To find your father, you will need all the power you can muster.”

  My head snapped up. “What do you know about my father?”

  “He needs you.”

  Again her tone was cryptic, but I had the very disturbing notion that her words held some deeper meaning I couldn’t yet decipher.

  “What do you mean? Have you seen him? Do you know where he is?”

  “He is alive, but not well, the servant of a malfacteur who wishes to use him to gain more power.”

  “How could someone gain power through my father?” I asked with growing panic. “I don’t understand. Unless you mean…he’s been kidnapped. Is that it? Did someone send you here with a ransom demand?”

  Mama Vinnia shook her head. “No one sent me here, mistress. I’ve come to help you. I brought you the gris-gris to protect you. The same malevolence would wish you harm as well. You must guard yourself well. Only you can save your father. You are of the same blood. Together you and he can overcome the malfacteur.”

  “But if there’s no ransom demand, why on earth would someone hold my father prisoner?”

  Mama Vinnia touched the silver cross that hung around her neck. Her voice whispered through the stillness. “Because someone wants his soul.”

  A cold draft swept over me. I looked toward the trees, but their leaves remained calm, unruffled. The old woman was probably demented, I told myself, but her words frightened me just the same as I remembered the conversation I’d overheard at the airport.

  “Some people have the power to capture another living human’s soul. That’s what makes a zombie—someone alive, but without a soul. A body without a will.”

  “You can’t be serious—” I began, but Mama Vinnia had already turned away. “Wait, you have to tell me more!” But she didn’t respond. I could hear her chanting, though, as she made her way down the veranda steps and disappeared into the garden.

  I caught up with her and grabbed her arm. The black eyes slanted toward me, and I immediately released her. “Please. You have to tell me whatever you know.”

  She looked infinitely sad as she shook her head. “I’ve told you what I can. The rest is up to you.” And then she turned and walked away.

  I stared after her for a moment, transfixed by the thousands of thoughts racing through my mind. The bizarre conversation, coming as it had right after such a disturbing dream, seemed sinister to me somehow.

  Sinister and portentous.

  Shivering slightly in the already warming air, I turned and went back inside to dress.

  The picture of my father and me was lying faceup on the dresser. I was quite sure I’d put it away the night before, yet there it lay, like a talisman.

  Or a warning.

  I set the gris-gris on the polished wood surface and picked up the photograph with one hand, studying it as I had hundreds and hundreds of times before.

  My father and I looked so much alike, but where his features had always been so clear and sharp and attractive, mine were more nondescript, a paler, dimmer copy of Christopher Greggory.

  “You are of the same blood.”

  At that precise moment, perhaps because the old woman’s warning still rang so keenly in my ears, I had the most incredible sense of foreboding. Like my dreams, the feeling seemed almost a premonition, a presage of danger and violence.

  And blood. When I closed my eyes all I could see was red.

  But whose blood? I wondered with a cold terror seeping through my veins. Whose blood did I foresee? My father’s? Or my own?

  My fingers began to sting where I held the photograph. The tips were burning, as if I held them too close to a flame.

  The pain increased. My heart began to pound in terror.

  My skin was searing, scorching, and I cried out in agony. I tried to drop the picture, but it was almost as though it held me now. Like clutching a live wire, I couldn’t release it.

  With growing horror, I stared down at the image imprinted on paper. Before my eyes, my father’s face seemed to change. His handsome features altered hideously. He looked old, haggard, near death…and all the while the flesh on my fingertips burned from the unseen blaze.

  In desperation, almost unconsciously, I grabbed the gris-gris with my free hand and held it over the scorching heat. The picture fell from my fingers and fluttered harmlessly to the floor.

  I dashed to the bathroom and held my stinging fingers under cold water, but when I examined them, the skin looked normal, not even reddened. And the pain was already fading away.

  Slowly I went back out to the bedroom and stared at the picture lying faceup on the floor. After a moment, I stooped to look at it, making sure not to touch it.

  The image of my father’s handsome, youthful face smiled back at me.

  Relieved, I started to pick it up, then noticed there was something on the picture I hadn’t seen before. With a pencil, someone had drawn a strange-looking snake symbol—a vévé—over my father’s heart.

  I was going crazy, that could be the only possible explanation. Images on photographs didn’t change. Pictures didn’t burn flesh. No. The only rational answer was my own insanity.

  And for that very reason I didn’t mention the incident to Mrs. DuPrae when I saw her a short while later in the kitchen of the main house. Dementia was not something I wanted to advertise, especially when my credibility might make a difference to my father’s safety.

  Because whatever I’d imagined earlier, my father’s disappearance was very much a reality. I had to make people listen to me, especially Reid. Whether I liked it or not, I needed his help to find my father.

  “How long do you think you’ll remain in Columbé, Christine?” Mrs. DuPrae asked as she poured our tea. It was a sweet-smelling herbal brew that was wonderfully comforting. We were seated at the cozy round table in the kitchen, and the sunshine streaming in through the curtained window was a welcome respite from the gloom of my own creepy thoughts.

  I smiled vaguely. “I certainly can’t leave until I hear from my father. I have to know he’s all right before I go back to Chicago.”

  “Perhaps you’ll hear something today,” she said, lifting her cup of tea. She examined the contents for a moment, as though momentarily lapsing into deep thought. Then she lifted the cup to her lips and sipped.

  “I met a woman named Vinnia earlier,” I remarked casually, “Mama Vinnia, she called herself.”

  A shadow of annoyance moved in the housekeeper’s brown eyes. “What in the world was she doing here?”

  “She brought me a gris-gris.”

  Mrs. DuPrae’s tongue clucked in disgust. “I hope you threw the smelly old thing away. No doubt she tried to upset you with her prattle about voodoo and spells and powers and God knows what else. You can’t take that old woman seriously. She used to work for the St. Pierres years ago, and she still hangs around here from time to time, I think because the poor old thing’s lonely. She has no family, nothing with which to occupy her time except her potions and whatnot. She calls herself a mambo, a voodoo priestess, of all things. She’s a bit senile, but I don’t expect she’s actually dangerous. Only if you start to believe her,” she added, smiling.

  At this point, I wasn’t sure what I believed anymore. But I returned Mrs. DuPrae’s smile and asked with casual interest, “How long have you and Rachel lived in Columbé?”

  “Oh, it’s a long story,” she said dismissively. “Christopher brought us over here after my husband died. They’d been good friends in Chicago, and Chri
stopher knew that Martin had left me—well, in dire financial straits. He offered me a job and a home for my daughter. Now Rachel works at the hotel. We’re both deeply indebted to your father.”

  Her expression changed when she spoke of my father. Her eyes seemed to glow with an inner light, and the austere lines of her mouth softened. She looked very much like a woman in love, I thought with a start. No wonder she seemed as worried about him as I was.

  Faint color tinged her cheeks as our eyes met. “Let’s hope he returns soon,” she said, taking a hurried sip of her tea.

  “I plan to file a missing person’s report with the police today,” I informed her. “I hope Reid will go with me.”

  Mrs. DuPrae set her cup down with a little clatter and looked away.

  “Did I say something wrong?”

  The eyes—full of worry—swept back to me. She tugged at the top button of her dark brown dress. “Oh, no. Of course not. It’s just…Well, Reid may be a little preoccupied at the moment.”

  “With what?”

  “Things are not going well at the hotel.”

  “Are he and my father having financial difficulties?”

  Mrs. DuPrae hesitated, pulling so furiously on the button I thought she might snap it loose. “They’re having…difficulties.”

  “Reid doesn’t seem in the least concerned about my father’s disappearance,” I confided. “I can’t help wondering why.”

  “You’re very perceptive. He and Christopher had a bitter argument the night before Christopher disappeared. You could hear them shouting at one another all over the house. It was very…disturbing.”

  “What was the argument about?”

  Her lips thinned into a rigid line. “I’ve said too much. I don’t like gossip.”

  “But I have a right to know,” I argued. “I’m terribly worried about my father.”

  “Then take care yourself,” she said ominously.

  Her words echoed Vinnia’s, but I couldn’t imagine someone as practical as Mrs. DuPrae believing in voodoo. I said almost fearfully, “What on earth do you mean?”