Beneath the Black Moon (Root Sisters) (13 page)

Two
little girls in white run out onto the lawn. The elder is Diana, and she
clutches the hand of a smaller, pudgier Cam. The young Cam has no idea what is
happening, only that she has never seen such a big fire, but Diana screams and
screams until she has no voice.

With
that, the vision rushed away, and the dreaming Cam found herself transported to
another time and place.

This
vision begins in the kitchen as it looked fourteen years earlier. Caro and
Daphne are both dressed in black, and it is impossible to say who looks more
anguished. Or more determined. They create the poppet together, using the
strongest conjure that either has ever harnessed. Alone, neither of them could
have fought Kat Varennes, but together they will best her. They each take a
needle, the longest and thickest on the plantation, and drive it into the body
of the doll again and again, with more grief than reason.

Across
the county, Kat Varennes is brushing her hair in front of her mirror. She
receives no warning, and there is a smile on her face when the first blade
plunges straight through her rib cage. That first wound is all that is
necessary to stop her heart, but not to appease the bereaved mothers. When the
wounds finally stop coming, the dead woman slips sideways off her chair. The
hairbrush falls from her hand, and there is still the ghost of a smile on her
white lips as her fingers twitch a final time.   

Still
locked inside of the vision, Cam cried out in terror and revulsion, thrashing
and struggling against the horror that she was forced to witness.

           
“Cam!
Cammie!”
The words pierce Cam’s dream as surely as the conjure sliced into
Kat.
“Wake up Cam!”

And
suddenly, Cam woke. She was drenched in sweat and her forehead was hot while
her hands were cold. Someone clutched her shoulders, and she gasped in fear
before she recognized the outline of her sister’s face in the darkness.

“Helen?”
She whispered.

“It’s
alright,” her little sister told her. “You’re safe, you had a bad dream.”

Cam
exhaled and then took a deep breath, still reeling from the vivid dream.

“Not
a dream,” she realized suddenly. “A vision.”

“What?”
Helen asked.

“A
vision, Helen. I had a vision.”

“A
vision? Like Mary?” Helen sounded shocked. “I didn’t know that you had those.”

“I
don’t,” Cam said. “I’ve never had one before.”

“Are
you sure that it wasn’t just a dream?” Helen asked.

“Positive,”
Cam said. She’d had nightmares before, plenty of them, and the difference was
like night and day.

“Some
dreams can be very convincing,” Helen said.

“I
dreamt of mama, Helen,” Cam said, still breathing heavily. “I dreamt of Kat
Varennes. I saw her face. I’d never remembered Kat’s face before, but I
remembered it then. Helen, it was a vision.”

“What
about?”

“Their
deaths,” Cam said, keeping her voice low so that she couldn’t be overheard. “I
dreamt of how they died. Exactly as it happened. My God. I saw everything that
happened.” She shuddered, and Helen put an arm around her.

“You
already knew,” Helen said. They’d all learned when they were children that Kat
Varennes had murdered Sam and Solange and that Caro and Grandma had killed her
for it.

“Knowing
is one thing,” Cam said. “Seeing is a different matter.” She shivered again.

“Should
I stay?” Helen asked, sitting on the mattress beside her older sister.

Cam
opened her mouth to tell her sister to go back to bed, but before she got the
words out an image of the dead gaze of Kat Varennes flashed in front of her
eyes. Cam swallowed. “Maybe,” she admitted.

Helen
didn’t say anything else, but climbed into bed beside Cam. “Remember when I was
little and I would climb in bed with you when I had nightmares?”

Cam
nodded. She lay back tentatively, but was still too frightened to close her
eyes. “I remember. You also used to climb in with Aunt Beth though, didn’t
you?”

“Only
until I was five,” Helen sighed. “Then she told me that I was quite old enough
to brave a few nightmares. Also I was getting too big and starting to kick her
at night.”

“You
did kick,” Cam whispered. “I remember that.”

They
reminisced for a few more minutes, both of them purposefully avoiding any
further mention of Cam’s dream.  Cam had finally worked up the courage to try
to fall back to sleep when Helen’s tone changed.

“Cammie?”

“Hm?”

“Do
you… Do you believe what they say about mama?”

Cam’s
eyes opened, and suddenly she was no longer sleepy. “What do they say?” She
asked, as if she didn’t already know, as if the whispers didn’t torment her.

“You
know.” Helen said flatly. “That she took lovers. That she wore red to every
party and danced with all of the married men. That she used to go on long walks
with James Smith and not return till after dark. That one night Mrs. Laurel
came home and found mama-”

Cam
sat up suddenly. She was alarmed by the way Helen’s voice had grown higher and
more distressed as she repeated each rumor. “You’ve been listening to Hadley,
haven’t you?” She said, turning to her sister in the dark.

“Is
it possible to avoid listening to Hadley?”

“I
manage,” Cam said firmly, lying down again. “For heaven’s sake, Helen, don’t
listen to that. You’ll go mad.”

Helen
hesitated. “Alright,” she said finally, sighing deeply. No one said anything
for a few minutes, but Helen stirred restlessly. Cam had almost drifted off to
sleep when Helen spoke again.

“But
do you think it’s true, Cam?”

Cam
didn’t open her eyes, but an image of her mother’s portrait flashed behind her
eyelids. “Would it matter?” She asked her sister. “Would you miss her less?”

“I
don’t miss her at all,” Helen said, and she sounded close to tears. “I never
knew her, how could I?”

“You
can still miss her,” Cam said.

“Hm,”
Helen murmured, but whether in agreement or dissent Cam couldn’t tell. She
didn’t ask Cam anything else, and within a few minutes they were both
sleeping, this time peacefully.

Genteel
Southern lady or not, Cam was fairly certain that if she begged indisposition
one more time, her aunt would— politely— murder her. Still, even the threat of
domestic violence was not enough to make her go downstairs.

There
was quite a bit of activity on the lawn at the moment. Her father was
entertaining several families— including Marianne and her parents,
unfortunately. Brent had come over to pick up Cam, Helen and Elizabeth, and he
had remained a few minutes to talk to Cam’s father and some of his guests.
Either that or he was waiting for Cam to come down.

Which
was not going to happen.

Just
the thought of being in a confined space with Brent was enough to make her heart
race. She could handle Aunt Beth. It was Brent she didn’t want to face. She had
never known anything quite like the burning, all-consuming fire that burned in
her blood when she was around him. She had to remind herself, frequently, that
it was her family he was interested in. Her family, her history, and all of the
secrets that were meant never to be told. She wasn’t really all that important.
And the kiss—

Well,
the kiss was really quite impossible to explain. It was just a spur of the
moment thing. Something that neither of them had planned or even enjoyed very
much (
no, not even a little bit
, Cam insisted to herself). So, she
wasn’t going to go down. It was that simple. She couldn’t afford to become so
unwound over a man.

Cam
sat on the edge of her bed, taking the time, out of boredom, to attractively
arrange her taffeta skirts around her until she was seated so gracefully that
even her Aunt Beth would have been impressed. Cam sucked in her stomach and
held the pose, staring at her reflection in the mirror. She tilted her head so
that her curls fell attractively over one shoulder, but her face was turning
pink and her mouth was puckered with the effort of holding her breath.

I
look like a fool
.

Cam
sighed and the breath she had held came rushing out. She stretched her legs out
in front of her, which wasn’t easy given the weight of her skirts, and wished
that she were an avid reader like Helen. She could vaguely remember listening
to her mother read stories as a child, but since then she hadn’t been able to
sit still long enough to enjoy a book. Grandma liked to say that she had been
born with “restless feet.”

Today
it wasn’t just her feet that were restless. Her mind was going around and
around in meaningless circles, and she couldn’t seem to find any peace.

“Oh,
damn it,” she said finally, and made her way to her bedroom window. “Just a
peek,” she told herself firmly.

Cam
leaned forward until she could feel the sun-warmed glass pane against her
cheek. It didn’t take her long to find the man that she couldn’t stop thinking
about. He seemed more relaxed then when they had parted last. There was
looseness in his broad shoulders, and from the tilt of his head Cam could
imagine the lazy smirk on his face. She was almost tempted to join her aunt
downstairs, just to see if the expression on his face matched the smile that
she was picturing.

That
was ridiculous, of course. She had fought tooth and nail with her aunt to
excuse herself from this picnic, purely because she wanted to avoid Brent and
those horribly perceptive eyes of his.

They
were beautiful eyes though. 

And
at that moment, almost as though she had called him just by thinking of him, he
glanced up, and their eyes locked across the great distance between them.

Cam
gazed back at him coolly, dispassionately, and tried not to remember the way
that he had touched her beneath her basque last week. She could tell from the
grin on his face that he remembered. She was tempted to flounce away from the
window, but that would make it seem as if he had won, and she couldn’t have
that.

So
she kept staring down at him, and he kept staring up at her, and somewhere
along the way Cam felt a treacherous smile steal over her face. She tried to turn
away before he could see it. She whirled around and then laughed into her empty
room at their childish behavior. She waited until she was no longer laughing
and then glanced back out of the window to see if he was still there. He was,
and something warm and almost… affectionate? filled her heart.

He
was going to draw attention to himself he kept standing there, obviously
staring at her window. Marianne was downstairs and she would notice
immediately. Cam knew that she should be alarmed by all of this, but all she
felt was tempted to go downstairs and see what he had to say for himself.

It
wasn’t as if they’d be alone, after all.

Surely
if they weren’t alone there was no harm in it.

And
it wasn’t as though—

Oh,
blast. She needed her coin charm back anyway.

***

Cam
could see the victory in Brent’s expression as she joined her father’s guests
on the lawn. Helen and Aunt Beth were off to one side, conversing with Mrs.
Winthrop, while her father was absorbed by Mr. MacIntire. Brent stood alone,
arms crossed, waiting with eyes that seemed to burn just for her.

Marianne
was eying him longingly, but the disgusting Mr. Hadley was talking to her and
she couldn’t seem to escape him. He was a middle-aged gossip who was nearly
impossible to get rid of. Despite the fact that he was married, he had his eye
on all the young women. Cam had been cornered by him more than once before and
had gradually grown adept at avoiding him.

“Cam.”
Brent said as she approached, and in that tone her name could have been either
a curse or a prayer.

“Brent.”
Cam said in a more clipped tone. It was imperative that in this first conversation
post-kiss she set a precedent that was distant and formal.

He
laughed at the look on her face. “Trying to set me straight are you? Don’t
worry, I wouldn’t dream of shocking your friends and family by kissing you
again. I’m rather enjoying having your Aunt’s favor. I think she has plans for
me.”

“Sssh!”
They were standing off to the side of the other guests, but she couldn’t be too
careful. Girls’ reputations had been ruined over less. “We’re not going to
discuss that,” she told him.

He
sighed, studying her face closely. “I can’t tell whether you’re actually embarrassed
or toying with me like usual.”

“I
don’t toy with you.” Cam told him. Her Aunt Beth was coming over, so she didn’t
dare to glare at him openly. Instead she shot him an angry look from under
lowered lashes.

“There
you go again,” he told her.

“Camilla?”
Her Aunt sounded surprised and pleased. “I thought that you were indisposed?”