Persuasion (39 page)

He only shrugged. “You never asked who my relatives were.”

“You’re not after the lodestone to break the curse. Or, at least, that’s not all you want, is it? You want the gold.”

“I told you there was a debt to pay.”

“Blood and years and lives, you said.”

“Stolen lives and years of servitude. Yes, and blood.” Obadiah’s face lost any veneer of charm. “John Colesworth thought nothing of ordering his slave to trap the Fire Carrier and demanding a
gift
that would always make him prosper while the Watsons and the Beauforts failed. Elijah refused. He knew that kind of magic would have consequences, and John Colesworth bludgeoned him to death for refusing. Elijah’s wife, Ayita, cast the curse and buried the lodestone in the treasure room that John was having built.”

“So you have known about the hidden room all along,” Barrie said.

“I knew it existed. I didn’t know where it was, and I couldn’t be sure the gold was in it.”

“You still don’t know that.”

“No, I don’t,” Obadiah said, regarding her steadily and somehow managing to turn the statement into a question.

Barrie had no intention of telling him. Not until she’d sorted through her options.

“Charlotte Colesworth is buried in that room. Did you know that, too?” she asked. “Whether or not the gold is there,
whatever happens, we have to get her out and make sure she’s laid to rest. That’s who Alcee and his wife were both trying to reach the night they died.”

“How do you know that?” Obadiah’s exhaustion showed in the sag of his shoulders as he studied her.

“I read between the lines in Caroline Colesworth’s diary. Caroline never knew about the treasure room, and she never knew about the gold until the night the Union soldiers came for it. Alcee took the slaves and men out through the tunnel, but because Charlotte was beautiful, he locked her in the hidden room where she’d be safe—or so he thought. He must have figured his wife, Caroline, and Daphne would be all right because he thought the girls were too young to be of interest to the soldiers, and he believed that if the house was occupied, the Federals wouldn’t burn it. They must have been desperate to reach her when the fire started.”

Eyes closed, Obadiah rolled his head on his neck until his spine cracked loudly enough for Barrie to hear it. “They’re both still desperate. That must be why they wanted us to see what happened. They can’t speak, so they used the burst of power Elijah and Ayita threw at me to show us what happened that night, hoping we—someone—would finally reach Charlotte and set her free.”

“What happened to Daphne?” Barrie asked, biting her
lip. “I know Caroline survived, but was Daphne all right?”

Obadiah’s expression smoothed out and became inscrutable. “Why do you suppose I would know that?”

“The names can’t be a coincidence. Mary, my friend Mary, is your family, isn’t she?”

“That’s not the family I need to be concerned with now.” Obadiah sounded even more exhausted. “Elijah and Ayita have never lost their hatred for John Colesworth and his descendants. Their need for revenge makes their spirits strong, and their hate keeps them from caring whom they hurt.”

“But who’s to say what the Colesworths who came after John would have been like if they hadn’t been affected by the curse?
I’m
half-Colesworth.”

“Not like them.”

Barrie shook her head. “I can’t let you take the gold,” she said, before she’d even realized she was thinking it. “It doesn’t belong to you, and I can’t imagine that Mary would want it if you take it illegally. Stealing won’t solve anything.”

Obadiah didn’t answer her, and in the silence, the sound of car doors slamming and an engine turning over made her turn to look behind her. The police were leaving, and Andrew and Berg were climbing inside the dusty white Prius. From the row of tents, the other students were emerging with towels and bathing suits and racing one another to ride shotgun in an equally dirty Ford Escape and a tiny, battered Fiat. Closer to
the house, Cassie’s mother hustled Sydney into a Toyota and sped down the driveway as if she was late for work, which she likely was. In less than five minutes, the grounds were empty, apart from Cassie standing beside the excavation site alone.

Barrie turned back to Obadiah in time to see him make a gesture with his fingers. His lips moved, Barrie’s breath died, her muscles spasmed, and everything went black.

The earth shook. Rumbled. Barrie groaned and tried to roll over, but her entire body felt too stiff to move.

“Wake up! Barrie, you have to wake up.” The ground rocked even harder.

Forcing one eye open, Barrie pried her brain loose from a deep swamp of sleep that wanted to pull her back. She found herself lying on her side on a wooden floor. There was no earthquake. Someone was shaking her. She was staring at brick, and the planks beneath her were worn, rough, and splintered.

Damn, her head hurt even worse than usual.

And while her mind was cloudy, her body was on high alert. Every heartbeat was too loud and too fast, and her wrists were bound behind her. The pull in her shoulders said they
had been fastened behind her for too long already. Her ankles were tied together. What the
hell
?

“Barrie, get UP!”

A shoe connected with her hip in a white flash of pain, and Barrie came fully awake. Awake enough to recognize her cousin’s voice.

“Stop kicking me, dammit. Where are we?” she asked.

That was a stupid question, though. Barrie recognized the low ceiling, the two tiny windows, the brick fireplace, and the wooden flooring of the slave cabin where Obadiah had left his offerings.

The thought poured chills down her spine.

She wiggled onto her back, and then turned her head so that she was facing Cassie. Her cousin had tears brewing in her eyes. Lying on her side, hands behind her back, Cassie had been pushing Barrie with her knees and feet instead of her hands because she was tied up, too.

“Stop gawking at me,” Cassie said. “Turn back over and let me see your ropes.”

Barrie inched her way along the floor and rolled over so that the ropes around her wrists were close to Cassie’s mouth. Cassie tried to tug on the knots with her teeth, but that accomplished nothing. Cassie started to tremble, her teeth chattering.

“Cassie, stop. Let me try yours instead.” Trying not to
panic herself, Barrie took deep breaths and forced herself to think while Cassie got into position.

Obadiah had used magic to knock her out. And Cassie, too. That was fact number one. He had said he wouldn’t hurt her, but he’d lied. Or had he? She wasn’t hurt. Even Cassie wasn’t hurt. At least not yet.

She and Cassie were in one of the slave cabins. That was fact number two. If it was the same cabin where Barrie had been before, the floorboard was loose. That might be useful. If she couldn’t release Cassie’s wrists, maybe she could pry up the plank and push it aside and get—what? A pile of bones? A rusted straight pin? A pot?

With a sigh, she tried to find an angle on the rough twine that Obadiah had used to bind Cassie’s wrists together behind her back. The knot was tight.

“Ow,” Cassie said. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to break the twine. It’s too tight to untie, but it’s the same stuff they used to create the gridlines.”

“Well, quit. It hurts.” Cassie pulled away.

Barrie thought of the clay jars in the recess beneath the floorboards. If she could break one, it might be sharp enough to cut through the twine. But how would she pry the floorboard open? Maybe the jagged brick of the fireplace would do just as well.

She rolled onto her side and pushed herself into a sitting
position. Trying to stand up with her ankles bound was harder than she’d expected. With effort, she maneuvered herself into place in the low fireplace, her knees bent, her back wedged along the top so that she could rub the twine back and forth against the corner of the bricks.

“Are you about done wasting time yet? What are you doing now?” Cassie asked.

Barrie sent her a withering glance. “What does it look like I’m doing? Shopping for shoes?”

“You don’t have to be a bitch.”

“Gee, and you’ve always been so nice to
me
—” Barrie broke off as a gunshot rang out. One gunshot, and then another.

“What was that?” She tugged frantically against the ropes, working her wrists even faster across the brick. “Go look out the window, would you? Hurry.”

Cassie grunted as she struggled to her feet and hopped to the window, and then her muscles seized. She began to shake, and tears slid down her cheeks, leaving fresh dark mascara smudges.

Who wore makeup to an archaeological excavation anyway? Well, apart from Cassie. And Mark would have, too. He had always said it wasn’t worth going anywhere that you couldn’t go in a good pair of shoes and a great pair of lashes. Which pretty much ruled out where she was right now—Barrie really should have considered that.

But that was beside the point. Barrie recognized that she was trying to distract herself because she was on the verge of being hysterical. Dammit, she needed to breathe. Her chest ached, and she couldn’t take in air. Now was not the time for a panic attack.

She made herself take five deep breaths. Exhale, then inhale.

She made herself keep working the twine back and forth against the bricks. “Cassie, what do you see?” she asked. “I need you to stay with me. Tell me who’s out there.”

Cassie gave no sign that she’d heard.

Barrie doubted that it was Obadiah. He wouldn’t have needed a gun. So who had fired the gunshots? The police? Or someone else?

Speculation was pointless. She worked the twine back and forth on the edge of the fireplace, and the rope grew sticky with blood. But eventually it began to loosen.

For her own sanity as much as her cousin’s, Barrie talked to Cassie as she worked, trying to bring her back to the present. “Focus,” she said. “Come on, Cassie. Tell me who’s out there. Who fired a gun and who got shot?”

The possibilities were endless. Barrie didn’t even know how long they’d been knocked out. Maybe the police had shot someone, or had someone shot Obadiah? Or had he shot someone else? What if Berg or Andrew Bey had come back?
What if they’d been shot? Any one of them might have forgotten something. Or—and now Barrie’s mouth went dry and her vision darkened until she felt like she was blacking out—what if Eight had come after her? What had happened to him that morning? He was supposed to stop and drop off the food for Obadiah on his way to Columbia. What if he’d forgotten and then come back? Or what if Pru had noticed the keys were missing from beneath the stairs?

“Cassie!” Barrie couldn’t keep the panic from her voice. “Dammit, Cassie! You have to tell me what’s going on!”

Cassie stood at the window and didn’t move.

The twine finally broke. Barrie felt the release in her wrists and her screaming shoulder muscles, and she sat down in the fireplace and breathed a sigh. Twisting and pulling her clammy hands, she managed to unwind the rest of the rope after loosening it enough to pull her hands back through. The first thing she did was reach into her pocket for her cell phone, but Obadiah must have taken it. It wasn’t there.

With a growl of frustration, she fumbled at the twine binding around her ankles, but the knot was drawn too tight. The fireplace would have been impossible, so after hopping to the area where Obadiah had lifted the oak plank, she pried up the board to reveal the shallow root cellar the slaves had used.

The desperation struck her then, the desperation to escape, and the desperate sense of helplessness. The magnitude of the
impossible hope that she was investing in a few objects in a hidden cellar. She wondered if that was what Obadiah’s family had felt while they were alive, what Cassie had felt.

Did a prisoner ever stop hoping? When people didn’t see you as a person, when who you had been or what you did made no difference to their opinion of you, how long did it take for hope to turn to resignation?

Barrie lifted one of the clay urns out and smashed the lip against the edge of the plank. It made a deep thud, and the vibration shook against her fingers. She tried a second time, harder, and a two-inch chunk of the narrow lip broke off.