Chapter Fourteen #2
Above us, the clouds darkened by a noticeable fraction.
‘You really don’t need to worry,’ I said. ‘Nothing terrible is going to happen. Not to me.’
She stood, her ladylike leather handbag hanging from the crook of her arm, an unreadable expression in her pale eyes.
‘You are so like her,’ she said softly. ‘And you sound so sure.’
An unexpected jolt of magic shot through me. A warning. My fingers flexed instinctively but I kept control. Just. With a Cheshire Cat smile, Ileen Stovell clucked her tongue loudly and slapped the side of her purse.
‘I must be going, I have house guests and it wouldn’t do to leave them alone all day,’ she said. ‘How lovely to catch up with you, Miss Emily, we must do it again very soon.’
As I watched her slinking away through the square, the lingering threat of something I couldn’t name scratched at my skin like the papery tag of a cheap shirt.
I’d felt the same way on Sunday. This woman brought out the absolute worst in me and my magic, but I wasn’t about to ruin the whole city’s day with an unnecessary storm just to mess up her blowout, as tempting as it was.
Desperate to shake off the feeling, I breathed out slowly, sending the dark clouds on their way and stalked off in the opposite direction to Ms Stovell, not stopping until I reached the edge of the historic district at Broad Street. I needed the river.
Oceans were a problem for witches, unpredictable, uncontrollable, and too vast to manage.
Magic didn’t cross large bodies of water well, and neither did we.
Just being near the ocean or the sea could play havoc with our abilities, amplifying or diminishing or altogether drowning our senses when they were most needed.
I could only imagine how painful the first Emma Catherine’s crossing had been, surviving on a cramped wooden boat for weeks on end.
Leaving the open waters and sailing up the Savannah River must’ve felt like coming back to life.
Rivers were our friend. The constant flow of the current refreshed a witch’s energy, the old and the new, a reminder that nothing stays the same for too long.
The water was almost in sight when I noticed him standing in front of the Pirates’ House restaurant, I knew right away this man had long since left the land of the living.
The half-mast trousers, a blousy shirt that was white once upon a time but now a dirty beige, a scarlet scarf tied around his head and a matching sash at his waist. When he caught my eye, he nodded towards the restaurant, a slight gesture I might’ve missed if I wasn’t watching so closely.
He disappeared into the wood-clad building with its Haint blue shutters and proudly flying flags, and I crossed the road quickly, darting between moving cars rather than using the crosswalk, and followed the ghost of the pirate inside.
The Pirates’ House was one of the few popular places in town I still hadn’t visited.
According to Lydia, it was too touristy to be worth her time, and even though Jackson would happily share lurid stories of the sailors and pirates who passed through this place over the decades, it wasn’t one of his favoured destinations either.
I had no idea what to expect as I passed through the rickety doors into a dimly lit but wildly decorated entryway, plenty of evidence of its past life as a haven for scoundrels on display.
The brick walls and wooden trim looked their age and, standing in the doorway, the whole place felt like a maze.
There were staircases going up and down, and narrow, uneven hallways leading off to who knew where. I was lost before I could even begin.
‘Can I help you, hon?’ a kind voice asked from behind the hostess stand.
A woman in a full green skirt, white shirt and wide black leather belt blinked at me, one hand hovering over a digital screen. Not a ghost but a very committed hostess. I had to applaud her commitment to the bit.
‘Um, yes, I’m meeting my family,’ I said brightly, looking past her to search for my guide. ‘Is it OK if I go look for them?’
‘You know where they’re at?’
‘Oh, I sure do.’ I leaned into my best Savannah accent, hoping to pass myself off as a local who knew her way around and definitely didn’t need to be accompanied. ‘I reckon they’re at our usual table, I can find them.’
‘Sure thing,’ she replied, handing me a menu. ‘Just holler at your server when you’re ready to order.’
I gave her a grateful smile, taking the menu and holding it in front of me like a shield. My guide waited just beyond with visible impatience.
‘Are you in some kind of rush?’ I asked under my breath.
He said nothing, only continued to lead the way, passing easily through tables and chairs without a care for the people sitting in them.
It was early, but the place was packed, a tourist-heavy brunch crowd, and it took me more time to navigate around the diners, struggling to keep up with him as he sailed directly through someone’s shrimp and grits.
Three dining rooms later, he stopped in front of a door, old and dark with a black iron ring for a handle.
I raised one hand to the wood, soft and solid at the same time.
‘Don’t bother, it’s sealed shut.’
A young server dressed in almost exactly the same outfit as my ghost guide, only with Nikes on his feet and an absurd parrot perched on his left shoulder, appeared beside me.
‘Been that way for years,’ he said as I pulled my hand away. ‘The boss says it led down to a pantry back in the day, but they sealed it up when the floor caved in after a flood.’
‘Right,’ I replied. My fingers trembled as magic sparked under my skin. He was wrong. There was no pantry behind this door.
‘You want the tour?’ he asked, a hopeful look in his eye. ‘I’m on my break. I can take you around, if you’d like.’
‘Thanks, but my food is waiting,’ I replied as the ghost disappeared, walking straight through the wooden door. ‘I just went to the bathroom. To wash up. Before my food.’
It was too much information. The hopeful glint in his eye shifted into something more suspicious.
‘Why d’you have your menu?’
‘Oh, you know,’ I said airily. ‘I like to have something to read.’
That did it. Hope became suspicion became a complete lack of interest.
‘Uh, OK. I’ll let you go.’
I waited until he was out of sight before I tried the door.
It was beyond heavy and the server was right, it was sealed shut, but not because of any flood and not by anyone who had worked in that restaurant in the last hundred years.
Taking a deep breath, I clutched the iron ring in one hand and pressed my other palm against the wood.
It had swollen after so many years, lodging itself against its frame, but the wood and the iron were both open to negotiation.
I silently cajoled them, whispering to the trees that gave their lives to make the door, to retake their original form.
Asking the iron to return its rust to the elements that created it in the first place.
On the first tug, there was no give at all and I grimaced as my shoulder pulled against its socket.
If brute strength was needed here, I was in trouble.
Without my magic, I was hardly the world’s strongest girl – I couldn’t get the lid off a jar of peanut butter without Ashley loosening it for me.
But I wasn’t without my magic. Closing my eyes, I shut out the world around me and concentrated on the door, picturing it wide open, seeing myself walking through, until I felt it give. Just an inch. An inch was enough.
The happy laughter of families dining in the restaurant shifted into something more raucous.
The smell coming from the kitchens changed too, fried fish and fresh bread still in the mix but blended with something far less pleasant and altogether more rancid.
Unwashed human bodies and sweet spilled rum stung my nose and when I opened my eyes, the hand grasping the iron ring tightened and I pressed myself against the door.
I was still in the Pirates’ House but I was not in the twenty-first century anymore.
‘This is new,’ I whispered, still gripping the door tightly, all my senses on high alert.
The carefully laid tables with their China plates and linen napkins had vanished, replaced by smaller tables all crammed together and surrounded by stools, each and every one taken by the kind of person you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley.
Some tall, some short, all of them weathered, and very few had a full complement of teeth.
Pirates of the Caribbean it was not. The only light came from torches burning on the walls, but even in the gloaming I could see this was not the kind of place any reasonable person would want to be in for one minute more than absolutely necessary, least of all the young man I watched ambling through the door.
He stuck out almost as much as I would if anyone could see me, but they could not.
When I held out my hand, it had the same eerie translucent quality as my ancestor.
‘WhereamI?’ the man asked, his words bleeding into one long slur of a sound. ‘This isn’t Habersham’s house.’
‘It is, it is,’ hissed a one-armed man who drew him deeper into the tavern, much to the amusement of his cohort. ‘You haven’t been in this room before, that’s all. This spot here is only for friends.’
‘Only the most entertaining company,’ agreed a loud voice from the back corner of the room.
His black hat and black coat rendered him almost invisible, the torchlight only reflecting the gold coin he flicked up and down on the back of his knuckles.
‘Will you sup with us, John Stiles, or are you too fine to drink with we friends of Habersham?’
The assembled all roared with laughter.
‘I’ll drink,’ the first man said, loosening his blue coat. As soon as the final button was undone, it slipped off his shoulders, passing from person to person until it disappeared through the door.
‘Don’t worry about me,’ he said, trying to disguise a hiccup with a belch. ‘I can drink with the best of them.’
‘Unlucky for you then,’ the man in black replied. ‘We’re the worst of them.’
When he stood and stepped into the light, I saw the marks on his face. Five deep red gashes on his left cheek. Scratch marks. But not from a supernatural being. Those wounds had been inflicted by a woman.
‘What do you think of this?’ he asked, handing John Stiles the gold coin. ‘Ever seen anything like it?’
‘Coin’s a coin,’ Stiles replied blindly without looking at the token in his hand. ‘Where’s the gin?’
‘We’re rum drinkers,’ grunted the man in black, taking the coin and slipping it into Stiles’s pocket. ‘And so are you from now on.’
In one swift move, he produced a club from behind his back and slugged John Stiles in the back of the head.
I let out a terrified gasp and the menu I was holding slipped from my fingers and floated to the floor, disappearing into thin air before it could meet the flagstones beneath my feet.
Stiles tottered forwards as the room cheered, several men rising at once to hoist his unconscious body above their heads and carry him from the room.
I dodged out of their way before they could pass straight through, the leader yanking the previously stuck door wide open, and all of them singing an ugly song as they marched down a long sloping tunnel that led off into the darkness.
‘You all saw, Stiles took my gold,’ announced the man in black as he took his seat at the table. ‘He works for me now. Everyone back to the ship, we raise anchor at dawn.’
Despite a chorus of moans, every man in the room stood, reluctantly following John Stiles and the rest of their shipmates through the door and down the tunnel.
‘And next time his father tries to cheat me at cards, he’ll think twice,’ the man grunted into his silver flagon, a self-satisfied smirk on his face.
‘Only there won’t be a next time.’
It was a promise and a threat, spoken by a woman I hadn’t seen enter the room. She stood tall in a blue brocade gown, heavily embroidered with bronze thread. Her green eyes burned and long, fiery red hair spilled down her back.
‘Back for more already?’
The pirate stood, slamming his flagon on the table and moving into the light, his huge body primed to intimidate. The blood on the woman’s right hand was as red as her hair, her nails sharp but broken and, I realized, a perfect match for the gouges on his face.
‘No man lays his hands on me and walks away,’ she said, raising her bloody hand to make a fist. ‘You’ve done enough damage here, Laffitte. Few will mourn your end.’
He stalked towards her, murder in his black eyes.
‘And fewer still will know how you met yours.’
He knocked a table out of his way, lunging towards her.
His body took up too much space in the room, crossing the floor in less than one stride, but the woman didn’t care.
She didn’t need to be bigger or faster or stronger than him.
She squeezed her fist tightly until drops of blood, hers and his, mingled together and fell to the floor.
Without laying a hand on him, she held him exactly where he was, wide-eyed and ashen-faced.
‘Witch!’
The accusation dragged itself out of him as he grabbed at his throat, bubbles of spit issuing from his mouth.
‘I’ll have you burned at the stake,’ he said, gargling the words as he choked on his own blood. ‘I’ll have your bones ground to dust.’
‘No, I don’t think you will.’
The woman squeezed her fist so tight her knuckles turned white and the man fell to his knees, slumping face-first and striking the flagstones.
‘Or else how would my descendant be here to observe your ugly passing?’
She turned to me, her emerald eyes full of triumph as blood began to pour from his mouth, his nose, his eyes and ears, limbs convulsing on the floor.
‘You’ve seen all you needed to see,’ she said, looking me right in the eye. ‘Go, while you still can.’
With her unblemished left hand, she gave me a short, sharp shove and I tumbled backwards through the open door.
With a cry of surprise, the back of my head struck hard wood.
Several diners turned to see what was happening as the past melted into the present and I stumbled sideways into a chair, almost skidding on the menu I’d dropped on the floor two hundred years ago.
‘I’m fine,’ I said loudly, raising both hands above my head to prove the point. ‘Just slipped. Very clumsy, enjoy your dinner.’
Stooping to collect the menu, I stopped halfway, eyes catching on the handle of the door.
Tentatively, I grasped it lightly and twisted to the left.
It opened without complaint, the locking mechanism clicking open as the previously warped wood gave way.
I closed it again, dropped my menu on the nearest table, and sprinted out of the restaurant and all the way home.