Chapter 45
Destiny’s eyes popped wide.
“Hey, Ingrid …” she heard Boney say, but his voice sounded muffled, like he was underwater.
“Your business is cursed,” Ingrid said quietly to Destiny.
Destiny let out a dismissive huff, but in the neon-blue glow of the bar, her eyes looked wild.
“You’ll lose everything you’ve invested and more,” Ingrid said. “Everything.”
“Ingrid, come on,” Boney said.
She ignored him. Pivoted away from Destiny and fixed her eyes on the table across the room. The square-jawed husband. The child with the pink beret.
Destiny let out a squawk. “What are you—” She grabbed Ingrid’s arm. “Don’t you dare, you bitch—”
“Your marriage is never going to make you happy,” Ingrid said softly, her eyes gone soft and dreamy. “He’ll never love you the way you want. He’ll never fully see you, never fully hear you—”
“Stop it, Ingrid.” Boney was off his stool now, crowding her with his body, pushing her arm down, shuffling her toward the door.
She didn’t stop. There was something flowing through her, the current of some divine river that she couldn’t resist even if she wanted.
It felt inevitable. Sacred. There was a droning in her ears that reminded her of a medieval chant.
The songs of acolytes, filing toward worship.
She liked it. It reminded her of the middle C hum she’d heard when she met Sailor.
Her gaze settled on the little girl. She stretched out her hand. Destiny let out a panicked wail.
“Jesus, Ingrid, no!” snapped Boney and then, grabbing her by the wrist, threw a bill on the bar and dragged her out of the place.
Outside, Boney opened the door of his car and shoved her in.
“Stay,” he ordered, and went around to get in the other side.
He started the car, as Ingrid blinked in her seat.
“Strap in,” he said as he peeled out of the parking lot.
He glanced in his rearview mirror. “Great, the husband’s coming out. ”
He gunned it and glanced at her. “I said seat belt!”
Ingrid buckled herself in as they streaked down the highway.
“What the hell was that?” Boney shouted at her.
“I wouldn’t have done it. I wouldn’t curse a baby.”
“I don’t know. It looked to me like you were pretty much on your way to doing that. And her husband was jacked.”
“She’s a bad person.”
He sent a swift look at her. “And you’re good? Randomly cursing someone you don’t like?”
Ingrid said nothing. She’d finally started to come down from the high she was riding, and now tears had started to slide down her cheeks.
“Oh God, don’t do that.” Boney wheeled the car onto another road and patted her shoulder. “Come on, Ingrid. Pull it together.”
“Where are we going?” she croaked.
“We’re taking a field trip.”
He took a couple more turns, finally pulling down the road that ran parallel to the Bonaventure Cemetery. He opened the door for her.
“Get your ass out.”
She wiped her face. “Boney, it’s closed—”
“Out!” he snapped.
She climbed out of the car and grudgingly followed Boney to the chain-link fence. He climbed it, then motioned for her to do the same. Once she was safely over and standing at the edge of the cemetery, he straightened her dress.
“Now where is it?” Boney asked her.
She sighed. She was calmer now, gazing out over the white gravestones. The breeze swayed the moss on the branches of the trees. The crickets sang. She could hear the low hum of the river at the back of the property. She had forgotten how peaceful it was here.
“I’m not kidding,” Boney said. “Tell me where she is.”
Ingrid, resigned, drunk, and spent from her spiritual exertion, beckoned him to follow her.
They walked down the sandy path all the way to the rear of the cemetery where the Wilmington River flowed.
She took him to the small gravestone, still smooth and unsullied by the humid salt air and the creeping fungus, glowing pale gray in the dusk.
Edith Sossaman White, 1950 – 2016, She Gathers the Light.
Ingrid swallowed a sob down her already-clogged throat.
This was where she should have come in the first place.
Edie’s grave. But the truth was she hadn’t visited in years.
She was too busy pretending that wearing Edie’s clothes and sleeping in her bedroom meant her grandmother was actually with her.
But Edie wasn’t with her, was she? She was here, under this stone, buried under the sandy dirt.
“‘She gathers the light,’” Boney said behind her. “I like that. You should do that,” he added. “Gather the light.”
She sniffed, wiped under her eyes, and folded her arms. “Spare me the lecture, if you don’t mind.”
“Just trying to help.” Boney gave her a look, then ambled off between the headstones.
Ingrid gazed down at the smooth slab of granite. She wanted to say so much, but the words just weren’t there. How could she make Edie understand that she’d tried to follow her guidance, but that all it had ever gotten her was bullied and used and blamed for every bad thing that happened?
Even now, she could imagine the argument as it would go between them.
They said it wasn’t my magic that got Sailor the things she wanted for her wedding.
Why does it matter what they say? You know what’s true. Just stay in the light, my Budgie … don’t stray from the path …
But how could Ingrid stay in the light after all the terrible things Scoot and Rill Loeffler had done to so many people? She was duty-bound to wield her magic against them. To avenge Edie and to save Sailor and Cas.
To right the fucking balance.
But she couldn’t do it the way Edie had wanted. The Loefflers didn’t play fair.
She finally found her voice. “They destroyed you, Edie, and then they tried to do the same to me. I can’t change what they did to you, but I won’t let them take my power. I know who I am, and I know what I have to do. I want to save them, Edie—Sailor and Cas—but your way won’t work.”
Ingrid strained to hear Edie’s answer, but all she heard was the wind blowing through the trees, ruffling the Spanish moss.
“I still need your help, though. I need you to be with me.”
Nothing. If Edie wouldn’t answer, if she wouldn’t send her help, what could Ingrid do? She would be on her own. She would have to come up with her own plan.
She felt Boney’s soft footfalls behind her, and he came to stand beside her at the grave.
“Were you following me?” she asked. “Earlier, when I was walking around town?”
He was quiet for a moment. “Miles was worried. He’s been scared you were going to … I don’t know, do something stupid.”
She nodded.
“He loves you, Ingrid. He’s worried about you. You should give the guy a break.”
“I know.” She felt him lean down, press a kiss on her temple.
Boney said in a low, gravelly voice, “Your grandmother loved you, too. She would hate to see you so messed up over the Loefflers. They’re not good people.”
“Sailor is.” Cas is.
“Maybe.” He held her as they both looked down on Edie’s grave. “But it’s not your job to save her. You could get hurt.”
“Maybe it is, though. My job, I mean.” She was saying it as much to herself as to him. “Maybe I’m the only one who can do it.” She took a breath. “I feel like if I don’t do something soon, I may never get another chance to help her.”
Just then, her eye caught sight of another gravestone, taller than the rest, just a few yards away from Edie’s. It was half-shadowed, half-illuminated in the fading light. On the base, carved in granite, stood an angel. At her side she held a ship’s anchor.
It reminded her of something …
Something Miles had said not long ago.
Boney was pressing himself against her now. “Been a while, you know …”
She wiggled away from him. “You’ll survive.” She gave him a wry grin, but her mind was racing now.
For reasons Ingrid could not understand, Edie had chosen not to come to her tonight.
But it didn’t matter. She would do it on her own.
Because something had to be done, and quickly, about Sailor refusing to see Ingrid.
Or she worried Sailor and Cas would be swept away by the tidal wave that was Scoot and Rill Loeffler. Lost to Ingrid forever.