Chapter Twenty-Eight
Auralia
“This is a bad idea, Auralia.”
“You have a better one?” She pointed to Rou. “Someone has to go after her. What if no one went after Parker when he wandered away in his stupor?”
Creed pressed his lips together.
“You know more about field medicine than I do,” Auralia was trying to be pragmatic.
“Honey should be here soon, and then you hand Sheelah’s care over to him, and you follow your shirt’s directions to Rou.
” She put her hand on her head. “That was such a strange sentence.” She took a breath.
“And if that doesn’t work. She’s wearing a tracking collar.
Iniquus will know where we are. You can monitor everything over the video and comms on her collar. ”
“You’ll hold on to her lead the whole time?” Creed was fighting some war inside himself; she could see it raging in his eyes. He didn’t want her to go, and he’d never stop her from doing what she wanted.
“I can do that,” Auralia said.
“And you press this button here if you need me.” He bent down and pointed. “That signals my phone directly. I always look and listen before I call out. So if you don’t hear from me straight off, it’s because I’m following protocol.”
“Yup. Hand me your headlamp.” She opened her free hand. “I don’t want to be down the river with just this thing.” She shook her wrist with Remi’s rubber band gift. “You have something to see by?”
“In my pack,” he said, setting the headlamp to green before handing it over.
“Gotta go.” Auralia rose onto her toes and kissed him. “I’ll be back. Ten minutes tops.”
Once she had Rou’s leash in hand, Auralia held out her leg and said, “Rou scent. Scent.” After all, Brandy was wearing Auralia’s clothes, and if nothing else, they were washed in the same laundry detergent. “Rou search.”
Rougarou’s nose went up, her nose went down, then she shimmied and danced in her little red shoes as she tracked Brandy.
At this point in the search, Auralia didn’t need Rou. There were only two sets of tracks that were visible on this stretch. There were the heavy boot prints of a man coming and going, and nearby were the smooth-bottomed tracks made with Auralia’s swim shoes.
Now they added her hiking boots and Rou’s doggie shoes, Creed would have no trouble getting to them even without his new technology.
At this point, ten minutes had come and gone.
They’d walked a much farther distance than Auralia had contemplated. She thought she’d find Brandy around the corner, and that would be that. But now Auralia was following Rou up onto the paved parking area of a public boat ramp.
There was a single jacked-up pickup truck parked there with a boat hitched to the back.
And through the windows, Auralia could see a man helping Brandy inside. “Oh! Hey!” Auralia called out.
The guy jerked around.
Good guy? Bad guy?
Auralia leaned down and pressed the comms button on Rou’s collar so Creed would have a heads-up.
“Hey there!” she called out. If it were a good guy, he’d need to know what to tell the hospital. If he were a bad guy and he took Brandy away, thinking he’d get some from the girl who looked like she was on drugs, well, Brandy might die. “Hi!” She rounded within view but kept the hood between them.
“Hey,” the guy said and glanced at Brandy, who might be up and walking but was eerily zombie-like.
“I’m part of the rescue effort.” She pointed at Rou then up toward the highway. “Are you part of a first responder group?”
“Me?” He pulled the bill of his hat lower. “No.”
Was he trying to hide his face, or was her headlamp shining in his eyes? There were parking lot lights here, so she reached up and turned off her green light.
Auralia wasn’t sure what to say here. This guy wasn’t offering her any kind of explanation for why he had his hand on Brandy. He simply looked at Auralia as if she were an inconvenience. The whole scene was off, and then it was even more off.
A second pickup roared into the parking lot, heading straight for the first guy’s truck. He came to a squealing stop right before the two vehicles collided.
The door flew open. The man jumped down. “Shane, you no good son of a bitch.”
“How’d you get here?” Shane asked, squaring off.
“'Cause your damned phone is in your cab and Brandy set it up so I could find her when she’s with you.” The new guy stabbed a righteous finger at Brandy, then waggled his own phone, showing a map with a red pin.
Brandy’s set up a “find my” for this guy? So they all knew each other?
Auralia jumped back, pulling Rou around and picking her up. Auralia held Rou in her arms in such a way that the camera focused on the new guy’s expression; it was one of red-hot anger and cold-hearted loathing.
“I know what you were planning to do, she texted it all to me. Brandy wants none of it.”
Shane took a menacing step forward, blocking New Guy's line of sight to Brandy.
“Tough guy, huh? You think I’m letting you get away with this? You think I’m going to let you enslave Brandy? Hide her away until she’s old and fat and dyes her hair?”
“You’re insane.” Shane hocked up a glob of phlegm and spat it toward New Guy’s feet.
“Brandy,” New Guy said plaintively. “Tell him. Tell him you love me. I saw you get pulled out of the water. I saw them try to take care of you. You should be headed to the hospital, not letting him take you away.”
Brandy was vacant.
New Guy softened his voice to a warm and loving tone, the kind of voice Creed sometimes used when talking to Auralia —a boyfriend voice.
“Your mom is fighting for her life on the beach right now,” he cajoled.
“She needs a hospital. Snap the hell out of it, baby. You haven’t done anything wrong.
This was your parents’ scheme. Come with me and let’s get you some help. ” He held out his hand.
Brandy, gripping her Mylar blanket tightly around her, started forward.
“Oh no, you the hell won’t,” Shane yelled, chest puffed out like a rooster, veins popping at his neck, spittle flicking with every syllable.
Shane shoved Brandy back, and she fell against the truck. He didn’t even look to see if she was okay. Bent almost in two, he roared forward like a football player, driving his shoulder into the new guy, shoving him backward.
New Guy took the flats of his hands and slapped them together over Shane’s ears.
A move that did a lot of damage with little effort.
Shane’s head must be spinning.
Then they were at it, wrestling moves, football moves, probably things they’d seen in some kung fu movie.
The punches were real.
“Creed.” Auralia was sidling over to get to Brandy. This was a shit show. This whole damned day had been a goddamned shit show. “We have a situation.”
Rou had moved her body to drape over Auralia’s shoulder, and that was good in that Auralia could hold her up with one hand. Though she had to shift her angle to keep the camera focused on the men. With her free hand, Auralia grabbed Brandy’s arm to pull her out of the fray.
Brandy was slowly letting herself be drawn backward.
The men were fierce. And Auralia thought they were hellbent on killing each other. To the victor would come the spoils. And that looked like Brandy.
Brandy had her eyes fixed on them when she froze. The woman had been pale throughout the situation, but now her lips were blue.
Was the new guy a good guy or a bad guy?
New Guy had Shane up over his shoulder and tried to throw him onto the ground, but Shane had hold of New Guy’s pockets and held tight.
Neither shrank from the fight; they were going full bore.
Both of these men had tricks up their sleeves. Whether it was through their military training or a barroom brawl, it didn’t really matter.
Even in war zones, Auralia had never seen anything like this. Shane made a move that put New Guy on his back on the ground, and as Shane straddled the man, he was hooking his thumbs into New Guy’s eye sockets.
But New Guy responded by planting the sole of his foot on the ground and rolling his hip up just enough to rip his weapon from his kidney holster.
“Gun. Gun. Gun.” Auralia said as the pistol barrel landed on Shane’s temple.
Auralia spun on the spot.
“Lady, you move,” New Guy panted out, “and I shoot you in the back. Easy as that.”
Blood was pouring from a deep cut on Shane’s head, dripping onto the gun barrel.
Auralia watched as the color drained from Shane’s face. His lips looked white and chalky.
She’d only seen that one other time in her life. It was back home. The guy had been in the water going after his pole that was tugged in by his fish. He didn’t see the croc, but the bite went into his femur, and he bled out right there in the water.
All the kids standing on the pier were pointing and screaming for help.
Her Uncle Sebastian was the one who got to the rowboat and got out to him first.
But by the time he got there, there was nothing that could be done.
Auralia had asked one of the elders from her neighborhood if seeing a man die like that meant she was going to be possessed by his soul? “Like, would he see that I was young and healthy and want to stick around and be part of me?”
“Now, child, why would you ask such a thing?”
“Because I felt him start to brush past me, then it was like he paused and looked really hard at the top of my head. And I didn’t feel him fly off again.”
Miss Cinnamon was her name. Wow, Auralia hadn’t thought about her in ages. Hadn’t even thought about her when Creed and she were talking about Sheelah in the car.
But Sheelah hadn’t died.
Was Shane dying?
When Auralia told her story to Miss Cinnamon, she got up and called Mamma, asking for permission to help.
Mamma had apparently said yes, because Miss Cinnamon took Auralia out of the garden, sat her on a stool, and pressed colored stones into her palms. Out came the blue box of salt, and Miss Cinnamon traced her way around the stool three times, keeping them both within the lines.
There was a smudge stick, as Auralia remembered, and chanting.
Yes, she remembered that. She remembered that her eyes were closed and the skin on her scalp prickled and itched, but she knew not to move her hands to scratch at it. It felt like her hair lifted up like the childhood game of rubbing a balloon on your head and seeing the static.
She’d thought about how her brothers would shuffle their feet across the carpet at church and then reach out and zap her. She remembered how that was fun, but the zap she got sitting on the stool was not. With a zing, Auralia popped her eyes open and exclaimed, “Ow!”
Miss Cinnamon was sitting on the ground, nowhere near her.
She opened her lashes, too, and stared into Auralia’s eyes for a good long time, then nodded.
“That should do it, child. You sit still while I open the circle back up. Lord. Lord. I heard that you had a visit from PittyPat and that she said you had the gift. That’s not how we use it, so I sealed you good.
No one’s gonna come hant you. Not in this lifetime.
Miss PittyPat taught me herself. So I’m good at what I do. ”
Auralia had known that. That’s why she’d hightailed her way over there to begin with.
When she got home, her mamma asked, “Did Miss Cinnamon take care of it?”
“I’m sealed tight,” Auralia announced.
And that was the end of it.
But that wasn’t the end of this.
Shane was hurt, possibly dying.
If he did die, Auralia was sealed tight; he wouldn’t hant her.