Persuasion (11 page)

When he had walked all the way around her, Obadiah stopped and leaned back against the fountain. “Have you figured it out yet,
petite
?”

“Figured out what?”

“Honestly, I had hoped you would be more intelligent.” He trailed an idle finger in the basin. The water spat at him with a hiss of the pipes. He snatched his hand away. “Your handsome friend across the river might not be suited for magic. The gift is a responsibility, and he told you himself he doesn’t want it. Your problems would be solved without it. You would have answers about how he feels. He could come and go as he pleased. No binding. No restrictions.”

In the basin, the water level rose until it threatened to spill over the fluted marble lip, the way it had the night the spirit had appeared to bind Barrie to Watson’s Landing. Barrie eyed the water warily, expecting that any minute it would assume the liquid shape of a woman, but Obadiah passed the flat of his hand above the basin, then clenched his fist. The bubbling subsided in a low, rippling moan that was echoed by a screech from the
yunwi
as if they were in pain.
The flurry of shell bits and gravel being pelted at Obadiah grew thicker.

Obadiah flexed his hand again, raised it in the air.

“Leave them alone!” Barrie yelled. She grabbed his arm in both of her own, and held on with every ounce of her strength.

He easily shook her off. “Enough of this. I’ll make the choice simpler for you. Choose whether you want to keep
your
gift or lose it.”

“
My
gift?” Barrie’s hands went numb and cold as if she were slowly freezing from the inside out. “We were talking about Eight.”

“We were,” Obadiah said, “but I’ve offered twice to remove the Beaufort gift. You don’t seem willing to cooperate.”

Barrie’s ears rang with the silent screech from the
yunwi
in the wake of Obadiah’s words. “You can’t take the Watson gift away,” she said.

“I can’t?” His smile held no amusement. “Or I shouldn’t? Because it might require a bit of time, but I assure you, it
can
be done. You have something I need, so consider it a bargaining chip.”

“You haven’t even said what you want. Anyway, I can’t agree without asking Eight.”

“In your shoes he wouldn’t hesitate,” Obadiah said.

Remembering what Eight had told her the day before, Barrie wasn’t sure Obadiah was entirely wrong.

“What I’m asking is not so difficult,” Obadiah continued with the air of someone who had already won a bet. “There’s
a lodestone buried on the Colesworth property that binds the curse to the family and the family to the plantation. I need you to find it for me.”

Barrie stared at Obadiah, taking in the too-steady way he watched her. It struck her as evasive. He was lying, or hiding something. “Did Cassie send you? Is that what this is about?”

“No one sent me. My ancestor laid the curse on the Colesworth family. Finding the stone would let me try to break it.” Obadiah sighed and shook his head. “Dark magic rebounds on the caster. What you wish on someone else, you reap in return. The same way the curse passes from generation to generation in the Colesworth family, the karmic price of casting it has passed from mother to child in my family ever since. I’m tired of seeing them suffer.”

A chill crawled up Barrie’s spine. “Why now?”

“Because you’re here with your gift. You can find the stone, and when the Colesworths finally pay their debt, I can break the curse.”

“What debt?”

“Blood and years and lives. Which isn’t the point.” Obadiah’s voice took on a soothing tone. “You have no reason to care about the curse as long as it doesn’t affect you or Watson’s Landing. Compared to the curse, removing the spell that created the Beaufort gift would be child’s play.
If
you want it removed. That would be your choice. You would only
have to find that lodestone, too.” His smile turned oily and smooth, and he held his hands out, palms open, as if to show he was holding nothing back. “You see? I can be generous as well. I may not know where the other stones are buried, but the Scalping Tree is a landmark no one can miss.”

Barrie turned instinctively in the direction of the enormous oak at the center of the woods where the Fire Carrier emerged and disappeared each night. Local legend said braves had once hung the scalps of their enemies on it in tribute to the ancient spirit, and she had felt the pull of something lost emanating from it the moment she’d first arrived at Watson’s Landing. That had turned out to be from the keys to the tunnel, which Emmett had hidden in a recess beneath the trunk. But she and Eight had retrieved those already.

“There’s nothing else lost in the woods. I would feel it if there were,” she said, but even as she spoke, she acknowledged to herself that there was
something
. She had attributed it to the Fire Carrier himself.

“The Watson and Beaufort lodestones aren’t lost. Thomas Watson and Robert Beaufort buried the stones themselves as part of the Fire Carrier’s bargain. I may not be able to find the others, but the area around the Scalping Tree is not so large that I wouldn’t eventually find it myself. I’m not above a bit of revenge,
petite
.” Obadiah’s lips twisted, and he blinked a little too slowly, as if he were seeing something about himself
he didn’t like. “Given a choice between my family and yours, make no mistake which I’ll choose.”

There was something in the way his eyes shifted that made Barrie not entirely sure she believed him, but the
yunwi
seemed to have no such doubts. Their soundless shrieks of fury made Barrie wince. They rushed at Obadiah, and the handfuls of shell and gravel they had been throwing swelled to a barrage.

Several slivers of shell bounced off Obadiah’s cheek. His face shimmered under the onslaught, like a holographic projection losing power. For an instant, Barrie wasn’t sure what she saw there, a man Mark’s age, or someone older, different.

He put his finger up to wipe his skin, and it came away glistening with drops of red. Frowning at the droplets, he circled his finger in the air. The flurry of pebbles and white shards stopped and hung, suspended. Then in a rush of air they swirled and spun, faster and faster, climbing skyward until they vanished.

Barrie’s hair whipped into her face. All around her, the
yunwi
darted behind the low hedges of the maze, and whimpers sounded in the wind, barely audible and more felt than heard.

“You’re hurting them. Stop it!” Pivoting back to Obadiah, Barrie grabbed his finger, pulled it toward her, and let go only when the air stopped churning.

“They’re a nuisance. Now, are you going to help me?” Obadiah flicked a piece of shell from a crease in the dark fabric of his suit. There was a hard edge to the way he watched Barrie that turned the question and the motion into a threat.

It struck Barrie then how helpless she was. In the face of Obadiah’s power, how could she stop him from doing anything he wanted?

As if he’d heard the thought, Obadiah extended his finger and tilted her chin up to make her look at him. Her fear fled and left her blinking.

Why would she want to argue? She should
want
to help Obadiah. Feeling disconnected from the movement, she found herself nodding.

“That’s good. There, you see.” Obadiah smiled darkly. “I have no need or wish to harm your pets, little one. You come with me to find the lodestone. I remove the Colesworth curse, you keep the Watson gift, and everyone is happy. Then you can choose whether you wish to find the lodestone at Beaufort Hall.”

There was something off about the logic, something wrong. It niggled at the back of Barrie’s brain the way a tickle in the throat demands that you cough, even when you can’t. But it was hard, impossible, to think through the sludge of hot insistence that overwhelmed her objections. Of course she had to protect the
yunwi
and the Watson magic. That was her
responsibility. Giving Eight the chance to live without the Beaufort gift was an added bonus.

Relationships never came with any kind of guarantee, but Barrie couldn’t imagine that she would ever feel indifferent to Eight. There would always be warmth or pain, and having to live with the Santisto between them would be either too much distance or too little.

“What if I—
we
, because this isn’t my decision alone—tell you to go ahead?” she asked. “If you remove the Beaufort gift, is there any danger to Eight and Seven?”

“Think of all the magic here like it’s a layer cake. It’s harder and more dangerous to remove the middle or bottom layers than it is to remove the top. I need to break the Colesworth curse before I can safely reach the Beaufort gift. Of course, I’ll also need the Beaufort lodestone, but it must all start with the curse.”

Barrie glanced across the river, first at Beaufort Hall, and then at Colesworth Place. “I’ll talk to Eight, but first you have to promise you won’t put anyone in danger. And no matter what happens, you don’t get to take my gift,” she said. “You don’t get to touch the
yunwi
or the Fire Carrier or anything or anyone at Watson’s Landing. Not ever. Those are the terms.”

Obadiah changed. Not a change of expression: a more fundamental, physical transformation of features into someone
kinder and more familiar. Someone beautiful. He looked . . . not like himself.

Rationally, she knew it wasn’t real, but he looked like Mark.

Mark, who would never, had never, hurt anyone in his life.

“No harm will come to you or anyone you care for, but there is no ‘we’ in our bargain,” he said. “This is between you and me and the Colesworth girl. Leave Eight Beaufort out of it.”

Barrie looked up sharply. “You never mentioned Cassie.”

“The curse is bound in blood. It requires blood to remove it. A prick of the finger, no more than that.”

“Take mine, then. I’m a Colesworth, too.”

“That wouldn’t satisfy. You aren’t bound by their curse.” Obadiah’s smile dropped away. “Listen,
petite
. Nothing is sure in life except for death, and even that isn’t as certain as you might think. You don’t know me well enough to trust my promises, but I’ll give one to you anyway. Keep your bargain, and I’ll keep mine. The last thing I want to do is add more blood or pain to the burden my family bears.”

He spoke with such sincerity that Barrie couldn’t help believing what he said. And really, the choice was simple. If Obadiah took away the Beaufort gift, Eight would never need to know about the headaches and all the things his father had never told him. He would have his dream and the escape he had wanted all his life.

He could choose to go play baseball. He could choose anything, or anyone.

When you set someone free, they could choose to fly. But they could also choose to leave you.

“All right,” she said reluctantly. “I’ll help you. I’m not sure about the logistics, though. Even if I can get Cassie to agree, what about her family? Not to mention there are still ghost hunters and treasure hunters and reporters hanging around. Someone is going to see us and wonder what we’re doing. I can’t get over there unless Eight takes me—I don’t have a boat or a driver’s license—”

“I already told you to leave Eight Beaufort out of it.” Obadiah leaned forward, his nostrils flaring with a sudden intake of breath. “Tell no one about our bargain, or I’ll consider it the same as if you refused. As for the boat, I’ll take care of that and any unwanted attention. You just find a way to get the Colesworth girl to cooperate, or I will do it less pleasantly. And don’t wait too long to call me.”

“Call you how?” Barrie asked, thinking of the way he had appeared out of the blue.

He pointed toward her fist in answer, and something cold and hard dug into her palm. The green disk was back. At the center of it, the raven ruffled his feathers and blinked up at her, and she let go as if he’d pecked her skin. The disk clattered to the gravel. The raven stilled, became an etched image and nothing more.

Barrie raised her eyes back to Obadiah. “What does that have to do with calling you?”

“Pick it up.” He lifted his brows and regarded her with clear amusement.

She used two fingers to lift the disk, and found a phone number etched in gold on the other side. A laugh escaped her; she couldn’t help it. In one way, a phone number didn’t seem at all like Obadiah, but on the other hand, it hinted at a sense of humor.

When she looked up again, Obadiah was gone.

This time, though, she remembered all too clearly that he’d been there.