Persuasion (9 page)

“I think I know how we can have the restaurant,” she said, “without having people going where we don’t want them to go.”

The pretrial intervention hearing wasn’t in a vast room full of people as Barrie had feared. No doubt as a courtesy to Seven—or more likely thanks to his ability to maneuver around what people wanted—it took place in the judge’s chambers. Apart from Barrie, Eight, Seven, and the judge, who looked a little bit like God-as-played-by-Morgan-Freeman, there was the prosecutor, the court reporter, the defense attorney, and Cassie herself. But Barrie’s cousin seemed to fill the room. With her combination of near-black hair and deep blue eyes, Cassie was always the focal point, but today it was more than that. Slouched in her chair, she gave off waves of resentment, glaring at Barrie until her attorney poked her in the ribs. Even then, Cassie didn’t bother sitting up.

Judge Abrams studied everyone from behind his desk. “All
right, now. Y’all understand why we’re here? This isn’t a trial. Not yet. Ms. Willems”—he nodded at Cassie’s attorney—“has asked the prosecutor to have the case kicked over for pretrial intervention, and Mr. Allgood”—he nodded to the prosecutor—“feels disinclined to agree, seeing as he wants the defendant tried for kidnapping, which wouldn’t be an eligible offense. The case has been sent up here to me after a bit of arguing back and forth.” He slid his glasses down his dark, freckled nose and pinned Cassie’s attorney with a stare that made the woman squirm.

“You two”—he waved a hand first at Barrie and then at Eight—“are here because making amends to the victims is a key part of the PTI process. You being the kidnappees, as it were, I want to hear what you have to say.”

Cassie’s attorney half-rose from her seat, her deep auburn hair bouncing in a low ponytail. “Your Honor, if you’ll look at the facts of the case, you’ll see that the charge of kidnapping isn’t warranted. All my client did was slam a door closed. At worst, that’s a matter of—”

“Is your client admitting to unlawful confinement, Ms. Willems?” The judge leaned forward. “Because if I remember the law, and I believe I do, that’s pretty much the definition of kidnapping here in South Carolina.”

“Your Honor!” The attorney was young and attractive, although unlike Cassie, she didn’t seem to do anything to try to use that in her favor.

Not that, for the moment, Cassie was using either her looks or the charm she could so easily turn on and off. The realization made Barrie sit up in the round-armed chair and study her cousin. The Cassie she knew would have been leaning forward, watching the judge with wide blue eyes, looking innocent and beautiful and lost. This Cassie, on the other hand, showed almost no interest in the judge. She sat there, pale and hollow-eyed, still slouched and rubbing her temples, squinting against the light that shone through the open blinds in the window behind the judge.

Barrie knew that body language. She’d lived with her mother’s migraines, and she suffered them herself. She’d managed to ignore Seven’s symptoms in San Francisco, but that had been before she’d known he was bound to Beaufort Hall the way she was bound to Watson’s Landing. Now she noticed how often he squinted and rubbed his temples when he thought no one was watching.

The Fire Carrier had given magic to all three families. The oldest direct descendant in both the Beaufort and Watson families was bound to the land in addition to having a stronger version of the gift than anyone else.

Why
wouldn’t
Cassie be bound to Colesworth Place? It made perfect sense. Wyatt dying in the explosion had left Cassie the heir to the Colesworth curse. Gift, curse—did it matter?

Between the angle and the light shining through the
blinds, Seven’s face was hard to read as he sat beside Barrie. She scooted toward him in her seat and tapped him on the leg.

“Last night in the lane, you said none of us has a choice,” she whispered. “Did you mean only Watsons and Beauforts, or does that include Cassie, too?”

“Now is neither the time nor the place for this conversation.” Seven kept his profile to her, his eyes locked on the judge.

“Is Cassie having migraines because she’s in jail?” Barrie insisted.

“She’s not in jail yet. She’s in juvenile detention. Now stop. Pay attention.” Seven’s eyes had gone from light green to glacial. He looked hard, the kind of hard that had to come from a lifetime of being pushed, in spite of yourself, to give people all the petty, stupid, senseless things that humans always wanted.

The set to his jaw, a defensive mulishness, clued Barrie in. “You’re deliberately avoiding the question,” she said, “which means you either know or you suspect and you don’t want to know.” She paused and gathered her thoughts. “The judge said something about the prosecutor
wanting
to try Cassie for kidnapping. Does that mean what I think it means? Did you manipulate him? Use your gift to read what he wants and use that to your advantage?”

Seven’s nose flared and his brows snapped together. “You and Eight could both have died in that tunnel.”

Barrie pulled back. Away from him.

Stated so baldly, the words conjured the clang of the door and the stench of death that had seeped into the air after all those years that Luke and his fiancée had lain forgotten in the tunnel. Barrie fought to block the memories of the long, awful night and stuff them back into the locked compartment in her mind, where they belonged.

She hoped Cassie had felt half as terrified in jail as she and Eight had felt in the tunnel, when they’d thought they would die down there and no one would ever find their bodies. Still, Barrie remembered how much the migraines hurt. Remembered what they had done to Lula. Seven had said they’d made people commit suicide to get them to stop.

“Excuse me.” The judge turned in their direction. “Are we disturbing y’all? Because I wouldn’t want this proceeding to be an inconvenience to you, Mr. Beaufort.”

“We’re very sorry, Your Honor.” Seven turned a gimlet eye to Barrie, and then looked past her to Eight, who had leaned in closer.

Barrie swallowed what felt like a throatful of bitterness, and it settled in her stomach, heavy and impossible to digest. Shaking her head at herself, she couldn’t believe what she was about to say.

She had no choice.

Leaving Cassie in prison with the same migraines that had
made Lula go half-crazy, the kind of migraines that didn’t let up,
that
was cruel. It amounted to torture.

If dreams changed a person, as Seven had suggested, then so did cruelty. The sort of person who could turn her back, knowing Cassie would be in pain every day, wasn’t the person Barrie wanted to become. She hated what she was going to say, but she would hate herself more if she didn’t say it.

“Can I speak, Your Honor?” Her voice came out too soft, and she cleared her throat and scooted forward in her chair to try again. “Is it okay if I ask a question?”

“Sure, what the hell. Why not?” The judge pushed back the yellow tablet he had in front of him and clicked the end of the pen as he sat back. “What do you have to say, young lady?”

“If Cassie can make some kind of amends, I think she should get to do that.” Barrie ground to a halt as she felt both Eight and Seven staring at her, but she refused to look at them. She especially couldn’t look at Eight. “I’m not going to make excuses for Cassie, and if the amends can include me never seeing her again, I’d be happy with that. I’d have a hard time living with myself, though, if I thought she was in jail with people who had done a lot worse than lock a door and walk away. I don’t want to be the reason her life is ruined.”

The judge glanced at Cassie, who had looked up at Barrie with sullen eyes and very little reaction. What he saw didn’t
seem to impress him. “That’s very commendable of you,” he said, “but you didn’t make the choices for your cousin.”

Barrie nodded and held his gaze longer than was strictly comfortable. “I know that, Your Honor.”

He finally looked away. “What about you, Mr. Beaufort?” he said to Eight. “Is that what you want?”

Bracing for the betrayal she was going to see written on Eight’s face, Barrie turned with her eyes stinging. For once, she was glad he had his gift to urge him to agree with her. On the other hand, his gift also pushed him to want what Seven wanted. Did that mean Eight would feel pain no matter what he told the judge?

Eight gripped the armrests of his chair. “I want what Barrie wants,” he said with only a hint of bitterness. “If she wants Cassie to make amends instead of going to jail, then I’ll go along with that.”

Barrie and Eight turned into the marina and threaded their way along the narrow labyrinth of floating walkways among the berths, boats, and empty water. It was another of the between places in the world that became addictive to contemplate, ships loaded with hope as they set off to fish or search for adventure, coming back with dreams fulfilled or empty holds. Either way, there was something innately optimistic about the kind of people who were always ready to set out in search of something
more
.

There was nothing optimistic, however, in the set of Eight’s profile as his boat shoes and Barrie’s sandals slapped in time along the boards. He had barely looked at her on the long drive back in Seven’s car. When they reached the
Away
, he helped Barrie into the boat before he threw off the rope and jumped down to head toward the motor.

“Are you not going to talk to me at all?” Barrie dropped onto the seat beside him and rubbed her aching head.

“I’m waiting until I figure out what I’m going to say to you,” he said, pulling the cord on the outboard until it sputtered to life. “Or until you can explain to me why the hell you did that. Without even asking me. Without even giving me a heads-up first.” Shading his eyes, he guided the boat cautiously out of the marina and past the no-wake zone before speeding up. Glancing over at her, he shook his head. “And put on your life vest.”

Barrie kept her center of gravity low as she went to get the vest and slip it over her head. It was odd how things changed. Fears and perspectives. A week ago, she had been terrified of being on the water, but she had come about as close to drowning as a person could get. That wasn’t her biggest fear anymore. She had been terrified of Eight going to California, but that was only a geographical loss. A temporary loss. There were things far harder than geography to overcome.

Explanations, for example. It wasn’t up to her to explain to Eight that his father had lied to him all his life.

Eight opened up the motor a bit and steered across the short stretch of ocean that stood between the harbor and the point, guiding the boat past the sandbars where the dark Santisto River emptied into the frothed Atlantic like tea spilling into nonfat milk. The
Away
hit the top of a wave
and slammed down again, jarring Barrie in her seat.

“The letter that Mark left for me with Lula’s lawyer asked me to choose what to do with his ashes,” she said.

Eight glanced at her, then looked back out toward the lighthouse they were approaching on their left. “I know that.”

“He also told me that I was—I am—his legacy. I’ve been thinking about that. Thanks to what he gave up for me, I’m all he has to show for his life. I figure that means it’s my responsibility to do the kinds of things he taught me by example. To be the kind of person he was.”

The boat slammed down again, and her heart thundered in her ears. Not with anxiety. Or not
only
anxiety. Blood and adrenaline and need made her tingle in every finger, every toe, and against all logic, it made her feel alive. Out loud, no-holds-barred alive. She looked at Eight, and he was watching her without a smile, but still with the kind of focus that made her feel like the only girl in the world.

She hated Seven then. Seven and Cassie and the Beaufort gift.

“Have you ever been to a drag show?” she asked him.

He eased the motor back to slow the boat. The tails of his shirt whipped against his pale chinos, so he looked like the last kind of guy to go to a drag show. Still, she could picture him cheering for Mark.