Illusion Read online

  Honored Sir,

  Your most obedient and ever Dutiful Daughter,

  E. Watson

  “She didn’t like her brother much, did she?” Eight commented when Barrie had fallen silent.

  “It sounds like she’s threatening to force him to come back here, doesn’t it? Which means he doesn’t think he has to.”

  “Are you thinking Eliza found a way to bind him?”

  “Well, it doesn’t seem like her father had to be at Watson’s Landing,” Barrie said, suppressing another yawn. “Unless they had a way to transfer the binding and Eliza had it while he was gone, it could be that the original bargain was a gentleman’s agreement. But if Eliza did something that forced one person to be the designated heir, she would have written about it, wouldn’t she? It would be good to know before Obadiah does his ceremony tomorrow night.”

  “Why? You’re not thinking of taking the lodestones to him, are you?”

  “Not if there’s any danger, no. But what if there aren’t enough people there tomorrow night? What if—even with everything we’re doing—Obadiah isn’t able to break the curse?” Barrie yawned again, so tired that her words were slurring.

  Eight took the book from her and closed it firmly. “I hate to break it to you, Bear, but you’re going to be reading in your sleep here in another minute. We’re working as fast as we can, and we can’t do any more than that.”

  What if that’s not good enough?

  Unsaid, the words hung between them as if both she and Eight had thought them simultaneously. Eight’s expression turned worried again, and he gave Barrie his hand to help her to her feet.

  A firefly winked by the chapel wall, and she looked up to see a yunwi watching her. She wondered how many times a small light flickering in the dark was other than it seemed. How many shadows glimpsed from the corner of an eye were only shadows?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The text message from Eight came after four o’clock in the morning. Barrie was drifting in the half slumber between exhaustion and too much leftover excitement when she heard the ping. She groped for the phone and peered at the screen.

  YOU STILL UP? CALL ME!

  Pushing her curls out of her eyes, she dialed him back. The sound of his voice spilled out in the darkened room. “You have to listen to this.”

  “Are you okay?” she asked. “Is Kate all right? Did your dad do something again?”

  “Kate and Dad are both fine, as far as I know. She’s asleep, and Dad’s still holed up in the library with the door closed. Maybe he fell asleep on the sofa.”

  “So then what’s wrong? It’s almost four thirty in the morning. Don’t tell me you’ve been researching all this time.”

  “Research is like a rabbit hole. It’s hard to claw my way back out once I get started,” Eight said. “I just meant to look up the Serpent Stone that Eliza mentioned, and I found a lot of references to ancient Cherokee war priests and medicine men using divining crystals. Sometimes those are referred to as ulunsuti stones, but the original ulunsuti, the truly powerful ones, at least according to what I found online, were the focus stones taken from the forehead of an Uktena, a horned serpent with wings that guarded the entrances to the underworld beneath rivers and lakes and certain springs.”

  “Berg said Eliza’s fountain was fed by an underground spring.”

  “So it’s not just me? I’m not crazy for making that connection?”

  Barrie kicked the covers off and swung her legs down from the bed, then wandered to the door that led out to the balcony. “Maybe we’re both crazy. We don’t have any idea what it means.”

  “That’s definitely true. The one thing I’ve read over and over is that the Cherokee who know the real stories only pass them along to the people they think are ready to hear them. I can’t even tell which stories are purely from modern Cherokee and which came from the ancient ones who lived here before European settlers, or whether some of the stories are remnants from even before that, from the mound people, or the fire priests they mention in the oldest stories. Which means anything I find on the Internet isn’t likely to be more than scraps of truth. Maybe that idea of being ready to learn something is also why Obadiah is so closemouthed about information. We aren’t ready.”

  “Or maybe he doesn’t know the stories, either. Not completely. But in that case, do you think that Inola would have told Eliza the truth? And if she didn’t, how do we ever figure out what the Fire Carrier and the yunwi want us to do?”

  Eight took a deep breath. “Are you sure we’re meant to do anything, Bear?”

  Barrie turned to the two yunwi who had curled up in the armchair in the corner of the room—the same two who had accompanied her into the tunnel, she was almost sure of it. They opened their eyes and looked back at her.

  “I’ve never been more certain of anything in my whole life,” she said. “I feel it. The binding itself has something to do with protecting the yunwi, and maybe that’s even the reason that my gift is pushing me toward Obadiah, because there’s something that I’m supposed to do with him or through him. All I know for certain is that whatever the Fire Carrier wants from me is separate from simply protecting Watson’s Landing, and like you said, it’s urgent.”

  Opening the door, she let herself out onto the balcony. Across the river in his bedroom, Eight stood in his window, silhouetted by the light behind him. “If one of the lodestones is Eliza’s Serpent Stone, it could be riskier trying to find it than Obadiah said. Uktena came and went from the underworld, and the ulunsuti were the most powerful things a person could possess. They were fed by blood. Medicine men kept them outside their houses because they were too dangerous to keep inside.”

  Barrie shook her head. “I still can’t believe we’re thinking about the underworld as if it’s an actual place.”

  “Why not? You and I are looking at each other from across the river right now, but I can hear you as clearly as if you were standing here beside me. Once you know how, you can cross any boundary. Maybe the ulunsuti stones are a key of some kind. There’s a reference to an ulunsuti being buried with the last priest who knew how to use its power. I also found an article that said the ancient Cherokee called the chief war priest the Fire Carrier, and he carried an ulunsuti with him along with the sacred fire—that could have been a plain divining crystal, but what if it wasn’t? What if our Fire Carrier had the real thing and brought it here?”

  “Then where did the other two lodestones come from?” Barrie asked, leaning her elbows on the balcony railing. The clouds had faded away, and the weak moon glimmered on the river where the Fire Carrier spread his magic. Who was he? And why was he on Watson Island? Those still seemed to her to be the most important questions, or at least the ones that all the remaining questions branched from.

  “If we’re saying the underworld is an actual place,” she said, “then there are different ways in, and not all of them involve the ulunsuti. Obadiah crossed the boundary before Ayita and Elijah brought him back, and Obadiah’s intending to send Ayita and Elijah back there.”

  “Maybe you only need the ulunsuti if you aren’t dead? I don’t know. But we can’t postpone the ceremony, if that’s what you’re going to suggest. Obadiah said it needs to be done when he has the most energy possible—right after the open house—and it’s too late to cancel the party now.”

  “Could we find someone who knows the real stories?” Barrie asked. “An actual Cherokee medicine person or historian?”

  “How long do you think it would take to convince someone to come here and help us? And you should see what I’ve been searching through. Even if we could be sure the person knows the real stories, we can’t be sure they’d be willing to share them.”

  “So what do we do?” Barrie asked, yawning again.

  “Unless there’s more in the letterbooks, we’re going to have to trust Obadiah tomorrow. And right now, we both need sleep. Good night, Bear.”

  “Good night.”

  I love you hovered on th
e tip of Barrie’s tongue, but Eight had hung up before she could get it out. She sat a moment thinking, then typed out a text for Berg about ulunsuti stones, war priests, and Cherokee history. But she didn’t go back to bed. Her head was filled with too many swirling thoughts, and she pulled out her laptop and started searching for the terms herself. In the end, she slept very little.

  • • •

  Barrie rose before seven to go out to the stable. After everything she had learned about the yunwi, it seemed even more wrong to let them do anything as mundane as mucking stalls.

  As usual, they accompanied her, but their behavior was strange. When she brought Miranda and Batch in from the pasture, where Pru had left them turned out for the night, and returned them to their stalls, the yunwi boiled around her. Then suddenly, they dashed away down the aisle and left the stable to disappear in the tangled trees beyond the cemetery. Following the yunwi as far as the old chapel out of curiosity, Barrie couldn’t find where they had gone, and she couldn’t see anything amiss, so she went back to feeding the horses. She had just dumped a flake of hay into Miranda’s stall when two of the yunwi darted back in after her with a voiceless warning.

  Run.

  Miranda’s ears flattened against the side of her head, and she stomped her foot. The yunwi grabbed at Barrie, pulling her toward the house, but she could barely feel them—barely even see them. Their eyes were cooling embers with scarcely any fire at all.

  “What’s wrong?” Barrie stepped out into the aisle, unsure whether to stay and try to calm the mare or let the yunwi pull her away. Obadiah was the only person the yunwi had ever reacted to with such a sense of panic.

  The figure who stepped through the open stable doorway wasn’t Obadiah.

  He was a silhouette at first, backlit by the sun, but even in the split second before her eyes focused, Barrie knew that the shape was wrong. Too short. Too bald. Fear coiled around her heart and squeezed until the blood in her limbs ran cold. Her brain told her feet to move, but there didn’t seem to be any functioning nerves available to translate the command.

  Yunwi circled all around Ernesto, trying to keep him from coming into the stable, trying to push him out. Their bodies were only hints of shadow, hardly visible—hardly even there. Ernesto didn’t seem to feel them.

  He advanced, dragging the yunwi with him along the concrete. Thorny vines, too thin and new for strength, clung to his shoes and pants as if the yunwi had used them to try to stop him or slow him down. Leaves had caught in the torn fabric of his shirt, and hundreds of small, bloody cuts covered his arms, crisscrossing older, deeper cuts that had been stitched up, and places where the skin was red and raw as if it had burned. A fresh scar ran from the bald scalp above his forehead, across his eye, and down to the midpoint of his cheek. The face tattoo on the back of his skull wasn’t visible, but Barrie remembered it all too well.

  Miranda whinnied and knocked the wall as she spooked. The yunwi pushed Barrie back into the stall, or maybe she stepped in on her own. They struggled to close the door and didn’t have the strength. She slammed it closed, but there was no way to lock it or latch it from inside. Ernesto easily slid it open.

  He stood in the doorway, blocking the only exit.

  Barrie backed up until she ran into Miranda. Putting her hand out to calm the trembling mare, she tried to think. Escape was impossible. The window in the stall was too high, and the wall was solid. She snatched up the rake she had left by the water bucket.

  Ernesto gave a humorless smile, and the raw scar puckered and made him wince. His hand half-rose to touch it, but instead he reached behind him and pulled a handgun, matte black and lethal-looking, from his waistband as a flurry of stall bedding flew at him. The yunwi snatched up more to throw.

  He waved them away and spat. “What the hell is wrong with this place? Hello, chica. Surprised to see me?”

  “Should I be?” Barrie croaked. It was a stupid thing to say, but her brain didn’t seem to be working right, and she held up the wooden rake handle like a sword in front of her. “Why are you here?” she asked, to keep him talking.

  “Because you cost me,” he said. “I’d tell you it was nothing personal, but it doesn’t get more personal than losing my friends, my customers, and an entire shipment I have to replace myself if I want to stay alive. Picturing the moment when I would get to kill you is the only thing that’s made me feel good in weeks.”

  He advanced into the stall, and Barrie backed up another step. She ran into Miranda again, but the mare was already pressed against the wall with nowhere to go.

  Small flames, as thin as matchsticks, burst from the yunwi’s upraised palms and landed on Ernesto’s shirt. He swatted at them. Miranda squealed and reared back, eyes white-rimmed, hooves churning the air. Her head crashed into the ceiling. Barrie dropped the rake, grabbed her mane, and pulled her downward.

  “Shh, honey. It’s all right.”

  It wasn’t, though.

  The yunwi screamed again. No words. Just urgency. Fire burned in their palms. Ernesto’s eyes widened, and his mouth fell open, as if he could see the flames, though he hadn’t seemed to see the yunwi.

  Miranda’s head hit the ceiling again, hard enough to shake the rafters. Hard enough to crack bone.

  Barrie didn’t think. Both hands fisted in Miranda’s mane, she threw herself up onto the horse’s back and kicked her forward. Miranda’s forelegs thudded against the floor, her hindquarters bunched, and she surged toward the door.

  The yunwi dove aside. Ernesto jumped away and fell, scrambling as the mare leaped past him. A shot rang out, but Miranda didn’t flinch. Barrie hunkered low over the mare’s neck, clinging for balance. Steel shoes struck concrete. Her ears rang. The floor rushed past. The faint acrid scent of burning curled her nose, but whether that was from gunpowder, the sparks cast off by horseshoes, or whatever fire the yunwi had thrown, Barrie didn’t know. She hoped it wasn’t from burning sawdust. She couldn’t get to Batch.

  Bolting out into the sunlight, Miranda ducked left, throwing Barrie hard to the right. Barely clinging, Barrie pulled herself back up in time to be flung in the opposite direction as the mare rounded the corner of the house.

  White shell and gravel blurred beneath Miranda’s feet, and the first columns of the portico flashed past. Barrie had time to dimly think that she shouldn’t go toward the house because Pru was there and Ernesto would follow her. Because windows were too easily broken and guns were faster than police cars. Then Miranda veered left toward the oak-lined lane. The relief of that was short-lived. The gate on the far end was closed, and they would get there only to have to come back again.

  Shifting her weight across Miranda’s withers, Barrie yanked the mare’s mane toward the right to try to turn her head. Miranda didn’t react. Dropping her weight even more, Barrie barely kept her balance, and she wished she’d paid more attention to what Pru had tried to teach her. She wished she had the courage to close her eyes to connect better. Mostly she wished she hadn’t switched off the motion detectors at the perimeter of the property when she’d turned off the house alarm to go feed the horses, but she hadn’t given it a second thought.

  Miranda finally changed direction. Barrie dug her heels in and sent the mare galloping, surging, flying across the grass toward the Watson woods while she clung low over Miranda’s neck and prayed and tried to let herself sink into the motion. Snatching a look behind her, she caught a flash of white rounding the corner of the house, and she hunched even lower. Urged Miranda faster.

  The woods loomed ahead. That was the only hope. Not for Miranda, though. The trees were too close together, the ground too rough. Mentally, Barrie calculated. She shuddered at the distance to the ground.

  She had to risk it.

  “All right, sweet girl. You’re going to turn when I pull you around. Can you do that? And then you’re going to run like hell and leave me—and keep running as far and fast as you can.”

  Wrapping her arms more tightly around Miranda’s neck, she
kicked her left leg up over the mare’s broad back so she’d be ready to jump off. Unbalanced, she struggled to hold on, her whole body weight shifted to the right to try to swing Miranda around to avoid the trees.

  She fell before she was ready. Her shoulder hit the grass. Light flashed and pain splintered in her head.

  No breath. Pain filled her up while the thunder of Miranda’s hooves shook the ground, and Barrie lay there, useless. For too long.

  Inhale. Inhale and exhale.

  Get up. Run. Barrie forced herself to her knees.

  Miranda had run a few more paces, then stopped, blowing hard. Head down, nostrils red and quivering, she was coming back toward Barrie.

  She couldn’t come back. Scrambling upright, Barrie stumbled and took a few steps. Waving her arms over her head, she shouted: “Yah! Go! Run, Miranda.”

  The mare shied and reared.

  A shot rang out. Miranda squealed in fear and fury, and ducking low to the left, she plunged toward the river. Barrie dove toward the trees. Her feet tangled in the underbrush and she tripped, fought to get her bearings.

  There was no place to hide. The fallen logs were too low; the sparse bushes and palmetto wouldn’t provide any cover. The trees were too narrow. Nothing was dark enough. Even if she made it to the river, then what? Barrie couldn’t swim, and she couldn’t get away, and if Pru came out to investigate . . . She couldn’t let Ernesto hurt Pru.

  Something large thrashed in the brush behind her. Ernesto cursed.

  Barrie angled toward the Scalping Tree, navigating purely by the rush of energy from the center of the woods. At the edge of the clearing, a fallen branch caught her shoe. She wrenched free, took two steps, and then went back and picked the branch up to bring it with her. It was as thick as her wrist, rotting at the end, but the core appeared sturdy enough. She broke off the remaining offshoots and took a practice swing.