"You brought that boy into this house, didn't you!" Grammie hissed at me at breakfast the next morning.
I froze where I stood pouring my cereal before slowly resuming. "I'm not sure what you're talking about, Grammie."
It'd do no use to lie directly to her. I got my ability to taste lies from her after all.
She grabbed my elbow and whipped me around to face her. For such an old woman she was surprisingly strong. "Don't you lie to me by not speaking the plain truth, child!"
Her anger coated my mouth tasting so strongly of orange peel that I couldn't help but gag.
"Why did you bring him here," she demanded, shaking me once, "Why would you bring a stranger into this house?"
"He's not a stranger!" I cried, desperately trying to pull away. Desperate to put some distance between me and the awful taste of her aura. "He's lived here before!"
Grammie's nails dug into my arm as she squeezed tighter. "What does that mean?"
"It means he lived here before!" I yanked at my arm but she yanked me closer. The taste was overpowering now. "His name is Indigo! He's Violet's brother."
All at once she dropped my arm like I'd burned her.
"Violet's brother?" she asked.
I nodded, cradling my arm against my chest. Bruises were beginning to form.
Grammie didn't say anything, just looked far off into the distance like she was trying to see something important. She finally turned to look back at me. Her bone white braids were falling out from its bun and into her wrinkled face.
"Why is he back?" she asked.
"Lie, don't tell the witch a word," a fern hidden in the corner suggested.
I hesitated. Ferns were usually quiet, but when they spoke it was best to listen.
"He wanted a change of scenery. That's why I invited him over, Grammie. I wanted to make sure that he didn't know about the secret."
"And does he?" she demanded.
I shook my head. "I used a potion to make him speak the truth, so he might suspect that you have a little power, but he's nowhere near the truth of it all."
Grammie nodded and speaking to herself, muttered, "He doesn't know yet. That's good."
I didn't say anything. My arm was throbbing where she had grabbed me. She turned to look at me.
"Stay away from him, child. He's no good for you." Her milky eyes stared deep into my own, looking for any hesitation.
I nodded quickly. It was best to agree with Grammie when she got into her moods. This was the reason I'd never touch voodoo as long as I lived. Voodoo wasn't black magic but it still stole its way into your ọkàn - your soul - and buried itself deep inside. Used incorrectly it had a way of twisting people up. Grammie always said she had never misused the voodoo but still, if it turned me into anything like her, I didn't want it.
There was a long moment of silence between us as I kept rubbing her finger marks off my arm and she just stared at me. Finally, she clucked her tongue and turned to go her shop room. She came back moments later with a paste made from willow bark and witch hazel and grabbed my arm once again.
As she rubbed the healing paste into the newly-formed bruises she began to speak. "Do you know how much I love you, Lavender?"
"Yes ma'am."
"I took you in after your mama ran off and that no good father of yours died. You know I just want what's best for you, don't you?"
I nodded. She always reminded me about how she didn't have to take in her illegitimate grandchild, how the elders wanted to leave me outside the town's borders.
"Do you know how hard it was for me to raise a half-breed granddaughter? When your mama came home saying she fell in love with an outsider it nearly broke my heart. And after he went off and died and your mama left, I thought my magic was going to end with me. That'd you'd be of no use to anyone. But I still kept you, didn't I?" She paused in applying the paste to meet my eyes. "Didn't I?"
"Yes ma'am."
"Well don't kill me by making the same mistakes your mother did. Leave that boy alone."
I couldn't lie to her. She'd know and would be even angrier than she had been.
So, I just answered, "I won't make my mother's mistakes, Grammie. I promise."
She seemed satisfied with the answer and pulled away. "I don't want to hear about that boy anymore, you hear me?"
I nodded once more. She humphed and went back to the table to eat. I glanced at the clock and saw that I only had a few minutes to meet Indigo if I wanted to be on time.
"I'm going to go into town, Grammie. We're running out of black eyed susans in the garden and the sunflowers are starting to complain."
It wasn't a lie. We really were running out of black eyed susans and the sunflowers really had started to complain. But beyond being true, it was believable. After Violet disappeared, I took to keeping a magnificent garden. In a way the flowers and herbs I grew were my only friends. My grandmother wouldn't question me going into town to buy more flowers.
Grammie humphed once again. "I swear out of all the useless gifts for the God to give you, you had to be able to speak with flowers. What a waste of potential. What a waste of our bloodline."
I ducked my head and nodded. Grammie never forgot to remind me that as her granddaughter I should somehow be better. That I should be stronger. That if my father wasn't an outsider, I would've been. Grammie was psychic. She could look at your tea leaves and tell you the day you'd die. She could taste your aura as soon as you came in the door and some say she could even read your mind. I was a disappointment to the Fletch family name as someone who could only taste the strongest of emotions. And while I loved being able to hear and communicate with plants it wasn't a particularly useful skill to have. And Grammie was even more powerful after mastering voodoo. It was another disappointment to her when I refused to even learn.
"Well, you best be getting off," she told me then glanced out the window towards the clear sky, "A storm's coming."
I nodded and after dumping my cereal walked out the front door. Indigo was waiting at the bottom of the steps looking like he was about to come knock.
I grabbed him by the arm and dragged him from the front yard. "Don't ever come to the house," I hissed at him, "Never, ever."
He blinked at me surprised by my tone. "Why?"
"My Grammie doesn't like outsiders and she doesn't want me spending time with you."
"Outsiders?" he asked, his face darkening with anger.
I kept pulling him across the street till we stood in front of his car. "People not from this town," I explained.
"Well, that's a little xenophobic, don't you think," he snorted, pulling himself free from me.
I paused, going over his words. "No, it's not. We just don't like newcomers here."
He unlocked the car and climbed into the driver's seat. "Literally the definition of xenophobic, love."
I was speechless at that but climbed into the passenger side nonetheless. We weren't xenophobic, we just didn't want outsiders coming in ruining what we had worked so hard to build. We had reason to worry after all; the outside world was dangerous.
Indigo quickly started the car and pulled out of the driveway. He didn't say anything on the drive to the town square and I didn't think he wanted me to talk if the way he was glaring at the road was any indication.
He parked in front of the Sheriff's station and turned off the car, but didn't move to get out. His fingers were turning white from gripping the steering wheel so hard. I hesitated but slowly reached out to lay a hand on his arm.
"Are you okay?" I asked, "We don't have to do this if you don't want to."
He glanced at my hand touching him and I quickly removed it.
"No, No. I'm fine," he answered, "Let's just get this over with."
He quickly got out of the car and started walking towards the doors. I had to almost run to keep up with his long stride. I paused for just a second to nod at the ancient, lightning struck cypress tree that grew twisted near the entranceway. It was said to be the oldest tree in Nowhere.
He burst through the doors of the police station and Bo Buchanan, the aging Sheriff startled out of his seat. If he carried a weapon I think he'd have reached for it. I quickly placed a hand on Indigo's shoulder in an attempt to calm him. Sheriff Buchanan might appear harmless but he was anything but.
Never before had a man so strongly resembled a bloodhound than Bo Buchanan did. He had the appearance of being eyeless as his rolls of wrinkled fat sagged down his face like he was a melting candle. He was one of those men who looked so settled into old age that it was beyond your powers of comprehension to imagine him as anything other than covered in liver spots and balding. He had the unfortunate habit of clicking his tongue to make a point which would cause his great jowls to shake and shudder like that of a bulldog's. And to top off his unfortunate canine appearance, he was of such great girth that his breaths would come and go in mighty heaves and sighs giving him the perpetual impression of panting.
His personality also resembled that of a particularly rabid dog as well.
"You best be watching how you come into my police station, boy," Sheriff Buchanan growled out.
Indigo's mouth dropped open at the Sheriff's words. As a rule of thumb, black men tend not to like being called "boy". Indigo glared at the dark skinned man and opened his mouth to say an, undoubtedly offensive, retort but I quickly squeezed his shoulder and shook my head no at him. The reason the Sheriff felt comfortable not carrying a weapon - the reason the town elected a 63 year old Sheriff to begin with - was due to his fearsome gift. Sheriff Buchanan came from a long line of sirens - people gifted with the ability to entrance you with their words. The town whispered that that's how he got his pretty young wife, 30 years his junior, looking how he did.
"Hi Sheriff, how's that wife of yours?" I asked, stepping in front of Indigo with a broad smile on my face.
Sheriff Buchanan turned and smiled back when he recognized me.
"Lavender Fletch! I haven't seen you twice in a fly's lifespan. Where've you been? How's your grandma?" His booming voice filled the room. He was one of those men who thought volume made up for substance.
"She's good! Doing much better. Her eyes are still bothering her but they're getting better with each day." I said it all with a forced smile. Grandma and Bo Buchanan were close friends, though I never understood why. Grandma despised being told what to do and Sheriff Buchanan lived to boss people around.
"Well what can I do for you and that ... boy?" He said the word like he was daring Indigo to give him a reason.
"We're actually hoping to get a case report, if that's alright with you."
His eyebrows raised up high on his head and you could almost fully see his eyes. "A case report? What for?"
I shrugged and laughed lightly. If I acted ditzy he was more likely to agree. "Indigo here was badmouthing our crime report and I wanted to prove to him what a great police department we had."
Indigo sputtered behind me, indignantly but I just waved him off behind my back. He would never get anywhere with Bo Buchanan. The Sheriff hated outsiders more than my Grammie, but he also might help me prove one wrong.
The Sheriff glared at Indigo over my shoulder, "You got a lotta nerve, boy. Probably ain't got a lick of sense up in your head neither." Turning to me he said, "Let's prove him wrong, sweetheart. What report do you want?"
I smiled triumphantly as Sheriff Buchanan turned around to the filing cabinet. "It's an old one," I warned him.
He waved a hand dismissively. "Then I'll get you an old one. Which one did you want?"
His opened the cabinet looking for the older cases. He pulled open the top drawer but apparently it was too recent as he then opened the very bottom drawer. He was bent halfover to look at them.
"The Violet Byrd case," Indigo answered, suddenly standing beside me.
Sheriff Buchanan stood up so quickly he banged his head against the open drawer. He turned to stare at us and sputtered for a second before snapping his mouth shut. He looked between Indigo and I, intently studying our faces for something.
"I think," he finally said, uncharastically serious, "it's time for you to go."
"But-" Indigo began.
"Leave. Now." I felt the crackle of power in Sheriff Buchanan's voice and against my will I turned and began to walk away, Indigo beside me.
The further I walked from him the less his power affected me but Indigo was a different story. A siren's power acted like a drug. It was very potent but the more you were around it the less it affected you. I'd been around Sheriff Buchanan's powers since before I could remember but Indigo hadn't, this was the first time he had likely encountered anything of the sort. Right now his head would be swimming in a cloud of fog. He wouldn't snap out of it for hours and when he did he'd be confused and disoriented.
I shook my head to clear the last of the fog from my mind and turned to Indigo. His eyes were unfocused and he was shaking, just a little, like he was in withdrawal.
"Indigo. Indigo, look at me," I took his face in my hands and turned his head towards me. He kept blinking his eyes in these long blinks like he was trying to clear his vision. "Indigo, can you look at me?"
He finally met my gaze and his brow wrinkled in confusion. "Lavender?" he asked.
I smiled in relief. "Yeah, Indigo, it's me. Can you tell me how you're feeling?"
He was staring at me intently. "You're pretty," he whispered.
I smiled bemused, "Thank you, Indigo, but can you please focus. How are you feeling?"
His dark eyes bore into my own. "Like I want to kiss you. I should kiss you." He said the last part to himself and before I could react he leaned forward and pressed his lips against mine.
I immediately pulled away. It barely counted as a kiss, it was more a light brush of lips, but my lips still tingled where his had touched mine. I had kissed some girls before but I had never kissed a boy. I would've been more flattered if he didn't look high, though.
"Indigo, I think you should head home." I was actively trying to stop remembering the feel of his lips.
He wrinkled his brow but nodded, almost to himself, and started walking to his car. I quickly grabbed his arm.
"I actually think you should walk home. You don't seem to be in a place to drive."
He paused but nodded again and in a trance turned around in the direction of his house and began walking. He got halfway down the street before he stopped and jogged back towards me.
"Here," he said putting his keys in my hand. "Can you drive my car home?"
"No, I-" I protested but he was already walking away.
I looked down at the keys in my hand. Technically I could drive, but grandma never let me use her car. She said that I shouldn't be going anywhere I couldn't walk to anyways. I pocketed the keys and looked back at the police station. Indigo might be out of it now but sooner or later he'd try to go back to get that report and Sheriff Buchanan would be much less forgiving the second time.
I chewed on my lip as I considered what to do.
"The sapling that grows sideways in the Fall will never reach the sun in the Spring," the old cypress tree whispered.
I frowned. "What does that mean?"
"It means, sapling, stop growing sideways. The sun is directly above you. Grow towards it."
I nodded to be polite, but I had no idea what it meant. While flowers lived short lifespans and would always tell you to seize the day, trees lived far longer than we did. Their advice was always to outlive what bothered you. Maybe that was what it was telling me: to stop worrying. It was for that reason I prefered the flowers.
"Thank you," I told the tree, "but I don't think I can outwait this. I need to do something."
In a voice that sounded like the cracking of branches, it boomed, "A storm is coming and if you keep growing sideways, you'll one day fall too. Grow upwards, sapling, grow up."
I frowned but nodded once more. You'll never get anywhere in this world by disrespecting the trees.
I was about to turn away and head home when a pop of color caught my eye. Growing in the shade of the great tree was a single yellow tansy. It looked like a common dandelion expect for it's great height and an idea formed in my mind.
"I'm sorry," I whispered to it, before I pushed my fingers deep in the Earth at its base and ripped it out by the roots.
"Use me wisely," it warned, "I am more powerful than you know."
That's where it was wrong. I did know how powerful a tansy was. As a child, after Violet went missing, I took to reading anything that mention herbology and botany. As a result, I knew what the meaning of a tansy was: I declare war on you.
Used properly with the help of some other flowers, it held great power.
I quickly walked over to Miss Callway's home. She was a middle aged woman who had the most extensive garden in all of Nowhere. She was widowed and made money selling cut flowers from her home. She's where I got all the seeds and bulbs and plants I needed to replenish my garden. She also happened to live only two blocks east of the police station.
She was weeding in the front yard when I came to the gate.
"Lavender Fletch! Back already?" she asked breaking out into a beaming smile and a warm feeling filled my chest. She was looked down on by the town for not having much magic but she's also one of the sweetest women you'd ever meet. Her mother was a great healer and her father was said to be able to steal the life from a man. I guess they balanced each other out cause Miss Callway could barely cause or fix more than a scrape.
"Hi, Miss Callway. I'm actually in a bit of a hurry today. Do you have any black eyed susans, red poppies, or zinnias?"
She rubbed her chin as she thought. "I believe I have all of those, but that's a pretty powerful list you have going there. Not getting into voodoo are you?"
I shook my head, "No ma'am. Just thought the garden needed some. You know how particular flowers are."
She laughed and nodded, appeased. She got up from where she had been kneeling and went around transplanting the flowers into a tray of containers so that I could take them. After she was done she came to the fence and passed them over to me.
"What do I owe you?" I asked.
But she just shook her head. "Nothing, dear. Just come over whenever you can and make sure my flowers are happy."
I smiled back in thanks and turned to walk away.
Honestly, what I was about to do wasn't voodoo, but it got about as close as you could to it. What I was about to do was some serious hoodoo. And believe me there was a difference.
Voodoo was a religion. It taught its followers to steal magic from one thing and place it in another. Like voodoo dolls. You stole magic that resided in the doll and used it to harm whoever the doll represented. Hoodoo, though, was more rural, it was a practice of bringing forth the natural magic already present in a plant or animal and bringing it all together to make something new. Like I was about to do.
I went to the gas station and bought some black coffee and a lighter before I walked back to Indigo's car. I quickly took off the lid and took a tansy leaf from the plants I had been carrying. I lit the lighter beneath it and let the leaf catch on fire until it disintegrated to ash, then I dumped the ash into the coffee. The tansy leaf would act as a base, it would allow the other plants to do their jobs.
I grabbed three petals from the zinnia. Zinnias were a symbol to never forget an absent friend. It was perfect for the situation. I dropped the petals into the coffee, then grabbed a black eyed susan. Whispering an apology I snapped the stem and let the sap drip into the drink. Black eyed susans represented justice. Eaten, they would twist the stomach of man without guilt. Next, I grabbed a red poppy. Their meaning was simple: remembrance. I scrapped the pollen into the coffee and stirred it with my pinkie. There was one last ingredient I needed. Walking up to the cypress tree I pulled off a single leaf. Cypresses, in all their forms, meant despair and sorrow. I dipped the leaf in quickly before pulling it back out. I wanted Sheriff Buchanan to feel overcome with guilt, not dead.
Leaning over the cup, I whispered a small prayer to the God. I didn't have enough magic to power the spell myself, not unless I stole it from somewhere else, so I'd have to rely on his help.
"Please, Anansi, I need your blessing. Bind this together and bless it so that anyone who drinks it feels the pain they've caused others."
I waited for a minute and nothing happened. I've prayed to Anansi before, but he'd never responded to me, not like he had for the people at church. Or at least how they said he'd responded. Maybe he wasn't interested in helping a halfbreed. I was about to dump the coffee and go home when I felt something climbing up my leg.
I glanced down and a small black spider was crawling up my jeans. I held my breath. Was this the God? Anansi often took the form of a spider afterall.
I reached down and picked the spider up. It didn't bite me which seemed like a good sign. I crawled down my hand to the brim of the coffee cup and kept crawling until it jumped inside. I held my breath once more. I watched as it twisted and contracted and eventually sank into the boiling hot drink. Nothing happened for a moment, then slowly the drink started to glow brighter and brighter until it faded back to black. Above me, the sky started to drizzle.
I couldn't believe it. It had worked!
Smiling triumphantly I walked into the police station.
"I thought I told you to go, girl," Sheriff Buchanan spat from behind his desk.
"I know, I know!" I began, "But I felt awful bringing that disrespectful outsider in here so I got you a cup of coffee as an apology."
The Sheriff stared at me for a second, considering my words before he smiled and held out his hands. "You always were such a good girl, Lavender. Bring it here."
I handed the drink over with a smile and watched as he took a sip.
"You know," he said, "You'd make the perfect little housewife. I'd steal you up if I wasn't married to Mimi."
I chuckled to hide my disgust. He took another sip.
"But who knows? Mimi is getting older - turned 33 this year - maybe one of these days I'll ask you out on a-"
He froze in his words and made a face. He coughed once then again and again.
"Are you alright?" I asked, pretending to be concerned.
He waved me off but kept coughing. I watched as a thick black foam the color of the coffee started pooling from his mouth. He truly looked like a rabid dog now. The more he coughed the more foam kept coming. It was starting to get hard for him to breathe now.
"Maybe you should go to the bathroom and get a drink of water," I suggested.
He quickly stood up, wavering on his feet and practically sprinted towards the back of the station where the bathroom was, dripping black foam the entire way. That was the fastest I'd ever seen him move.
I glanced at the coffee cup with a frown. The book of hoodoo I had read said the potion would make a man choke on his own guilt, but I wasn't expecting it to be literal. I shrugged to myself and quickly walked behind the counter to the filing cabinet. I opened the bottom drawer and started looking through the files for the right one. Barb, Babcock, Bezona, Brown, Bundson, Byrd. There it was! I quickly snatched up the file and glanced towards the bathroom. I could hear the Sheriff retching from out here.
Smiling to myself I made my way outside. It was pouring now.
I quickly unlocked the car and, placing the file and the tray of flowers on the seat next to me, pulled out of the parking lot. It was really coming down now. I could barely see three feet ahead of me, but I felt on top of the world. I couldn't believe that I actually managed to do that! Now, I could give Indigo the file and he'd read it and see that no-one here was capable of hurting Violet. He'd see that what happened to her was an animal attack and he'd move on. He'd get closure.
In the back of my head I distantly thought perhaps he'd still choose to stay and maybe he'd still want to spend time together.
I pulled into his driveway and turned to look at my house. The lights were off, so Grammie probably wasn't home. So, I could talk to Indigo right now without fear of her seeing us. I glanced down at the file beside me.
I don't know what possessed me to read it before giving it him. Maybe a part of me knew that I'd want to be alone when I read it. Maybe I already suspecting something wasn't right. Maybe I was just too excited and wanted to tell Indigo the good news myself.
But whatever the reason I opened it and scanned the pages.
"Oh my God," I gasped.
I dropped the file onto my lap and stared ahead at nothing.
On my lap the file was opened to a picture of Violet's ballet shoes laying on the ground next to a pool of blood. And there, on the pink satin of her slipper, was a single bloody adult handprint.
Violet hadn't been attacked by an animal. Someone had taken her.
Notes: Sorry that it took so long to update, this was a really long chapter. Tell me what you think! I hope you liked it.