for my redemption.'
'Come clean about what, precisely?'
When Josephine told her about her role in Brad's death, Charmian was enraged; clearly, Richard had never revealed that Josephine had a hand in it. And when Josephine said she wanted to go talk to Ron and Lila, too, Charmian took her arms so hard her nails made bloody crescents in her skin.
'You old fool! You shut your black face about this. You want to confess your sins? You don't even know what your sins are! You don't know half the damage you've done! You killed my husband, too! Telling my children stories of your darkie potions and superstitions – '
'What you mean?' Josephine gasped.
Charmian worked her nails in deeper. 'I've done my best to accept that Bradford deserved to die,' she hissed. 'And I've told myself that you couldn't have knowrn Lila would someday use your stories to kill her father. I think I have forborne admirably, Josephine, all these years. But I won't forgive your coming here and stirring this up. Lila has truly forgotten, and Ronald and I have done our best to. If you ever try to contact Lila, and she learns the truth, I will not forgive you. Do you understand?'
The truth about Pdchard's death shocked Josephine. She tore her arms from Charmian's taloned grip and fled in fear for her life.
Now her conscience was doubly, triply burdened. Charmian was right: If Lila found out she'd killed her father wrongly, that'd be the worst thing. After all she'd been through. That baby girl didn't deserve that. No one could live with that.
Josephine hated herself. In her selfish quest to seek forgiveness for her sins, she'd sinned again, worse than ever. Like some dumb country nigger, she'd spilled her story to Temp Chase. He'd lied when he said he was a friend of the Beaufortes, that he knew the story already; he'd used his wiles to get her to talk and she'd fallen for it. Now the truth was no longer completely buried. If Temp ever spoke of it, reported on it, Lila might remember and have to face the terrible mistake she'd made. What Charmian would do if she found that Josephine had told Temp was the least of her worries. In her vanity and weakness, her selfish concern for her own salvation, she had done the last thing she would ever want she'd put Lila in danger.
Now Lila needed to be protected.
So before she left New Orleans for good, she performed some hoodoo craft her mother had taught her long ago: She cut little sticks of hackberry tree and notched them twice, one notch for Temp and the second for his wife in case he'd told her, and left them at Beauforte House. Some practitioners used the technique to induce craziness in an enemy, but Mama had always prescribed it for making people forget, like if a woman knew someone had seen her with her lover and wanted them to forget so they couldn't tell her husband. She put one hex at each corner of the grounds, then waited until no one was home and used her old key to get inside and put one under the mantelpiece. She looked up Lila's address and left hexes at the Warrens', too.
She thought it was probably just superstition, an old woman's foolishness, but her mother had always sworn it would work.
And anyway, there didn't seem to be anything Jesus could do about this.
As for herself, she no longer sought forgiveness. She didn't feel she deserved it. Oh, she did pray to God for Temp to forget, for Lila to keep forgetting. She went on her knees every day and pleaded for that. But when she heard on the TV news that Temp had been murdered, not two weeks after her visit, she knew that neither God nor Jesus nor hoodoo nor anything else on Earth or in heaven was going to stop Charmian Beauforte from remembering and from protecting her family however she felt she had to.
43
Josephine's rasping voice ceased suddenly, and Cree felt the light in the room change. She turned her head to see a dark silhouette at the screen door, eclipsing the light from outside.
In another instant, Charmian Beauforte had opened the screen door and stepped onto the porch, and then she was coming through the open inner door. She wras dressed impeccably in a beige suit over a white silk blouse, holding her ostrich-skin purse close to her side. She didn't have her cane, but she mastered her limp almost completely as she came into the dim room, stood regally, and fixed them with her raptor's gaze.
'Can't just come in my house like this!' Josephine gasped.
Charmian ignored her. 'You know why I'm here,' she said to Cree. 'We need to end your investigation. One way or another. Today.'
'My investigation is over.'
'Yes, it certainly is. Now, you two are going to do exactly as I say. We're going to make a deal, right now, the three of us. Your lives depend on making this deal and sticking with it.'
Josephine stood up from her chair, mustering a formidable power of her own. 'Miz Charmian. This my home. This my family home. You don't come here an' tell me what I do or don't do.'
Charmian didn't back down as the taller figure approached her. 'Josephine, look out the window. See the man leaning against the big car? His name is Loup Garou.' For Cree's benefit, she translated, 'That means 'Werewolf,' and they call him that for a very good reason. There's another man, just down the street. So get it through your head, right now – I do tell you what to do. Here or anywhere else.'
Cree turned in her chair to look out the window, and it was as Charmian had said. An older Cadillac had pulled up, right at the end of the front walk. The man leaning against it wore an oversize checked shirt, parted enough to reveal a mat of dark chest hair above a sleeveless T-shirt. A big automatic pistol was stuck in his belt. Though he wore sunglasses, it was clear he watched the door of the house with interest.
'How did you know where I was?' Cree asked.
'Paul Fitzpatrick has been most helpful to me throughout this escapade. He told me you'd locate Josephine. I just had you followed.' Charmian must have seen the astonishment come into Cree's face, because her mouth hardened, the tiniest smile of gratification at revealing this betrayal.
Josephine had studied the man at the car, and now she looked back at Charmian. They locked eyes. Cree could see the arc that leapt there, the ancient antagonism between these two old women, the bitter contest over which would possess Lila's heart, the unforgiven failings they accused each other of. After a moment, Josephine took two steps to the kitchen hallway and called down it. 'Hiram! Go get yo' uncle's shotgun from out my closet. Then you come on out the front room.'
But Hiram must have heard some disturbance earlier, because immediately Cree heard the sound of a shell being jacked into the chamber, and then Hiram was coming out of the hallway with the big gun leveled. He was still shirtless, his dark skin still glistening with sweat, and he towered over Charmian with a baleful look.
Charmian looked him up and down with contempt.
'Hiram,' Josephine instructed, 'you go sit on the porch, an' you watch that man at the car. He start to come up here, you shoot him dead. I call you, you turn around shoot this ol' lady dead. She like a witch, you don't trust her neither, you understand?'
Hiram moved silently past Charmian, out onto the porch, where he took a chair facing the street, the shotgun held low but aimed at the man outside. When the Werewolf saw him come out, he straightened out of his slouch and one hand strayed to his pistol.
The guns scared Cree. The powers of the two women held each other in a tense stasis. The motionless air was charged with latent action, and the guns made any shift of balance potentially lethal.
'You don't tell me what I do,' Josephine said quietly. 'No more. You not my judge, and you not my maker. You not even my boss. And this is my home. This be a good time you learn humility, Miz Charmian.'
Charmian eyes blazed at that, and she seemed to inhale, swell with rage. If she upped the ante another notch it would all blow apart.
'Charmian,' Cree broke in. 'What deal? What do you mean?'
'I will protect my daughter,' she said through her teeth. 'That's the deal. The only deal.' The compressed fury in her had only grown in the face of Josephine's resistance and Hiram's dark presence twelve feet away. Against her will, Cree had to admire the strength of her.
'We all want that! But how, Charmian? You told her to forget. She did her best. But the ghosts won't let
