Erielle forced a polite smile. “Hi, Mrs. Guillory. What can I do for you?”
“Oh…ah…” The older woman’s eyes kept straying toward the road. Her grip on her bag tightened until her knuckles whitened. “How’s the house coming?”
Samson stepped forward, suspicion in the hard line of his jaw. “Mom. Why are you here?”
The sharp edge in his voice startled Erielle. Mrs. Guillory flinched. “I just…just came to check.” But her glance flicked down the road again, quick and guilty.
Erielle followed her gaze and straightened. Hattie hustled down the sidewalk, her stride businesslike, her dress snapping about her legs. She pushed through the rickety gate like she was being chased and marched toward them.
“Marie here yet?”
“Marie?” Erielle’s mind flashed to the tiny woman with the steel spine from Rumrunners. Did they know her?
Hattie mounted the steps and took Mrs. Guillory’s hand, forcing the other woman to meet her gaze. “You doing okay, Leslie?”
Mrs. Guillory rolled her eyes and inclined her head slightly toward Sam, still waiting for a response in the doorway. Hattie turned and gave him a look, but before anyone could say anything, a motorcycle roared down the street and stopped in front of the house. The woman in the back, wearing a familiar flowy skirt, unhooked her helmet and shook out her cloud of hair. She dismounted, resting the helmet on the back of the bike as the second woman, tiny blond Marie, hopped off and marched toward the house, Allison trailing behind.
“Well, let’s go on in,” Hattie said, waving her hand in the direction of the door.
Samson hustled out of the way, making space for the women, but Hattie stopped directly in front of the empty nail where the bayou painting had hung.
“Where’s the painting?” Hattie demanded.
Erielle’s head was spinning. Why were all these women here? How did they even know each other? She wouldn’t have put two of them together if she’d had everyone in Phantom Bayou in one room. Something tickled the edge of her mind, but she couldn’t fit it into the puzzle because Hattie was glaring at her, waiting for an answer.
“It’s—on the kitchen table.”
The women and Samson followed Hattie into the kitchen. She clearly knew her way around the house. She walked straight to where Sam had left the picture on the closer side of the table, passed her hand over it without touching.
Marie circled the table to the journal. “I was wondering where she left this,” she said, her voice low, reverent.
“What is it?” Erielle’s curiosity outbid her confusion and her anxiety over what was going on. “Can you read it?”
“It’s been a while,” Marie murmured, her finger lightly moving over the page. “It’s probably in here, don’t you think?” she asked Hattie.
Hattie made a noise in her throat and flipped the painting over. At that point she saw the sketch on the cardboard, the rubbings on the napkins. She looked at Erielle.
“So you do know what’s going on? Or you don’t?”
Erielle shook her head. “I don’t know. I just—” Her throat tightened, and she forced the words out in a rush. “The painting moved on its own. We found symbols carved over the windows. Then this—” she gestured toward the journal, her hand unsteady “—hidden in the back of the frame.”
The silence that followed pressed against her chest. It was the first time she’d strung all of it together, the first time she’d admitted out loud how impossible it sounded.
She drew a sharp breath, bracing for disbelief, for laughter.
But none of the women even blinked. Their faces remained unreadable, calm in a way that made her stomach dip. Not shock. Not surprise. Almost…expectation.
“Then we found the room today. But we don’t know what any of it means.” She looked from one unreadable face to the next. “Why do you?”
Hattie pressed her lips together, gathered up the napkins and put them back on the table in a star shape.
No. A pentagram. Fear clawed its way up Erielle’s throat. What was happening here?
“I need someone to tell me what’s going on.”
“In a minute.”
“How do you all know each other?”
