urgency riding me to flee this house.
“He wants to meet up at the carnival in town. It’s a Feast of the Dead celebration. Everyone wears a mask, so you wouldn’t be seen. It’s a big crowd, but mostly tourists.”
My stomach twists at the thought. For all the effort Thierry’s put into keeping me unseen, a crowd is the last place I should be. “Isn’t there somewhere quieter we can meet up?”
“Can we meet at the old pier, instead?” The three of us hustle out the door, and with the phone tucked at her ear, Brie lifts Justin up into her arms, practically running toward the car. “You get that, Luc? How ‘bout the old pier?”
Trailing behind her, I swipe up a pair of white socks that she drops along the way, along with the shorts that slips from beneath her arm.
Rounding the small sedan parked in the drive toward the passenger side, she pauses, setting Justin back down. “Luc? Hello?” Pulling the phone from her ear, she stares down at it, then lifts it again. “Luc? Are you there? Dammit!”
She opens the door and tosses the clothes into the backseat, before ushering Justin inside. The two of us pile in, and I toss the socks and shorts I gathered onto the rest of the pile.
She dials a number on her phone again and waits.
A few seconds later, she’s shaking her head and dials again.
Waits.
“C’mon, Luc!” One hand gripping the steering wheel, she breathes deeply. In and out. “Can’t get ahold of him.” Handing off the phone to me shows neither of the two calls she made went through. “I don’t even know where I’m going to stay tonight.” After another few seconds of quiet, she huffs and looks up to the rearview mirror, toward Justin. “You wanna stay with Tante Nia?”
“Yeah!” Justin hops up and down on the seat, wriggling his little legs.
“She’s one of the girls from the club. I can stay at her place for a while.” She fires up the sedan, which lets out a disturbing chug, but one rev of the engine, and it roars to life. “You okay meeting up at the carnival? I know it’s not ideal, Cely, but Luc’s right. They’ll have masks. No one will see you.”
I don’t have a choice, really. After one drive from Luc’s house to town, I can’t say I’d know how the hell to get back, and finding Thierry’s boathouse in the bayou would be pretty much impossible.
As she reverses the car out of the driveway, I try Luc’s number one more time. It rings and rings with no answer. “I guess we’ll have to meet up at the carnival.”
Once on the road, I twist around to face Justin, who stares out the passenger window, seemingly less troubled already. “This … tataille. Has he visited you before, Justin?”
The boy nods, and a quick glance shows Brie staring back at him through the rearview mirror. “Justin, why didn’t you say anything to me?”
“I did. I tol’ you it was da tataille, but you said he wasn’ real.”
She snaps her gaze forward, a look of chagrin blushing her cheeks when she glances at me. “I thought …. I didn’t know he was talkin’ ‘bout an actual person.”
Though I feel for my friend’s embarrassment, I can easily relate to Justin’s frustration. Even if my boogeyman wasn’t real, it was based on trauma that no one bothered to investigate, or believe, either.
“Does he ever talk to you?” I ask him.
“Yes.” Fingers fidgeting in his lap, he lowers his gaze, as though he doesn’t want to tell me.
“What does he say?”
Instead of answering, he shakes his head.
“Is it something bad?”
He nods, sending a chill across the back of my neck. Getting him to talk is going to be tricky, but at this point, I need to know.
“You know, I see him, too.”
Eyes wide, he stares back at me in disbelief. “You do?”
“Yes. Can you tell me what he said?”
With an emphatic shake of his head, he leans back, staring out the window, only shooting me the occasional glance from the corner of his eye.
“If I tell you something he says to me? Will you tell me something he says to you?”
Brows coming together with worry, he pushes his glasses up onto his nose. “But he said he would huwt momma.”
Curling tendrils of shock slither over me, and when I look over at Brie, her knuckles are white against the steering wheel. “Justin. He say he knows where your momma is?”
Justin nods.
“Where? Where’d