Description: Persuasion CHAPTER ONE The last miles of the journey stretched eternally, and Watson''s Landing pulled more and more on Barrie''s finding gift. The ache at her temples had never been absent since she and Eight and Seven Beaufort had flown out to San Francisco to retrieve her godfather''s ashes. Now the pain swelled to a pounding pressure. Seven turned the Jaguar off the bridge from the mainland onto Watson Island. Slitting her eyes, Barrie tried to avoid the afternoon sun slanting through the oaks that shadowed the road along the water''s edge. The blackwater Santisto River surrounded three sides of the island, but the Atlantic Ocean on the Eastern side added a familiar tang of salt to the tannin-scented air and made her more eager still. A few miles later, the car clattered across the smaller wooden bridge spanning the creek that separated the Watson property from the other half of the island, and a historical marker stood at the edge of the high wall that skirted the rice plantation Barrie''s family had owned since 1692. Beyond the bricks lay the Watson woods, with the Fire Carrier''s Scalping Tree at their heart. The thought both drew Barrie and repelled her. "There, you see? Almost home." From the backseat behind her, Eight reached over and lightly touched Barrie''s shoulder. "You''ll feel better in a second, Bear." Barrie smiled absently in the passenger seat, tightening her grip on the boxed urn she held in her lap. She braced herself as Seven swung into the driveway. The car stopped in front of the wrought-iron gate decorated with its ornate gold W and swirling hearts. Perceptions were fickle things, as formless as smoke and just as dangerous. Weeks ago, when Barrie had first seen the plantation her mother had run away from in her teens, the light clawing through the haunts of Spanish moss along the avenue of ancient oaks had seemed ominous, and the down-at-the-heels mansion beyond the trees had appeared forbidding. So much had changed since then. The things Barrie had considered "safe" at first had tried to kill her, and the spirits and the landscape that had frightened her initially were part of what she''d missed the most these past four days. Leaning forward, she waited for the gate to open. It occurred to her only as the sticky heat blasted into the car from Seven''s lowered window that the entrance shouldn''t have been shut at all--not on a Sunday afternoon in tourist season. Trying and failing to tamp down a twinge of panic, she turned to Seven, who had reached out to press the intercom button set into the thick brick pillar. "Why is the gate closed?" Barrie asked. Seven didn''t answer, and in the backseat, fabric rustled across the leather as Eight shifted and slid his eyes away. Not that their evasions delayed the truth for long. The Watson gift for finding lost things had continued to grow stronger since Barrie''s mother''s death. A tug of pressure pulled her toward the answer, which was hidden from view by Seven''s shoulder. Craning her head around him, she discovered that someone had taped a sheet of yellow paper over the plaque on the gatepost: Tearoom and gardens closed to the public until further notice. "All right, what''s going on?" Fighting to keep her voice level, Barrie skewered Eight with a glare. "What happened? Did Pru hurt herself? Where is she?" "Your aunt''s okay," Eight answered at the same moment Seven said, "Pru''s just fine." Barrie looked from one to the other, but it was Seven who had spent the most time on the phone with Pru. "Out with it," Barrie commanded. "What are you hiding?" In the rearview mirror, Eight and Seven flicked each other looks that acknowledged guilt. "There''s been a bit of trouble with reporters and ghost hunters since the story broke about the explosion," Seven hastened to say. "Nothing to worry about. Pru and I decided it was better to close up in an abundance of caution." "You and Pru decided . . . ," Barrie repeated. "Why didn''t anyone tell me?" Seven''s face smoothed into the typical Beaufort for your own good expression that drove Barrie nuts. He jabbed the intercom button again, and Barrie aimed an expectant and disapproving eyebrow in Eight''s direction. "Well?" she asked. A hint of red spilled across Eight''s cheeks. "Come on, Bear. You were already dealing with packing up the rest of your mother''s things." Losing his usual confident calm, he waved a hand toward the box on Barrie''s lap. "Not to mention Mark." Grief didn''t make Barrie fragile. She would have told Eight that, but the intercom crackled, and her aunt''s voice came across the wireless system. "Hello? Who''s there?" Pru asked. Seven''s expression softened as it did whenever he spoke to Pru. "Just us," he said. "Well, thank God for that. Hold on, and I''ll buzz you through." It was so good to hear the honey-slow pace of her aunt''s South Carolina drawl that Barrie''s train of thought evaporated briefly. But then the exchange only heightened her sense that the situation was worse than the Beauforts let on. Turning in her seat, she studied them. They were a matched set in their pastel oxford shirts, with their stubborn-jawed faces and their hair lightened by the sun. She wasn''t sure which of them frustrated her more. They both had the infuriating bossiness that came with the Beaufort gift of knowing what people wanted and being compelled to give it to them. Seven even more so, as Barrie had discovered the past few days. But Eight? He was supposed to be on her side. He shouldn''t have kept things from her. Not about Watson''s Landing. Technically, the plantation still belonged to Pru, but it was Barrie who was bound to the land by blood, magic, and inheritance. The house, the gardens, the woods where the Fire Carrier disappeared each night, and the spirits of the yunwi that the ancient witch kept corralled on the island with his nightly ceremony of fire on the river were all Barrie''s responsibility. Responsibility. The word felt right as Barrie thought it. She was responsible. Because who else could be? Pru barely had the Watson gift at all; she had never been the true heir. As the younger twin, younger than Barrie''s mother, Lula, the gift had touched Pru only incidentally, and she couldn''t see the spirits or feel the land as strongly as Barrie did. And how was Barrie supposed to protect the yunwi or keep Watson''s Landing safe if no one let her know what was going on? She had every intention of telling Eight exactly why he was wrong and what kind of betrayal it was to keep secrets from her, but before she could open her mouth to speak, he leaned closer with his uncanny green eyes intent on hers. "You''re right, we should have told you," he said, echoing her thoughts the way the Beaufort gift so often let him. "But what was the point of worrying you? You couldn''t do anything while we were away." "Can''t do much even now. The Santisto''s a public river," Seven said. Barrie swung her attention back to him. "What does this have to do with the river?" "There are a few boats using it to watch what''s going on here. Reporters and people hoping to see the Fire Carrier." Seven pushed the car back into gear. "Don''t worry. The excitement will die down after your cousin''s hearing and Wyatt''s funeral. Everything will go back to normal." In front of them, the black iron gate trembled and began to slide. A dozen or more knee-high figures with mischievous, childlike faces rushed through the opening toward Barrie''s side of the car. Their shadow-shapes were hard to see because of the daylight and the speed with which they moved, but their eyes etched dim trails of fire and gold into the air behind them. Barrie smiled and rolled down the window to stretch out her hand. A movement on the six-foot wall beside the gatepost made her pause. There was a man sitting up on top. He was dark from head to toe, dressed in a black suit with a sheen that blended into his skin and an aubergine silk shirt, and he was reading a newspaper so casually, he could as easily have been sitting at home on his sofa. He turned and looked dead at Barrie. Thick rows of dreadlocks swung past his shoulders, and when he lowered the newspaper, something white flashed in sharp contrast against his wrist. Barrie shaded her eyes, and he smiled . . . and vanished. Between one blink and the next, the top of the wall was empty except for a large raven sitting in the spot where the man had been. The bird peered at her with its head tilted considerably. "Bear? Are you all right?" Eight grasped Barrie''s shoulder. "What happened? You''ve gone as white as a sheet." He managed to avoid the five-day-old stitches where a piece of her uncle''s exploding speedboat had sliced into Barrie''s muscle as she''d tried to swim across the river, but she flinched anyway, and shivered. "There was a . . . ," she began, but before she could mention the man she had seen, she couldn''t remember what she had meant to say. Eight''s forehead creased into worried lines. "There was a what? A person? Another reporter? Someone snooping around?" Barrie tried to focus.

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