Read Beneath the Black Moon (Root Sisters) for Free Online Page B

her
mother's death she had felt constantly, inexplicably cold. She was constantly
falling ill and shivered her way through several months before she discovered
the kitchen. Winter, spring, summer and autumn, the kitchen was sweltering and
full of life. Despite the strange things that went on there was also a sense of
normalcy. Potatoes were peeled, the bones were cast, butter was churned and
graveyard dirt was kept in a jar behind the jellies and jams. Cam had listened
to Grandma and Caro, learning all that they would teach her. In time she found
that their presence chased the cold away.
    Cam
knew every step of the path that she walked, and so even in the dark she could
avoid the spot where the old carriage house had once stood. In the years after
his wife's death, Cam's father had tried more than once to grow new grass over
the spot where Solange and Sam had burned to death. Eventually, almost reluctantly,
the grass had taken root. Since then they'd had storms. Wind that tore through
like the devil himself, rain that fell until the Mississippi itself was
drowning under the deluge. The ash had washed away, but Cam could still
discern, with perfect precision, the outline of the carriage house. The ash may
not have been there, but traces of the evil that had ended Solange’s life
remained. In Cam’s family it was called rootwork, but it was known by other
names: conjure, the evil eye, hoodoo. Whatever you termed it, however you
practiced it, there was a distinction, a line that wasn’t meant to be crossed.
A line that had been trampled that day in 1839, when the carriage house had
burst into unnatural flames and consumed two lives. 
    Solange
had been a practitioner, a rootworker, just as Caro and Grandma were. Cam
wasn’t entirely sure when her family had first been introduced to rootwork.
Perhaps when they first settled in Haiti, perhaps before then. Cam had never
asked.
    Like
so many things in life, it could be used for good purpose or ill. Cam had never
had cause to hurt anyone with her conjure, but she knew how. She knew how to
defend herself with it, even how to kill with it. Though in light of her
mother’s death, the very thought made her ill.
    It
was her secret, hers, Grandma’s and Caro’s. Her sisters knew too, though as far
as Cam knew neither of them practiced. She frequently wondered about Diana.
Grandma certainly hadn’t trained Diana, but Diana had been older when their
mother had died, almost nine years old. Solange might have begun training her
before she died. Cam frequently wanted to ask, but there never seemed to be a
right time to discuss their mother.
    The
scent of herbs grew stronger as she drew closer to the kitchen, and Cam caught
the faint sound of their voices. She heard Caro's voice first, heard her
speaking softly and steadily. Her grandmother's voice was higher, cracking with
age, but they both sounded calm. Her foot creaked on the step and they both
fell silent. There was a rustling sound at the window and then Caro opened the
door, and warm, flickering candlelight spilled out, illuminating Cam's face and
casting a narrow circle of light on the weathered steps beneath her feet. “It's
the child,” she told Daphne, shaking her head slightly. “I told you she wouldn't
be at that ball.”
    “Oh,
Cam,” her grandmother said, but she didn't sound terribly bothered. She had
reached the age where one ball blended into the other and became
indistinguishable from barbecues and weddings, and she didn't much care if Cam
attended any of them.
    Grandma
was seated at the hearth, which was not lit, with Mary, Caro's niece. Mary had
come to Cypress Hall as a young child, and Caro had raised her since then. She
was delicately built and her face was attractive, with big eyes and small,
perfect white teeth. She had recently turned eighteen, but something in her
face looked younger, perhaps fifteen or sixteen. She stared up at Cam pensively
as though trying to read her expression and then smiled when Cam