Gathering Deep by Maxwell Lisa

Author:Maxwell, Lisa [Maxwell, Lisa]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: teen, teen fiction, ya book, young adult, New Orleans, YA, teen lit, ya fiction, voodoo, young adult book, Young Adult Fiction, Supernatural, sweet unrest, teen novel, young adult novel, ya novel
Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide, LTD.
Published: 2015-08-17T07:00:00+00:00

Sixteen

Bile rose in my throat, and before I could stop my insides from turning over, I stumbled over to retch onto the side of the road until I felt emptied out, body and soul.

Trying to catch my breath, I wiped the corner of my mouth with the hem of my apron. I wasn’t even close yet and the stink was already so thick I could practically taste it. Not that I had any intention of turning back.

I’d known that something was coming. For months now, I could practically smell it in the air. But I hadn’t realized how fast it would come, and I hadn’t understood how much it would take.

My fault, I thought. Because I hadn’t been strong enough to protect him.

I looked down that dusty road, the heat shimmering off the surface of it, and for a moment, I remembered another road. Another time.

The first time I saw him, the cane had already been boiling away in iron pots wide enough and deep enough to cook a man. I’d been walking down a road just like this one when Jean-Pierre Dutilette came driving around the bend with a wagon filled with a new crop of men to replace the ones his plantation had cut down.

Except that time, one of the dark heads didn’t bow. That time, one figure sat straight and proud as the driver who held the whip.

Without a mother around to protect me, I’d been fighting off unwanted attention ever since I understood a smile wasn’t always a welcome. But when I saw the man with the straight back and too-proud eyes, I knew I wanted him.

But not even magic as strong as mine had been enough to keep him.

So I walked on, ignoring the ache in my chest, and I didn’t let myself stop again for anything—not for the heat licking at my skin. Not even to retch on the side of the road when the breeze brought with it the smell of death.

Ahead, I saw a row of poles that looked like crows were perching on the tops of them. But I knew that what I was seeing didn’t have anything to do with feathers even before I came to the first pike.

As I approached it, the skin on the man’s face seemed to be crawling alive, there were so many flies on it. All that was left of his eyes were dark, empty sockets staring sightlessly up at the sky. I don’t know whether it was relief that I didn’t recognize this face, or the horror that I’d have to keep on walking that made my legs go out from under me and a sob tear free from my chest.

I wanted to take the poor man’s head and give it the proper ritual to protect the soul as it went on its way, but I knew I couldn’t risk it. Not with everything that had happened. Not with the hate still spinning through the air and suspicion hanging in the breeze. Still, I

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