Page 84 of Girl, Remembered

‘I’ve got it,’ she shouted. ‘I’m looking at the pelican.’

‘Not close enough, apparently. That’s not a pelican.’

Ella leaned in. All she saw was a badly-painted pelican on top of a wooden box. ‘What is it?’

‘I carved it myself when I was sixteen. I used a bone, but alligator bones weren’t the right shape.’

Now she understood. ‘Who did this belong to, Austin?’

‘They never did find Lindsey’s father, did they? Drunk old hick. He shouldn’t get hammered before work. Makes it real easy to fall somewhere you can’t get out. Anyway, Lindsey was a superstitious woman too, just like my grandma.’

She made every child in that house touch its breast on the way in the door.

‘Are you saying all of Doyle’s followers touched this pelican?’

‘Took you long enough.’

Ella stared down at the box, at the crude, dark wing spread across the lid, worn smoother in one small patch than anywhere else on the carving. Dozens of hands. Maybe more, layered on top of each other, never wiped, never cleaned, because cleaning it would’ve stripped the luck clean off along with the prints.

‘Their fingerprints are all over this.’

‘I’d imagine so. By the way, have you ever heard of Bourré?’

‘No?’

‘It’s a game we used to play. Only Louisiana people played it, at least when I was a kid. All you needed was a deck of cards.’

Now what?

‘Cards?’

‘Yeah, you know all about them, don’t you?’

‘Yes, but… Austin, what are you trying to say?’

Creed laughed again. ‘She used to tell me about you, you know? She went to a bar once, one in Virginia, and talked to the staff about you. She said you used to do magic for the staff.’

Ella’s grip on the phone tightened. Cards. Magic. The Milestone. Her mind was trying to run three directions at once and getting nowhere fast.

‘I don’t have time for riddles, Austin. Tell me plainly or I hang up.’

‘Fine. Take the pelican off the box.’

‘Why?’

‘Because there’s something in that box you might want to see.’

‘What? What’s in-,’

‘We probably won’t see each other again, so this is my parting gift. Goodbye, Ella Dark. It’s been a life.’

Click.

The line went dead.

‘Austin?’

Nothing. She pulled the phone from her ear and stared at the screen.