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dark water of a river in the background. “But isn’t there some way to tell?” I asked, more urgently than I meant to. “I mean, whether a dream’s about the past or the future?”
    The past, I could handle. That was over and gone. The future, though? Considering what the Dream was about, that was more than a little worrisome.
    Mama Legba paused and studied me for a moment, her eyes sharp as knives, before getting up suddenly. “Our time’s up, Chloe-girl. We’ll pick up again next week. And don’t you be late.” She wagged a finger at her.
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    “But about the dreams?” I asked again, interrupting their goodbye.
    Mama Legba stopped my words with the sharpness of her gaze. “Your time’s up for now too. You want to know more, Chloe knows where to find me. Maybe you come back with her next week.”
    With that dismissal, Mama Legba gave Chloe a quick hug before disappearing through the doorway leading to the back of her shop.
    “Come on, Lucy. That’s all we get for today,” Chloe said as she tugged me out the door.
    After the coolness of the Voodoo woman’s shop, stepping into the steamy day was a shock to my system. But even that wasn’t enough to distract me from what the old woman had said.
    I didn’t believe in hoodoo, voodoo, juju, or any other type of mumbo jumbo. Whatever my cards might have been, my parents hadn’t raised a fool. But I hated the Dream. I hated what it did to me, how it made me shake, made me feel beyond lost when I woke tangled in my sheets. I glanced back over my shoulder and wondered, just for a moment, if maybe I could find answers in a place I’d least expected them to be.

Six
    After a few days on the job at Le Ciel, I was starting to understand that holding up my end of the deal I’d made with my parents was going to be a lot harder than I’d thought. It turned out that being an intern to the onsite preservation expert consisted less of actually taking pictures and more of fetching coffee and adjusting items in the light box “a little to the left, no to the right.” All. Day. Long. In fact, on the first day, Byron, my boss, told me not to bother bringing my equipment with me.
    As if I’d go anywhere without my camera.
    By the middle of the fourth day, I was exhausted, probably more from boredom than anything else. We were working in one of the big tents that had been erected on the grounds to handle the cataloging and inspection of objects from the estate. One of the research historians was sorting through a giant box of junk someone found in the attic, and Byron was deciding what artifacts merited documentation. He didn’t seem to trust anyone to just do their job.
    I refilled the coffee when necessary.
    When Byron said I could have the afternoon off, he didn’t have to tell me twice. With all the coffee I’d been lugging, I hadn’t had many chances to take any real pictures, and I was itching to continue documenting the house and the grounds for my senior project. I was in the mood for nature, so I took the gravel pathway that wound from our cottage, through some gardens, to a thin line of trees that bordered a clearing with a small pond.
    The second I saw the pond, I knew I should have walked in a different direction, maybe out toward the river. At the far end of the clearing, one of the plantation’s trademark oaks dripped its Spanish moss over a bit of land that interrupted the otherwise perfect oval of the lake. It was picturesque, sure, but it was too perfect to be interesting . I walked down to the water’s edge anyway, hoping maybe I could find something in the scene worth capturing.
    I was about to turn around and head back to our cottage when a warm breeze came up from behind me and cut through the stillness of the day, stirring the trees that surrounded the pond and rustling their leaves against one another. The current rippled through my hair, grazing me with an unwelcome warmth, and sent a skittering warning across my