Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

by Tucholke, April Genevieve

  I stared at a hole in River’s peasant trousers, at the brown skin of his thigh that showed through, and I didn’t meet his gaze.

  Monster.

  Stranger.

  God.

  These were the three words that came to mind as I absorbed the things River told me. And I meant god in the Roman sense. As in River was one, maybe.

  “Have you made anyone else glow?” I asked, finally. “Besides Sunshine, and Jack, and his friends? Have you made Luke see anything?”

  “Not yet. I’m keeping my options open.”

  “Who else? Who else before you came to Echo?”

  “Everyone.”

  I winced. “How many? How many people?”

  “Hundreds.” River paused. “Thousands.”

  “Oh.” My heart started beating, faster, faster than it did when River kissed me. Nightmare fast. Running for your life fast.

  “But not you,” he said, as if he was reading my mind.

  And then it occurred to me. “River, can you read my mind? Because if you can get in there to make me see monsters, it only makes sense that—”

  “No, Violet,” River interrupted. “I’m not reading your mind. I can’t read minds. Well, not entire minds. Tiny bits and pieces get through sometimes. Rarely, though. Children, they’re easier. Like Jack. But not adults.”

  “Can you only do monsters, then? Does the glow only make people see monsters?”

  River shook his head. He held out his fingers and placed them on the hollow of my throat, where my pulse beat. I took two breaths, and then River . . . shifted. And disappeared. And in his place stood my mother, clear as day.

  My eyes filled with tears. I couldn’t help it. I knew she wasn’t real, but my eyes didn’t. She was there, right in front of me, her flawless skin and her long straight hair and her too-wide smile, looking excited and stressed like she had the last time I saw her, right before she left for Paris with Dad.

  And it had been so long ago. Months. And months.

  “Mom,” I said, and my voice cracked.

  I heard a male voice say, Damn.

  And then River was in front of me again.

  “Sorry about that,” he said. “I should have guessed that seeing your mother would upset you. See, that’s why I stick to monsters.”

  I glared at River. Tears were dripping out of my eyes, and I was pissed. “River, that was cruel. I was over missing her, and then you brought her back and now I’m not over missing her anymore.”

  River moved closer to me, and his arm touched my arm in a comfortable way. I didn’t shrug him off like I wanted to, though. Because suddenly I felt a little better, with our arms touching.

  “Don’t be angry with me,” he said. “I won’t do it again. I only did it to prove a point. It’s easier to forgive someone for scaring you than for making you cry.”

  We were quiet for a while.

  River gazed out the window, like he’d been doing all night, his hands on the cold counter tiles, and his hair in his eyes. “Jack wanted me to do it again,” he said, not looking at me. “Show him the Devil. He liked it, my little trick. I don’t know how that kid figured out what was going on, but he did. Before Casablanca, I told him that the Devil likes to visit the cemetery after dark, and he went there to check it out, just like I knew he would. He’s a smart kid. And then I waltzed in later, conjured up the Devil, and, you know, fun, fun, fun.”

  “What about Isobel?” I asked.

  “Yeah, Isobel,” he said, still not looking at me. “When I got to the cemetery I found her with her little hula hoop, by the entrance. I asked her if she knew a good place to hide, and she told me about the tree house. Then I told her to go hide there for a while. I said it was part of a game. I didn’t think she would stay there so long. I thought, maybe a few hours at most, but—”

  “You glowed Isobel? But she’s so little. You made her go to that tree house, all by herself? The other things, fine, they aren’t so bad, Sunshine probably had it coming. But Jack, and Isobel? River, that’s evil. Bad. Devil bad. Freddie would—”

  River had me in a heartbeat. His arms were around me and his face in my hair and I calmed back down, way back down, calm, calm, calm.

  “Vi, Vi, shh. What real harm has come from all of it, Isobel included?” He was whispering, his lips by my forehead and his fingers pressing into my back. “Your neighbor Sunshine saw a crazy man in a tunnel instead of getting kissed, as she expected. Your town had the most exciting day it’s had since a rich boy cut his lover’s throat in a cellar—your brother was loving it. And the two of us got to see kids running around a foggy cemetery, carrying stakes. It’s just . . . fun.”

  “Just fun?”

  “Yeah.”

  I was scared of him now. Really scared. What chaos had this boy been causing in the world with his . . . with his glow, if that’s what he thought fun was?

  But still, I didn’t step out of his arms.

  The fingers of River’s right hand were playing with the bottom of the long strand of fake pearls I was wearing—his knuckles kept grazing the area above my belly button, sending waves of good feeling through my insides. I should have pushed him away. I should have screamed, I suppose, or cried or tried to run. But I didn’t. I just . . . let him.

  River kissed me again. We kissed. And we kissed. I lifted my hands and put them on his back and he ran his fingers up and down my pearls and his knuckles touched whatever they touched.

  We reached the bed.

  River pulled his peasant shirt off, but left the red kerchief around his neck. He took off my pearls, and set them on the dresser. He pulled the bobby pins out of my hair, gently, so gently, and my hair fell past my shoulders. Then he reached around me and unzipped the back of my dress. It slid to the floor. I was naked from the waist up, and wearing nothing much of anything below. River took me in for a second, and I shivered in the moonlight coming through the window. One breath. Two. And his arms were around me.

  I didn’t know what was going to happen next, and I can’t say I cared all that much. But River only tucked the both of us under the bed covers, kissed my bare back, up the spine, and then whispered good night in my ear.

  He was asleep in seconds.

  I was not.

  CHAPTER 15

  I WOKE UP a few hours later. Dawn was still just a twinkle in the night’s eye, but the moon was full and bright, and my almost naked body was still curled into River West.

  He hadn’t let go of me in the night. He was still pressed against my back, his lips near my shoulder, asleep. I didn’t move for a bit, just lay there thinking about things.

  Like how the world was full of mystery and magic and horror and love.

  Like how River scared the hell out of me. Because he was, I thought, evil.

  He could have done really bad things with the glow. He’d probably done really bad things with the glow. Worse than scaring Sunshine, worse than scaring little kids.

  Then something occurred to me as I lay there, listening to the waves crash far below. River made people see monsters. And missing mothers. What else? What else could he make people see?

  Or feel?

  I didn’t want to think about that.

  It would make River . . . worse than a liar. A lot worse.

  And it would make me a fool.

  I slid out of his arms. He didn’t wake up. I put my dress back on, quiet, so quietly, and walked down the hall and out of the guesthouse. The cold night air hit me sharp. I shivered. I walked across the grounds, past the greenhouse, past the tennis court, past the maze, and in through the back entrance of the Citizen.

  Inside my house, it wasn’t much warmer. I’d left the kitchen windows open, and others too. I ran up the marble steps, my bare feet wincing from the cold stone, and down the second-floor hall to Freddie’s bedroom. My bedroom.

 
Luke was sitting on the end of my bed.

  His arms were crossed on his knees, his hands on his temples. He’d turned one of the lamps on, but it was old and weak and the hazy light barely reached past the pillows. His head jerked toward the door when I came in.

  “Where have you been? Damn it, Vi. I’ve been waiting here for hours.”

  I grabbed a quilt from one of the art deco chairs and threw it around my shoulders. “I’ve been with River. Which I’m sure you knew. Why? What’s wrong?”

  I sat down beside him on the bed and threw the end of the blanket over his bare feet. Luke turned to me, and I saw that he was scared. Wide-eyed and about to panic and scared-scared-scared.

  “Look for me by moonlight. That’s what she said. And that’s how she came.”

  “True?” I asked. And suddenly I had goose bumps on my forearms, and my scalp tingled like it does sometimes when I’m afraid.

  “True,” Luke said. And he shook his head and shuddered. “One moment there was nothing but moonlight coming in the window, and then I blinked, and there she was. This girl about ten years old with long hair and you could see through her like she was moonlight, like she was made out of it, and she smiled at me, and I think I screamed, maybe, but then—” Luke swallowed, his voice was going faster, and it was cracking too. “But then she was right in front of me and dragging her tiny moonlight fingers down my cheek and I couldn’t scream anymore, and I just stared at her and her eyes weren’t moonlight, but pure night sky black, no white edges, no color, and she put her hand over my mouth then and it felt like she was pouring moonlight down my throat and it was coming so fast and strong, I felt sure I was going to drown on it.”

  Luke took a breath, finally. His chest rose and fell as he breathed. I grabbed his hand and squeezed, thinking all kinds of things I couldn’t focus on right then.

  “I coughed,” Luke continued, “and choked, and drowned on moonlight, which tastes like butter and steel and salt and mist. And then, just like that, just when I thought she was going to kill me, suck the air out of my lungs and make me a ghost too, she lifted her hand, and . . . faded away.”

  He tilted his head toward me, and his hazel eyes were kind of innocent-looking, trusting and overwhelmed, like a little kid’s. “It was a dream, wasn’t it, Vi? The scariest dream ever, but still a dream, right?”

  I thought about River, and the things he told me, and how he said he was keeping his options open in regards to Luke, when in fact he’d already decided what he was going to do to my brother, was maybe even doing it while he was talking to me.

  Liar.

  He was such a damn liar.

  I looked at Luke, at how scared he was, and I felt as if I couldn’t breathe for a moment. River. River.

  Breathe, Violet. Breathe.

  Luke lifted the quilt and put it over his shoulders, so we were both tucked in it together. “Strange things have been happening ever since River showed up. It’s weird, isn’t it, Vi?”

  “Yeah, it’s weird,” I said. I wanted to tell him. Tell him about River, and the glow. I did. But if I told Luke about the glow, about the kids in the cemetery, about Sunshine and Blue and the reason a ghost named True tried to drown him with moonlight in his sleep . . . Luke would probably kick River out of the guesthouse. I didn’t trust River. I was even starting to hate him. But I didn’t want him to leave, either. I didn’t want to go back to just me and Luke and Sunshine and them kissing and me waiting. I wasn’t sure what I wanted yet, but it wasn’t that.

  Next to me, Luke shivered again. “Sometimes I get this crazy urge to, I don’t know, grab a pitchfork and chase the guy out of town. But the next time I see him, the feeling’s gone. Completely gone. And then . . . you’re doing things with him, and you’ve never been interested in a guy before, and I just don’t know what to think.”

  “Do you want to sleep on the sofa in here?” I asked. And it wasn’t just for Luke’s sake. I didn’t want to be alone, suddenly, in my big bedroom, in the damn dark.

  “I used to sleep there, when this was Freddie’s room,” I said to Luke. “Whenever I would have a nightmare I’d run in here and she would give me a bunch of blankets and I would sleep on the sofa and everything would be all right.”

  “Yeah, I remember that,” Luke said. He looked kind of embarrassed and solemn at the same time. “I can’t go back to my room tonight. I just can’t.”

  So I gave Luke three old quilts and one of my pillows and tucked him in and he fell asleep in ten heartbeats. I thought it would take him longer, a lot longer, but it didn’t. And then my body hit the sheets and I slept the sleep of the dead too.

  CHAPTER 16

  WHEN I WOKE up in the morning, Luke was gone, but River was standing over me, looking clean and bright and wide awake, with fresh clothes on and a steaming cup of coffee in his hand.

  “You left in the night,” River said. “Why?”

  “I had to absorb,” I said. “I had to absorb the information you told me. By myself.”

  River nodded, like he expected this. He took a sip of espresso. I turned my head and saw that another bookmark was sitting on the nightstand beside me. A fish this time. A hundred-dollar-bill fish.

  “I’m not too proud,” I said, though I was starting to feel a bit like I was. “I’m not going to make you take it back.”

  “It’s just a bookmark.” River shrugged, and drank his coffee. “So, do you think you’ve done enough absorbing to come with me into Echo? I want to check on Jack. Make sure he gets a good breakfast and has something to do today. I don’t have any younger brothers or sisters, you know . . . I kind of like being responsible for someone.”

  Would the Devil care whether a grave, red-haired kid got a good breakfast? Would he?

  Yes, Freddie’s voice shot back. Especially if he knew you would like him all the more for it.

  “All right,” I said, ignoring what the voice said, shoving it deep, deep down to some dusty corner inside me where it could be forgotten for a while.

  River had already showered and was wearing coffee-colored linen pants, a white James Dean T-shirt, black-and-white wingtip shoes, and a Panama hat—which might have been his and might have been something he found in the attic the day before.

  I put on my mother’s painting overalls. She’d found them in the greenhouse after she had to let go of the Citizen’s gardener. They were covered in paint every color under the sun.

  River and I walked into town. On the way, right about the time we reached the tunnel, I stopped walking and looked at him.

  “So Luke had a nightmare last night” was all I said, because it was all I had to say.

  River laughed. He tilted his head back, and laughed. “And how did he like it?”

  “He almost choked to death on moonlight, at the hands of a ten-year-old dead girl. Yeah. He didn’t like it much.” I was starting to feel the tight, pinched feeling my face got when I was angry—searing, red-hot, fires-of-hell angry—and trying to hide it.

  River noticed. He put his hands on me and drew me close to him. “I’m sorry,” he said, and looked like he meant it, as much as you could trust him, which wasn’t much. “I couldn’t resist, after the Ouija board setup. It was just too perfect. Besides, I hate the way he talks to you sometimes. It felt good to send a little mischief his way.”

  I looked up at River. His skin was glowing in the morning sun, and it smelled clean and salty, like the sea, and his hair was still wet from his shower and looked almost black, and my anger . . . went away.

  “So that’s why you did it?” I asked. “To punish him? What about Sunshine then? Why did you do it to her?”

  “I don’t like the way she talks to you either.”

  “River, you didn’t even know her when you glowed her in the tunnel.”

  “That’s true,” he said, and laughed again. “Look, Vi. The thing is, I suffer from a deplorable
need for justice. Yes, I like to feel the glow in me. Yes, I’m having a hard time stopping it. But I also can’t just stand around watching people be mean to those who don’t deserve it. It’s a powerful thing in me. More powerful than the glow, maybe.” He paused for a second, and the glint came back to his eyes. “But I’m also a fan of mischief. So between the two . . .”

  My expression was kind of hateful, but River was pretending not to notice. “Is that why you glowed Jack and that little girl Isobel? Because you’re a fan of mischief?”

  River stopped smiling. “That . . . that I’m not proud of. Honestly. It went too far. I know that.”

  I didn’t believe he regretted it. Not for a second.

  But I wanted to.

  “Just don’t do it again. Any of it. I mean it, River.”

  He nodded. “I don’t plan to,” he said.

  We stopped at the co-op and bought bananas and fresh pain au chocolats for breakfast. The woman at the counter smiled at us while River paid for the food. A nice smile. Genuine. River smiled back. And I thought about what Luke had said, in the attic. About no one in the town talking to us. And I wondered, for the first time, if maybe it was more our fault than theirs.

  Were we snobs? We lived in a big house and had interesting ancestors, but our money was gone and we were holding on to the Citizen by a thread. Still, we kept ourselves apart. My parents had artist friends come to stay from the city, but they didn’t mingle with the people in their own town. My father said once that the only thing that bored him was boring people, and that Echo had nothing but.

  Thinking back, I wonder if he was just ashamed that we couldn’t afford to pay the heating bill most of the time.

  I took a deep breath and gave the woman a smile. She smiled back.

  It felt good.

  River showed me where Jack lived. The house was on a dead-end street near the big brick box of hate that was my high school. I let myself shudder as I walked past. I wanted to be tutored at home, like my father had been when he was a kid, but we couldn’t afford it. I wasn’t sure how I would face going back to school in the fall, if my parents didn’t come back. Luke played sports and had sports friends, during the school year at least. All I had was Sunshine, and Sunshine . . . was Sunshine.