by Kayti McGee
A figure huddled against the exterior of Ella’s café, a figure of which I had been aware for some hours. His dry, sun-blistered hand poked toward each passerby. A crude sign slanted at his feet: HOMELESS & HUNGRY. I grimaced as I approached the man.
His palm extended imploringly, but when his bleary eyes focused on my face, he jerked the hand away.
“No, no thank you,” he muttered. He snatched his cardboard sign.
He would have run if I’d let him.
“Tranquillum,” I said. I passed a hand before his face. He slumped against the bricks and whimpered. “Per mandatum meum, come into the shop in two minutes, order a cold drink, and spill it on the girl with the red hair and the black jacket. Make it look like an accident.” I handed him a twenty. “Keep the change, William.”
To any onlooker, my interaction with the man would have appeared benevolent. That was deeply ironic, considering I myself had broken him. Once upon a time, William had been a sane and successful scholar, his only shortcoming being an insatiable academic interest in the Blackmanes of Juniper Hollow. He’d read too much, researched too much, and drawn too many uncannily accurate conclusions. Nevertheless, Marion had not determined William to be dangerous enough to deserve death, so I had scraped memory after memory out of his mind until all that remained was the husk before me.
Death, I realized in retrospect, would have been a mercy.
I walked into Ella’s, folded my arms, and pretended to study the menu on the wall. A domino chain of whispers fell through the café. I heard the words Blackmane, like someone stepped on my grave, and so hot. At times, I wished I could turn off the acute hearing with which I’d spelled myself.
The girl was the only person who didn’t stop and stare. She remained oblivious to the hush in the café. She eyed the menu and wrangled out her earbuds just before ordering.
“I’ll have a large Americano, extra room,” she said. Her accent was nondescript, Midwestern. Her voice had a pleasant timbre, low and a little raspy. I cocked my head.
I rarely made such a study of my victims, but the girl had piqued my curiosity from the moment I saw her in Marion’s window. For starters, I was usually dropping men into the ravine, not women—and especially not young women. Women did less wandering around late at night, thus they did less stumbling upon things they shouldn’t see. More, it was obvious that this girl was a newcomer, some sort of visitor or tourist, which led me to wonder how much she could even know about my family. Again, the question pinged in my mind: What has she done to deserve death at my hands?
“Can I get a name for that?” said the barista.
“Rose,” the girl replied.
I did a quick double-take and almost laughed aloud. Rose? My amusement faded quickly. All my life, I had been taught to heed the significance of symbols and what mortals called coincidence. A chill spider-walked up my spine. Surely I would be cursed for killing this beautiful girl, if I wasn’t cursed already.
The people in the café continued to watch me and I continued to watch her. William scuttled up to the counter and ordered an iced coffee. Rose’s Americano arrived. She was practically ladling cream into it when William feigned a stumble and splashed cold caffeine all over her leggings and boots. She gasped and stared at the mess. Ice cubes skittered across the floor.
“Sorry... sorry.” William grabbed a wad of napkins.
That was my cue to intervene.
“It’s okay, Bill,” I said, my voice dripping with sympathy. The girl’s eyes fastened on me for the first time. “I’ll clean this up. Get yourself another drink, and get something to eat.” I gripped his shoulder—I felt a tremor go through him—and pressed another twenty on him. “And Bill, get a hot drink, okay? It’s cold out there.”
William practically ran from us.
“Sorry about that,” I said to Rose. I turned the full weight of my gaze upon her, which usually had a knee-buckling effect on mortals. Not this one. She was busy mopping up the mess at her feet. She wasn’t even looking at me.
“No big deal,” she said, though her tone said otherwise. “You know him?”
“Yeah, that’s Wild Bill. Everyone knows him.” I crouched and helped her lay napkins over the spreading coffee. “Not the most charitable nickname, I know.”
“Aha, the weird western town has weird western crazies.”
“Exactly.” I smiled slightly. “You’re new?”
She glanced up at me and arched an eyebrow. Obviously, the gesture said, and I felt profoundly stupid for a moment. Of course she was new. My social skills needed dusting.
“Yeah,” she said. “Just got here. I’m looking for... a friend, actually.”
“Oh? Maybe I can help. I’m a bit of a local history buff.”
Again, the girl appeared singularly unimpressed, as if being a Juniper Hollow historian was a mark of shame rather than a point of pride. I bristled. The fool, she didn’t know anything about anything. She clearly mistook me for another peculiar townie. Mistake, I thought, my mood darkening. Soon enough, I would show her true mysticism.
“That would be great, actually. I don’t even know where to begin. Um, his name is”—she cross-referenced a crumpled paper from her coat pocket—“Underwood. Rune Underwood. Hey, you don’t have to...”
We were scraping together the spilt ice cubes. Of course I didn’t have to help, just as I hadn’t needed to pretend to care about William. It was merely an act.
Our fingers bumped and a jolt went through me. It was power—magic—a warding spell, knotted and old. I yanked back.
“Who are you?” I hissed. Shock pulled the curtain off my performance. Whatever the girl saw on my face, it finally achieved my usual effect. She shrank from me, her eyes wide, her cynicism and conceit no longer in evidence.
“W-what?” she stuttered. “I’m—my name is Rose.”
I stood and turned away, composing myself swiftly. Marion hadn’t told me I was going to kill another witch, a far more serious undertaking than killing a mortal. There were protocols for discipline among witches, procedures...
Then again, Rose might not have been a witch. Perhaps she was some warlock’s pet, warded for her own safety. I rubbed my fingers together. I could still feel the magic’s unfamiliar weave. It smelled like earth; it tasted like death.
I pasted on an apologetic expression and turned back to Rose. She had finished cleaning the spill at warp speed. She probably wanted to get away from me, and out of this “weird western town,” as quickly as possible.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I misheard you. Ah... Underwood, yes, I know of him. Kind of a loner type. You said he’s a friend?”
I was hard pressed to imagine this mysterious girl being friends with Rune Underwood, a middle-aged man who lived alone on the outskirts of town. He was a recluse, a furniture maker, and he owned five wooded acres dangerously close to Blackmane territory, though he seemed to know better than to trespass.
“Yeah, he is.” She wrung coffee from her parka. Her gaze danced around the café. At last, she had noticed that everyone was watching us.
“So, you’ve come to visit your friend, but you don’t know where he lives?”
She huffed and shot a glance at me. “Look, I need to go. If you don’t—”
“Follow Main Street north to the foothills, take a right on Sable. He’s about twenty minutes out, the third dirt road on your left. Number ten.”
She nodded and took her coffee. “Great. Thank you.” As she left, I heard her mumbling the directions over to herself—“Right on Sable, third dirt road, ten...”
“Rose,” I called after her. She paused and looked over her shoulder. I couldn’t help myself; I didn’t want her running into Marion, or any other witch, until I figured out who—and what—she was. “Don’t go in the woods.”
She nodded tersely, but her expression said it all: You are creepy and I do not wish to prolong this conversation thanks.
I waited until I saw her car pull away, then I followed.
&
nbsp; Four
Rose
“My name is Rose,” I had told him.
“My name is... Rose?” was more how it had come out.
“Who are you?”
“None of your business is who I am,” is what I should have said. But Mother had raised me with better manners than that. Or maybe I should have said nothing at all and left the cafe the second things got weird. Although, given the inn I’d chosen, it might have been too late for that the second I’d passed the town limits.
Only, he had really truly startled me. That grim stranger with the hypnotic green eyes I could have sworn I recognized. The jolt his touch had sent through me. I’d felt sparks with good-looking guys before, but this was more akin to touching an electrified fence. It said back off all over it. Left the scent of woods and saffron in my nose, and the taste of them in my mouth. And if that wasn’t enough, there was the way his voice changed afterwards. From rough velvet to rougher anger. I started my car and took a deep breath, watching the exhale form a momentary cloud in the cold air.
Right on Sable. Third dirt road. Number ten.
If he’d actually given me the directions I needed to my uncle’s house and not his kill room, then I could forgive him anything.
It felt like a pretty big if, but it wasn’t like I had any better ideas. Mouse Lady wasn’t at the desk when I’d come downstairs this morning and the idea of just stopping people on the street to ask if they happened to know a guy called Rune sounded like a dumb idea now that I was here. I double-checked that my pepper spray was firmly attached to my keychain just in case, and headed north.
In daylight, the mountains were even more arresting. Strange that I’d lived out my entire life only a couple states away, and never even considered coming here. It was easy to see why others did. The dramatic boulders, the endless pines, the thin air that made me feel giddy even while I recognized that I was probably just a little oxygen-deprived. This time there was no traffic, so I was free to inch along the road, staring at the views.
My right on Sable startled an elk that was grazing nearby. Back home, the largest animal I’d ever seen outside of a zoo was the possum Joe was forever chasing away from our trash can.
I wondered if I should call him.
It was probably a good idea to give someone my last known whereabouts, just in case I’d made a terrible mistake following a creepy guy’s directions. A very hot, very tattooed, very hot creepy guy. Explaining this one to my very recent ex seemed complicated. But necessary.
I told myself not to be so relieved when a cursory glance at my phone said I had no signal.
The relief did fade fast when I realized that Number Ten Third Dirt Road looked like every cabin from every horror movie I’d ever seen. From the decrepit exterior to the pit bull chained up in the yard to the ungodly number of windchimes attached to the porch and trees, second thoughts were everywhere my gaze fell. Even the paint was trying its hardest to unpeel from the place. There was just enough time to run before the front door opened, but once it did, I knew I wasn’t going anywhere at all.
Because the man on the porch looked like me.
It’s impossible to explain how bizarre it was to see my features on someone else to anyone that wasn’t adopted. My breath caught in my throat the same way my eyes were caught on my uncle. I had to remind myself to open the door and step out. He stood still as a statue as I approached. The closer I got, the more his face solidified from mine into his own, weatherbeaten and sad. The lines around his eyes and mouth didn’t come from laughter. His red hair was dulled, but his eyes were bright.
“Hi,” I said, all my opening line ideas forgotten. “My name is Rose Perry, and I think—”
“You’d better come in before anyone sees you.”
It took a second to realize he was gone, in movements too quick for a man his age. Once I did, wondering exactly who on this empty road in the middle of nowhere was going to see me, I followed the trail of his rusty voice inside.
“Being seen is something all you young people talk about, but once it happens, once it really happens, you want nothing more than to be invisible. When you’re invisible, you’re safe. You’d do well to take that to heart.” It was out-of-the-blue, but not too crazy, so I kept walking.
Past the screen door lay a small living room. And here was the crazy.
In another life, perhaps I’d have come here more often. Maybe every day after school, or maybe just for the occasional holiday meal. Either way, the scents of cedar and rosemary would be familiar, I’d know who crocheted that afghan, and in all likelihood, I wouldn’t be so wide-eyed at the symbols covering every inch of the walls. My mouth fell open to ask—what? If he was psychotic, if he had some kind of compulsive disorder, if he had created his own alien-language immersion program? It didn’t matter, because he cut me off for a second time.
“You look just like her, you know.” His fists were clenched at his sides, thumbs rubbing against forefingers, the fidget of someone holding back. I hoped it wasn’t the psychosis. The brightness I’d seen in his eyes before turned out to be tears, I realized, as one escaped down his cheek. Mine remained dry.
“My mother, you mean?” The one who tossed me aside like ballast to keep her own life afloat. The one who had kept the adoption closed. The one who hadn’t once come looking for me, not even once.
“Luna.”
Lunar.
Moon.
Mother.
I stopped myself before the visions came. I didn’t want to think of her as a mother. She was a vessel. The sepia-toned prelude to the beginning of my story. I balled it all up and swallowed hard.
“She would have loved to see you now.” That sad, disused voice changed everything.
Loved. Past tense. The woman who bore me into the world was no longer in it herself.
Loved. She was dead, not uncaring. She must have known I wouldn’t have a good life here with her sad, compulsive brother. She must have wanted more for me.
She must have been a mother, after all.
I willed myself not to flinch at the revelation that the story I’d armored myself with all these years was a lie.
“How—” I stopped. I wasn’t ready for that. I needed time to digest. “Can I see a picture?” I asked instead.
“I’ll give you one. But then you need to leave.”
I nodded, watched him move too quickly towards a back room, and plopped down on his couch. I sure as shit wasn’t going anywhere. Not until I figured out exactly where my life began. Ever since I could remember, my parents were open about the adoption. But they had always indicated she was too young. Not ready. No one had ever mentioned an injury or an illness. It was an even better thing I’d sent off for my DNA if there was something dark lurking in my genetics.
Wouldn’t it be ironic if my adoptive mother and I both ended up with cancer? We could hold hands during chemo, vomit side-by-side afterwards. It would be the most we’d ever had in common.
I wondered if my parents actually had any idea what happened before they signed the paperwork and took possession of me, or if they’d just chosen the most likely answer. It seemed like I should have been saddened by finding out I’d never build a relationship with Luna, but it had never been something I’d wanted. More, I was curious. What kind of English major would I have been if I didn’t examine the flawed premise of my own narrative?
He returned with an old photograph, and for the second time in my life I had that surreal chill of seeing my own face on another body.
Hers was a little paler, sharper at the corners. But the eyes, the smile, the dimples… I could have picked this photo out of a million and known who she was immediately.
Rune and I were both silent a long moment as I memorized the face before me, the nondescript black dress she wore. She was sitting on the same couch I was now, I could tell from the color and the afghan, but the rest of the room was much different. No symbols on the walls, for one. Paintings hung everywhere, and there was just a general se
nse of happier times. Or maybe that all came from the grin on Luna’s face as she mugged for the camera.
She hadn’t thrown me away. She’d given me up. I wondered when the shock of that would wear off. I wondered when the burden of knowing it had gotten so heavy that I felt this weightless now. She was so young. It made me feel sorry, looking at that smile, knowing that she didn’t know she would soon be dead. Another thought hit me—had I killed her? Was it childbirth?
Of all the things I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, that had to be number one on the list. Looking at the light in her eyes, I couldn’t bear the thought that I had caused the absence of it now.
“You really are my uncle, then, huh?” I asked, though I’d known he was the moment he opened the door.
“And you really are Luna’s baby. She chose your name, did you know that?” I didn’t. It had never even occurred to me to ask. Mother liked roses. She grew them. I’m called Rose. It seemed a straight line from one to the other. “Called you the most beautiful thing in the brambles that Juniper Hollow was becoming then.”
Economic downturn, I assumed.
“It seems like a nice place to live now.”
The noise he made wasn’t quite a laugh.
“It’s always a nice place to live. Even when it isn’t.” Another blank stare from me, another noise from him. “This place, this energy, predates the town. It predates the tribal lands. Some folks think it predates life itself. That before amoeba were squirming around the oceans, the energy was here. It’s in a bunch of other places too, but this one’s ours. The Ute called it peace. The Christians call it judgement; they fear and love it in equal measure. The hippies call it Spirit, the whack-jobs call it aliens, and the zen monks are silent. We just call it home. And we protect it.”
“Who is we, exactly?”
“Us. Not you. You’re just a little girl with your whole life ahead of you.”
“I’m almost twenty-three!”
