A Murder of Magpies

by Sarah Bromley

“Same as when I left.” Ward paused while the barista brought him a second black coffee. “Drake, strangely, had friends. Even the ones he burned came, and not one spit on his grave.” His mouth frowned, and he coughed a few times. “The obituary read that Drake died unexpectedly. What the fuck. He was a smackhead for years. It wasn’t just heroin either, though that was the cheapest and easiest to get. He did laudanum, morphine, and opium when he could find them. He was a dope fiend through and through. That he died wasn’t unexpected.”

  He ducked low, his leather coat too big on him, made for someone taller, broader. Cold ebbed out of me. If it relaxed me, maybe this wash going over him would do the same.

  His voice grew firmer. “I don’t miss the midnight barges into my room raiding my cash drawer for a score. I don’t miss being careful of needles in the trash. My dad died years ago, but the body was still Drake’s, you know?”

  The bitterness of his words plunged into me. I couldn’t imagine not missing Mom. Her voice singing harmony with the radio, the messes she left in the kitchen, and the mock-innocent look she gave Dad when he bemoaned her accounting mistakes. I hated living without those things.

  Ward tilted his head. “Why so sad?”

  Few people knew Mom was dead, and no one in Black Orchard knew how she died. Ward couldn’t really know me unless he knew about Mom.

  “My mom died two years ago,” I admitted. “It changed everything.”

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “She was murdered.”

  He almost didn’t react but for a slight rise of his brow and a whispered, “Jesus.”

  There it was, out in the open.

  For the first time since I’d come to Black Orchard, someone knew my mother’s death wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t only a house fire. That Dad, Jonah, and I survived was a miracle, but some miracles had a blood price. My mother could’ve been saved. She deliberately wasn’t.

  “I sound like such a prick,” Ward blurted. “I had no idea. I really thought your parents were divorced.”

  “To talk about the dead is to call back the spirit instead of letting it rest, gadjo. I let my mother rest.” He cocked his head, but I cut him off. “Before you speak, no, what you’re going through isn’t the same. Doesn’t mean it’s any easier. It hurts. It hurts like no other pain.”

  After a while, his coffee was gone, and we left Café du Chat Noir for a walk in the November darkness. Trinket shops lined the street, and eccentric bistros interspersed with banks and offices. Surrounded by mock gaslights and cobblestone roads, walking there transported me to olden times. Tiny snowflakes rambled down from the clouds, and Ward eyed the rising moon. A brief smile etched on his lips before he swiped at the snow in my hair. Spheres of electricity swirled in my palms as he lowered his face. I wanted to let go and damn the consequences of blowing up every street lamp in downtown Black Orchard.

  “You’re strange,” he said. “I’m calm when I’m with you, and I don’t know why. You’re doing something to me, Vayda.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  His cheek grazed against mine. “You are. I want it.”

  And I know what you can do. He reached for my hand, almost too polite, but when I laid my fingers in his palm, he tugged me against him. I wrapped my arms around his neck and stood on my tiptoes while his hands roamed down my sides to my hips. And I know what you can do. Perhaps the wind flared my skirt. Perhaps it was the charge of our energies feeding through me. His breath scalded my cheek as his mouth hovered over mine.

  An inch apart.

  A centimeter.

  Less.

  “You know what you can do?” I asked against his lips.

  “I’m going to kiss you,” he whispered.

  The whirring in my chest became a blitz as his lips pushed into mine. A flick of his tongue deepened the kiss. His hand curled around my neck, and my fingers tugged on his coat’s lapels for balance while my mind wound in a dizzying spin.

  This was happening too fast. I was scared and wanted more and—He kissed me again, rough, fluid, far from timid or innocent. His fingers on my hips gripped harder, and his mouth found my neck. Snowflakes pirouetting from the clouds melted in my open eyes.

  “Stop,” I choked on the word and pushed off from him.

  He winced. “Vayda, what the hell? What’d I do?”

  “It’s not you. I’m sorry,” I hiccupped and dashed over the sidewalk as fast as my blue Chucks would take me. The soles of Ward’s boots trampled the concrete behind me. My breath flooded the air with white smoke. I couldn’t stop. If I stopped, he’d find out what I was.

  Chapter Nine

  Vayda

  School the following day physically hurt. My head throbbed. Light stung. All because my barriers had shattered, and rebuilding the wall took more time than a single night.

  Ward inspected the origami triangle I dropped in his lap while returning from the restroom. He maneuvered it between his fingers before flicking it into the recycling bin.

  Damn. He even punted away my note.

  I’d dreamt of kissing Ward, of his lips, rough and thrilling. Then his face, sand dollar-pale and equally fragile, broken. A snap, dust. Running away like that, what was I thinking? All he’d done was open up to me, and in return, I hurt him.

  With a huff, Ward hunched down. He wouldn’t look at me, listen to me, or read my words. There was no easy gliding through him today. There was nothing.

  Sister Hillary Lauren scrawled a William Blake quote on the chalkboard. The walls were inscribed with lines from his poems. On her desk, she even had a picture of herself posing near Blake’s grave. Vanity was clearly her sin. On the chalkboard, her cursive read, “‘I was angry with my friend: I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe: I told it not, my wrath did grow.’”

  Satisfied her penmanship was legible, she said, “Time for a pop quiz.”

  The rip of paper torn from notebooks punctuated a collective groan. Sister Hillary Lauren asked three questions to answer in three sentences. When finished, we exchanged quizzes. Ward took my paper, and I had his. His responses were:

  1: This

  2: Is

  3: Bullshit.

  The shaking in his shoulders turned to coughing. I reached into my backpack and slipped him a honey lozenge.

  “Thanks,” he grunted, his voice hoarser than usual.

  I should’ve failed him, but when Sister asked for his score I murmured, “One hundred percent.” Across the room, Jonah scoffed. During their Othello game that morning, they didn’t speak, moving black-and-white discs over the green squares like chess grandmasters negotiating an endgame. For once, Ward won, and not because Jonah let him.

  He whispered, “You shouldn't have done that.”

  “You know the answers,” I told him. “In theory, they’re on the paper. Invisible ink.”

  “I’m not talking about the quiz, Vayda.”

  If I were like Jonah, I could’ve rebounded and shoved my way into his mind, learned how to fix this, but that wasn’t how I worked.

  By the time lunch roared into the cafeteria, a headache squelched my appetite. As I picked the pith from my orange, I spied my brother’s hand on Chloe’s back across the cafeteria, oblivious to the whispers of the other students. Not long ago, she’d have gawked right along with them. Jonah gave her a long kiss, interrupted only when Ward approached them. The boys began to walk outside when Chloe darted to Jonah, kissed him once more, and giggled as she backed away. I felt like I could puke, and threw away the remnants of my lunch. That wasn’t the same girl who begged me to keep quiet.

  Chloe sidled up beside me with her neat paper sack. I’d come to know her fizzy energy well. She was all cherry soda, bubbly and sweet.

  “Oh, man, I missed your brother,” she exclaimed. “What was I thinking when I broke up with him?”

  “That if this school was a caste system, he’d be
an untouchable,” I grumbled. “Chloe, don’t you care that everyone’s talking about you two being together again?”

  “Trust me. He’s worth it. I’m so, here’s a ten-cent vocab word, uninhibited with him.”

  I knew what an uninhibited Chloe did with Jonah.

  She opened a bag of chips, offering me one. “Are you gonna tell me what happened between you and Ward?”

  Nice to know Chloe was still active in the gossip mill even if she didn’t care that she’d become one of its favorite subjects. I dismissed her with a limp wave. “I’m not discussing it.”

  “Please, for some mysterious reason, you like Prince Mood Swing. It’s obvious you give that boy the worst hard-on, so how’d you piss him off?”

  I opened my mouth but was distracted as Ward stopped by the vending machines. A cute sophomore pointed to the Modest Mouse shirt visible under his dress shirt and necktie. He didn’t object when she fixed his hair. I blew on my hands, trying to cool down.

  “Hey, Vayda,” Marty leered and plopped down beside me.

  He helped himself to a crunch from Chloe’s bag of chips and leaned in close. I pushed him back with my elbow. Maybe some girls went for the devolved type.

  “So,” he began, “everyone’s been talking about you and the Ravenscroft guy. I mean, a week ago, you two seemed tight, but something happened?”

  I said nothing. One more spike of anger or smugness, and my head would blow.

  Marty set down an unopened can of lime soda, a mocking twist to his mouth as Ward fed money into a machine with sandwiches and yogurt containers. “You know, guys like him, you can’t trust them. He’s all kinds of messed up, and I’m worried about you. I’m not saying that ’cause I think you’ll listen. I already know what you think of me, but that guy’s trouble, Vayda. As much as I freakin’ hate Jonah, I hate guys like that more.”

  “Marty, you’re wasting your breath,” Chloe hissed. “You don’t even know Ward.”

  He snorted. “I don’t want to know him. I can’t understand why Vayda would.”

  “I’m right here, Marty. You can talk to me, not about me.” I shifted away until I hung halfway off the bench. The pounding in my head wanted him gone. I didn’t like the energy coming off him. This wasn’t concern—he was jealous, and it felt like a black slime leaching out and soaking the table.

  “You wouldn’t give me a chance because I’m not one of your kind of people, but you’ll give it to him?”

  I focused on Chloe, taking her hand and flipping it over to examine her palm. Mom had shown me how to read palms, and reading Chloe’s would be a good distraction. I might get some idea of exactly how far my brother’s influence had taken her off her life’s true course. My feelers focused on hunting Chloe’s energy, feathery and light.

  “What, Vayda?” Marty snapped. “Am I not good enough to talk to? Frigid bitch.”

  Chloe yanked her hand from mine and sneered. “Oh, sure, the way to get a girl’s interest is to call her a frigid bitch. Marty, get thee to the Confessional.”

  When even Little Miss Student Ambassador was fed up with you, perhaps the hour for self-reflection had dawned.

  Marty ignored her and put his hand on my shoulder. I wasn’t ready. My barriers couldn’t take that great a shock. Beyond jealousy over Ward, something dark was in him, and it surged through me. I’d felt so many emotions from others, but this was worse than spite, worse than a grudge between him and Jonah, between him and me. He had hate in him, and it drenched me in a foul wash. I braced my hands on the table and felt like I might be sick when my little finger bumped his drink. Energy into electricity, from me into metal, the can ripped open and splattered radioactive green soda all over Marty’s face and uniform.

  “What the hell?” he bellowed, beads of syrupy soda dripping from his chin. He jumped up from the bench and thundered toward the restroom, stopping long enough to shove Ward into a candy machine, amid some chortling from the girls’ basketball team.

  Chloe’s skin flushed maroon as she cackled, but even with Marty gone, I was nauseous and losing the battle with my gut. I got up from the table, head down as I fled, only to ram right into Ward.

  I wanted to go around him and leave before I got sicker. Yet he stifled it. He stifled all of it.

  He didn’t move away. Steel. Unbending. His jaw contracted, and he coughed until I gave him another throat lozenge.

  “I guess I got sick standing in the cold,” he explained.

  What could I say? I’m sorry your immune system blows?

  “Gadjo—”

  “Stop.” He put up his hands in defense and took a step back. “I don’t know what you want from me. If you’d said, ‘Hey, I don’t like you that way’ or you weren’t ready, I’d be fine, but don’t act like it’s cool and then bolt if I make a move without telling me what happened. Stop it with the mind games.”

  What a choice of words.

  I stammered, “I-it’s complicated.”

  His voice rose sharply. “You think I won’t understand complicated? Get the hell over yourself. Until then, I’m done.”

  He stormed past me, leaving me unguarded. My weakened barriers cracked against the force of so much emotion hitting them at once, as if every student in the cafeteria had picked up a stone and thrown it at me. Each stone was their joy, stress, fatigue, glee, and it all pelted me. I grabbed my head to block the static and whipped around to see Ward’s back as he smacked his palm against the doorway before disappearing.

  By study hall, Jonah zipped through Sister Hillary Lauren’s copious notes on William Blake while tracing his finger over my palm. To anyone else, he appeared to be predicting my future as I had tried with Chloe. In truth, he basked in the heat of the energy I’d taken in, energy I couldn’t handle, and left me with a chill that took the faintest edge off my headache.

  I want to be normal. My words ran the psychic trail between us. I hate what I am. If I were normal, I wouldn’t have to worry about scaring people. I wouldn’t have to worry about winding up like Mom.

  My brother worked the currents through my palm. You aren’t normal, but you won’t be like Mom ’cause she actually knew what she was doing with her Mind Games. What we do isn’t a curse, you know.

  It isn’t a blessing either, Jonah. What we do gets people killed.

  He gave a loud sigh, though he couldn’t argue. Mind Games killed people. Mom hadn’t been innocent, and she paid with her life.

  My brother opened his mouth to reply when a willowy figure materialized in the doorway. I felt drained, ill, and squirmed in the presence of Sister Tremblay. She rested her emotionless eyes on mine and curled her index finger. “Miss Silver, you are to come with me.”

  Jonah began to stand when Sister Tremblay whisked into the room and laid her hand down on his desk. As she planted a seed of darkness, a spiritual shadow mushroomed from her fingers, blooming across the desk to touch both of us. “Not you. Her.”

  The other students distracted by their conversations and homework began looking up. I swallowed hard and grabbed my backpack. My legs quaked as I walked out of the classroom with the tall nun, Jonah’s voice faint in my mind. I’ll be listening. This time, I didn’t mind letting him in.

  Every breath reminded my heart to slow, and yet I searched the hallway for any place where I could escape from Sister Tremblay. As we walked, my footfalls echoed off the walls. She took me through the blue, lightless language arts wing, past the arched doors. Then, on the way to her office, we passed the sanctuary, and I glimpsed the altar. I’d never been inside a church so dark but for the flickering light of votive candles in red glasses. St. Anthony of Padua was the saint for missing things. No one going into that church would find what they sought.

  Sister Tremblay shut her office door and gestured for me to sit on a stiff, wood chair. There would be no slouching on her clock. “We haven’t had the pleasure of getting to know each other, Miss Silver.”

/>   “The pleasure is all yours,” I muttered. “What do you want? If this is about Marty—”

  “I have no interest in Marty Pifkin. Monsignor deals with him and all the other crude devils.” She blinked, the only sign of life on her blank face. “Your father’s concerned about your brother and you. I’m very familiar with what grief can do to the soul. Losing your mother, I imagine that’s been very hard for you both. You must be lost without her. Maybe even out of control.”

  My lips buzzed, and worry swirled in my fingertips.

  “We don’t talk about my mother,” I said.

  “Yes, that’s a Romani belief, right? Not to speak of the dead? I do know a little about your heritage, Miss Silver. It doesn’t change that your father’s worried about you.”

  “He wouldn’t tell you that,” I said. The worry in my fingers swelled to a sharp prickle. Overhead, the light hummed.

  “In not so many words.” Her hands sprawled like a daddy long-legs. “Your father’s rather cagey. I don’t suppose he’s always been that way. Perhaps something’s raised his guard.”

  With her spider fingers, she picked up a Bible from her desk. I spotted a coffee mug, white emblazoned with a black-and-red G, on the desk. University of Georgia. Rain had always kept a flag with that logo flapping on his front porch. Dad went there for a semester. I’d have known it anywhere.

  Sister Tremblay noticed me studying the mug and plucked a tissue from a box on her desk, dabbing her nose. A single drop of blood stained it. “I was raised in Atlanta, but I also lived for a while in a town called Hemlock. Do you know it?”

  The hair on my neck felt as if a spectral fist yanked it. In. Out. Breathing deep. I sat on my hands to mute the blitz in my fingers.

  “Wh-wh-why would I know anything about that town?”

  She sat forward, locking on me. “Your father has an unmistakable southern accent. Jonah has traces of one, too, but yours is nearly imperceptible. Like you’re hiding where you’re from.”

  Energy ripped out of me. The computer screen on Sister Tremblay’s desk glowed bright, near blinding, until it split amid a shower of sparks. Yowling, the nun leapt and opened a window to release the smoke and rancid stink of melting plastic.