Jonah’s breathing doesn’t sound too good as he tucks under a blanket in the backseat. How much smoke had he breathed in while he banged on my door screaming at me to get up? He saved Dad and me.
Rain and Dad hug, my godfather promising, “I’ll get some new papers in order for you. Stay in touch, Em, and may the angels keep their watch.”
Jonah’s voice broke through my slumber.
“Vayda, wake the hell up.”
Being in Jonah’s hospital room, being with his energy, his skull hurt so badly that my own head brimmed with pain. The sound of my voice was like hail on a tin roof. “I’m sleeping.”
“I mean it, Sis. Get up.”
Something in his voice, stern but frightened, I opened my eyes. Chloe stood by Jonah’s bed. She quaked with an uneven energy. The tension I’d sensed in her at lunch had spread into her every cell.
“You’ve been on my mind all day, Jonah,” she said. “I can’t get you out of my thoughts.”
A gray haze around her was at odds with the soothing green walls of the hospital room. I gripped the armrests of my chair, ready to stand, and yet I stayed put. I couldn’t be sure what would happen if I touched her or what she’d do if I moved.
Jonah’s head dropped forward. His face was a patchwork of bruises and small cuts, one eye still too swollen to open. A sling harnessed his left arm. Veins pumped full of painkillers, all the injuries muddling his brain—how the hell could he work a Mind Game? Unless whatever he’d done spun out of his control.
I climbed out of the chair. Chloe took hold of Jonah’s good hand, and he gasped. He felt something from her. I drew closer, lowering my mental walls for a better grasp. Her disjointed energy slinked over me. Chaotic, flashing. She needed to go, get away from my brother and whatever hold he had on her.
“Jonah can’t have any visitors but family,” I said. “You have to leave.”
Chloe didn’t budge. She clutched his wrist, her fingernails pressing white then red into his skin. Her words wavered as they fell off her lip. “He can do things, you know.”
I jumped and gripped the railing on the bed for stability. Jonah, are you working her right now? I screamed in his brain. How could you be so careless?
He groaned. Maybe my yelling inside his skull hurt all that much more because of his concussion courtesy of Marty’s foot. He looked like he was about to puke, and he deserved it, no matter how painful it would be on his cracked ribs. His forehead knotted. Mind hurts. I swear to Christ, I don’t know what’s wrong with her.
Chloe kneaded his hand, but her face twisted while thin tears rolled down her cheeks. “I can’t leave you, Jonah, but I don’t want to be with you when my head’s clear. You make my thoughts trick me.”
She wouldn’t let go of him.
He spoke softly. “Chloe, I never tricked you.”
Every hair on the back of my neck stood on end.
Let go of her, I said. A Mind Game was in the room. He had to be playing one. Stop yourself.
God’s honest truth, I’m not working her. Not when my head’s so jacked up.
Truth, when spoken or thought, felt like dipping my hands into clear water. Jonah told the truth. The Mind Game he began with Chloe had grown too big for him to manage. His energy moved in disorganized trails. It came and went from him, veering off so fast even my feelers couldn’t get a grasp. He’d built the bridge linking her mind to his, and now he didn’t know how to burn it? He damaged her, beyond damaged. Ruined. All because he couldn’t help himself.
Spit wet her lips, and she cried out, “Make him stop!”
This had gone on long enough. My thoughts pushed at Jonah. This is wrong. She’s hurting.
A wail withered in her throat. The sound seized my hands, flooding them with fiery energy. Too much, too quick. A cooling reaction came off my fingers and grabbed on to Jonah’s energy.
Bang!
The door to the hospital room slammed hard enough to jangle the hinges, and the cheap blinds over the window fell where they snapped closed. Chloe yelped, but her squeeze on my brother tightened.
Despite the heaviness of his head, Jonah sighed. “Good show. And you yell at me for showing off what I can do.”
He wiggled his fingers free from Chloe’s hand. Her aura brightened, though still wide and terrified.
“Freaks!” she screamed.
Freaks. The word carried as much hurt as “gypsy.” Both words together pelted my mother when the handcuffs clamped on her wrists. The crowd shouted them as Dad and Rain flanked her when she fled the courthouse in Hemlock. Layered so thickly in paint on Fire Sales’ brick exterior that the outline remained.
My mouth fell open. Chloe did it. She broke that window, branded us, and Jonah didn’t know it. How lucid was she when Jonah was in her head? She could take our lives, the way he had hers, and drive us out of Black Orchard. I had to sit. The walls slanted too close, and the floor shook as it begged to give away beneath me. I didn’t know if the shaking streamed out of me or only in my mind.
She rocked back and forth. “What the hell are you two? Evil?”
Jonah snorted. I felt his anger scalding my fingertips, his fear chilling my blood. “It’s not nice to call people names.”
With a lurch, Chloe repeated, “What are you?”
I gulped, a sound too loud in my head. Jonah kept scowling, and the anger inside him culled together. He polished it until it was smooth and hard, and then he shoved at me.
I needed it.
His push swallowed me and held me tight, forcing me to focus. Fear and hurt couldn’t help me cope. “We’re ordinary people, Chloe.”
“We have unordinary abilities,” Jonah completed.
She chewed on her pinky nail. Her eyes, so wide a moment before, narrowed. She would talk at her first chance. She already made sure everyone knew what I’d said to her at the coffee house. She’d whisper to everybody in the hall of St. Anthony’s, pointing toward Jonah and me, and as she’d promised, they would believe her.
Despite the banging in his head, Jonah sank into my mind. We gotta do something. You can make her forget she was here, Sis.
You want me to do your dirty work? Did you leave every shred of decency in your soul in Georgia? I shook my head. I can’t push myself on someone like you can. Even if I could, I wouldn’t.
I’m too weak to do it myself. Another groan parted his lips. His pain was real and sharp. You can do this, Vayda. What happens if she talks?
We would leave Wisconsin. I didn’t want to leave in the middle of the night with nothing once again. I didn’t want to leave Ward. Jonah didn’t want to go either. Black Orchard had become his home as well. We’d both grown to love the cold. While I might not know how to keep Marty quiet, maybe I could stop Chloe, at least long enough to come up with a better plan.
I’d close the doors he left ajar in Chloe’s mind. It wouldn’t be manipulating her, it’d be freeing her.
The hand poking out of Jonah’s sling touched mine. I’ll try to help.
I joined my hand to his and then cupped Chloe’s shoulder with the promise, “I’ll make you safe.”
Chloe’s sight flicked to mine, wide open and beautiful, a pond where I could dive.
I stole that glance as my chance.
Her pupils dilated until her irises were nearly full black like a hole at the bottom of a well. The light in the room hurt. Jonah’s hand was in mine as we moved through the dark, blind as the depth swallowed all light, until we crawled out in the hallway of Chloe’s thoughts.
Something had wrecked the inside of her mind. My brother. Every mind had rooms of memory, and while the hallway of Chloe’s mind was sculpted from marble, the doors were nothing more than brittle, smoking wood. Jonah hung his head.
What do we do? I asked.
He gestured to a doorway emitting the amber glow of fire. A fire he started. Go there.
I lagged, hesitant b
ecause of the paint blistering on the door, so many cracks. By all rights, Jonah, you ignited this blaze. You should be the one to overpower the flames, not me.
Curse me all you want later, but get this fire out now before it spreads.
He needed me. He couldn’t do it himself.
I sucked in a cold breath. My fingers stroked the fragile doorways, and the firelight shaded Jonah’s and my skin. As I breathed, ice rose up my stomach, through my chest, and swirled in my mouth. A draft pushed the hair back from my shoulders. If my brother was heat, I was the cold.
I felt calm. I felt like my mother.
Protecting our family comes before all else. Our family is our clan. We only have each other, I intoned in my head, in the place where Jonah would hear me loudest. Remember that.
My breath expanded in my lungs, and I exhaled over the fire in Chloe’s memories. The flames sputtered. Then they were nothing. Where the fire had been was a soot-smeared room with ashes powdering the floor. Stepping out from Jonah’s hold, I scooped the ashes and again breathed over them until they scattered.
Fire out.
There. I’ve done everything you wanted.
I flung off my brother’s hold, severing my connection to Chloe’s mind, but an ashy taste coated my mouth. God, I prayed this worked.
Jonah’s head lolled against his pillow, heavy, drained. Yet Chloe’s energy had a boost. Not gluey and oozy but still denser than she used to be. What more could I do? I didn’t know how taking out her memory would work, if it were successful, but I had to believe she couldn’t sweep up every fleck of ash to make a solid memory.
She blinked. “How long have you been here, Vayda?”
“She just got here,” Jonah lied. “You were leaving, remember?”
“Oh. I guess I’ll be going.” She picked up her purse and lingered by the door when she peeked over her shoulder, shuddered, then exited. Something morally bereft happened between my brother and her, something that went well beyond any mere disapproval of his relationship with her. Maybe I hadn’t understood why he’d want that gadji back after she’d humiliated him, but he cared for her. His care was broken, and I’d been too enamored with Ward to notice the decay eating at Jonah and his powers. They spoiled. He spoiled that girl’s mind.
I sat on the edge of Jonah’s bed and twisted the ends of my hair around my fingers. I swear on my soul. Never again.
He extended his good arm to me. “Come here, Sis.”
“No.”
Gritting his teeth, he held his ribs and inched to the side of the bed. “I need you.”
I stepped back. It’d always been the two of us, no distance, no misgivings. Why did he have to ruin that?
“Vayda,” he begged. “I only wanted her to care about me again. When I was with her, it didn’t matter that we’re freaks. She made things easier, and I wanted more of that. More of her.”
I could have spoken those same words about Ward.
“I didn’t know that would happen to her,” he confessed.
His voice. He wasn’t working me. He couldn’t.
I scooted close to the edge of his bed. His hand, pierced with IVs and wrapped with tape, took mine. We could’ve been seven years old, standing together to watch the black shapes of birds flock to the cottonwood tree outside our ranch in Montana. So many of them, endless with their wings and the cacophony of their screeches, they were mesmerizing. I couldn’t turn away then. I couldn’t turn away from Jonah now.
“I love you, Vayda,” he whispered. “You know that. You and Dati are the only people I love. I’m sorry I put you in a bad spot.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Something went wrong with Chloe. As soon as I’m at full strength, I’ll fix it. I’ll make up for everything.”
“Sure you will.”
My head ached, but whether the pain was my own or Jonah’s…
I promise to God, he vowed. I’ll make this right.
He sent out the thought to my mind, but before he could get in further, I blocked him with a wall, stacked brick by brick.
Chapter Sixteen
Vayda
For Mom, Christmas began the moment she fastened the backs on her holly earrings before Mass and culminated in the candlelight singing of “Silent Night” in the Catholic parish where Jonah served as an acolyte. Before I fell asleep, she’d stop in my room with hugs and hopes for blessings on her scarlet lips. Then she’d join Dad in the hall, laugh as he unpinned her black hair, swallowing her metal hair comb in his palm, kissed behind her ear, and close my door with a click. I’d listen to their footfalls, the murmur of their voices as they went off together, and then the whole house would sigh.
My father loved my mother. He loved her to death.
A month after Mom’s murder, our first Christmas in Wisconsin was buried under fourteen inches of snow. Jonah and I took in a marathon of “A Christmas Story” and ate Frosted Flakes because it was the only thing in the house. Rain called every few hours, saying he didn’t like the feeling he was getting, that Dad was squirreling himself away and desperate. Rain swore he’d keep an eye on all of us and help us through the bleak days and night terrors. He gave us the house. He gave us a chance at a life beyond Mom, but sometimes I wondered if Dad would have kept going if it hadn’t been for Jonah and me.
It had taken a while, but Dad eventually came out of his study once, hair unkempt and shirt rumpled. I’d followed him as he raided Rain’s wine collection and headed upstairs. He didn’t know I’d spied him while he unclasped his Archangel Michael medallion strung with a cross, a wedding gift from Mom, and dropped it inside the dresser where it’d since stayed.
This Christmas Eve, I strummed the acoustic guitar Ward loaned me. I felt along the frets and placed my fingers where his had pressed down on the metal strings. I could sense him, pouring himself into his playing, into his art. All Ward wanted was escape. Underneath him, there was someone else, someone so drugged he felt like sliding lower and lower in a warm bath.
Drake.
He was a ghost in the guitar, one that haunted Ward and knew him. His energy lingered in the strings. Seeking the emotion lodged in objects was to find the strongest attachment, and what Drake attached was numbness. I could see his skeletal fingers forming chords on the strings, his other holding a green pick, cigarette in mouth and ratty auburn hair, so tangled like dreadlocks, hanging near his shoulders. He played while Ward begged him to look at a sculpture he’d built, but Drake didn’t move. Nothing moved him. Not even his son.
I put down the guitar and rubbed my temples. Jonah rolled over on the couch.
“You get a hit?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I answered.
He nodded, and I believed, at least this time, he wouldn’t invade my mind. He couldn’t. In the nine days since the beating and two since his hospital release, my brother’s pain was overwhelming. Too weak to work Mind Games, the energy crashed inside him then glommed onto me as its outlet. He smelled of sweat and pressed his hand to his ribs. A cough, and the bulb in the lamp popped.
Such a sorry sight, reduced to misguided flares of energy.
I didn’t feel bad for him.
I brought him a blanket and, after helping to steady him as he sat up, I began combing through his hair. From my angle, he appeared wary as he took in the walls, running from one end of the floor to the other. As I slicked his hair, I knew his paranoia. Perhaps after his attack in Fire Sales, he’d finally wised up. We weren’t safe anywhere.
“Why do you take care of me?” he asked.
“You’re my twin. I don’t like that you’re hurt.” The answer was simple, yet I couldn’t pretend things were okay. The half-hearted apologies—no more. “Jonah, don’t ever do this again.”
He lay back, exhausted already. Through the curtains, I could make out the glow of headlights on the driveway. Not moving. Parked and waiting. They’d been there a
lmost every day since Jonah’s release from the hospital.
“She’s out there again,” he murmured. “Dati doesn’t want me talking to her. He’s afraid it would make things worse.”
“She won’t listen,” I replied and pulled back the curtain to spy Chloe’s car. “Last night, Dati was out there trying to reason with her. He had to call her mom to come and get her.”
Try, Vayda. Please.
How could I argue with him? We wanted the same thing, albeit for different reasons, I was sure. I slipped on my coat and made my way down the snow-covered steps and across the driveway. Through the car’s windows, I could make out Chloe staring at the house. She clutched the steering wheel with both hands, eyes darting and watchful. I tapped on the driver’s window. She only focused ahead.
Time for a different approach.
I walked around to the passenger side. The door was unlocked. If she would listen to me at all, I had to get into the car.
“Chloe, what are you doing here?” I asked as I sat beside her.
“I don’t know.” She blew a long piece of hair from her face. Not the neat, icy blond I knew, her hair was clipped in a ratty topknot, her matchy-matchy uniform of sweater and skirt replaced with an oversized sweatshirt. “I don’t know why I come here, but I have to.” She angled her face, and a million questions gleamed in her pupils. “I don’t like you very much, do I?”
“Not anymore,” I replied.
“I really don’t like your brother.”
“No, you don’t.”
“But I did. Once. I liked both of you. Why won’t he talk to me? He doesn’t come outside when I’m here. He won’t answer if I call. I thought he cared.”
“He did like you. He still does, but it’s not healthy for you two to be together.”
“Vayda, what’d I do wrong?”
She had no clue what’d happened, and the guilt churned in my gut because I was relieved she didn’t know.
“Chloe, you didn’t do anything. I wish you knew that. Is this what you want? To be outside some guy’s house waiting for him?” I opened the passenger door and eased out of the car. “Go home.”
A Murder of Magpies Page 15
