A Murder of Magpies

by Sarah Bromley

  Rain lights a cigarette, puffs slowly, and exhales blue-gray smoke. “Well, the upside of this mess is that no forensic expert will say anybody but Brett pulled the trigger. But people around here—knowing what you are, knowing what you do and what they want to believe you do—this will be a hell of a witch hunt. Lorna, darlin’, you might be wishing you had killed that man by the time the dust settles.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Vayda

  Ward didn’t speak once I finished my story about that night in Hemlock. I’d had over two years to think about what my mother did with her Mind Games, two years to know why I resented my abilities.

  Two years to grow more chaotic from not using them.

  Despite my mother’s bravado, she had good parts, though I had trouble finding them. I lived with the bad things she did. Some good existed in her. She kissed skinned knees. She had stories about caravans with the vardo, and all the places her father lived before settling in Georgia. She had my father’s adoration. That couldn’t make her all terrible.

  “No offense,” Ward said, “but your mom was a total shit disturber.”

  How sensitive of him. I draped my legs over his lap. “Well, I’m more inclined to say something colorful like Mom liked her coffee black with two troubles, but go ahead and cut to the quick. Saves time.”

  He half-smiled. “I call ’em like I see ’em.”

  Cardinal rule: Honesty was the best policy. Unless you were a Murdock.

  “You know, the night Brett Forgette shot himself was hardly the beginning of the problems she caused.” It sounded awful to say.

  Ward traced his finger along the iron headboard of my bed. “Um, to refresh your memory, I have lived through some bad shit. You’re not the only one.”

  Yes, he’d witnessed awful things. Drake was an addict who neglected him. Not an excuse but a reason, a pathetic, understandable reason. My mom did bad things because she was bored.

  I didn’t need to him to hold me and tell me everything was okay, but I wanted him close. I couldn’t switch off how much I cared about him even though things weren’t okay between us. Not yet.

  After a minute, he asked, “How long have you worked Mind Games?”

  “How long have you found yourself drawn to metal?” I returned. “It’s in you. Mind Games are the same way. Jonah and I’ve worked them longer than we can remember.” I raised an eyebrow. “No one could levitate Tonka trucks like my brother.”

  Ward laughed, but his face swiftly fell. “Will you end up like your mom?”

  I couldn’t answer. I didn’t know. Had Mom known she would end up the way she did? I doubted her cards would’ve told her.

  Ward stood and peeled back the curtain over my window, staring at the forest shrouded with snow. The tendons in his neck flexed as he swallowed, stifling a cough. I moved behind him. “It doesn’t take an empath to notice how tense you are. Will you let me relax you?”

  His nod granted me permission. My hands gripped his waist and then lowered to his hips. A rush of calm flowed into him. The coolness spread through him, and he trembled as his body gave in and relaxed.

  “What was that?” he whispered as the lamp flickered. “How do you do that?”

  “Energy. Did you like it?” I asked.

  He faced me, took my hands, and guided them down the front of his jeans to press my fingers roughly against his leg. “Do it again.”

  I freed another frozen breaker into his muscles. Both of us gasped, him from the chill and me from the surprise flaring off him. Shocks burst against my palm, voltage searching out a channel. He cupped my neck, and the whisk of his breath made my heart run. He hesitated, open-mouthed, over mine.

  Please. Make us close again. Show me you still care.

  His lips dashed across my impatient mouth, tangling with mine, wet, reckless. With a few stumbled steps back to my bed, I lay down and eased him on top of me. Primal instinct poured out of him. I sensed his want, the hunger in his kisses, and my body hummed in response. His hand clutched the metal bars of my headboard while the other inched along my side under my sweater. A sting of sparks crackled every time his skin met mine.

  “Damn it!” He rolled off me.

  “Why are you angry?” I asked.

  “It’s not you,” he said. “It’s…weird that I touch you and that happens.”

  “It’s not like I can change what I am.” I dropped my head. “You’re the only person that happens with. I don’t know why.”

  He flopped on his back and shoved his fingers through his hair. After a moment, I rested my head upon his chest. This time, when he put his arms around me, he kept his hands on the outside of my clothing. Up and down, his breathing was choppy. He was holding back a cough. “Why is being angry easier than accepting things are different?”

  “Different isn’t bad.” I dimmed the energy balling in my palms.

  “Vayda, I didn’t expect this when I moved here. Didn’t expect you, your family. I didn’t expect anything good.”

  “Am I good?”

  His forefinger tipped up my chin. His breath whispered cool against my lips, and a shudder danced up my neck as his fingers curved around the back of my head. He stared at me and pressed his chin to my forehead. “You’re good.”

  As if deciding the sparks weren’t so bad, he stroked my back under my sweater, toying with the clasp on my bra. One part of his life shifted, and like the kinetic wind sculptures he built, one movement set off another until all the metal gears were spinning. He lost Drake, fell off the only foothold in his old life. If Drake weren’t arrested, Ward wouldn’t be in my bedroom with his arms around me now. I wouldn’t feed off the blissful, warm glow generated by his legs weaving with mine, his lips locked with mine. All because the wind blew. No, things between us weren’t perfect and may never be, but were any relationships perfect? Love wasn’t flawed, yet the people who were in love were always flawed. Did it matter as long as the emotion was true?

  I was okay with imperfection.

  “Magpie, come down!” Dad hollered.

  I jumped up from the bed and motioned for Ward to sit up. Dad wasn’t supposed to be home. A quick comb through my hair, and I straightened my clothes. “I’ll be down in a second!”

  “Hurry back. I’m not done with you,” Ward promised as I bent down to kiss him before exiting my bedroom.

  The wind whistled through the drafts. I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror at the base of the stairs and stopped. Not my mother’s face again, but rather a sense of something in the house, some unusual energy that sprang the hairs on my neck. A suitcase rested by the front door, but Dad rescheduled his winter buying trip for April since he didn’t want to leave during Jonah’s recovery.

  “Dati?” I called.

  “In the kitchen.”

  Ice cubes clinked against crystal. He wore a green sweater and jeans, nicer than his work attire when he restored furniture, more casual than his buying trips. He mixed two drinks and left them on the counter.

  “Work so stressful that you’re double-barreling your shots?” I kidded.

  “I haven’t been at the shop,” he said and swirled his drink around his mouth before adding, “but I tell you, I must’ve gotten more gray hair sitting in traffic at Milwaukee’s airport.”

  Airport?

  Dad nodded over my head. I pivoted and came face-to-face with Rain Killian.

  ***

  Rain stood shy of six feet tall, and his sandy hair was cropped much shorter than last I saw him. He smelled familiar, of Stetson and Marlboros, as he hugged me, though underneath I got whiff of Georgia mildew and Spanish moss. A coil of homesickness churned through me. Everything we’d lost and nothing we could ever reclaim.

  All because of Mom.

  “Em, your girl’s the spitting image of Lorna,” Rain remarked and winked. “I bet you’re as talented as your mama.”

  My cheeks burned
. I couldn’t go along with that, not really.

  Jonah shuffled into the kitchen before a trace of a smile crossed his mouth. Showing a gentleness for my brother’s injuries, Rain patted his shoulder and nodded toward his sling.

  “Your daddy told me you were jumped.”

  Jonah slouched against the counter. “Some jerks from school. We’re handling it.”

  Rain wasn’t satisfied. “Is it true the son-of-a-bitch was charged as a minor?”

  “It wasn’t our decision,” Dad cut in. “If Jonah had his way, there wouldn’t even be charges. The attention’s not good.”

  I spied Ward hanging out on the bottom step. A ghost of our old selves came to life in the kitchen, and he was there to witness it. He lingered, drumming on the banister, and even though I gave him a little wave to urge him to come forward, he stayed back.

  Rain caught sight him of lurking. “So you’re the boyfriend. Your pictures made you look taller.”

  Ward gritted his teeth and edged out of the shadows. “Sorry to disappoint.”

  “You got a smart mouth.” My godfather clapped him on the shoulder. “I like that in a fella. Shows you’re quick on your feet. I hear you’re working at Fire Sales.”

  “Emory’s teaching me about antiques restoration.”

  Ward went rigid. Every door into him slammed and locked. Even if most of what I felt around him was a quiet peace, the slightest change in his mood registered in the air.

  “I’ll catch up with you in a bit, Rain,” I said and took Ward’s hand. Getting him out of the house would be the best thing for him.

  Outside, we plodded through the snow to the barn. That feeling came back, the one of someone in the shadows. I spun around and scanned the woods when a swooping blackbird caught my sight. It darted under the gutter near the peak of the house’s roof and vanished inside.

  “What are you watching?” Ward asked.

  “A bird. We get them in the attic. They keep me up at night,” I answered.

  He pushed open the barn door. The last time we were out here, he punched the wood, and I wasn’t sure what all was broken. This time, we slipped inside and passed a few shrouded antiques. Ward picked along the wall beneath the hayloft, the place where old farm tools hung or leaned on the brittle wood—rusted shovels, a threshing blade, and a pitchfork. His finger ran along the pitchfork’s tines.

  “What would you do to make those into art?” I asked.

  “They already are,” he answered, touching a pair of iron baling hooks. “Did you know that silver is the best conductor for electricity? The cost is so high though. Copper works well. The current moves through it freely. It never gets hung up.

  “I mean, think about lightning rods. They draw the strike and carry it to the ground harmlessly. They take in all that energy that would probably burn up anything else. If not for the metal, the lightning strike would pass through whatever it could. Nothing could control it. It wouldn’t be safe. The metal is a conductor, but it’s also a shield.”

  He began to cough, a hack he couldn’t shake. I rubbed his back and sent out cool currents, my mind conjuring an image of a bellow opening to allow air to pass. Maybe it would help, I didn’t know, but there was no harm in trying.

  “Have you talked to a doctor, gadjo?” I asked. “You’ve had this cough for as long as I’ve known you.”

  “Longer,” he managed between ragged breaths.

  “Did you get some medicine? I could ask my father what my mom put in the tea she brewed whenever Jonah or I got sick.”

  He caught his balance against a wood post supporting the hayloft. “I’m trying to get healthy, okay? I didn’t take care of myself when I lived with Drake, and I’m paying for it.”

  “You haven’t lived with Drake for a while,” I countered. “Shouldn’t you be over this by now?”

  He wiped his lip with his sleeve. “You haven’t lived with your mom for a while, and you’re not still over that.”

  I linked my fingers with his. Veins mapped his hand, winding between the scars. I couldn’t ignore the shadow hovering around him. More than being haunted in the mind.

  “You’re not telling me something,” I said.

  “Why don’t you read my mind to find out?” he asked. It was a challenge, and I wouldn’t accept it. “It’s gotten better, Vayda. It’s nothing.”

  Nothing didn’t hang around. I hadn’t paid enough attention to notice if he’d gotten any better.

  That was the danger.

  You never noticed how bad things were until it was too late.

  ***

  The trick to Mom’s prize-winning fried chicken was hot sauce in the buttermilk marinade, made her chicken wings the hit of every picnic. It’s not good unless it’s got the devil’s bite, she always said.

  Supper was livelier than usual, despite the ghosts of the past lingering around the table as Rain and Dad bantered over how the other had changed. Two years thinned Rain’s face and paled the edges of his sandy hair, yet he still talked loud and fast. There was a reason Dad claimed to predict Rain would become a lawyer back when they were teenagers, and we hung on to his every word. We’d forgotten how quiet we’d become in Mom’s absence.

  Rain dabbed his mouth with a napkin. “I hate bringing this up over supper, Em, but for as cold as Lorna’s case is, her name still crops up in the papers down south. It’s no real surprise that so does yours.”

  Dad stopped eating and moved around some peas on his plate. “Rain, I was never one to dabble in people’s affairs the way Lorna did. I ran an honest business. People make assumptions ’cause of who I married. I’ve done my share of unforgivable things, but marrying Lorna wasn’t one of them.”

  Rain twirled the ice in his scotch with the handle of his fork. “Em, you’re too hard on yourself. Lorna was trouble before she ever met you—Lord knows I saw that side of her plenty. Mind Games clouded her judgment. She was doing bad before you ever came along. With you, she found her partner-in-crime.”

  Dad smirked. “Oh, there was no finding. That woman could’ve made either one of us do anything she wanted. And she did. She did it all the damn time.”

  I’d never heard Dad speak so candidly about Mom, and my head swam with uneasy waves. Anger that I hadn’t known the alluring side of my mother that made my dad and Rain forgive her again and again, anger I hadn’t really known her. Then loss because grief wasn’t something that happened and was over all nice and neat, it came back, some days worse than others. Jonah squeezed my shoulder. We both felt it, the sorrow of not knowing the people around you.

  “Look,” Rain interrupted my thoughts. “Whatever the truth is about you and Lorna, there’s no use ignoring that the people in Hemlock thought y’all were trouble. Lorna’s been gone two years, but the good ol’ boy cops still want you real bad, Em.”

  I couldn’t keep quiet any longer. “For what?”

  The reflection of my face in Dad’s glasses repeated my question. “That fire was set by vigilantes pissed about Lorna’s sentence, a sentence you haggled.”

  “They think you know things,” Rain replied. “To be honest, you don’t leave a burned-out house with a body inside and not break some laws.”

  “What kind of laws?” Jonah asked.

  “Let’s say that if your daddy’s caught, he’ll have a passel of questions to answer.”

  Dad’s mouth was tight. “I don’t know a damn thing, and I left Hemlock to protect what was left of my family. I don’t much want to discuss the past any more tonight. Let’s move on.”

  My father was in trouble, more than we’d wanted to admit, but he was also a good man. With one storm cloud of a lie thundering over not only him but also my brother and me. Jonah pushed back his seat and sighed. The room was cold from the hollow reality that we couldn’t hide forever, especially not if someone in Black Orchard knew Dad was Emory Murdock and all that the name entailed.

  Rain shook h
is head. “I’m sorry I brought it up. It’s the lawyer in me, I tell you. I won’t let anything happen to this family—any of you.” He eyed Jonah and me. “You gotta know I go back with your mama and daddy a long time, long enough to do damn near anything for them. Your mother was special, and she knew how to pick a man.”

  Dad raised his drink. “And once she did, she left a hell of a mark on him.”

  ***

  After supper, Dad vanished into his study as I rinsed the dishes. Dishwashing was Jonah’s chore, but he earned some leniency while he recuperated. Rain appeared in the kitchen with Ward’s backpack. My godfather hoisted the backpack onto the counter and slid open the zipper.

  I set a plate in the dishwasher. “That belongs to Ward.”

  “If he’s involved with my goddaughter, don’t you think it’s wise to know what kind of boy he is?”

  I knew what kind of boy Ward was—one who didn’t like anyone snooping around where they didn’t belong.

  Rain gave me a long look. “Do you know about his history, about his daddy being a junkie and whatnot?”

  I plunged another plate into soapy water. Dad wouldn’t have told Rain about Ward’s past, which meant Rain did his homework. The lawyer doing what he did best.

  “Did he tell you he has quite an arrest record?” Rain went on. “He’s not some innocent kid.”

  I knew this, but having it pointed out was a kick in the back. “He’s not in that life anymore. Trust me, will you?”

  “Of course.”

  Rain closed the backpack but kept out a drawing pad. Other than me, Dad was the only person granted permission to review Ward’s sketches of metal sculptures. Rain smiled as he paged through the pad. “Might be your daddy sees a shadow of himself in young Mr. Ravenscroft. Once an artist, always an artist.”

  I finished loading the dishwasher and retrieved the menagerie of cups Jonah accumulated in the living room. The couch was empty, the blanket hanging off the cushions. I touched the couch. The fabric was still warm. His black Chucks were gone from the mat by the front door, too. Where the hell did he go?