A Murder of Magpies

by Sarah Bromley

  I raced to the kitchen. “Where’s Jonah?”

  Rain plundered the bowl of chicken in the fridge for one more wing. “Right before I came out here, he said he wanted some fresh air. Too cold for me. Brr.”

  I rushed back to the living room and slipped into my coat. Something wasn’t right about this. My brother could hardly get off the couch for meals, let alone go for a midnight stroll through the woods.

  This was one secret he couldn’t keep to himself, barriers or not.

  Outside, tracks other than Ward’s and mine trampled the ground between the barn and the house. Snow powdering the evergreens gave their only definition. I spread my fingers and sought out Jonah’s fire. Wavering puffs of steam rose from the soil under the snow, and a heated, invisible fog illuminated the path around the barn. Pulling my coat tight, I followed Jonah’s trail between the trees. The path was deliberate.

  He’d walked this way before.

  My feet sank inside my brother’s tracks. The tip of my nose went cold while I trekked several hundred yards into the woods until the forest cleared. Seven pine trees marked a circle. Jonah knelt in the snow, shirt gone, skin almost glowing under the moonlight. He’d removed his sling, and his left arm dangled at an uncomfortable angle, the shoulder and collarbone still blotchy with bruising. His wild, black hair fell around his chest. With eyes closed, he arched his spine and stretched out his arms. What was that devil up to?

  I lurked behind a white pine and gasped as Jonah’s chest heaved. One hand thrust into the snow, and a guttural roar tore from his mouth. The noise startled me so that I tumbled back over a slick rock.

  His head jerked, and his burning eyes found me. He smiled like our mother.

  “Sis, come here.”

  “Are you nuts?” I staggered into the clearing. “What are you doing?”

  “Working with energy. Get down like I am. I want to try something.”

  “I don’t trust you.”

  “Read me. I won’t hurt you.”

  Ward already tried testing me tonight, and I wouldn’t do it then. I wouldn’t do it for Jonah now either. He knew I’d feel guilty for not believing him, but why should I go along and blindly do whatever he asked of me?

  Because he was my twin.

  Because we were born within a minute of one another.

  Hesitantly, I knelt before him. With his right hand, he guided my fingers over his chest before placing his palm over mine. The skin, which I expected to be icy and smooth, burned. My fingertips tingled. The heat from his hand moved through my skin, past my bones, and rode a current toward my heart. Within seconds, our pulses matched, mine elevated to meet his.

  “Get ready,” he ordered.

  “For what?”

  A scalding surge rampaged through my body, flooding from Jonah’s hand to my chest. I doubled over, sick from the blow but also invigorated. Red flashed behind my eyes, and I saw inside his mind, saw myself through his sight, and sensed the crashing of cold and hot between us. Surely, he saw himself, untamed, and felt the fear and awe pumping in my veins. An orb of light the size of a supper plate rose between us. The flare lasted a mere moment and extinguished as I snapped my hand away from my brother’s chest and broke the filaments of our threaded energy.

  “What in God’s name was that?” I asked, sweat trickling down my cheeks and growing cold in the wind.

  “I gave you a boost.” He grinned while he panted. “Our energy together is like a cold front colliding with warm air. Lightning. This is what happens when we join together.”

  “We shouldn’t mess with this.” I stood to wipe the snow from my knees. “I’m freezing my ass off. Let’s go.”

  I helped Jonah into his secondhand T-shirt, hooded sweatshirt, and sling. With his shirts and ratty jeans, he was like any other guy at school. He was something else altogether, a boy who dabbled in dark things.

  A twig snapped in the woods. Jonah grabbed my hand, and our backs pressed against each other. As he scanned left, I dispatched my feelers to the right. Nudging, prodding, searching. Someone was out there, hiding in the trees.

  Who is it? Can you tell? Jonah asked.

  I can’t find anything, just the night.

  Again, my feelers raced out. A murky energy was nearby, though I couldn’t be sure of where it came from. It felt familiar enough. Marty? Sister Tremblay? Maybe. She’d been to Fire Sales and followed me at school. What was to stop her from coming to the house?

  “Let’s go,” I whispered.

  I strode away with Jonah from his place in the woods until we came around the barn. Under the lantern-light by the front door, Dad approached the house with a bundle of firewood. I noticed a cloud of smoke where Rain puffed on his cigarette by the porch.

  “What are you two doing?” Dad asked.

  “Only an evening constitution through the woods,” Jonah replied, speaking with the kind of heavy drawl we’d heard on the old timers in Georgia. “Dati, I think somebody’s hanging around. Someone who doesn’t belong.”

  Dad set down the firewood. “I’ll take a gander.”

  Rain shook his head and held up his cigarette. “I stepped outside not more than thirty seconds ago. Don’t tell me y’all are getting paranoid like your daddy.”

  Dad glanced over his shoulder. “Being paranoid doesn’t mean someone’s not after you.”

  Yet nothing was to be found.

  By midnight, the fire in the woodstove crackling as flames ran over pinesap was the only noise. Dad and Jonah were asleep, and Rain sat in Dad’s recliner as he leafed through my scrapbook. I perched on the couch and propped Jonah’s legs on my lap.

  “Em said he’s undisciplined,” Rain said, tilting his head at my brother.

  “That’s an understatement,” I admitted.

  “How so?”

  How could I tell the man who vowed before God to guide Jonah that his godson trifled with wickedness? What, if anything, had Dad told him about the swell in Jonah’s powers? I wasn’t certain if Dad was even aware of how Jonah worked over Chloe, only that they’d had a bad break-up, and I didn’t want to betray my twin’s secrets even if I didn’t agree with his actions.

  As if understanding, Rain switched subjects. “I guess your daddy made a friend. A woman who works at your school, I guess.”

  Friend? Not quite. I picked at my skirt and muttered, “She can go to hell.”

  “Vayda, mind your mouth. Your mama’s been gone two years, and if Em’s got himself a lady friend…”

  “No!” I held up my hand to silence him. “It’s not like that. She’s not a friend. There’s a nun at my school from Georgia. Hemlock, actually, but she lives here.”

  His eyes bulged. “Are you fooling me?”

  “The name Polly Tremblay mean something?” I asked.

  Rain leapt to his feet and banged on the study door where Dad often slept on a chaise. My father opened his door and glowered. Without warning, Rain shoved Dad’s chest, knocking him into the doorway, and yelled, “What the hell are you doing? When I set you up here, you swore you’d tell me everything, and I was stupid enough to believe you might keep your word for once!”

  Dad massaged his sternum and snapped, “Rain Killian, you got five seconds to tell me what this is about or we’re going outside for a talk.”

  Rain placed his hand on Dad’s shoulder, but Dad shook him off. His face read of years of frustration of watching his best friend dragged around by Mom without question, frustration that everything he did for us might not have been enough.

  “Em, you gotta use your head.” Rain leveled Dad with his gaze. “You know all too well people down south still yap about how Lorna blew out every window in Sully’s market with one of her little tricks. A southerner never forgets a soul’s earthly relations. Now you’re either stupid or you’ve gotten complacent in these woods ’cause there ain’t no reason for you to talk with June Forgette’s niece. Are you gonn
a tell me you forgot it was Polly and her mama that convinced an entire town Lorna was a witch?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Ward

  “If you’re gonna fuck me up, make it count.”

  The words sputtered from my mouth as my cheek crashed against the lockers in the empty hall. Marty’s fingers dug into my shoulders and shoved me into the metal once more. The salty copper of blood wet my mouth. I swallowed, sneering, “Hit me harder than that.”

  Marty let go. “That’s what all the bitches like you say.”

  “Not surprising. Your dick’s so tiny they can’t feel it.”

  From his lookout point, Danny chortled. “Oh-ho, shit!”

  I shouldn’t have searched for a fight, but anger felt good. Easy. I never thought I’d get this pissed at Heidi, but my hands clenched up at three a.m. when I descended from the attic with a box under my arm and questions in my brain. The rage in my bones was familiar, an old friend I bumped into who wanted to hang out again. It’d been so long since I craved hitting someone for no reason other than to feel better. Unfortunately, nothing got you knocked on your ass faster than hurling a French textbook at a bastard’s head.

  “You know, I’ve had that girlfriend of yours,” Marty hissed as he pushed my chest into the locker. “Such a tease.” His voice rose high. “Oh, don’t…don’t stop.”

  More anger bled through my mind as he crowed. I backed up and swung at him, catching him in the jaw hard enough to daze him. Nobody talked about her like that, least of all a dickless rat like him.

  He shook off the punch and leered. “I still think about the way that one tasted. Sweet, like a peach.”

  “You leave Vayda out of this.” I threw as much of my weight into him as I could. A blow from Marty’s fist to my ear rocked me, and I stumbled to the trashcan to puke, but nothing rose from my stomach, drool and blood trickling from my lip.

  “Want more?” Marty asked as Danny pulled me away from the trashcan by my collar. “I can tell you all about the rock-n-roll she got from me.”

  I closed my eyes and waited for another bash.

  Nothing.

  Opened my left eye, then my right.

  Marty froze opposite of Jonah. In three weeks of healing, Jonah still wore a sling as his tendons mended. Didn’t matter. He cast a jarring shadow.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked calmly. Too calm.

  Marty’s skin paled. “Nothing of your concern, Silver.”

  “Leave my friend alone.”

  Danny freed me and I sagged, coughing, against the lockers. I choked down a mouthful of blood, which immediately tried to climb back up. Jonah parted Marty and Danny with a scowl and stood close.

  “Get the hell out of here!” he yelled.

  Danny was quick to bolt up the stairs, but Marty dawdled at the base of the stairwell, baring his teeth like a pinned badger. “You know, I saw some crazy shit the night I kicked your ass. I kept my mouth shut. So far. You wanna risk people finding out you’re a freak?”

  “If you were gonna say anything, you would’ve already,” Jonah snapped.

  “Not unless there’s something I want. Something that’ll be too scared to tell me no.”

  Vayda. Whatever he saw Jonah do in Fire Sales, that jerk thought it gave him some advantage with her. No way in hell could I let him get near her.

  Jonah cracked his neck, swift and direct. “You made your point. Go.”

  Marty followed Danny up the stairs. I pulled away from the lockers, my lungs in a full-on wheeze.

  “You’re a mess, Ward,” Jonah remarked as he followed me into the bathroom. “Why’d you pull that stunt? Marty could pulverize you.”

  I snorted. “So could you.”

  I ran some paper towels under cold water and checked out my mouth. My teeth had massacred the inside of my cheek. Jonah readied more paper towels and kicked the trashcan closer to dispose of the bloody ones. I tried to stop him from picking up one that missed the rim, but he raised his eyebrow.

  “You gotta be careful around blood,” I explained.

  “Did your old man have something catching?” he asked, washing his hands.

  “In a way.” Then I dropped it. Talking about Drake would make me angry all over again.

  Jonah watched as I cleaned up, his face revealing nothing. No one could tell by looking at him or Vayda that they had these abilities. Now that I knew, I was more aware of a halo surrounding them. Something was strange about them, but defining it was impossible. It was there.

  He tore off a dry paper towel, folded it into a paper airplane, and shot it at me. “People chase us off once they know what we can do, Ward. Why haven’t you?”

  Gee, I loved loaded questions.

  I shrugged. “Your family’s good to me. I guess I owe you guys.”

  Jonah opened the restroom door, and we walked down the hall until he froze, slowly spinning around. Sister Tremblay waited behind us. She regarded him with a coolness as though approaching a rare bird while hiding a wire cage behind her. Covetous.

  “What are you staring at?” I asked.

  “Some students who should be in class,” she replied.

  Jonah’s good hand balled into a fist, and he flexed his jaw. With a moan, the nun scrunched her eyes shut and pressed her fingers to her forehead.

  “Might want to visit the nurse for that headache, Sister,” Jonah said, his lips curling.

  I stopped my mouth from falling open. He didn’t…Yeah, he really did.

  He inched closer to her. “You might have some deal worked out with my father, but you don’t have one with me. Think about that before I catch you skulking around again.”

  Holding her head, Sister Tremblay steadied herself against a locker. Jonah backed away, leaving me to gawk over my shoulder before he pulled me down the hallway. We slipped into the church sanctuary. The stained-glass windows didn’t let in any light, and only cold streamed inside. All the warmth had gone out of the woodwork, and the church felt empty. In Minnesota, I knew churches. Soup kitchens didn’t ask questions about why you came; they simply fed you. The nuns cared. The priest ate with Drake and me. Sister Tremblay was the opposite of them, and this sanctuary didn’t offer any comfort.

  Jonah and I sat near rows of votive candles. Drake used to light candles for his buddies who hadn’t made it out alive. I was too furious to light one for him.

  “What’s the story with Tremblay?” Pulling out a prayer book from the shelf in the pew, I tried to sound nonchalant while I paged through until I returned it, grabbing for his highlighted copy of Jane Eyre beside me.

  “Sister Tremblay’s from Hemlock. That’s a problem.”

  “Does your dad know?”

  Jonah rubbed his thumb and middle finger together. “He’s known for months, since he had to bail me out of trouble before Halloween. He claims they have an arrangement, but we’d be stupid to trust she’s not talking to anyone back home.”

  “Well, does she know what you can do?”

  “As I said, she’s a problem.”

  After how he acted with Marty, I didn’t want to know what he’d do if Sister Tremblay tried hurting his family. What stopped her from contacting the Georgia police? What did she want?

  As if hearing my questions, a wisp of smoke rose where Jonah rubbed his fingers together.

  ***

  Neither Jonah nor I said anything to Vayda about my fight with Marty, though I was sure she’d guessed something from the marks on my face. After the final bell, I walked her and Jonah outside where Emory and the Chevy waited in the pick-up line. I hated seeing her with her head down, the weight of her worry growing heavier every time I saw her, and I didn’t want to add to that burden.

  As the Chevy pulled away, the tires of a silver car squealed as it lurched out of its parking spot and cut into the pick-up line. I caught sight of the driver steering erratically to try to catch up t
o the Chevy.

  Chloe had been waiting. Stalking. Now following. Jonah swore he hadn’t talked to her in weeks. What the hell was going on?

  Heidi’s minivan made its way through the pick-up line, and I climbed into the car. As Oliver tried to gnaw the ear off a teddy bear, Heidi drove through the streets of Black Orchard. The roads were winding and slick, everything glassy and frozen from a new coating of sleet. Ice cased the black trees, the cracks in the cobblestones, all of it preserved until the spring melt. My head was a mess: fighting with Marty, weirded out by Chloe, still angry from this morning. All I could do was try to remember to stay calm.

  “How was your day?” she asked.

  I steeled my jaw to avoid snapping. The hours at school should’ve been enough to clear my head, to give me the cool to be rational, but I want to rip into her. To scream. The anger I felt as I pawed through that box from the attic—how could she have kept such a secret?

  As soon as we reached home, Heidi became serious. “We need to talk.”

  I unbuckled Oliver from his car seat. He tugged on my hair and giggled, but I couldn’t even pretend to smile and carried him inside where he could go crazy with a cabinet full of Tupperware. He toddled across the floor and brought me the lid for a skillet and a wooden spoon, and I showed him to the pantry. Maybe I’d let him tear off the labels from all the cans, see how Heidi would like that.

  “I got a call from the head nun today, Ward,” Heidi said as she refilled Oliver’s cup. “What’s this about you fighting with Marty Pifkin?”

  Now that she was with me, playing dumb, I scrunched my hand into a fist and considered smashing my knuckles through the plaster wall by the table.

  “Like you give a fuck about me.”

  Bernadette scuttled up the stairs after me, her tags tinkling like chimes. Her breath stank of kibble as she snuffled my face while I crouched on the floor by my bed. Busy, dog. I waved her away, but she chewed the cuff of my jeans as I dragged the box from under my bed.