The fire in the woodstove blurred as I recalled the Christmas lights twinkling in Dad’s junk shop in Montana, always strewn above the front counter. The Cure’s doom-and-gloom anthems mixed with the chime of a sale on a vintage cash register.
“Dati had an odds-and-ends shop called Baubles,” I began. “It didn’t make much money, but we got by. In the back of the shop, past a beaded curtain, Mom arranged her tarot table. The walls were painted red, candles everywhere, totems, herb remedies. Every Tuesday night, a line of people went out of the shop and halfway down the street. Nice Mrs. Murdock who knew everyone’s underpinnings. The thing is people don’t visit a tarot reader to learn tomorrow’s weather. Mom meddled with deeper stuff.”
Ward’s eyes tightened. Sometimes the stillness I felt around him got in the way. I’d made a promise to listen to his thoughts only when he was aware of what I was doing. Right then I wished I knew what he was thinking. That my mother was trouble was obvious, but did he think we enabled her to do bad things? It was easier to project these thoughts as his than admit they could be mine.
I had to tell him everything. No more secrets.
“Like Hemlock, Mom uncovered bad deals. Someone decided the best retaliation was to yap Mom was an occultist. The rumors took on some life. Jonah and I were teased. A lot. Gypsy thieves. ‘Witch, witch, Devil’s bitch!’” I pushed back the chant in my ears. “Mom lost her temper when we had to leave our church. People made things rough for our priest. Mom was all, ‘If they want a witch, I’ll give them a witch.’ Her Mind Games went public. People painted curses on our house and Dati’s shop. We had a black barn cat. Mom wouldn’t let it in the house, but Dati called it Nyx—”
“I don’t want to know,” Ward cut me off. “Especially since you don’t have any pets now.”
Smart boy.
“We left town soon after. Mom was angry with Dati for making us go. That much I remember. She thought she could keep everything under control using her Mind Games.”
“Sounds familiar.”
Jonah was reliving Mom, but at least he guarded his abilities more often than not. As long as he didn’t get ahead of himself.
“You see why I keep the Mind Games under wraps,” I said. “I mean, how would an entire school react if Danny or Marty talked about that night in Fire Sales? Or if Chloe blabbed about how Jonah messed up her mind? People won’t let us be.”
Ward squeezed our joined hands, fire-shadows dancing over our faces. “So you flee from one town and stay until you have no choice but to escape to another.”
I inched closer to him, my lips barely touching his. “Yeah, but there’s one thing in Black Orchard I don’t want to leave behind.”
“And what’s that?”
“You.”
***
A scream reverberated off my skull.
I bolted upright in bed. My skin was slippery with sweat, and my braided hair lay damp down my back. I didn’t know if it was dream residue or only me, but the house was unsettled, the shadows too long, too wide. Too dark.
I crawled out of bed, the floor creaking, slid a cardigan over my camisole, and crept out from my room. Across the hall, Jonah’s door was ajar. He slumbered on his stomach while his iPod dock hummed a harp and string piece. A biography of Mary Shelley was open on his nightstand. I shut his door, said a prayer he would sleep with nothing going on in his mind.
Farther down the hall, a slant of moonlight streamed from Dad’s bedroom. My fingers glided over the plaster walls in search of his energy. He hadn’t been in the room since morning. The blankets were undisturbed, corners sharp, not even a pair of shoes out of place.
The scream from my nightmare cut me again with its teeth, and despite the cardigan covering my shoulders, I trembled.
The house wanted me awake. My eyes rose to the corners of the hallway, searching the darkness, but I didn’t know what I was looking for. Eyes. Something watching. I couldn’t shake the sense that I wasn’t the only one up and staring down these halls.
“Dati?” I edged along the stairway to the living room, lit with the same silver glow as upstairs. The kitchen made no sound but for the droning icebox, and the study was vacant. Yet Dad’s chair radiated warmth. Real warmth. He hadn’t been gone long. I switched on the lamp and noticed a folder open on his desk, left abruptly.
“What’s this?” I wondered.
Real estate listings, commercial and residential, comments like “private schools” and “historic district” jotted in Dad’s neat cursive. Listings in Oregon, Colorado, and Maine, were organized and clipped in the pocket. I whapped the folder closed and dropped it on the desk, hands aflame. If he was this far in his search, then a move would come soon and Black Orchard would be behind us.
A car’s engine rumbled on the driveway. Chloe? At this time of night? I darted to the window, shrouding myself in the curtain, and watched the headlights gleam against the icy driveway. Sister Tremblay, in a black dress, climbed out of an equally black sedan. Unkempt ringlets of hair spilled around her shoulders and a trail of dried blood near her lip marked her pallid face.
The barn door opened. Dad approached her with the lantern we used when camping and, ever courteous, offered his arm for balance on the ice.
No time to grab my coat, I yanked on my blue Chucks and headed outside. Every crunch of ice beneath my shoes made me flinch as I slinked closer to the barn where I squinted through a knothole. The forest shifted with the wind, but the closer I drew, I overheard Dad and Sister Tremblay. They were arguing
“Do you even know what that boy of yours is up to?” she shouted.
“Polly, you’re bleeding. You need to calm yourself,” Dad said.
She touched the blood on her lip. “Don’t tell me what to do! I can’t stand by anymore, Emory!”
Sister Tremblay shook as she spoke, and a new cut split her lip, dribbling fresh red down her chin. I pulled back from my watch point, heart amplified in my head like orchestra drums. Seeing her cuts appear from nowhere, I didn’t know whether to be terrified or astonished.
She pointed a finger. “Your boy’s working in a bad way. Jonah feeds off fear, lust, and hate. I’ve seen his handiwork, and we both knew he has his mama’s temper!”
I splayed my hands on the weathered wood. Jonah’s handiwork? He fought Marty and messed up Chloe’s mind, but to feed off it? That made him sound depraved.
Dad’s skin paled. “I can’t be with him every hour of the day. What am I supposed to do?”
Sister Tremblay wiped her lip and closed her eyes, but the anger in her voice didn’t calm. “You need to rein in Jonah or he’s gonna kill someone! Unless you bring that boy out here so we can have a word with him—”
“You’ll what?” Dad asked. “Go to the Hemlock police? That won’t give you what you want.”
The nun folded her arms. Months of watching us, gathering evidence of who we were and what we could do, what did she have planned for us? I bit my lip to stop from crying out. From screaming she had no right to hurt us. To stop myself from wheeling out of control.
A drop of red descended from her nostril, and she sniffed it back. Stress might explain the bloody nose, but the cuts that came from nowhere? A sickness crept over me, like flesh rotting from the inside out. How could such a thing happen?
“Polly, you’re all riled up,” Dad murmured. “It’s not good for you, so stop. All this anger isn’t very Christian.”
“I won’t let Jonah destroy lives like Lorna did,” she said. “He must be stopped. He needs control. If you won’t teach him, then anything he does is on your head, Emory Murdock.”
Dad’s shoulders widened with tension. “I guess it’s not enough that my life’s trashed and Lorna’s dead all because your mama wanted to avenge a piece of trailer trash like your aunt. Don’t threaten me unless you intend to follow through with it.”
I wrenched my hands around my braid. Please, Dati, don’t start
something with this woman. She’s out of her mind.
Sister Tremblay’s irises were like slits in the lantern-light. The angrier she became, the looser her accent grew, dropping all pretense of formality, until there was no mistaking where she was from. “Aunt June raised me for years before my daddy took me to Athens. June had problems, but she was my kin. Her boy lost both his parents the night she died. All June wanted was help, but your wife got her killed and orphaned that boy. Don’t forget that I knew Lorna. I knew her well, Emory. I sat through her trial. She never showed remorse, and you stayed by her side as if she’d done no wrong. You’re a stupid, stupid man. Everybody knew Lorna and Rain Killian tramped it up when you came back to Hemlock. To put it straight, your wife was a whore.”
Dad’s rage threw a ball of fire into my core. Mom and Rain? My stomach rolled with vomit, and my toes were soaked inside my Chucks. The ice and snow melted where I stood, heated by the electricity in my palms, so that watery gravel squished beneath my shoes.
I’d seen the looks Mom and Rain shared. She’d sworn they meant nothing.
Dad clenched his hands into fists, trying to appear calm but so irate even my hands quaked with anger. “Polly, I know the truth about my wife, one way or the other. No need to call upon old ghosts.”
Why didn’t he defend Mom? Had she run around on him? I couldn’t tell what went on in Dad’s head—he was too pissed. Every thought came out as a flash of red.
“Lorna was beautiful.” Sister Tremblay wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and smeared the blood so that it coated her teeth. “She was also malicious, but you were blind to that. You’ve always chosen to be blind.”
Dad glared at her. “First, you come here to tell me how to parent my son! Now you’re gonna talk to me about how I handled my wife? You think anybody could’ve restrained Lorna? Without me keeping her in line, she would’ve torn up that town!”
Sister Tremblay reeled back from his shouts and landed against a bale of hay.
Dad didn’t stop. “I’d seen Lorna go out of control before, and she promised when we got back to Hemlock things would be different. It took her a while, but it didn’t surprise me when she ran with June again. Those two were thick as thieves. It was only a matter of time before they got themselves in deep. Given what damage those two could’ve done, I’d say we’re lucky June’s the only one she killed.”
My brows knitted together. I knew Mom and June had gone way back, but unlike Rain, June never came around the house. Dad wouldn’t let her, and I had no idea why. He sheltered us from June’s family. I pressed my eye closer to the hole in the wall. Sister Tremblay pushed herself up from the hay. She pulled some straw from her snaky curls and then wrapped her blood-streaked hand around the cross pendant dangling against her breasts, winking in the lantern light.
“Lorna’s gone, but there’s no undoing how she cursed your family, Emory,” Sister Tremblay declared. “You knew those twins would be like her. You knew how destructive they would be without the right guidance. The least I could’ve hoped for was that you’d make them learn from Lorna.”
Dad retreated to the shadows, pacing away from Sister Tremblay until only the silhouette of the silver in his hair was visible. His squirminess and the forced swallow in his throat became mine. Shields of paternal steel dammed the black flood of her gaze. My knees shook, but I didn’t feel the cold night.
Lowly, he seethed, “Polly, you best leave my children out of this.”
The nun jutted out her chin. “I came here to get answers about Lorna, but I also came to watch the twins. They aren’t innocent. They will hurt people, and then they’ll be monsters.”
Dad gritted his teeth in a biting grin and laughed. “Monsters, eh? Usually, it’s witches or gypsies or freaks.”
“You can’t tell me your boy isn’t friends with the devil! I’m here to warn you, Emory: You’re going to wake up to another fire one of these nights.”
“You’re threatening me again. We both know Jonah isn’t harmless. Absolutely, he’s manipulative, but his abilities didn’t make him that way. He’s not only his mother’s child, you know. I’ve done my wrongs and repented, and I imagine Jonah will as well. With time. If you’re worried about power and Mind Games, you’re better off keeping your distance from Vayda. She’s the one to worry about.”
Orbs of energy in my palms sparked with lightning. What had I ever done to make Dad say that about me? Through the knothole, I watched the lantern, and the currents raced from my hands to the only light in the barn, which shattered in a blast of metal and glass.
Over Sister Tremblay’s scared yelp, Dad hollered, “Vayda!”
I sprinted for the woods. Pulse compressing and releasing, blood sloshing as loose and wild.
“Vayda, stop!”
I wouldn’t go back.
I was a monster, a girl to fear.
I plunged into the snowy thicket. More arduous than wading through knee-deep water, I shambled past the pines snagging my cardigan and hair. With each passing tree, wood snapped as limbs broke in response to the force purging from my being. Ice cracked and dropped into the snow, gouging the mounds.
All this time being wary of Jonah, fretting what he would do, but I was the one to fear?
I leaned against a tree and tasted saltwater from tears collecting on my lips. The bark under my hands grew hot until the wood smoked, and with a scream, I fell back. Emotion as energy, energy as heat.
Mom didn’t teach me as she had Jonah. I wouldn’t learn. I was hurt. I burned. The shocks, electric glitches, and the breaking lights happened more frequently.
Before I was always cold, but there was now a heat in me. A bit of Jonah. I couldn’t be like him. I couldn’t be like Mom.
I could hurt someone.
I could kill.
It was only a matter of time.
Chapter Twenty-One
Vayda
After midnight, Mom’s gait paces the stuffy hallway of the bungalow. I lie with my pillow over my head, covering my ears, but hope for sleep is lost as Dad murmurs, “Lorna, you’re carving a path in the floor. Come on to bed.”
“I can’t help it, Em,” she confesses. “I ain’t got any life in my hands.”
“Honey, please. Nothing’s worth getting yourself this riled up.”
“You don’t understand. I need to feel.”
Mom clambers into my room and rattles my shoulders. Yawning, I follow her to the hall where Jonah rubs sleeping sands from his face. Dad lowers his head and lags behind on the porch as Mom drags my brother and me into the dirt yard with the air thick with heat lightning and humidity.
“Can you feel it?” she asks, frenzied. “All that energy coming up from the earth, streaming toward our hands, and it’s ours!”
She clasps our fingers, a three-person circle, and a blast blinds me.
***
Emerging from the woods, I clomped through the snow toward Ward’s home. My face was numb despite the electricity crackling in my fingers. Ward’s window was too high, and ringing the doorbell so late would wake the whole house. I inhaled, filling my lungs, and pointed to the window.
Open!
The window remained still.
“Come on, Ward.” I wiped my nose on my sleeve. Hear me. “I need your help.”
The nightly train blew its whistle. Snowflakes waltzed on the wind. After a minute, Ward appeared by the glass. Barely awake, he noticed me below and opened the window.
“Vayda, what the hell are you doing?”
The words didn’t come, though I ached to scream. I collapsed to my knees in the snow. A wail built from my belly up—a primal howl. Behind me, a tree branch cracked and landed with a whoosh of falling show. The headlights in the Jaguar gleamed bright though the car was off, so garish and blinding until they cracked.
It was me. All me.
Overloaded, overburdened. Exploding.
No wonder
Ward avoided me after finding out about the Mind Games. I horrified everyone, including my own father.
Clad in a much-loved Pixies shirt and sweatpants, his boots hastily pulled on and unlaced, Ward was beside me and dragged me out of the snow. “Come inside. It’s too cold out here.”
Sobbing, shocking his hands as he guided me, I trudged toward his porch. The cries ripped from my chest and pushed me down to my knees on the steps. Ward held me close, ignoring the growing puddle of melted snow around us.
“What happened?” he asked.
My voice wouldn’t cooperate. Even if he were telepathic, my thoughts weren’t coherent enough to understand. My mom, who I thought was the most beautiful person in the world…How much had she hid? And Dad, strong and unwavering and yet broken with grief, thought I was a time bomb. He hid things as well, too many things.
With my forehead against the curve of Ward’s neck, the story of what I saw between Sister Tremblay and Dad—what I’d learned about Jonah and me, the possibility of Mom’s affair with Rain—all spilled out as messy as milk oozing from a broken glass.
The door behind us creaked. Heidi bundled her robe around her shoulders and pushed aside her strawberry curls. “What’s going on? It’s after midnight.”
“Bad night,” Ward replied. “Heidi, I can’t send her home like this.”
If she judged me, she didn’t let on and held open the door. “I’ll put on some lavender tea.”
My legs wavered. Ward shouldered most of my weight while escorting me to the couch and mouthed thanks to his half-sister. She put her hand between his shoulders and ushered him into the kitchen, leaving me alone with the ghosts whispering against my neck.
Jonah abused his powers. He was sorry about what happened to Chloe, but he was also adamant that his power could fix her. He didn’t think it was wrong to try. I knew that. My parents were in love. I knew that, too. What if Jonah’s ego ruined the good in him? What if my parents’ love wasn’t enough to stop Mom from having an affair? She smiled at Rain, let him take her hand, and kept him in her life. They shared something, and Dad never objected. It wasn’t normal. What even was normal?
A Murder of Magpies Page 20
