Heidi entered the living room. I raised my barriers to block all confusion and hesitance streaming off her. No more currents tonight. I didn’t want to feel. I wanted numbness.
She offered a pair of dry socks. “Why don’t you take off those wet shoes and put these on?
The rubber of my shoes squawked as I kicked them off. Heidi picked up my sneakers and disappeared. A moment later, thuds and clunks rang through the quiet house, shoes spinning through the clothes dryer, and she wordlessly headed upstairs.
The phone rang. With Bernadette following close behind, Ward held out a mug of tea while on the phone. “Yeah, Emory, she’s here…I don’t think she wants to talk.” I shook my head, and he said, “Yeah, I’ll take care of her.” He clicked off the phone and set it on the coffee table. “Your dad wanted to make sure you’re safe. He said he’s sorry.”
I sipped the tea sweetened with milk and honey, my raw throat coated with healing warmth. Bernadette lay across my feet. Her body was a heating pad and thrummed with gentleness. Ward eased the mug from my hands and didn’t bother to use a coaster as he set it on the table. “I can’t make you any better, but I’ll listen. All night, if you want.”
“Give me the phone.”
My heart hiccupped as I dialed Rain’s number, digits I’d had memorized since I was tiny. The grandfather clock read one a.m. In Georgia, the time was an hour later. Rain picked up on the second ring.
“We need to talk,” I told him.
He yawned. “Vayda girl, unless someone’s dead, it can wait.”
I didn’t give him a chance to hang up. “Were you screwing my mom? I know something happened.”
Quiet. The clenching in my chest spread to my muscles. I couldn’t get in his mind. He was too far away to try.
“Darlin’, your mama was special. I knew her all my life, but she loved your daddy like no other,” he answered. “That was plain as day back when I was seventeen, and it still holds true now. Call me after the sun comes up, and we’ll talk more if you like.”
As I clicked off the phone, my mouth tasted like I was sucking metal, but the kind of sickness I had was in my soul. Ward and I said nothing. He hugged me, occasionally swiping his lips or his fingers over my cheek. Lots of slow exhalations as I let the energy out of my body, not feeling hot or cold.
Feeling nothing.
For once.
***
Ward leaned over from the driver’s seat and kissed me, hungry and apologetic and not giving a damn for who saw. As much as I wanted, I couldn’t let go, not even for him.
“No matter what, Vayda,” he promised as I unbuckled my seatbelt.
“I know.”
“I mean it. I don’t care what anybody says.”
The front door of the stone house opened, and Dad waited on the step. The warmth of my shoes from the dryer cooled far too fast, and I couldn’t tell how much was the winter and how much was simply me.
“I’ll call you in the morning,” I told Ward.
“First thing?”
“Always.”
One last kiss from Ward’s warm lips, and I climbed out of the car, keeping my head down as I staggered up the front steps. Dad stretched out his arm.
“Vayda.”
I brushed him off, shocking him with electricity, and entered the house. “Don’t you dare touch me.”
Dad closed the door behind us and locked it from top to bottom, deadbolts, chains, and sliding locks. I cracked my knuckles and huddled away in the kitchen where the dishwasher needed unpacking.
Jonah stood by with a towel. “Need a hand with the dishes?”
He didn’t want to make me better—we both knew he was horrible at calming me down. I set a coffee mug in the towel. It was two in the morning, but what else would we do? Sleep wasn’t an option.
“Both of you need some rest,” Dad said behind me as I aligned the cups in the cabinet. “Get on up to bed.”
“You want me out of your sight, is that it?” My chin wiggled, raging. I couldn’t hold back. “You’d be better off keeping your distance from Vayda. She’s the one to worry about. Real nice, Dati.”
“That wasn’t a conversation for you. You don’t know the context.”
I thought his glasses made him seem old, but it wasn’t his glasses. It was him. The years had worn on him like a constant gale. Me? I looked like Mom, and I hated it because people expected me to be the same as her.
I scoffed and tried not to sound as unstable as I felt. “How could you say that about me? I keep the house in order and care for you and Jonah ’cause you sulk around all the damn time and he’s out doing God knows what! I take care of everything! I keep my shit together!”
“Magpie…” Dad stepped toward me.
The cups in the open cabinet rattled.
“Don’t ‘Magpie’ me!” I shrieked. “When you should’ve defended us to that woman, you stabbed us in the back.”
I rushed out of the kitchen. A succession of pops and breaking glass exploded from the cabinets. I didn’t dare turn back, didn’t care to clean up the mess, but before I could charge the stairs, Jonah grabbed my arm. The shocks crackling under our skin barely stung. “Get out of my way.”
“Sis, let Dati talk,” Jonah argued.
I caught sight of my strained jaw in the wall-length mirror by the stairs. “I’m sick to death of apologies that mean nothing. All the times you’ve said you’re sorry—you don’t mean it. If Dati apologizes, it’s another lie. I heard his true feelings about us, how you—you who’s been messing around with people’s thoughts—are fine and I’m destructive. He can’t take that back.”
Jonah released my arm and sat on the steps, burying his face in his arms. Nothing could undo tonight. Nothing could make me un-hear the words.
I tore up the stairs, ignoring the sizzle of the electric wall sconces behind me, and hurled myself onto my bed, onto the vintage quilt where I curled into a ball. My eyes didn’t run or swell with tears. I’d cried too much. I had nothing left. In the attic, the sound of wings flapped as birds banged into the rafters, still trapped. If only there was some way to free them.
After several minutes, Dad knocked on my door. “I’m coming in.”
He sat on my bed, angled so I couldn’t see his face. Yet his need for atonement was palpable. He spoke softly as if reciting the same rhymes I’d learned as a child, the ones about blackbirds in pies and blind mice.
“I’m sorry you overheard what you did.”
“Don’t try to apologize,” I muttered.
He fidgeted with a paper scrap from his pocket. “Give me a chance. I worry about you. I’ve watched you torment yourself ’cause you hate your abilities.” He nodded to Jonah leaning against my doorway. “Maybe you like what you can do too much.”
Jonah sighed. “Probably.”
He narrowed his eyes, ignoring my brother’s flippancy, and continued, “If you’d both learn to control your Mind Games, I wouldn’t worry as much. You’re both pendulums stuck swinging one way without ever coming back to center. If you could even out…”
Didn’t he know that a hug and some talk wouldn’t gloss over that he betrayed my trust? He called me destructive. I was destructive. I could blow the house apart. I could explode everything.
“The last two years haven’t been easy,” Dad admitted. “I know you’re scared the same thing as what happened to your mama will happen to you.”
“It always goes back to her,” I said. “Why’d she have to be such trouble?”
“She wasn’t with everyone she met. She and June went far back, enough so to have one hell of a feud, but June kept coming ’round, so I thought they were mending fences.” Dad arched an eyebrow and shook his head. “Those two, like a couple of mad, feral cats.”
“And Sister Tremblay is June’s niece?” Jonah asked.
Dad nodded. “She knows too much about us, but it’s best to keep he
r close.”
“So is it Sister Tremblay that you’re worried about or…” I didn’t finish. I didn’t like the idea that my parents had that many enemies.
“Polly’s here ’cause she needs to be. She’s June’s kin and that brings problems, but there’s no telling what hell Brett’s crazy family would unleash if they got wind of where little Polly, who ran off and joined a convent, was now. It’s why I tell you mind yourselves. The problem with hiding is that you don’t know who knows what. Cardinal rule: You never know who’s watching, and I promise you someone is always watching.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Vayda
Usually weekends brought in business to Fire Sales, yet today was dead but for the occasional slice of Dad’s southern twang as he sorted out an order gone wrong on the phone. I passed through the storeroom for a bucket of soap solution to clean a few wood pieces in need of attention. Still on the phone, Dad caught sight of me, popped some nicotine gum, and strangled the air.
Back in the showroom, I began cleaning off years of grime from an apothecary chest, only barely noticing the chime of the entry bells. Ward leaned on a Louis the XVI chair, no greeting but for a grin that curled up his lips while his eyes roamed over the way I filled out a shirt of his I’d snatched for myself. Stains from oil soap and wet dust covered the fabric, and I’d paired it with a ratty pair of jeans I kept for days when I dealt with furniture.
“As much as I like the show you’re giving me, pay attention to what you’re doing, Vayda,” he said.
Damn it. A piece of wood from a carved cherub snapped.
Ward took the broken wing from my hand. “I’ll fix it.”
“Look at you, gadjo, thinking you can repair that naked baby angel,” I teased and dropped my rag back into the warm, soapy water.
“I’ve learned a lot from your dad.” He examined the wing’s feathers. Soft wood, white walnut, not at all like the black birds in my memories. “I’m thinking of breaking something in Heidi’s house to try to fix it.”
I giggled. “And if you can’t?”
“Then I’ll beg for help from Fire Sales’ restoration guru.”
Wiping my hands on the back of my jeans, I laughed again. The sound was foreign in the still shop, foreign to me period. Ward put his arms around me and pulled me close to feel him both soft and hard. He took my chin between his thumb and forefinger, and I wondered if my exhaustion showed in my face.
“I’ve done a lot of reading up on the Romani. I know about how trades are passed down in families,” he said. “Your dad’s woodworking wasn’t passed down to him, but your mom read the tarot cards. She taught you how to read palms.”
As Ward let go of me, I sat again beside the apothecary chest and inspected the crevices I’d been scrubbing moments before. He tried to make me better, but there were too many sore wounds carved in my mother’s name. Palm reading, it was a parlor trick. It wasn’t her real trick. That was something I’d have to learn on my own. Her way of doing it, Jonah’s way, they weren’t my way.
I picked up the soapy rag and wrenched out the extra water. “You know, maybe what they say about people like me is true. We don’t know how to be honest. My mom was close to Rain. She knew him before she knew Dati. He used to ask Mom to sit in court and listen to the jury’s thoughts, let him know if he needed to tweak his case to snag them.”
Ward knelt behind me, wrapped his arm at my waist, and rested his chin on my shoulder. “Is this supposed to shock me?”
“Maybe.” I ran my cloth over the apothecary chest again. Scrub, scrub, scrub. “My mom messed up things for a lot people, not just Dati. Not just Jonah and me. Her own father couldn’t be seen talking to her, Ward. That doesn’t happen because of some piddly offense. Rain told Dad that being so close to my parents hurt his law career.”
I swiveled to face Ward, his lips tuck together in thought, but all he did was tip back his head to the fluorescent lights. “Drake gave me two pieces of advice that have stuck with me. The first was to head to the free clinic if my prick burned.” I gave an unexpected laugh, and he waited until I was finished to add, “The second was if you make a bed, you damn well better be ready to lie in it.”
That advice applied to my parents, obviously, but did he know how it applied to himself? Did he know what he’d gotten himself into by being with me? My dad made a promise to keep my mother safe, and he couldn’t keep that promise. I wanted to believe I could make my bed with Ward, that he could with me, but too many watchers, too many horrible things could go wrong.
The shop’s door chimed again. Marty maneuvered past a row of dressers and dragged his finger along a fireplace mantle carved with laurel branches, sticking out his tongue at the dust.
I rose to my feet and hollered, “Dati! We got a problem!”
“Pifkin, you aren’t welcome here.” Jonah emerged from behind a china cabinet, dusting his hands on his dark cargo pants. He’d had so many barriers up while doing his own cleaning, I’d lost track of my twin. “Besides school, you can’t come within a hundred feet of me. You want your bail revoked?”
Marty glanced over at my brother and straightened his back. “I’m not here for you.” He walked around to my side of the counter. “What’s up, Vayda?”
“You got five seconds before I call the cops to get your ass hauled out of here. That’s what’s up,” I snapped.
His hand slapped my backside hard enough to sting. A light bulb overhead popped and sprinkled glass on the floor. Even my brother and Ward were too stunned to speak.
“Don’t you ever touch me again!” I shouted.
“Or you’ll do what? Push me? Shove me? Don’t tell me the only Silver with magic fingers is Jonah.” His chest swelled, smug as he leaned over a counter, level with my breasts. I hoped he saw the poisonous glare I gave him. “I want to make a deal.”
“What type of deal?” Jonah asked.
“I’m in trouble after whooping your ass. My court date’s coming up next month, and I’m gonna be convicted and sent to juvie.”
Ward snickered. “You’ll be eaten alive. There’s always some kid in juvie wanting to prove himself by taking out the biggest guy in the cafeteria, which will be you.”
The edge came off Marty’s ego. His sneer faltered, but he recovered quickly. “Yeah, obviously, I can fight, and I’ve got nothing to lose.” He looked from Jonah to me. “But you two have everything to lose. What could be making you Silvers squirm? Maybe you’ve got something you need kept quiet, a secret that could flip your world inside-out.”
A defensive kick tried to find its way to my voice, but Jonah stayed me by raising his hand. “What makes you think anybody’ll believe a dumbass like you?”
Marty grinned, scavenger-like. “My mom gets together with her friends. I hear the way they talk. Your last name comes up all the time. Black Orchard is small enough that, if you weren’t born here, you don’t belong. For a couple of years, people have wondered about you. They want to believe you have a secret, and they’d make sure everybody finds out what you’re hiding. How long do you think you could stand having the whole town breathing down your neck?”
Ward wedged between Marty and me. The tightening of his hand into a fist, the urge to clock Marty in the jaw, I felt it coming off him, unguarded and unasked for, and I retaliated by stroking his neck with my fingers and a wave of calm.
All it took to create a panic was one person igniting a fire.
I asked Marty, “What’s stopping you from blathering to everybody? You’ve had plenty of time to run your mouth, but you haven’t yet. Why now?”
He gave a perverted curl of his lip. “Vayda, how far will you go to keep your little secret?” He glanced at Ward. “Is that how you got her? ’Cause you found out and the only way she shuts you up is to get on her knees and beg?”
Ward’s fist moved quickly, but not as fast as Jonah’s arms reaching to pull him back. I shouted at Marty, cussing h
im out in my mother’s tongue. The commotion caused enough noise to draw my father out of the storeroom. “Boy, get outta my shop. If I catch you hassling these kids again, forget the police. I’ll deal with you myself. You understand?”
A bluish shadow tainted Marty’s skin as Dad tugged on his bicep and towed him to the entrance, but Marty pulled back, hollering, “If you thought what happened to Jonah was bad—”
Dad heaved him outside. “Shut your mouth and get out!” He whipped around to face us, composed on the outside, but his voice gave enough of a quake to give him away. “Listen to me, all three of you. I want y’all to stay away from him. That Pifkin boy is nothing but smoke. No fire. But even smoke can do you in if there’s enough of it.”
***
A snowball sailed past my head and wetly thumped against the barn. I smiled at Ward drying his hands on his jeans. Jonah buttoned a thrift-store trench coat and stood close enough for his hot breath to skim the crown of my head. “You don’t have to do this, Sis.”
I chucked a snowball, watching it splat beside the remnants of Ward’s, and wrapped tighter in my own coat. “I can’t live like this. Marty’s scared. Animals attack when scared. This stops tonight.”
The energy balling in my fingertips intensified, supplemented by my every shiver, and I clenched my hands to dim the electricity sneaking out. A spark and snuff like flint steel striking against itself to procure a flame.
Save the energy for later, Jonah intoned in my mind.
I’ll be fine.
I thought the dark mornings and darker nights of winter couldn’t get any blacker, but the cold and storms had been unrelenting. Hills of snow and ice buried Black Orchard. Ward pitched another snowball, this time into the woods.
A Murder of Magpies Page 21
