“Go ahead! Give them something to talk about, dumbass!” I called after him. He didn’t swivel back around but stuck up his middle finger. I could get pissed, but honestly, I’d be tempted to use Mind Games to shut up people if I could.
The crowd dispersed once the show ended, but Chloe hung close by. Her lips were a self-satisfied smile as she traced Vayda’s scratched locker.
“Who the hell let you out of your cage?” I hissed and coughed. Damn thing still wouldn’t go away.
She eyed me curiously. “Aren’t you afraid Vayda’s playing you like Jonah did me?”
“No.”
I could make some comment on how I had a brain and, thusly, was harder to manipulate, but Chloe wasn’t worth it. Jonah messed with her. She was angry. What he did was inexcusable, and it still surprised me that he’d ever thought it would be okay to “free” her mind. What she and Marty planned for Vayda—that was a different level of demented.
Leaving Chloe to admire the graffiti on Vayda’s locker, I spied Jonah and Vayda outside the lab. Vayda’s cheeks flushed, and she tugged at her hip-length hair. Drawing closer, the scent of pine knocked me back. Her hair was stuck to her hands with some kind of glue.
“What the hell?” I asked. “What’s in your hair?”
“Sap left over from the physics class’s viscosity experiment last week.” Jonah plucked at a knot in his sister’s hair. “Some kid ganked it from the supply cabinet with the other sticky gunk they tested, thought it’d be funny to pour it over Vayda.”
“How will I get this out?” she groaned. A rope of hair tore, adhered to her skin in a tacky mess.
Chloe edged close, though keeping her distance by walking by the lockers on the other side of the hallway. “Wow, Vayda. Shame about the rat’s nest in your hair, or maybe a bat got tangled up in it.”
Vayda’s mouth dropped, and a silent cry was on her breath. With a strange laugh, Chloe let herself into one of the classrooms, and Vayda wept at the torn hair stuck to her hands.
“It’ll wash out.” I reached toward her, but she waved me off and charged down the hall.
I took a step after her when Jonah stopped me. “Let her be.”
“She needs help,” I protested.
He rubbed his face with his arm. “You don’t have a clue what it’s like for us. No one’s written slurs about you or filled your gas tank with sugar. Dad’s lost three clients this week. That paper I wrote on Jane Eyre? I got a D. I’ve never gotten a D, but Sister Hillary Lauren gets away with it ’cause Monsignor hates us. Now my sister’s got a scalp of pine sap, and you’re gonna tell her everything will be okay? Fuck that.”
He took off after Vayda.
She told me before there was a pattern to the harassment—began with jokes, became vandalism, and eventually someone took it too far. I had to wonder if “too far” had come.
I skipped class. During the final bell of the day, I washed my hands. Paint dust peppered my hands. Chipping the paint was arduous, but Vayda’s locker now read itch with a scribbled blob over the W. Small victory.
That morning, I’d left a note for Heidi to pick me up an hour late, explaining I needed to do research in the library. So what if it was a lie? Within forty minutes of dismissal, the school was pretty well empty. Fifteen minutes left until Heidi arrived. This shouldn’t be hard.
The whispered pace of my stride carried down the cavernous hall of the language arts wing and through the arched doors into the church. I slipped past the open doors of the sanctuary until I reached the main office where Monsignor and Sister Tremblay worked. I peeked around the corner and spied the secretary. She hummed the Beatles’ “Yesterday” and sipped tea, thankfully distracted by the phone, and I slipped unnoticed past the doorway. The paperclips in my pocket easily straightened. I found Sister Tremblay’s door, shadowed in the corner of a hall within the office, and crouched beside it. Privacy was important for a nun specializing in counseling. How fortuitous for a delinquent with lock-picking skills.
The lock was simple, a cylinder mechanism. Line up the pins, and that was it. Despite my shaking fingers, the paperclips finagled into the keyhole. I chewed the inside of my cheek as the pins’ weight shifted against the paperclips. Three, two, one��got it. I glanced at my watch. One minute-seventeen seconds. Not shabby at all for being rusty.
The file cabinet in Sister Tremblay’s unlit office had a lock I barely needed to manipulate before it opened. Manila folders contained transcripts, notes, information on every student. Flip, flip, flip. Q, R, S—Silver, Vayda. Her file rustled with papers, and my fingers snagged Jonah’s folder as well. Dozens of pages of handwritten notes, each stating a time, place, and one sentence description of “incidents.” Mind Games. No time to read much detail, not then, and not much in the way of school papers other than vaccination notes and a homeschooling transcript, which Vayda already explained was a forgery Rain concocted to smooth away any bumps from the lack of official records. For good measure, I read over my own file. Only transcripts from Rochester and a medical report clearing me for public school. Flipping through more random folders, none of the other students had personal notes quite like those in Vayda and Jonah’s files.
The secretary’s chair squeaked.
I shoved the files in my backpack. My hearing sharpened, breath still. More Beatles’ humming.
With a phantom’s stealth, I ducked into the hallway, slid past the sanctuary, and then ran toward my locker, my boots thundering on the floor. As I rounded the corner, a cough ripped from my lungs. Heidi had taken me to urgent care last weekend when I’d come back from Fire Sales unable to stop coughing enough to work on my own metal sculptures. In spite of x-rays and breathing tests, my cough was still a mystery, the doctor called it chronic. Maybe even psychosomatic. It wasn’t in my head. The tightness in my lungs was real and had gotten worse.
“In a hurry, Mr. Ravenscroft?” Sister Tremblay asked as she stepped around a corner.
“I’m trying out for track.”
My chest gave a final cough, and I glared at her face, stoic as a statue in an abandoned cathedral. Untouched. A chill climbed my spine.
“Do you know what you’re doing with the Murdocks?” she asked.
I half-smiled. “I don’t know any Murdocks. Do you?”
“If you’re smart, you won’t fall in with them. People with uncontrolled talents such as Vayda and Jonah ruin others.”
I tightened my hold on my backpack and glanced at my scar-covered knuckles. Maybe staying with Vayda would leave me broken, but I was fractured before I ever met her.
“Why are you so hung up on them?” I asked, spinning the focus toward her.
Sister Tremblay cocked her head. “A person’s past is inescapable. Cycles repeat. Like mother, like child. They need control, and a promise must be kept.”
“What promise? To who?”
She didn’t listen, continuing, “Instead of forcing them to be trained, Emory excuses them. This can’t be allowed to go on.”
I moved closer to her. Even though she was taller than I was, she backed up. “What are you gonna do?”
“Like I said, I have a promise to keep.”
Sister Tremblay glided down the hall. I should’ve called Emory. He knew how to handle her whereas my first instinct was to trip her.
I checked my watch. Heidi should have arrived five minutes ago and had to be wondering what the hold-up was. I headed outside to my half-sister’s car. My reflection in the side mirror appeared spooked, but Heidi didn’t notice as she switched the stereo from bouncy kids’ tunes to the Carole King album I gave her for Christmas. Anything was better than “I’m a Little Teapot” set to a reggae beat.
“Want some coffee? Black, right?” Heidi asked and pulled into a drive-thru. She placed our order, and we waited. She peered at Oliver sleeping in his car seat. Sunlight streamed through the van’s windows, glinting off Heidi’s red hair. There weren’t t
oo many bright days in Black Orchard, not during the barren winter.
“Emory called this morning,” she declared, “and I have to say I was taken aback. He said you approached him about doing an apprenticeship. I had no idea.”
I wanted to work for Emory, but if things got worse for them in Black Orchard, I didn’t know what I’d do. Giving me an extra second to prepare an answer, Heidi passed my drink to me, and I sipped the bitter coffee. “Did you know Emory was on the news and written about in magazines? That stuff doesn’t matter to me, but I’m telling you ’cause he’s that good at his work.” Heidi’s lips pursed. Time to flip her to my side. I said, “Heidi, I can do this. Emory said he’d show me. He’s been training me since I began working for him.”
She traced a fingernail along the steering wheel and shifted to flicking the pine tree-shaped air freshener dangling from the mirror. “I’ve been getting calls about the Silvers, Ward.”
“Whatever you’ve heard—”
“Are they in trouble?”
I stopped my knee from bouncing. “Nobody’s perfect.”
She quieted and focused on the road. At a red light, she put her hand on my shoulder. “I care about you. Starting over was part of why we let you live with us.”
Starting over was why the Silvers might have to leave Black Orchard. Was I willing to give up everything Heidi and Chris gave me to run with Vayda’s family? Was that even an option? I’d been a runaway before…
“I know what I’m doing with the Silvers,” I said.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
God, I hoped so.
At the house, Bernadette waited by the door and headed for her special spot under a spruce tree. Her wagging tail thanked me for letting her out, and I tied her collar to a lead attached to the porch. Bernie moaned as I massaged the stiff fur on her back. The dog needed a bath. Badly. I pushed her brows from her face, and she panted, happily dazed enough to make me snicker. She liked to watch the ravens from her basket even on cold days, though she usually whined to come inside after ten minutes. Time enough for me to clean up the mess of scrap metal I’d promised Heidi I’d sort last night.
The corner of the driveway I’d high-jacked for metal sculpture had grown to taking up the bulk of the driveway, leaving only a narrow crevice to squeeze the cars through to get to the garage. The cold had done nothing to distract me from sculpture. Looming in sharp-edged curves and spires, I’d crafted trees from refurbished copper. A forest of dangerous metal. Scars twisting on my hands from all the times I’d cut myself, the roots of these trees were in me. Maybe that was why I didn’t bend once I’d made up my mind.
The door leading from the open garage into the kitchen clattered. As Heidi carried out a bag of papers for recycling, a shrillness in her voice caught my ear as the wind lifted her words.
“Kate, do you hear yourself? That’s nuts…I don’t care what people say. Ward’s around them all the time. The Silvers are decent people.” Her face darkened as she listened then hit the disconnect button, standing with one hand to her forehead and the other pressed into the small of her back.
I placed a sheet of copper onto a stack by one of the sculptures. “Who was that?”
“Kate Halvorsen, Chloe’s mom,” Heidi replied. “She’s the fifth person to call today about the Silvers. There’s an informal concerned citizens meeting tomorrow night. What is this about, Ward? Emory said they’re Romani, but Kate said Vayda’s a witch. An actual witch.”
I crossed my arms. What did it say about me that the first response in my mind was the canned one I’d learned from Jonah and Vayda? “People don’t like anything out of the ordinary.”
Heidi nodded. I knew she believed in giving people the benefit of a doubt.
“Why don’t you get Bernadette and give me a hand with dinner?” she asked. “Before all these phone calls, I’d invited the Silvers over. They need someone in this town on their side.”
The way she rested her hand on my shoulder, my half-sister and I weren’t close, but she could be trusted. I split off from her and walked around the house to the front porch.
Bernadette’s wicker basket was empty.
“Come here, Dog!” I whistled. The end of her tie-out coiled like a frozen cobra in the snow. No sign of her. I jogged an oblong circle around the house, searching the woods marking the property line. Nothing, just some paw prints by the usual tracks left by the cars’ tires and footprints on the snow.
My hand yanked open the front door and I called into the house as Chris’ Jaguar pulled into the driveway. “Bernadette’s gone!”
Retracing her tie-out and doddering trail, the only prints I saw were within the length of the leash. If she’d gotten off her lead, she’d have left a sign.
Chris waited with Heidi on the front porch. “You didn’t find her yet? She never goes beyond that pine tree.”
“She’s missing,” I said, again scanning the woods. The sun was lowering. Occasionally, coyotes and even a badger crept along the trees since I moved to Black Orchard, but what if something else stalked those woods, waiting until nightfall to emerge from its den?
Heidi nudged her husband’s arm. “You go out, Chris. Emory and the twins will be here for dinner soon. I’m sure they’ll help us. We’ll find her.”
Chris took a flashlight since a gray dog blended in all too easily with the snow at dusk. He walked along the evergreens, called her name, and then headed out in his Jaguar. I slumped on the front steps. I shouldn’t have left her alone. She was old. She was mostly blind and didn’t hear well. No wonder Drake didn’t trust me with a pet. I couldn’t care for anything. On nights when my insomnia was bad and I paced the house, I wasn’t alone. Bernadette paced with me.
Headlights on the driveway. The Chevy’s tires ground to a halt and the Silvers approached the house, a trio of black hair and shadowy faces, but Heidi got to them first, out of my earshot. Vayda’s expression fell, and she slipped away from her family. Her hair was more than a foot shorter than it’d been when she came to school that morning.
“You cut it off,” I remarked, pointing to the waves falling at her chest. “Looks nice. Kind of weird.” Jonah’s hair was also shorter, barely below his ears.
“Your dog’s missing and you want to talk about my hair?” she asked.
“Well, it’s better than worrying about what could’ve happened to Bernadette.”
Emory squeezed my shoulder before he followed Heidi inside. I stayed in the cold dusk with Jonah, Vayda, and a strange weight in the air between us. I should’ve been out finding Bernadette. My legs moved with speed over the snow. One more sweep around the border of the woods. Nothing. Nothing at all but for a weird glimpse between Jonah and Vayda. They were talking and didn’t even open their mouths.
“What?” I asked. “Do you guys know something?”
Vayda reached for the ends of her hair to twirl them on her fingers but missed, still not used to the new length. She backed off from the porch and walked the driveway, pausing alongside each of the metal trees I’d hammered together.
“I told you about Nyx, the cat in Montana,” she murmured.
“Sis,” Jonah said, “you don’t think—”
Her eyes shimmered with tears. “Can’t you feel the energy they left behind?”
He dropped his head. “Yes.”
Something cold and wet opened up inside my gut. They knew what happened to my dog. Bernadette was gone because of them? Because I wouldn’t give up on Vayda? My hands began to shake, the cold inside me surging with a tingling that boiled.
“Where’s my dog?” I placed my hands on Vayda’s shoulder, turning her toward me. “Was it Marty?”
“Chloe,” she whispered.
My chin shuddered. Fury. The prickling shocks of electricity between my palms and her shoulders felt like hundreds of needles piercing the same spots on my flesh.
“I left Bernadette alone for ten minut
es, maybe fifteen, and that girl came and took her?” My voice cracked with the question, didn’t even sound like me but someone more fragile.
“This isn’t your fault, gadjo,” Vayda assured me, dropping her stare to the ground. “I’m so sorry. If I’d known you could be hurt because of me—”
“Stop! Just stop!”
My lungs began to close up the longer I kept my hands on Vayda. Her palms glowed pale blue-white. I lowered my head, my cheek pressing against Vayda’s. All I could think was how that dog was the first thing in Black Orchard to like me and I let her down.
More fury. Now guilt. Now sadness.
A tornado of emotion blowing me apart.
“Ward, let go of me,” Vayda whispered, begged. “You’re going to get hurt if you hang on.”
Her hands crackled with electricity, and a fever-red blush colored her skin. She stepped back, staggering, and fell to her knees. Jonah and I were on either side of her, but he blocked my hands from taking hold of his sister.
Words from a night in December, the night of Jonah’s assault in Fire Sales, reechoed in my skull. People’s emotions emit energy. There’s something in me pulling that energy. I shut it down as best I can unless someone reaches to me. She hadn’t been able to shut me down this time. I’d overloaded her. Jonah held Vayda’s hand and lifted his free one, eyes scrunched shut.
In a sudden gust, the forest of metal trees upended, a storm of edges and spikes that could slice and spear. They lay against the snowy ground like deadly playthings, and then Jonah made a beckoning gesture with his fingers. The sculptured trees righted themselves again.
Somehow, someway, Jonah and Vayda worked together, sucking and expelling energy.
If Jonah was a gun and could fire off, then Vayda gave him the ammo.
“I have to go,” Jonah said as he rose to his feet. “I promise, Ward. I’ll make this right.”
I crouched on the ground beside Vayda, not taking my sight off Jonah. “You’ve done enough damage.”
“I’m gonna get your dog back. I swear to it.”
A Murder of Magpies Page 23
