Jonah disappeared into the dusky trails of sunset growing longer across the driveway. The Chevy’s engine sputtered as Jonah drove away.
“Where’s your brother?” Emory asked as he came onto the porch to investigate the noise.
“Looking for Bernadette,” Vayda replied. It wasn’t a lie.
“It’s too dark to find her tonight. Call the boy and tell him to come back, Magpie.”
Vayda furrowed her brow. “He doesn’t have his cell phone.”
Emory reached for the screen door. “Like either of you needs a phone.”
Vayda and I waited on the front step, her hand in mine. My lungs ached, wheezing with each breath, but she hugged me close. The tighter her hold, the stronger the calm she poured into me, making me numb so time meant nothing. The sky blackened and night birds squawked as they swooped around the trees. Chris returned from his hunt for Bernadette, dog-less since he didn’t have the lead Jonah did, but Vayda and I remained on the porch.
“It’s stupid to get this worked up over a dog,” I muttered.
“No, it’s not.” Vayda brought my hand up to her mouth and kissed my knuckles. “You have no idea how sorry I am. This is what it’s like to be with someone like me, Ward.”
I knew that.
Knowing and living were different though.
“I’m not going back to school,” she said. “At least not for a while.”
“Because of the bullshit with Chloe and—”
“I’ve been suspended.” Her voice was hoarse. “Jonah’s out, too. Monsignor came to the physics lab after you skipped. Jonah got into it with Marty, shoving each other. Monsignor believed it when some girls said I started it. There’d been too many problems with my brother and me. Marty, Chloe, they did it. They got rid of us.”
“What?” I didn’t believe it. “But that’s not fair. It’s not true.”
“Cardinal rule: It doesn’t matter what’s true; all that matters is what people want to believe. They want to believe we come from the devil.”
It was so unfair. No one would listen to her and Jonah. I held her closer and said a silent prayer.
After a while, two pairs of headlights crept up the driveway. The Chevy followed a car I didn’t recognize. Jonah hopped out of his dad’s car and charged over to the driver’s door of a blue sedan, practically pulling Danny out of his seat.
“Hand her over,” Jonah ordered.
“I’m getting there,” Danny croaked from behind a puffy lower lip. Had Jonah done that to him? Something told me that was hardly the worst Jonah’s fists saw while he was gone.
Danny pulled open the door to the backseat and hunched inside to retrieve a bundled up blanket. He kept his eyes on the ground as he trudged to where I waited on the front step, arms offering up the blanket. I hesitated to take it. What if I unwrapped it and Bernadette was—
The jingle of tags and a snort flooded my veins with relief. I uncovered Bernadette’s head and felt the warmth of her tongue licking my hand.
“My dog,” I choked.
“Tell him what you did,” Jonah barked.
Danny didn’t delay. The words tumbled out of him like rocks sliding down an avalanche. “Be careful of Chloe. Marty’s bad enough, but that girl’s full-on psycho. Marty called to brag that he and Chloe had your dog, and I heard her saying what she planned to do.” He shuddered. “She’s lost her mind. I couldn’t let them do that and was gonna bring the dog back, but…”
Jonah smacked the back of his head. “You fucking liar. You denied having her. Don’t you know it’s impossible to lie to me?”
“I was gonna bring her back, I swear!” Danny rubbed his head and backed away. “I couldn’t let Chloe and Marty do what they said they wanted to.”
The front door opened. Chris stepped outside and exhaled as he saw me cradling the old schnauzer in my arms. He eyed Jonah. “You found her?”
“Something told me where to go, who to talk to,” Jonah replied and elbowed Danny. “Isn’t that right?”
“Sure,” Danny blurted. “I gotta go.”
He hustled his ass back to his car and sped away so fast the wheels shot an arc of snow across the driveway as he fishtailed toward the street. I really didn’t care where he went. My dog was back, and after a quick check over from her ears to the toenails that clicked on the floor behind me hundreds of times, she seemed to be okay. Before Vayda ushered me inside the house, I ran my fingers over Bernadette’s ears and her chin.
Good dog. Damn good dog.
After dinner, upstairs, I lay on my bed in the darkness, Bernadette on my chest and Vayda curled up against my shoulder. We didn’t talk or kiss, simply held one another, and let our minds grow heavy. My thoughts were heavier.
I awakened after one in the morning. The room was hushed. Vayda was gone, and Bernadette had taken her place. Soft snoring. Legs wiggly with dog dreams. I got up to brush my teeth then wandered downstairs to the kitchen for some water. In the living room, Chris watched television and muted the stand-up comedian.
“You’re up late,” I said.
“Long night. Lots on my mind,” he replied. “It could’ve ended badly tonight, Ward.”
An angry nail hammered into my mind, sinking through my brain. Anyone could tell Bernadette was feeble. To take her away from what she knew, to terrify her—that person was soulless. Chloe had every right to be furious with Jonah, but what she’d plotted for Vayda, for Bernadette, was dangerous. It was more than revenge. It was murderous.
“Emory said you kids are having problems. Heidi’s gotten calls about them. About you.” Chris didn’t sound angry but worried. “What do you know, Ward?”
I sat beside him on the couch and stared at the hushed television. “Oh, I know something.”
I knew Chloe and Marty were going down.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Vayda
Jonah brought me a slice of red velvet cake and perched on the sales counter. “Happy birthday, Sis.”
As we’d watched the sun move above the horizon this morning, gold and silver rays streamed over our faces and anointed our seventeenth year. We were strangers in these bodies. He hadn’t needed to cut his hair, too. All that black hair lying on the barn floor as if a dark bird was ripped apart, feather by feather.
I produced two books from below the register and dropped them with a thud. Amy Lowell’s two-volume biography of John Keats, 1925 first edition, signed.
“Awesome,” he whispered while the book’s spine cracked upon opening. “This’ll occupy me for a spell.”
“You need something to keep you out of trouble,” I teased. “You and your writers. Aren’t our own lives enough?”
His hand hovered over the pages. “Writers get inside people’s heads. Get into thoughts and feelings.” His voice was somber, face forlorn. “You think there are more people like us?”
“Somewhere,” I ventured. “Can’t imagine we’re the only ones.”
My brother grabbed his coat and tucked his books under his arm. “I’m heading out. We won’t get any customers. Ostracism at its finest, right?”
The showroom had been empty for days. Since our suspension, spending time at Fire Sales was safest, but the idea of people tracking our every move intensified no matter how cordoned off we were from the rest of Black Orchard. The only people in town who spoke to us were Ward’s family. At the market, I couldn’t choose which box of speckled eggs from the farm or select winter squashes without meeting someone’s scowl. Dad said to hold up our heads, but the weight of angry stares curved my spine.
At home, the currents should have abated, and yet they were worse. If I walked past the mirror, it watched. If I walked down the wall, it was too quiet and the darkness breathed behind me. Sometimes, at night, I lay awake in bed, listening to the wind shift in the attic like footsteps, and in a half-dream, I’d hear my mother’s voice whispering, They’re coming, Vayda. Soon.
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Last night, Heidi and Chris brought Ward over for supper. It didn’t take long before Heidi admitted she attended the “concerned citizens” meeting. Funny, we never knew half the town didn’t trust us ever since Dad opened up Fire Sales. Maybe I should’ve been shocked a mob with pitchforks and torches hadn’t shown up at our house. Dad was in scramble-mode. Banishment moved faster here than down south, probably since the people were so cold they did their duty and hurried back inside.
Since Bernadette’s disappearance and return two nights ago, Ward fox-holed himself in the shop after school, keeping his dog close by in the storeroom. He should have never aligned himself with us. No apology would suffice.
Dad lugged out a rosewood cabinet with an iron door. Busy work for my gadjo. I prepped my barriers to take the full strength of his emotions, yet for the first time in two days, he wasn’t blitzed by rage but blunted, anesthetized. It was a relief to slide through without any hang-ups once again. Dad crouched down and patted Bernadette’s back before focusing his attention on Ward, who scraped the rusted iron with a sanding cloth.
“Not quite.” Dad pointed to a clean spot on the bars. “This is what you want. Don’t scrape any farther or you’ll damage the metal. When it comes to the wood, scarcely touch it. Rosewood’s naturally oily, so the finish darkens with age. The flaws give it life.”
Ward continued sanding the rust, flake by flake. A proud smile poked Dad’s mouth, and he offered his student a wire brush to clean between the bars. Ward removed the gloves Dad insisted we use when handling a restoration. “Why are you helping me?”
“’Cause if I don’t, you’ll do more damage instead of fixing things,” Dad replied. “I’ve made mistakes. They cost me. If I can you teach something I learned by messing up, well, that’s worth my time.”
Guardedness haunted Ward, and he spied me eavesdropping. His mouth ticked, too much anger still running through him. I inspected his work and gave Dad a thumbs-up before he headed back to his desk. For several minutes, I observed Ward while he scraped and brushed, checking his progress between passes. He was heavy with thought if I sought his energy, but I wanted the slide and dive we used to have. I wanted us back before we hurt.
“Dati’s trying to wait until the end of the school year to move, give us time to properly relocate his store and transfer our records,” I told him. “But it might be sooner.”
“How soon?” he asked.
“Spring break. If we can hold out that long.”
He didn’t break away from the cabinet. “Where are you going?”
“Mom got anxiety attacks in big cities, too much energy, so Dati won’t move to one. He’s found some property near Lily Dale—some spiritualist community in New York. Real big into séances. Jonah and I won’t be so extraordinary there. Being a vessel through which the dead speak trumps empaths, hands down.”
A wry arc tilted his lips as he imitated my accent. “Why, Vayda, were you being funny?”
“Your sense of humor’s rubbed off on me.”
“Hell, I want to rub on you.”
I tensed, shutting my eyes to beat back the memory of Marty holding me down in the snow. Not the same as Ward. Not the same at all, I reminded myself. Because what Ward wanted wasn’t to take, to overpower, demand. What he wanted was to share. Together.
“You’ll get your chance,” I promised, running my fingers up his spine.
We had plans for my birthday that night. Coffee. Movie. Time alone. In the dark. Every time Ward kissed me, time and trouble pressed in on us so that I felt his hunger as if it were our last chance.
I tugged my hand away from Ward’s back as Dad walked past, carrying the mail, much of it documents for his wares. Strange how precise his furniture’s history was while he muddled his past. Everything, his family’s disownment, his clan’s abandonment, the miscarriage Mom had before us, his identity as Emory Silver, all of it bricked up behind his personal barrier. Even before Mom died, he was a man of secrets.
Ward hid things, too. A painful history, ideas about what he planned to do, he was private. Which was why I trusted him.
“Son-of-a-bitch.” Dad held up a piece of paper. “Magpie, where’s your brother?”
“He’s not here.” I gestured to the paper. “What’s that?”
“A letter from Polly Tremblay. She must’ve dropped it in the mail slot overnight and Jonah found it. I suppose this here letter made him take off.” Anger steeled his voice as he read aloud, “‘Emory, I’m afraid my files on Jonah and Vayda have been stolen. You know how delicate that information is and if it falls into the wrong hands—’”
“I have them,” Ward interrupted.
The cold filtering through me halted. He what?
Dad snapped up from reading the letter. “And what in God’s name do you think you’re doing with them?”
“She’s been hanging around so much. I wanted to know what she knew. She’s been making threats.”
Darkness spread through the green of Dad’s eyes. “Boy, you stuck your nose where it didn’t belong. What do you mean by making threats?”
“She said that Jonah and Vayda needed to be controlled, that they ruin people. And she said she needed to keep a promise.”
“Jesus.” Dad pushed his fingers through his hair and motioned for Ward and me to sit on the same fainting couch where I’d become Ward’s girlfriend months ago. Bernadette whined and Dad lifted her into Ward’s lap. “Polly didn’t threaten anyone. She’s on our side.”
What? I popped my knuckles and released some of the uncertainty building in me. Months of being afraid of what she knew about us, of not feeling safe when she was around, and she meant us no harm?
“We don’t agree, never have and never will,” Dad went on. “You know that saying of keeping your friends close and your enemies closer? That’s Polly. Because of the hell that fired up when Lorna got June killed, I always feared someone from Hemlock would come. Figured it’d be somebody from Brett’s side since he took the fall.”
“But she’s not Rom, right?” I asked, and as much as I hated Sister Tremblay, I almost was hopeful to have another Romani nearby, even one who seemed to hate us.
“No. Southern bred and born, far as I know. Polly’s intimidating as all get out, but if anything ever happened to me, she’d be there for you.”
A million questions swam through my mind. Faster and faster. I felt like I was spinning and had reached the point of vertigo.
“Why Sister Tremblay?” I asked. “Rain was so mad when he found out she was here.”
“I couldn’t tell Rain ’cause I knew he’d get his fingers in the pie. I wanted them separate ’cause he never liked Polly’s kin. He grew up with June, and there was bad blood. When we came here, I needed someone else who knew your mama well. Polly and your mama were friends of a kind. Lorna babysat Polly as a little girl. Back in the day we returned to Hemlock after Montana, she and Polly caught up. Lorna saw Polly has some affinity for emotions. Polly joined the convent in hopes of getting rid of it.”
“Another empath?” Ward wondered.
Dad held up his fingers, indicating a little bit. “Let’s call her sensitive.”
“Then in the barn that night and the cuts on her face appeared,” I ventured.
“She was angry with me. Rather than force emotion and energy outward, she clamps down on it so it can’t hurt other people, only herself. She also picked up your emotions. It was too much for her.”
So it was me who’d hurt Sister Tremblay. Me who’d caused gashes to open on her face and bleed. Another whoosh of dizziness coursed through me. Dad put his hand on my shoulder. I needed his steadiness to stop my mind’s reeling.
“Polly’s afraid you’ll be like Lorna. All kinds of power, be it too much prosperity or love or the kinds of things you can do, corrupts if not guided. Lorna wanted you and Jonah to be so great that nothing could touch you, and that kind of thinking is how you
r mama wound up dead. Polly and I agreed it’d be best if you and Jonah had another empath close, and she wasn’t to interfere. Telling you to mind yourselves doesn’t teach you anything. That’s where I fell short.” He scoffed and shook his head. “All this time, I’d worried about protecting you two from others and didn’t think to protect you from yourselves.”
I didn’t know what to say. If he had told me in October Polly Tremblay wasn’t someone to be concerned about…But again, Dad’s secrets created more damage than good, brought up more questions than answers.
“Why can’t you be straight about anything?” I balled my hands. “About Mom? About Sister Tremblay? You don’t lie, but you don’t exactly tell the truth. You let us be wrong about people, to think they’d hurt us, when you know what they’re really like. And if Jonah’s gone after Sister Tremblay because he thinks the wrong thing about her—”
I cut myself off but still held Dad’s eyes with mine.
He lowered his head. “I always figured it was safer to admit to the minimum than give away too much and regret it later.”
I reached over to scratch Bernadette’s ear. Dogs trusted people. Even if they’d been hurt by them, dogs defended their masters. Dad hurt us by not being up front with Jonah and me, but he did it with his heart in the right place. Everything I’d thought about Sister Tremblay, everything I’d witnessed since she’d come to Black Orchard, how could I know what was true? “Rain said Sister Tremblay’s family turned Hemlock against Mom.”
“Hemlock already didn’t like her.” Dad took off his glasses and slouched in a wingback chair. “What happened with the Forgettes only gave people an excuse to be open about how much they didn’t care for your mama. Polly and I made peace enough over that. When we left Hemlock, she and Rain were the only people to know where we went. She came here because I called her last summer. I told her I needed someone who knew what your mama could do and would keep watch over you kids without getting emotional. The job at school came up, like it was fate.”
Dad unfolded the letter from the nun and passed it over to me to read from where he’d left off.
A Murder of Magpies Page 24
