The night above the bungalow glimmers with auburn light. Flames sprint from the windows to the roof, and black grunge smears the white stucco. Moss smolders, cascading from the twisted cypress near the house, begging to ignite.
“Magpie, get back!” Dad bellows, his drawl a violent rolling.
Hacking grains of ash, I drop beside Dad and Jonah in the peach grove. I smell charcoal and singed hair.
The smell comes from me.
Jonah coughs as he kneels on the chilly ground. Dad places his hand on my brother’s shoulder. “Deep breaths.”
“Look!” I point to a crowd on the gravel road fifty yards from where we cower in the dark.
Neighbors, people we know from around town, mill together and gesture to the burning scaffold. More bodies zombie-trudge toward the house in bathrobes and ratty slippers.
“What happened?” someone calls, no more concerned than if asking whether anyone brought marshmallows for s’mores to the beach bonfire. “What started it?”
“How about divine intervention?” a man snorts.
My vision races from one flat face to the next. I send out a probing nudge, my feelers sifting through their thoughts. No pebbles of fear, no worry. Divine intervention? That would mean God was against us.
A fire truck lazes in the street, its siren unheard, lights swirling. A young fireman hops from the truck and eagerly unwinds the hose, nearly losing his helmet, but his superior stops him with a shake of his head.
“Why won’t anyone help us?” I ask, gawking back over my shoulder at Dad. “What’s wrong with them?”
“Shh.” He covers his lips with his finger and pulls Jonah and me farther into the trees, whispering, “Don’t move.”
I twist away from Dad and again search the crowd. Only three of us, not four, are huddled away from the fire-crackled wood and plaster.
Where’s Mom? Why isn’t she with us?
I shake Dad’s arm. “Mom made it out, right?”
Dad lowers his head. “I couldn’t get to her. The fire…”
A keening whimper rises from my throat. Dad’s callused palm clamps over my mouth. His skin tastes of burnt wood and smoke. Our knees hit the unyielding Georgia clay, and my fingernails rake his skin. Tears drop from my face to Dad’s hand, washing off the filth of the fire where they land.
Jonah’s breathing wetly rattles, and his voice cracks. “Dati?”
Our father rises to his feet, his glasses reflecting the blaze. “Let’s get to Rain’s house. He’ll know what to do.”
I take in a view of the crowd. The young fireman, the only one compelled to help us, crosses himself.
“Burn in hell, Lorna! You thieving gypsy!” a woman damns my mother as two firemen laugh.
The word crudely whittles into my spine, slashed onto my bones, and forever marking me.
Gypsy.
***
Snow fell before dawn on Saturday, the day after my birthday. The wind blew so hard snowflakes stuck to the windows. Ward and I lay in my bed with the sky creeping toward sunrise.
He curled up behind me, his chest clammy against my bare back. I relaxed as he cradled me in his arms. His breath wheezy, he asked, “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” I was, at least right then. I wrapped my arms around his at my waist. I didn’t want him to let go.
The house had been still, and his mouth gentle, shy, when we climbed into bed. My skin pulled taut, my heart whirring. I’d loosened his belt while the humming between my legs intensified.
“I want you, gadjo,” I’d told him. My voice had been hushed, the words breathless between kisses. He’d held his breath, shaking as I unzipped his jeans. A spike of arousal had shot off him as his tongue flicked my lip. I’d pushed away my barriers, both those as an empath and those that claimed it wasn’t right to be with a boy like him. I knew what I wanted, and this was my choice.
Our shirts flung to the floor, mouths hungry and hands in search of skin. He’d guided my touch where he wanted, but mostly, his fingers tread down my arms, across my bare abdomen, until they snuck lower on my hips.
The lamp by my bed had dimmed as I drew in curiosity and need, energy rising. I’d listened to my skirt fluff out on the floor and the chime of his belt when his jeans followed. His hands slid over my body, my eyelids flickering against the waves crashing over me. He’d taken his time to kiss me everywhere, my neck, the side of my ribs, my hips. It wasn’t fair that I loved him. I hated him for making me love someone who could never be like me, yet I held him tight.
“I don’t want to let go,” I’d murmured.
He’d kissed my cheek and smoothed the hair on my forehead. “I’m staying, Vayda.”
He’d reached over to my nightstand to the condom he’d laid beside my clock. Another smoldering ember sparked to life in my blood. Neither of us had breathed as he tore open the wrapper. As much as I wanted him, I’d been scared. Of his history because I knew I wasn’t the only girl he’d been with, so what, if anything, did that mean? Of being “spoiled” or even too uptight. Of the change that would inevitably be felt between us.
I’d been scared because nothing in my life was certain—except that I craved closeness, and closeness was what I found when I lay beneath him. I’d felt him against me, then inside me.
I’d been used to touching everything, feeling, but it had been all my other senses that heightened. The sweat of our bodies against cold sheets, the creak of the bed’s frame. How my room smelled of ghosts and lace and when the first ray of dawn bled through the curtain to glance off the steel ring in Ward’s ear. A strange, new energy radiated through my body. I’d noticed it first when Ward’s arms wavered, and at once, all my being escalated to drown the ache in me as he kissed me deeply, kissed me from the inside out.
Watching the snowfall as the sun crested the horizon, I felt his breath on my neck and his sweat on my skin.
He painted a lazy circle on my hip. His face was unlike any expression I’d seen from him before. No sorrow pinching his eyes. Content. Peaceful.
“I wonder when it happened,” he murmured.
“When what happened?” I asked.
“When I realized I love you. There wasn’t an exact time. It’s all the moments of being with you and your weird Mind Games and your fucked up family and how I wouldn’t take any of it back. Not one second.”
I rolled over to lay my head against his chest. His arms around me were cool, the energy between us dreamy, sleepwalking. “I love you, too, Ward.”
“Not calling me gadjo this time?”
“Not this time.”
The phone rang. For a half-second, I hoped Jonah would answer, but he was sleeping hard in Dad’s study last I’d checked. Annoyed and slipping into my clothes, I moved slowly as I retrieved the phone from the hall. The caller ID read Rain’s cell phone.
“Darlin’, I hope you weren’t asleep,” he said. “I’m in Milwaukee and heading straight to the police station, gotta stop at a bank first if I need bond money for your daddy.”
Ward drew in his sketchbook as I sat on my bed. “Thanks, Rain. We owe you.”
I hung up the phone and noticed Ward was still smiling dreamily. I kissed his cheek before heading into the bathroom, locking the door behind me. Too much to do today. Too much filling up my mind.
There was something more.
Energy loomed not in my hands but in my core, the bony nest of my ribs. It hurt. I grasped the sink’s edge. Cold shocks of energy pinged off every metal surface, the light fixtures, the faucet, the towel bar.
My head ached as the muted thuds of Ward’s thoughts from the other room battered my barriers like birds colliding with a window. My energy overflowed in a chilly gust, freezing the water dripping from the leaky faucet. “Get out of my damn head!”
Footfalls pounded the stairs, ascending the steps two, three, at a time. The door unlocked itself and flew open, and Jonah stood in th
e hall. Ward appeared beside my brother with his jeans hastily pulled on and hair disheveled. “Vayda, what’s wrong?”
Jonah barely registered that Ward was beside him. The wariness on his face faded. Even as flares of energy zoomed from my fingers, my brother was calm. “Give us a minute.”
Hesitantly, Ward backed away, and Jonah shut the door. On my knees, I couldn’t control how fast my breath came. The axis of the room shifted and tilted to the right, woozy and shaking.
“You’ll be okay, Sis,” he promised.
My forehead rested on the tile floor. The grout cracked beneath my skin. Too much energy.
“Let it out.” Jonah’s voice was a chant, low and steady. “Don’t try to hold back. Move it out of you.”
A white-hot flare sprang from my fingers and cracked the plaster ceiling while the light fixtures burst with fire and smoke that quickly evaporated. I rolled to my side and held my stomach, crying out.
Empty. My hands were empty. My body was empty. No more energy.
“What was that?” Ward shouted. He opened the bathroom door and gaped at the cracked ceiling, the fractured tiles in the floor, and smoldering lights. “The hell did you do? Set off an atom bomb?”
“Of a kind.” My brother sparked an orb in his palm and snuffed it in his fist. “Empaths feed on emotion. Mom told me some events involve so much emotion our Mind Games kind of flake out. Our energy surges. Fights. Injuries.” He cocked his brow. “Anything intense.”
My stomach dropped. I covered my face with my hair. “Is this what you and Mom talked about all those times?”
“Nah. I wanted to command my abilities like Mom. Problem is I don’t have much empathy. If I move something with my mind, I release my own feelings. I push energy. Vayda, you pull. It’s why you care so much, why you calm people down and I rile them up.”
So this was why such a blast ignited when Jonah and I joined.
“Why didn’t Mom tell me?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Because she didn’t know what to do with you. You’re a magnet for emotions. I’m not. I don’t have it in me. Mom created and released, and she was volatile. All you need is the right catalyst to push as much energy as you pull. Because you can do both, you are way more like Mom than I could ever dream to be.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Ward
Until I met Vayda, I’d never been serious about anyone. Hell, anything. For once in my life, someone wanted me around.
I was losing her.
The kitchen phone rang, distracting me from the caramel popcorn Vayda had mixed up a while ago, right in time to be hot after I dropped off Bernadette at Heidi’s home. Vayda listened to the phone, and her voice was snowflake-fragile after the call ended. “Rain said they’re stuck deciding charges for Dati. He mentioned fraud, arson. It’s a mess. He’s getting Dati released until he’s formally arrested.”
“Dati went off the radar for years,” Jonah grunted as he popped the tab on a can of Coke. “The cops won’t let him go.”
I raised my brows, silently agreeing with Jonah. Why should Emory be trusted? I doubted he’d run again, but who knew what a guy would do for his family when cornered?
Vayda touched Jonah’s shoulder. “Rain’s good at what he does. He’ll get Dati out.”
After what she’d endured, she still trusted people. I wished I could be like that.
If Drake taught me much of anything, it was, “Don’t fuck up.” Easy to do when my only model was one mistake after another. Emory? He wasn’t my dad, but he’d shown me a lot. Yeah, he’d fucked up, but he made the effort my own father never did.
I closed my sketchpad and unzipped my backpack when I noticed the manila folders I’d stolen from Sister Tremblay’s office. I’d forgotten to hand over the files before we left Fire Sales.
“I should’ve given this to you sooner,” I said and showed the file to Vayda.
She took a seat. “How’d you get it?”
“I told you I was a delinquent.” I opened her folder. Several newspaper clippings and photos fluttered in the house’s persistent draft. “But this isn’t really a school file.”
A picture was clipped to one newspaper article. A family, two teens with braces and a mother with dark hair grinned at Emory as he put his arm around her. They sat on the grass during a backyard barbeque. I kept the picture in my hand and scanned the smudged newspaper clipping.
Riot breaks out after forgette sentencing
Hemlock, GA—Police broke up rioters after a judge announced Lorna Murdock’s sentence in the Forgette homicide trial. Judge King threw out the conspiracy charge in the death of June Forgette, citing lack of evidence. King also railed against the prosecution for “buying into archaic superstitions and rumors of witchcraft,” regarding the assertion Murdock used psychic powers to force Brett Forgette to shoot himself. King told the court she would have dismissed the assault charge but agreed that Murdock was involved in a skirmish with Forgette and sentenced her to forty-eight hours in jail and a small fine. Murdock’s sentence will begin after the Thanksgiving holiday.
A decided victory for defense lawyer Rain Killian turned into chaos as the gallery erupted into shouts defaming Murdock as a witch and threw chairs. Killian and Murdock’s husband Emory, owner of Antiquaria on Poplar Street, shielded her from the crowd as they left the courthouse. No arrests were made.
Vayda shoved the article across the table and snapped, “Rain’s a good lawyer if nothing else. She’d been charged with felonies and, because of him, got off scot-free.”
“Scot-free. Yeah, right,” Jonah muttered and sulked out of the kitchen, the slam of the door to Emory’s office shaking the bones of the house.
Vayda took a deep breath and fanned herself. “Whenever he’s mad, all this heat pours out of him.”
So I’d noticed.
She flipped through the rest of the articles in the folder, an obsessive collection of every mention of the Murdocks in print—Emory’s articles in antiques magazines, published lists with her and Jonah’s names for their school’s honor roll, tons of articles about Lorna’s trial.
She closed the folder. “Thanks. For standing with us.”
I touched her cheek. “I don’t scare easily.”
I kissed her before she had the chance to speak. The last say was mine this time.
***
Sister Tremblay’s hospital room was one floor below the one where Jonah had stayed after Marty attacked him. Second time Marty Pifkin had put someone in the ICU. At least now he was in lock-up.
I stood in the doorway of Sister Tremblay’s room. Coils of dark hair spread out on her pillow. Her upper lip stitched together, and the skin on her cheek was a mess of shiny purple, handprints visible on her neck. I passed the Shirley Jackson book I’d grabbed in the gift shop from one hand to the other. Maybe I should leave, let her recover before asking questions. By the time she was released, Vayda could be gone, Emory locked away.
“Go away, Ward,” her voice rasped.
“I brought you this,” I said and set the book on a table by her bed. “I need to talk to you about the Silvers.”
“You mean the Murdocks.”
I pulled up a chair by her bed and counted the mountains on the screen of the heart monitor. Nothing changed her pulse. Nothing surprised her even in her battered state.
“The Murdocks,” I repeated. “Yeah.”
Sister Tremblay licked her cracked lips. “Stay away from them. It’s for the best.”
I coughed, the rattling in my chest refusing to let go of its grip on me, and Sister Tremblay lifted a weak hand toward the pitcher of ice water and two cups on her bedside table. I poured myself a drink and waited until my cough eased up. “You know I can’t stay away. Vayda needs help, Sister. I know you’re here to help. I want to help, too.”
“Then be prepared for the consequences. How long have you had that cough, Ward?”
&nb
sp; “A long time,” I answered. “It’s not contagious if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“The doctors don’t know why you have it, do they? Has Vayda ever said why she enjoys being around you?”
Clearly, it was my sparkling personality.
“Do you give her peace?” Sister Tremblay pressed on. She waited, and when I didn’t answer, she asked, “Do nearly all your thoughts and feelings stay your own and not invade hers unless you want her to know?”
“It’s how we are together,” I said. “And I’m not going to talk with you about why I’m with Vayda.”
She studied my face with sad eyes. “You need to know there’s more than you think. There’s a word for people like you. Conduits. You have the ability to safely let the energy inside her come out.”
“A lightning rod,” I said.
She gave a slow nod. “Lightning rods are nearly impenetrable, but if they’re not properly grounded, they’ll corrode with time. They fail. The more you are with her, Ward, the worse the effects of all that energy passing through you will become.”
The hair on the back of my neck stood on end, and this time Vayda hadn’t caused it. My mouth went dry. When I was with her, my cough was worse. My lungs were tighter.
“Every empath eventually wills someone into becoming a conduit to make their lives more bearable. It sounds selfish, but most of the time, they don’t even realize they’ve done it. They only know they need that person. For the conduit, the repeated exposure to energy and emotion finds a weakness and feeds on it. It is a danger of being a conduit. Wherever you are weakest, that’s where the damage will have the greatest impact. For some, it preys on the mind or heart. Mental illness. Blocking arteries. For you, it is your breathing.”
Vayda damaged me. She had no idea what she’d done, how destructive she was.
A Murder of Magpies Page 26
