Pallas exhaled, her breath ragged in her chest. She was probably worried for nothing. Leviticus would tell her so as he lumbered out of bed, making his bearish morning growls. She’d wait on the sunporch for him to get dressed and snoop around to see what he was reading. They’d go out for an early breakfast and a ride to the beach and stop at the bookstore on the way home to visit Peas. Xochi was fine. Just out late. She might have met a friend or even a girl or boy she fancied. Or maybe she was with the green girl and her brother, doing something magical. She’d come home soon and tell Pallas all about it. She definitely, definitely would.
Pallas stopped, in the kitchen now. She sniffed. Someone had been smoking inside, but who would do that? She padded downstairs to the studio. It was ridiculous how isolated her dad’s room was from the rest of the house. You could only reach it by going down to the basement and up a curling wrought-iron staircase in the studio, or from the stairs outside that led to the balcony and sunporch. Pallas trudged down and then up, her stomach gurgling for answers and breakfast.
The sunporch was toasty warm. Morning lit the garden, but something was strange. It was the trees—they were black with crows. More soared above the carriage house and perched on the power lines. An unusually large crow landed on the balcony outside the French doors. It met Pallas’s gaze. She’d never been so close to one of their kind. The bird bobbed—or was it bowing? It cawed three times and lifted off, soaring into the silver sky.
Pallas was suddenly woozy, her insides congealed like the wet wool stuffing Kiki had once removed from a teddy bear Pallas left in the garden overnight. “He’s septic, love,” Kiki had said. “We have to operate.”
Pallas wished for some sort of operation now, some emergency that would stop her from opening her dad’s bedroom door. Because somehow, some way, she understood what the crow was trying to tell her: Stop! Go back! Flee!
But she couldn’t. And she wouldn’t. The crow had known that, too.
Moving forward on button-jointed limbs, Pallas approached the door. This part of the house was modern, made in the sixties. Leviticus’s door was fashioned from a wide plank of redwood, a cross-section slab from a single gigantic tree. Pallas used to count the rings. “Barbaric!” she’d say. “Elder murder!” The doorknob was brass. She turned it, hoping to find it locked, but it was never locked. It opened easily, swinging on hinges that were quiet for once—not that the squeakiest hinge had a prayer of waking Pallas’s dad.
She tiptoed in. At first, there was only his back and the covers. He rolled over.
Someone was in the bed with him.
A T-shirted back, dark hair. Andi?
But Leviticus never had people overnight at Eris Gardens. He slept over at other people’s houses—Pallas knew that. If she asked where he’d been, he always told her. Unlike everyone else in the family, neither of her parents ever brought anyone home to spend the night. In Io’s case, this was because she never dated. Pallas wasn’t sure why her dad kept that part of his life separate. She’d never thought to ask.
Leviticus shifted. Pallas stood absolutely still.
The person in bed beside him shifted also, coming to rest with her head on his chest as if they slept cuddled together every night of their lives. Leviticus pulled her closer, deep in his dreams, swimming in a sea where Pallas had never existed.
Pallas’s limbs were loose, a marionette with cut strings. She fell to her knees, head in her hands, a dramatic gesture she’d scoffed at in plays and movies. But now she understood. She raised her face as the sun shone in the window above the bed.
Xochi and Leviticus were yin and yang, two sleeping animals of the same species, natural as a pair of deer in a woodland glen. The room swayed with the music of their mingled breath. The crows stopped cawing and the wind chimes stopping chiming as even nature whispered to protect the sweetness of their shared sleep.
Pallas could not remember leaving the bedroom, but now she was in the sunroom. She opened the balcony door. The wind rose, suddenly cold. Pallas shivered in Xochi’s sweater. Her dad’s leather jacket was on his reading chair. She pulled it on, slamming the French doors behind her.
47
Meet Me in the Morning
Cold hands yanked Xochi from the warm epicenter of Leviticus’s bed. “Wake up!” The voice sounded like it was coming over a bad phone connection from someone else’s dream.
Opening gluey eyelids, Xochi found herself on the sunporch outside Leviticus’s closed bedroom door opposite a glowering Kylen. He shoved a pile of clothes at her. “Get dressed. And don’t you dare wake him.” Kylen’s tone made it impossible to disobey.
Xochi tried to pull a pair of jeans over the baggy boxers she’d put on the night before. Still on, she noted, wondering if she was sober yet. She yanked off the shorts, not caring what Kylen saw, nearly tripping as she tugged on her jeans.
“Are you happy now?”
“Shh! Just. Get. Dressed.”
She sat in Leviticus’s chair to lace her sneakers, then zipped her hoodie to her chin.
Kylen marched her down the stairs. “We’ll talk about it over coffee. Come on. Right now.”
Again, the tone. Xochi moved her feet even as her brain struggled to catch up and got on the back of Kylen’s motorcycle. They rode through the deserted streets and parked at a diner in a nondescript part of upper California Street.
Kylen was silent as they were seated in a booth in back. Xochi snatched the cigarette Kylen offered her with a shaking hand. “Where’d you get my clothes?”
“From your bedroom floor.”
Xochi tried to picture Kylen in her room gathering her things and couldn’t. The diner was empty except for a man at the counter in a glittery pink chiffon dress and basketball shoes eating chocolate pie and an old woman dressed in a proper wool suit, heels, gloves, and a hat like she was on her way to church. Okay, Xochi thought, if this is a dream, I’ll go along.
“So, uh, why were you in my room?”
“I was looking for you, Einstein. When you weren’t there, I had a good idea of where to find you and figured you wouldn’t be wearing much.”
Xochi’s face went hot. She put her hands on her cheeks. Her skin was taut and parched. She switched from coffee to water, remembering the gin and tequila from last night. She was unaware of any side effect from the drug. Even in her head, she wasn’t saying its name. Heroin. The word bounced around her brain but found nowhere to land. There should have been remorse. Horror. But there was only a pleasant detachment. Maybe she was still under its spell.
The food arrived and Xochi pushed it away, lighting another cigarette.
When the waitress was out of earshot, Kylen finally spoke. “So, kid, tell me about your freaky little watchdogs.”
“What?” A giggle burst from Xochi’s throat, slightly hysterical.
“Listen to me. My best friend could have died last night. I don’t care if you’re embarrassed Leviticus caught you drugged out with Duncan’s hand in your bra. You did it, so own it. I’m talking about those fey-ass bodyguards you invited to the party. Start talking.”
“Kylen, don’t get mad, but you sound crazy.”
“Fine. You were too high to remember Thing One and Thing Two. But how about the pot farmer with the dirty dreads? Remember him?”
Xochi jumped up, knocking over her water glass. Kylen caught it without missing a beat.
“Is he here? In the city?”
“Calm down.” Kylen was using the commanding voice that had made her get dressed and get on his motorcycle. Xochi sat still.
“Look at me.” His eyes were surprisingly soft. Fierce, but in a way that made Xochi feel like he was on her side for once. “You’re safe. He’s not here.”
“Then how?” Xochi said. “How did you know?”
“They told me. Little Green and her brother.”
“Wait, what?” Xochi grabbe
d her water and gulped. How did Kylen know?
“You do remember—I can see it in your face. You have to tell me, Xochi.”
“I . . . I dream about a girl and—”
“And her brother. The Waterbabies. Yes. Them! That shit last night? With the aquariums and the glass and Leviticus on the floor? Also them.”
“But—” Waterbabies? Was that what her dream children were called?
“Dude,” Kylen said. “Shit like this happens. Trust me, they’re real. Fey as fuck, but corporeal. Not. A. Dream.”
“No way.” Xochi shook her head.
“Tell that to Pad,” Kylen said. “I knew something was up from the night we played with Rabbit Hole. I saw them in your weird little head. And now they’re here in the flesh. For you. They say you called them.”
“So they . . . talked to you?” A sharp pain gripped Xochi’s forehead. She closed her eyes. Duncan’s room. Leviticus. A small being with impossibly long dark hair. “What did they say?”
“The green kid showed me some stuff.”
Stuff? Xochi resisted the urge to stand up and run away.
“They were pretty quick flashes, but I got the gist.”
The gist. Xochi closed her eyes again, trying to find an internal place to rest, but there was only a slithering, carsick darkness.
“Xochi? I know I’ve been kind of a dick to you. But you have to believe me about this. I’m worried. I want to help.”
If this were a fairy tale, Kylen was the wolf who befriended you in the forest. But wait—that was “Little Red Riding Hood,” not a good-wolf story. And Kylen was good, more or less. He may not have liked her, but he loved Pallas and Leviticus, and they loved and trusted him.
Xochi’s tear ducts stung, too dry for her to cry. Something whispered at the edge of her understanding. She was so tired. She could have used another week of protected sleep in Leviticus’s wide bed. Another year.
She closed her eyes and caught the snatch of a dream, an image of a lake where one didn’t usually exist, a swirling whirlpool, a man floating in the center. She remembered the clear picture she’d dreamed up of Evan the day Pallas went to LA. The feeling of closure. How happy she’d been afterward. How free.
“Evan is dead.” Her words hit the bottom of a bone-dry well, clattering like bones.
“Dreadlock man? Yeah.”
“The Waterbabies—killed him?” The word tasted like burned foil in her mouth. Her fillings hurt. Her head pounded. Her dream children, innocent, naked—they were capable of killing?
“Yes.”
Even before Kylen answered, she knew it was true. She’d called them with that bathtub potion. Fates! Fates and Furies! Open! Open! Open up the door!
They knew her need and came. Xochi touched her face. “Why am I crying?”
“He was good to you,” Kylen said, “when you were a kid. They showed me that, too. At first, I wasn’t sure why.”
Xochi was dizzy. Kylen grasped her wrist—too hard, but it helped. The room stopped spinning. “You grew up with him, and he was good to you. You—”
“I loved him.” The words left a greasy film on her tongue.
“What that asshole did to you was unforgivable,” Kylen said. “He deserved what he got.”
That day. The day Loretta died. Xochi took out another cigarette, but her hands were too shaky to light it.
“He deserved it,” Kylen repeated. “He was a defective piece of shit.” He took the cigarette from Xochi, lit it, and passed it back.
Evan used to tell a story. When he’d been a child, his father had kept a python. One day, it had escaped. People would see it around—high up in a tree, curled on the hood of someone’s car. But no one had ever been able to capture it. Xochi slept with her windows shut for years after that.
She had to focus to bring the cigarette to her lips. The nicotine weighted her, made it possible to stay in her seat. “There’s something else,” Xochi said. “Something I did.”
“I saw it, okay?” Kylen sat, patient and solid. “Silence isn’t the same as consent.”
“I know.” Xochi closed her eyes. A lake where the creek should be. Evan floating, eyes to the sky.
“You don’t know. That’s the problem. We all want attention. We all need to be loved. It takes a special kind of evil to take advantage of that. Do me a favor, okay? Imagine it was Pallas.”
“I’d want to murder him.”
“That’s right.”
“Yeah, but Ky? That’s hypothetical. This is real. Life and death. I don’t believe in capital punishment. What kind of things are they if they go around killing people?”
“It’s not like that. It’s about balance. What they showed me was not an image of suffering. I wish I could explain it to you.” He waited for the waitress to refill their coffees. “Okay, it’s like this. Imagine you’re a kid playing with clay. You make a guy, a family, a house. But in the end, it’s not right. So you smash it all together and try again. This time, you make a dog. The essential stuff that made the guy and the family and the house are all there in the dog, but it’s a better creation. Later, you make something else. It doesn’t matter. Nothing is ruined. It wasn’t meant to be permanent in the first place.”
“Yeah, but in this world, in this reality, he’s dead. No matter what Evan comes back as, right now, his dad is alone on that property with no one to take care of him.”
“That’s why I’m telling you this. Those guys may not be malevolent, but they’re dangerous as hell. They were right about that asshole, but they almost made a mistake with Lev.”
“He was fine last night.” She remembered Leviticus rubbing his neck, teasing her about being heavy.
“I’m guessing you were pissed at him. The bigger one, the brother, he touched your forehead, and a second later, he had Leviticus on the ground and his hands on his throat.”
“Ky, oh my god! I’m so sorry.”
“No, dude. That’s on me.”
“But I’m the evil temptress here, right? Isn’t that why you’re mad at me?”
Smiling transformed Kylen’s face almost completely. He shook his head.
“Listen. Last summer we were all out to dinner, talking about John Lennon. And Bubbles was like, ‘Why does everyone pile on poor Yoko? It’s not her fault the damn Beatles broke up.’” Ky did a spot-on Bubbles. “So Pallas pipes in and goes, ‘It’s obvious—blame the outsider, blame the woman. Misogyny 101.’ That’s what I did to you. Lev gets caught up with relationships. They mess with his head. I didn’t want to have to go through that again.”
The whole time, Ky had been worried about Leviticus? A memory surfaced, drug fogged but real. Leviticus in the doorway of Duncan’s spooky blue room, tears in his eyes. Duncan’s cold, sweaty hand fumbling with the front clasp of her bra. She shook her head, trying to erase the Etch A Sketch image of herself, a drugged-out damsel in distress on that horrible sofa. She ground her cigarette out in the ashtray and picked up her coffee. It was time to start using her brain.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m having a hard time believing this is an actual problem we need to solve, but it seems like I’ve summoned a pair of otherworldly creatures that are going after people from my past. Also from my present. Maybe it’s all true, but it feels so . . . unreal.”
“Exactly. Your brain does not want to process all this weird stuff. I’m guessing your hangover isn’t helping.”
“Can I just . . . tell them to go home?”
“I don’t think so. It seems like . . . they have to accomplish something, you know? I don’t think they’ll stop till they do.”
“Accomplish what?”
“That’s what we have to figure out.” Kylen’s attention zeroed in on her, a hawk circling its prey. “When Leviticus was on the floor, the dark-haired one did something to make everyone forget. But while he was doing that, the green
one put her hands on your heart. Do you remember?”
“No,” Xochi said. Even as she said it, she realized she was lying. “I mean, I’m not sure.”
“Think.” Kylen’s voice was so calm. It made Xochi want to sleep. “Close your eyes. What do you see?”
The voice trick. He was doing it again, pulling out all the stops this time. It was pointless to fight him.
“My room,” she said, “my old room in San Leandro. We lived there for the first half of second grade. The green girl—she was going through my things, searching for something. She found a music box. There was a locket inside. I wanted to grab it, but I couldn’t move. I started to cry. She was sorry, though. So sorry she’d upset me. I’ve never felt anything like the apology she made. The next thing I remember clearly is Leviticus picking me up like a sack of potatoes and carrying me out of there. Before, when she was touching me, I was sober. But when he picked me up, I was so wasted again. I think they did something to make me forget.”
“Xochi, come on.” Kylen’s voice was hard. “Whose picture was in the locket? I hope it’s not someone who fucked you over. Or worse, someone you love.”
What if it was both? “I thought you were psychic,” Xochi said. Her tone was bratty and false. “You probably know already. We were touching the whole time on the motorcycle.”
“I was driving,” Kylen said. “You want me to crash? And okay, if you must know, I only get a flash of what’s on your mind. If I focus, sometimes I can see shit that’s about to happen, like a tarot reading without the cards. If you can’t remember what the green girl found, fine. Give me your hand.” He held her eyes until she dropped them. She kept her hand in her lap.
“What do they want from me? Why are they here?” she said. The words were strange in her mouth, like lines she’d memorized for a play.
“Can’t you feel it? They want to heal you. They have to. Xochi, they’re protectors of children. That much I got. You’re not a kid anymore, but whatever’s in that locket is keeping you a victim.”
“I’m no victim.” Xochi stood and pulled on her hoodie. Wait, she told her body. But it wouldn’t listen.
All of Us with Wings Page 23
