Between the Spark and the Burn

by April Genevieve Tucholke

  Except I saw the fragile look in her eyes.

  “There’s a chance Finch will wake up and be himself again,” I said. “There’s always a chance.”

  But what I didn’t say was, If Finch can wake up, then Brodie can too.

  “If he’s there I’ll find him and bring him back to Captain Nemo and make him get better.” She paused. “Roman’s dead. But if I can still save Finch, then I have to try.” Canto put her hand on her heart like she was pledging allegiance, or like she was keeping it from splitting in half. She gave me a fierce smile.“Be careful.”

  “I’m not scared of Brodie,” I said, though I was.

  “That’s not who I meant.” She stared at me for a second, a long second, and then turned and went down the steps.

  I watched her walk off, all the way until the trees swallowed her up, just her and her suitcase on their way to the little Echo train station at the other end of town.

  Neely was next. He found me in the kitchen, making espresso shortbread with Jack.

  “I’m leaving,” he said, and the second he said it I let my breath out. I hadn’t realized I’d been holding it.

  Neely and I had been walking circles around each other for days.

  I knew he was going to leave. Somehow, I just knew.

  “I’m heading off to find that barn boy and the two missing girls,” Neely said. “I heard something on Stranger Than Fiction and I’m going to Canada. I think the barn boy could be another one of my half siblings. And if so, then I’m going to find him, and I’m going to help him. Before he turns into Brodie. Or River.”

  Jack looked up from stirring the batter, and his eyes were wide and very, very young. “Maybe those girls went with him because they wanted to. Maybe the barn boy is good. Maybe he’s like you, Neely.”

  Neely just smiled, and it was a sad, un-Neely smile.

  Neely was leaving.

  I stared at the white flour that covered my blue cooking dress and then I closed my eyes and Neely put his arms around me and I let him. He whispered I wish it had turned out differently in my ear. And I felt the choking thing you feel, the one that comes even if you’re not a crier.

  Later that night, I went to him. I walked right past River’s door and went to Neely’s.

  “I thought you’d never come,” he said, and his long arms were around me, pulling me down to him, down onto the bed. His lips went to my neck and his hands to my waist.

  Just for a few seconds, and then just a few more.

  I thought of the horses.

  On the beach, sand flying, reveling in each and every breath.

  I reached up and wove my fingers into the roots of Neely’s blond hair and gripped it tight and pulled his face down to mine and . . .

  . . . and then I was on the beach, running like the horses, my heart screaming with the joy of it all, and I was alive, I was so damn alive, not afraid, not glowed up, not confused, just alive, alive, alive . . .

  “What is it, Vi?” Neely asked, later, a lot later. After I’d stopped turning my head so he could reach another part of my neck, stopped gripping his naked lower back, stopped moving my hips with his.

  “Neely, I need you to do something for me.”

  “Anything.”

  My insides sang out at the yearning I heard behind his voice. “Come back,” I said. “Come back to Citizen Kane. No matter what.”

  “I will. I promise.”

  Neely kept his promises, unlike River. So I trusted him.

  So I let him go.

  ≈≈≈

  River.

  I was going to stay by his side, damn it. Unlike Freddie, with Will. I wasn’t going to be scared away. Wasn’t going to turn my back on him.

  Maybe River was the one I should push over the cliff.

  Or drown in the sea.

  Maybe it would help. Maybe one more time would do the trick.

  I don’t mean that, Freddie. Not really. . . .

  River was sane again. Mostly. Maybe his madness finally wore off, like Neely always said it would. Or maybe the icy claws of the frozen lake cut it out of him. I don’t know. He wasn’t the sea king now, but he wasn’t the sly, carefree River of last summer, either. He was distant with me, with everyone but Jack, and he drifted in and out of Citizen Kane, quiet, mysterious, always so damn mysterious, disappearing for a few days to who knew where and then strolling back again like it was nothing.

  But River had been drowned and starved and sea king–ed and then almost drowned again and a person didn’t recover from that overnight. I’d stay by William River Redding III. I would. Because Neely would want me to. And because I knew he would get better, if given enough time. I felt it in my bones.

  Even if River still walked around without a shirt on.

  Even if he refused to wear shoes half the time . . .

  Even if I caught him staring at the sea in the sea king way, three times a day.

  Even if I found him singing sea songs in some dusty corner of the library, or on some dusty sofa in the attic, when he didn’t think anyone could hear him.

  Even if he spent his days reading or painting with Jack or cooking instead of attending school or going home and dealing with his father.

  Even if he mostly slept in the guesthouse but still crawled into my bed every so often, and I let him, let him put his arms around me and bury his face in my hair and sleep like that until dawn, never anything more now, just sleeping.

  Even if I stumbled upon River standing still under a blue sky and humming the sea sounds with Jack, more than once.

  Even if I opened the door to Brodie’s room and found River leaning over the bed, and he’d shut his mouth, quick, as if he and Brodie had been in the middle of a conversation that he didn’t want me to hear.

  ≈≈≈

  We were drinking hot caramel milk from a thermos in the Echo cemetery, in front of the Glenship mausoleum. Right near the spot where Jack had watched for the Devil, right near the spot where River had glowed a bully into his own train-smashed death in a ditch.

  Luke, Pine, Jack, Sunshine, and I had come to pour blood on the mausoleums.

  I took the second stainless-steel thermos from Jack’s hands, opened it, and looked inside.

  The blood looked black in the dying light, but it still smelled red.

  A breeze blew in from the ocean below. Suddenly everything smelled like the sea and the blood scent was gone. I breathed in deep and felt better.

  “I had to pull a River to get it,” Jack confessed. He shrugged his shoulders. They seemed stronger, broader, than before I’d left. He was getting older. “I had to promise the butcher I wasn’t trying to fake my own death, like with Huck Finn. I guess butchers are onto this trick. I told him we were Scottish and we wanted to make blood sausage.”

  I winked at Jack, quick, sly, River-style. “Well, the butcher never would have believed the truth anyway.”

  I held out the thermos to Luke. “Do you want to go first?”

  Luke smiled his old condescending smile. “No way, sister. I’ve come to watch, not participate. I want to see how far you’ll take this crazy plan.”

  Pine frowned. She was wearing the scarf I’d given her in Inn’s End, and she tucked her small, pointed chin into it, and looked at the ground.

  Jack scowled. “It’s not crazy, Luke. Pine told me she poured blood on the stones in Inn’s End and prayed they would find Brodie. And they did. Even though he looked like Finch at the time, it was still Brodie, and they still found him.”

  “That doesn’t make it any less barbaric. Or crazy.” Luke looked at me. “If anyone catches us we’ll never live it down. We’ll be the crazy blood-wielding Whites forever.”

  “Shut up, Luke,” I said. And held out the thermos.

  “Yeah, shut up, Luke,” Jack said.

  Pine looked at Jack,
and then my brother, and smiled. “Pour the damn blood, Luke.”

  “Fine.” Luke grabbed the thermos from me. He looked at Sunshine. “I knew we should have just gone to your house instead.”

  But he filled up the thermos cap with blood, walked to the Glenship mausoleum, and threw it across the door. It splattered and dripped, red ribbons bleeding into the snow. Luke knocked the cup against the stone to get the last drops, and then handed the thermos back to me. “Now what?”

  We went on down the line, each of us throwing the red red red at the wood and stone of the tomb, Jackson Pollocking it with blood instead of paint. And then we went to the White mausoleum and did the same thing.

  I splattered the last drops over the letters “Rose Redding,” and then the whole damn thing from top to bottom was dripping red. I motioned for Pine to make her prayer.

  “And thou shalt slay the swine, and thou shalt take his blood, and sprinkle it on the stones.”

  “Please keep away the spark,” Pine added, a second later. “Please keep away the glow.”

  “Please keep away the burn,” I added. “Please help Neely on his Redding brat hunt. Help him find the two missing girls. And then make him come back home, to Citizen Kane.”

  And after it was all done, and the top screwed back on the thermos, I told Pine and Jack and Luke and Sunshine about River, talking to Brodie.

  “Do you think he can read Brodie’s thoughts?” Jack asked. He sipped the burnt-sugar-tasting caramel milk and tried not to the let the worry show through his sweet, freckled face.

  I grabbed a fistful of Freddie’s skirt and squeezed it between my fingers. Something I used to do, last summer. Something I hadn’t done in a while. “What if River couldn’t bring himself to do it, not all the way? What if Brodie’s mind is still alive and aware and raging somewhere inside, somewhere hidden? Somewhere that can’t be found without a River-ish X marks the spot treasure map?”

  The five of us leaned against the Glenship mausoleum, and a few quiet minutes ticked by . . . but then Jack made a joke about pirates and Pine laughed and Luke said there was a treasure map in the attic, inside one of the trunks shoved into the back corners . . . and then all of us went home to the Citizen, Sunshine too, and climbed to the top floor and dug around in the dust and clutter and creep until it got so late we ended up falling asleep in the middle of the floor on a pile of moth-bitten clothes that someone hadn’t put away, probably me.

  And the last thought I had before I drifted off, my cheek rubbing against an old velvet cloak, was that everything was going to be all right in the end. Luke was on his back, snoring to wake the dead, and Sunshine had her head in the crook of his arm, and Jack was curled up with Pine, and they were both using the same tall Marie Antoinette wig for a pillow, and maybe Finch would still be alive and maybe River was half sane again but still a little bit of a sea king and maybe Brodie wasn’t entirely un-witted and maybe River was talking to him in secret . . .

  But. But Neely was going to come back soon. He’d promised.

  And meanwhile I was going to count my lucky stars and keep thinking of those wild horses.

  Freddie used to say that life could be safe, or it could be interesting, but it couldn’t be both. I was content with the path I’d taken, no matter what, hands down, no question. I really was.

  I really, really was.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Jessica Garrison, for every damn thing ever.

  Molly Sardella & Jessica Shoffel, Bri Lockhart, and everyone else at Penguin, with a special shout-out to Jill Bailey, Colleen Conway, Biff Donovan, and all the other kickass field sales reps. You are brilliant. All of you.

  Joanna Volpe, for the frozen lake, for sneaking into the cemetery, for being the best damn agent a girl could ask for.

  Everyone else at New Leaf Literary, especially Danielle and Kathleen.

  Kendare Blake.

  Melissa Marr.

  Nova Ren Suma.

  The library girl who asked me to sign an old copy of Byron.

  Alison Cherry, for giving me a lock of her red, red hair.

  James, Cindi, and Junior Warburton, for the Friday the thirteenth camping trip, complete with middle-of-the-night screaming.

  H. P. Lovecraft.

  Erin Bowman.

  Megan Shepherd.

  To my butler, Henry, for his years of service, and for providing the clue that solved the mystery.

  To my Gravedigging Mentor. You always know just what to say. And where to dig.

  Oscar & Finn.

  Nate, for the bottle of poison.

  April Genevieve Tucholke is a full-time writer who digs coffee, redheaded heroes, attics, and discussing poison at the breakfast table. Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, her widely praised debut novel, is the first book in this duet. She and her husband—a librarian, former rare-book dealer, and journalist—live in Oregon at the edge of the forest.

  Visit April on

  Twitter @NightOwlAuthor and at

  AprilTucholke.com