The Blue Woods

by Nicole Maggi

  “Oh, sweetie.” She pulled me deeper into the house, into the kitchen, which for once wasn’t covered with remnants of her cooking experiments. “You were in Tibet? How long? When did you get back?”

  “Just now. I came straight here.” I perched on one of the kitchen stools. Mom set a glass of water in front of me, but I didn’t touch it. “How do you know they’re watching the house?”

  She grimaced. “Please. The same black town car drives by every half hour. If they think I’m not going to notice that, they’re idiots.” She laid a plate of sliced apples and peanut butter next to the water. “Eat.”

  “I’m not hungry.” I wrapped my arms around myself. “Do you know what happened in Tibet?”

  Mom shook her head. “They haven’t been very forthcoming with details.” She bit her lip, her eyes searching my face. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No,” I whispered, “but I think I’d better.” I swallowed. “Is Jonah here?”

  Mom nodded. “Upstairs in his room. They let him come home after your dad . . .”

  I hopped off the stool and headed up the stairs, Mom on my heels. I didn’t even knock on Jonah’s door, just pushed it open to find him lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling, headphones stuck in his ears. When he saw me, he sat up, pulled off the headphones, and opened his mouth to say something.

  I held my hand up. “I need to tell you what happened in Tibet,” I said. “And then I don’t want to talk about it ever again.” I looked from Mom to Jonah and walked over to the window. Sure enough, a black town car drove slowly by the house, its dark windows shielding whatever coward was inside. I jerked the curtain shut so that I wasn’t visible, but I stayed by the window. I didn’t turn around the whole time I was talking. I could feel the heat of their gazes on me, burning into me, crackling my skin like they were burning me in hell for the sinner I was. When I was done, I still couldn’t turn around. I couldn’t face them.

  Silence swept the room for a long time, the only sound the soft whir of the heating system. There was a rustle, the tap of footsteps, and then I felt Mom’s arms come around me from behind. “Oh, baby,” she murmured into my hair before she turned me to face her and then hugged me tight. “Come lay your head, Bree-girl.” She tried to draw me down to sit on Jonah’s bed, to comfort me, but I pulled away so hard that she stumbled backward.

  “No,” I said, my voice sharp. “I don’t deserve it.”

  “Bree.” Jonah spoke from where he sat on the bed, his legs drawn up to his chest. “You showed him a lot more mercy than I would’ve.”

  “And that’s supposed to make me feel better?” Angry tears squeezed out of the corners of my eyes, and I slapped them away. “Whatever he did, however much of an asshole he was, he was still our father, Jonah. And I killed him. I killed him.”

  “Yes, you did.” We both looked at Mom. “You killed him, and Jonah killed him, and I killed him. All of us in this room had a part in his death.”

  “Mom—”

  “It’s true.” She thrust her hands into her hair and pulled. “I knew something was wrong with the Guild. I knew he shouldn’t have taken that job. I should’ve put my foot down about it, threatened to leave him . . .”

  “I should’ve taken responsibility for Emily,” Jonah said. His green eyes—my green eyes—were bright against his pale face. “If I’d just owned up to what I’d done, he wouldn’t have been in so much debt to the Guild.”

  “But I was the one who actually killed him,” I yelled. Why were they being so nice? Why weren’t they throwing me out of the house, telling me they never wanted to see me again? That I could deal with. This kindness . . . it made me want to stab something. “I delivered the actual death blow. Not you. Me. Me. Me.” I punched my heart hard with each syllable until Mom grabbed my arm.

  “No, you didn’t, Bree.” The softness in her voice struck me more than any blow I could give myself. “The Guild . . . the Malandanti . . . that mage . . . They did that. You saved him. In the end, you were the one who saved his soul.”

  A little chink appeared in my armor, a tiny hole through which a thin beam of sunlight poked its way through. Mom hugged me again. I gave her a feeble push and then sank into her. Maybe . . . just maybe . . . no. Just because they forgave me didn’t mean I was forgiven.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The House Call

  Alessia

  A chill settled over Twin Willows for the next few days, dipping below zero. It was too frigid to even walk the half-mile to school, so Jeff drove me and Jenny. We jumped out of the car and hurried indoors, unwrapping our scarves as soon as the heat blasted through us. “I thought spring was just around the corner,” Jenny complained as she plucked her gloves off. “Isn’t that what that stupid groundhog said?”

  I pulled my hat off my head. “That groundhog is obviously a Malandante.”

  “What’s a Malandante?”

  We both whirled. Carly had come in behind us, her face half hidden beneath a thick woven scarf. “Uh, it’s a bad word in Italian,” I said.

  Carly unzipped her parka. “Really? I’ve never heard you use it before.”

  “I just learned it.” I forced myself to shrug, even though my whole body shook. “Lidia is getting a little lazy about hiding the swears from me lately.”

  “I guess it must be tough, being holed up at Jenny’s house.”

  “Hey, I resent that.” Jenny punched Carly lightly in the arm. “My house is a barrel of laughs, thank you very much.”

  The front door to the school opened, sending in a gust of icy wind and Melissa. “Oh, my God, I am so over this cold,” she said as she joined our little circle. “Can it just be summer already?”

  I tried to imagine summer, the trees green and lush, the hillside behind our farm dotted with goats again. Would we be able to live there again? Would the barn be rebuilt by then? Would the Waterfall be under Benandanti control? Would the woods be Benandanti blue again, instead of Malandanti silver? I shook my head. It was impossible to see that far ahead.

  Melissa nudged me. “Alessia? Are you okay?”

  I squinted at her. “What? Oh, yeah. I’m fine.”

  “We should totally have a sleepover at my house this weekend,” Carly said. “What do you think?”

  “Uh . . .” I exchanged glances with Jenny. “I don’t know if I can.”

  “Why not? You’re sleeping at Jenny’s anyway, so what’s the big deal?”

  “There’s just . . . a lot going on.”

  Now it was Carly and Melissa exchanging a look. I caught it and tilted my head. “What?”

  “Yeah, that’s kinda what we’d like to know,” Melissa said. “You two have been thick as thieves since Alessia moved in and, well, we . . .”

  “We feel left out,” Carly finished for her.

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Jenny said. “We are not thick as thieves. You’re just jealous because you think it’s like one happy-go-lucky sleepover. Trust me, it’s not.”

  “It’s not like I asked for my house to get black mold,” I said. “Lidia is totally mortified about it.”

  “Speaking of Lidia,” Carly said, and I could tell by her tone that she wasn’t quite ready to let us off the hook yet, “did you know that she and Mr. Salter are a thing?”

  “Carly!” Jenny rounded on her. “You’re being a real bitch, you know that?”

  “You two started it—”

  “Oh, my God, grow up!”

  “Stop it!” I shoved myself between them. “Look, it’s not my fault we’re holed up at Jenny’s house. It just made sense because the Sands are Lidia’s closest friends. The fact that you’re jealous is idiotic,” I said, shooting a hard look first at Melissa and then at Carly. My gaze lingered on her face. “And, yes, I did know about Lidia and Mr. Salter. And to be honest, it hurts a ton and she and I aren’t really speaking right now. And if you were a good friend, you’d be supporting me instead of trying to make me feel even worse.” I turned on my heel and stalked off to the
office. I felt bad about leaving Jenny to deal with them, but the anger was hot inside me and I thought if I said anything else, it would be something mean that I’d regret.

  Jenny met me in the hall on the way to second period. “She’s being such a twat,” she said.

  “Jenny! That is not a nice word.”

  “Well, fine, but that’s what she’s being.” Jenny linked her arm through mine. “And the problem is, I feel really bad. We do have something going on behind their back, and we can’t tell them. It sucks.”

  “Now you know how I felt all that time before you found out about me,” I said. “The biggest thing going on in your life, and you can’t even share it with your closest friends.”

  Carly ignored us as she took her seat in French. Jenny huffed as she pulled her textbook out of her bag and dropped it on her desk with a loud bang. Carly flinched but didn’t turn around. I sighed and took out my own book. Carly was being an idiot, but I couldn’t blame her for feeling left out of the secret club that Jenny and I had going on.

  Madam Dubois called the class to order and took attendance. When she got to the bottom of the list, she paused after Jonah’s name. “Has anyone seen Monsieur Wolfe? This is his fifth straight absence.”

  I could feel every eye in the classroom straining to not look at me. Even though we were supposed to be broken up, I was still the person closest to Jonah. I put my hand into the air. “Oui, Mademoiselle Jacobs?”

  Screw the Malandanti. “Um . . .” They didn’t want Jonah and his mom to tell the world, but I wasn’t under their orders. “His dad died.”

  There was a collective intake of breath. Everyone swiveled in their seats to look at me. Madam Dubois lowered her attendance book, her face pale. “What?” She was so shocked she’d forgotten to ask it in French. “How—when—did it happen?”

  “Last week,” I said, squirming in my seat with so many people staring at me. I hadn’t really thought this through. Of course everyone would want to know how he’d died, and I couldn’t really tell them he’d been killed by a mage in Tibet. “I, uh, think it had something to do with all the stuff that’s going on with the Guild.”

  “They killed him?” asked Susan Turner from the front row.

  “Don’t be stupid,” Jason Freeman hissed from the desk behind her. “I bet he committed suicide so he wouldn’t have to face prison.”

  I rubbed my temples. “Um, I really don’t know exactly what happened.” That wasn’t a lie. I hadn’t seen Bree since she and Nerina had returned from Tibet, so I only had Nerina’s secondhand account. “I just know he’s dead and that’s why the Wolfes aren’t in school.”

  A low hum of murmurs echoed around the room. Carly twisted in her chair and met my eyes. I’m sorry, she mouthed. I nodded to show I accepted her apology and looked down at my lap. I wasn’t sure if I’d done the right thing by telling the world about Mr. Wolfe, but there was no going back now.

  Up at the front of the room, Madam Dubois clapped her hands. “All right, all right, everyone. Calm down. Let’s move on. Mademoiselle Jacobs?”

  I looked up.

  “Please give Monsieur Wolfe and his family our sincerest condolences.”

  “I will. Thanks.” I laid my hands flat on my desk, rested my chin on top of them, and didn’t hear anything Madam Dubois said for the rest of the period.

  I texted Bree the minute school let out.

  I’m coming over.

  The reply came soon after.

  The house is being watched. There’s a car that drives by every half hour. I’ll let you know when it’s clear.

  I waited outside the school, my phone in my hand so I would hear it the moment it went off. Jenny offered to wait with me, but I sent her off to Joe’s with Carly and Melissa to make peace. Several minutes after they left, my phone buzzed.

  Coast is clear. But hurry. Back door.

  When I was within a few yards of the door, it cracked open. “Get in, get in.” Mrs. Wolfe waved me in, and I ran full tilt until I was inside. She peered for a moment across the backyard and down the street before she shut the door behind me. “Did you pass anyone up the street?”

  “No.”

  “Good.” She gave me a quick hug. “It’s good of you to come, Alessia. I think the kids could really use a friendly face—besides mine.” She tucked my arm into hers, and we walked slowly toward the front of the house. “Listen, don’t press Bree for too many details. She doesn’t want to talk about it.”

  “Did she tell you what happened?”

  Mrs. Wolfe nodded. Before we reached the part of the house that opened into the kitchen and living room, she pulled me to a stop. “Travis was killed by the magic of the site,” she said. This I knew; Nerina had said the Rabbit had forced the magic on him before Bree could stop it. “But before he could do any damage to the Benandanti, he asked Bree to . . . end his suffering,” Mrs. Wolfe went on. “Which she did.”

  I sucked in a cold whistle of breath. My heart thudded against my ribs, so hard the force reverberated into my throat. That, Nerina had left out. Maybe she didn’t know.

  I closed my eyes. Of course Nerina knew. She knew everything. But I could see why she hadn’t told us. I almost wish Mrs. Wolfe hadn’t told me. It was bad enough to lose your dad—even one as crappy as Mr. Wolfe—but to lose him at your own hand was the stuff of nightmares. “No wonder she’s a mess.”

  “She needs to forgive herself,” Mrs. Wolfe said. “What she did was an act of mercy.”

  Not to mention an act of enormous courage on behalf of the Benandanti. But I highly doubted Bree saw it that way.

  In the living room, Bree and Jonah sat on the couch, a party-size bag of Cheetos between them. “Welcome to Depression Manor,” Bree said. “Wallowing required.”

  Mrs. Wolfe patted my arm. “I’ll get you a soda,” she said and whirled into the kitchen.

  For a moment I just stared at the Wolfe twins, side by side on the couch. I tried to remember the last time I’d seen them together; it had been weeks ago, before Bree had become a mage. They looked like a matched set of porcelain dolls, perfectly mirroring each other in every detail right down to the hollow look in their emerald eyes. I forced myself to go to Bree first and leaned down to give her a hug that she barely returned. “I’m so sorry, Bree.”

  “For what? For my dad dying? Or for the fact that I killed him?”

  I drew away from her, trying to keep the shock off my face. “For . . . all of it.” I grabbed her hand and squeezed. “I’m not going to pretend I know what you’re going through. Losing a parent is different for everyone.” I’d learned that in the days and weeks after my dad had died: how much I hated when people told me they understood what I was feeling. No one did. Grief looked different on everyone, inside and out. “But I’m here. If you want to talk. Or not talk.”

  To my surprise, Bree squeezed my hand and raised her eyes to mine. “I know you are, Alessia. Thanks.” She cleared her throat and pulled her hand away to reach into the bag of Cheetos. “What’s going on over at Benandanti Central? Is Nerina about to lose her shit?”

  “Nerina is always about to lose her shit,” I said. I glanced at Jonah. I knew he was on our side, but I didn’t know how much information we should share. Whatever he knew could be tortured out of him. “I think the Concilio is regrouping after Tibet, trying to figure out the next move.”

  “They should go after Friuli,” Jonah said. “Our Concilio isn’t there at the moment.”

  “Really? I’ll tell her.” I crossed to Jonah’s side of the couch. He patted the space next to him, and I squeezed in between him and a plush throw pillow with a pheasant on it. “Thanks.”

  He snaked his arm around me and drew me in close to his side. I snuggled in tight and turned my face up to him. He bent over and kissed me, his mouth warm and sweet. I put my hand on the back of his head, tangling my fingers in his hair. “Thanks for coming over,” he murmured against my lips. “It’s been lonely and sad around here.”

  “I miss
ed you too,” I whispered back. I pressed my face into the side of his neck, breathing in deep the scent of spice and pine.

  “If you guys are going to act out Fifty Shades of Grey, please go upstairs,” Bree said from her end of the couch.

  “Actually, I’d prefer if you didn’t do that and stayed down here,” Mrs. Wolfe said as she came into the room with a cup of soda and a plate of cookies.

  “Mom,” Jonah groaned, drawing out the syllable. “Don’t be gross.”

  I took the soda that Mrs. Wolfe offered me and snagged a cookie from the plate as she put it on the coffee table in front of us. For a brief, beautiful moment I could see how life would be if we were all normal, if Jonah was just some boy I was dating and we were just two regular teenagers hanging out at his house after school, if there wasn’t a car that drove by doing surveillance on the house every half hour, if there wasn’t a life-and-death war tugging us apart. I bit into the cookie, let the chocolate chips dissolve on my tongue. I wanted that life, to be that girl.

  Jonah sucked in a hard breath, his body trembling against my side. I stared at him for a moment, but when he drew his arm away from my waist and pressed his hand to his chest, I knew. I knew that there would never be one minute when we could just be normal, never one second to be just us.

  He stumbled off the couch. “I don’t want you to see this,” he muttered and ran up the stairs, taking the steps two at a time. I rose to go after him, but my phone buzzed in my backpack at my feet.

  An instant later, Bree’s phone went off too. We picked them up at the same time.

  We have the Congo. We’re going to retake the Waterfall tonight.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Wild Dogs of Africa

  Alessia

  “Why the Waterfall? Why tonight?” I asked Nerina the second I was back in Jenny’s living room. The Clan was gathered, clustered on the couch and comfy chairs, listening to orders before we all transformed.