by Dia Reeves
What had I ever shared with him?
Almost shyly, I stepped into his arms beneath the hot spray. “You remember asking me in what way I was weird?” I asked, letting my fingers drift along his face, careful of how I touched him.
He was focused on me, studying me. “I remember.”
I took a deep breath, blinked water from my eyes. “I can see my Poppa. I can talk to him. Even though he’s been dead for a year.”
“For real?” He kissed my nose. “I knew there had to be a reason nothing freaks you out.”
Porterene insouciance would never cease to amaze me. “That’s all you have to say?”
He kissed my ear. “Cool?” He kissed my collarbone twice. “Real cool?” He pressed three more kisses into my armpit. “Double-dog cool?”
We clung to each other, laughing in the heat and steam, the last of the leech blood swirling down the drain. We clung to each other … and it was cool.
Very cool.
We stayed under the shower until the water turned cold. Then we shut it off and stayed a little longer, despite the hard, unyielding tile. We could have been lying on a porcupine and still we would have tarried. I didn’t mind the discomfort, though to Wyatt’s credit, I didn’t notice how sore I was until after we staggered into his room. But despite how good the sex was and how well we’d meshed, I found myself avoiding him.
It was always that way for me. After I opened myself to someone, I needed a few minutes to close down again, to restore my sense of privacy.
Wyatt lay on the bed, brown as toast in his white boxers. He’d given me a ratty green robe to wear while my clothes were in the washer, but he hadn’t felt the need to clothe himself. He was too busy smiling at the ceiling, lying atop the fluffy whipped cream of his bedspread like boy-shaped biscotti.
“I don’t think I ever been this tired after sex,” he said, in tones of wonder. “Between the leech and you, I’m all tapped out.”
“That’ll last ten minutes,” I said, rolling my eyes. “There’s no such creature as a tapped-out sixteen-year-old.”
“I’m seventeen.”
“Same difference.”
I made myself stop smiling at him and turned on his stereo. Eerie British people singing about poems haunted me as I studied the multitude of plaster of Paris body parts clinging to the walls, like stark white bodies trying to escape into Wyatt’s room from another dimension.
“I used to be into sculpture,” he explained. “Arms, heads, feet. Just pieces of things. I’d stick ’em up here and there on the walls instead of played-out rock posters. I thought I was so fucking cool, you know? Real deep. Then I got into the Mortmaine thing and … all of it just seemed really childish. So I tried to remove ’em.”
I touched the nipple of the single, perfectly cast breast near the window by Wyatt’s desk. “Tried?”
Wyatt shrugged. “The house likes ’em now.”
The breast throbbed against my palm, as though a heart beat within it. I yanked my hand away and backed into his desk. An avalanche of books hit the floor at my feet as I gaped at Wyatt. “Your house is alive?”
“It didn’t use to be,” he said, in what he probably thought was a reassuring tone. “The Key changed it. All that power.”
“Is it changing me?” I asked as I retrieved the fallen books, glancing nervously at the walls.
He tsked at me. “If you’re a weirdo, own it. Don’t blame our Key.”
The nervousness went away. “Smart-ass. I do own my—” The title of the book I was holding seized my attention.
“The Compleat Book of Charms and Spells?” I gaped at him, brandishing the heavy old tome like a weapon. “You can do magic!”
“That book is totally bogus, Hanna,” he said, eyeing it scornfully. “It’s not even mine; it’s Pop’s. I hide that stuff in here so he won’t accidentally kill us all in our sleep with his stupid rituals.”
“His stupid rituals? What about your sticky cards?”
“Glyph cards.”
“Aren’t those magic?”
“Glyphs are just symbols. Letters, shapes, drawings. Just stuff that represents other stuff. Like the one on Melissa’s door, remember?”
I could see it in my head still, a square with three squiggles inside it.
“The square represents the idea of fencing something in. And the wavy lines represent smell. Simple as that.”
“But how isn’t that magic? You carve squiggles into a door and suddenly horrible, noxious smells can’t escape and alert the neighbors that they live next door to Corpse Central? And what about those glyph cards you put on us at Melissa’s house that kept her off us?”
He rolled over onto his elbow to look at me. “You know how spraying bug repellent on yourself keeps mosquitoes off ? It’s chemistry and biology, Hanna. Not magic.”
“But you said yourself that the other Mortmaine can’t use glyph cards. You said you’d get in trouble if they found out you were using them.”
“They can use them,” he insisted bitterly. “They just won’t. Nobody ever uses glyphs offensively; they’re too scared of what could happen.”
“Maybe it’s not that they’re scared; it’s that they don’t know how to do what you do. They can slash marks into doors, but can they make your little magic cards? Or are you the only one who understands ‘chemistry’ and ‘biology’?”
The loose lines of his body tensed. “It’s only magic if it goes against the laws of nature.”
“And you don’t think glyph cards go against nature?”
“Not nature as I know it.” He patted the narrow space on the bed next to him. “Come here.”
“That was a quick ten minutes,” I said archly, but I was in control enough to go to him, to lie in his arms. He wasn’t demanding or grabby, content to lie still beneath my weight as I snuggled with him on his bed, our feet tangling together. He made it so easy to be with him.
I decided to throw him a bone. “You don’t have to admit you’re a witch if you don’t want to—”
“Witch?”
“—but I like the idea that you’re different from everyone. I know I am. I don’t think I’ll ever really fit in.” I meant to say it offhand, like I didn’t care, but it didn’t come out that way.
“You already fit in. Transies usually die within the first week of moving here. Or move away. Or go crazy.” With my ear to his chest, his speech sounded deep and wise. “They come here with ideas about the way the world is supposed to be, so when they see something weird, their minds break.” He stroked his hand over my hair. “Your mind, though, is very bendy.” The pride in his voice made me smile. “So bendy, you can even see ghosts.”
“Not ghosts. Just Poppa. And never until I came here. I only heard him in my head before I came here.”
“How do you know it’s not in your head?” he asked reasonably.
“He knows things I don’t know.” I thought of the leech and shuddered, which moved Wyatt to stroke my back. “He’s the one who told me about the panic grass back at the fence.”
Wyatt’s hand froze. “Is he here?”
“Over there.” I pointed to where Poppa sat in Wyatt’s desk chair, still as lake water, watching me.
Wyatt went up on his elbows and gazed at his desk, badly startled. “What’s he doing?”
“Watching me.”
His eyes widened. “For how long?”
I laughed at his old-lady expression. “Poppa’s dead, Wyatt. Perfectly beyond shame.”
“Wish I was.” He pulled a pillow over his face.
I snatched the pillow away, and it was like unwrapping a present. Such a nice face my Wyatt had. I whispered in his ear, “You have nothing to be ashamed of,” and then I kissed him.
Such a nice mouth.
“Wyatt, did you turn off your—” Wyatt and I scrambled apart as Sera crowded the doorway. “Phone?” Her gaze steamrollered over me, vindicated.
I knew then that Wyatt’s mom and I would never be best friends.
&
nbsp; “I didn’t turn it off.” Wyatt sat slightly in front of me, shielding me from his mother’s eyes, even though he was less clothed than I was. “I left it in my pants.”
“Where did you leave your pants?” Sera asked pointedly, eyeing the pillow in Wyatt’s lap.
“In the hamper.” His ears smoldered like embers.
“Your elder had to call me to tell you that you’re going hunting in the dark park tomorrow night.”
“We’re going?” I whispered in Wyatt’s bright red ear, heart pounding with excitement.
“No,” he whispered back. “Not with Elder there.”
“Wyatt!” Sera barked. When his head snapped forward she said, “Go get your phone. And your pants.”
Wyatt rolled off the bed and grabbed a pair of jeans from his closet. He flashed me a rueful grimace as he yanked them on, and then he fled the room.
When Sera and I were alone together, she gave me the once-over, studying me like I was a shiny new toaster she wanted to take apart. “You look just like Rosalee.”
“Thanks.”
“That wasn’t a compliment.” Her eyes clouded over with dark memories. “Certain women don’t handle beauty well.” She refocused on me. “I hear your father’s a Swede or something?”
“Finn.”
“I’m surprised Rosalee didn’t get knocked up by some guy around here. Lord knows she’s had plenty of opportunities.”
Was it a cultural thing, this Porterene penchant for tactless commentary?
“Did Asher give her an opportunity?” I asked, oh so innocently.
Watching Sera’s scarlike mouth deform in anger was a distinctly unpleasant experience, but even though Rosalee didn’t deserve it, I had to defend her honor. And my own.
Luckily, before Sera could challenge me to a smackdown, Wyatt came back. “I put your dress in the dryer,” he told me, and tried to get by Sera’s outstretched arm blocking the doorway. She wouldn’t let him. Instead she started fussing at him in Spanish. And then they were going back and forth and forth and back until Wyatt yelled, “Basta!”
He looked at me apologetically. “I’ll make us something to eat, all right?”
“Great,” I said, but I was looking at his mother. “I’m always hungry after a good shower.”
Sera slammed the door, shutting me alone in the room, the best thing she could have done if she wanted to punish me.
I was sick of being alone.
“You’re not alone.” Poppa sat at the desk, white and still, like one of Wyatt’s sculptures, one that had managed to cross fully into the room.
“And you are like Rosalee,” he continued. “She liked to use sex as a weapon too. You’re going to hurt that boy the way she hurt me.”
“No, I’m not,” I said, appalled by the very idea.
Poppa turned away from me. “It wasn’t a question.”
I got home later that night to find Rosalee in the living room in a glitzy, skintight dress, transferring items from one purse to another.
When she saw me, she did a doubletake. “What happened to you?”
“Giant leech attack. I lost a lot of blood. Do we have any orange juice? Wyatt said I should drink lots of orange juice.”
She ran to the kitchen—ran!—and returned with a quart-size bottle of orange juice. She sat me in the chair near the metal floor lamp, which she used to spotlight my wounded inner elbow and the bruising on my head and legs.
Visible injuries, like a real Porterene.
Wyatt had done an excellent job patching me up, but the extra fussing sent me over the moon. Rosalee cared about me so intensely, the heat of it had melted her cold shoulder.
“Why didn’t you come straight home?” she asked, after listening to the story of the leech attack.
“It’s not that bad,” I said, bouncing in the chair. “Just a few scrapes. Did you make dinner? I know it’s late, but Wyatt made me an omelet.” I made a face. “It had eggshells in it, though, and too much salt.”
Rosalee had the funniest look on her face.
“What?”
“You got attacked by a giant flying leech and all you can think about is food? You should be thinking about how to make up with your aunt so you can go back home.”
“I am home. I won the bet. Remember? I’ve made friends. I have Wyatt.”
“Sleeping around doesn’t count. I told you that.”
I stopped bouncing. Wow. Could she smell him on me? I sniffed myself.
“You told me you was gone sleep with him,” she reminded me, exasperated.
“Oh, yeah.” I shrugged it off. “He liked me before all that, so it still counts. But what counts most is that I have you, too.”
Rosalee slapped me so hard that the inside of my cheek bled. “You do not have me!”
She shot off the arm of the chair to get away from me, as though I’d hit her. “You don’t even know me. And I sure as hell don’t know you. I don’t know why I even bother trying to talk sense into you. Get eaten. Get killed. It’s nothing to me.”
“You kill me.”
She started, as though I’d fired a gun at her head. “What?”
“Kill me in a fit of passion. How cool would that be?” The left side of my face was hot, as if a heat lamp was trained on my cheek. “A crime of passion. Do they call it a crime of passion if it’s your daughter? It doesn’t matter, because I know you would only go through the trouble of killing me if you felt passionate about it, right? If it was important to you? I’d like it if I were important to you. Would you like me to get you a knife? Or you could strangle me. How would you like to do it?” I couldn’t see her expression. The tears made everything run together. “Just tell me how.”
Before Rosalee could decide, a horn honked out on the street. She turned to flee, but I grabbed the strap of her purse. She wrenched away, leaving the purse in my hand as she scrambled for the door as though I were giving chase. I was glad I hadn’t caught her hand. She might have chewed through it and left it with me as well.
I watched her through the window, watched her throw herself into a black Lexus and speed away. Poppa drifted up beside me like a summer cloud in his vanilla suit. His purple tie was reflected in his gray eyes so that they seemed bruised, as though it literally hurt him to look at me.
As I moved to bury my face in his chest like I used to whenever I felt bad, he removed a knife from his jacket and held it between us, held the blade to my face.
“I would have done it,” he said, which only made me cry harder.
“You still could,” I said, trying to talk and sob at the same time. I didn’t even have my hanky; I’d lost it stripping in Wyatt’s bathroom. “I don’t care.”
“You have to do it. Then we can be together.”
I took the knife, eyes squinted against the fiercely glowing blade … and then Swan bit my hand.
“Ow!” I dropped the knife. Before it could hit the floor, Swan’s long neck shot forward, and she swallowed it. Then, with a heave of her wings, she flew at Poppa, whooping angrily as she clawed him with her sharp black talons.
Poppa screamed in surprised hurt, Swan a heavy weight on his face, driving him to his knees. She scratched off most of the left side of Poppa’s face, his cheek and temple, his hair and scalp. The excised pieces, like confetti, drifted slowly to the floor and melted away, reminding me of Melissa.
But Poppa wasn’t like Melissa. He wasn’t a villain, a thing to be exorcised.
“Stop!” I cried, trying to shoo Swan away. “Please don’t drive him away. He’s all I have. He won’t say anything like that again.” I looked at Poppa down on his knees, nearly half his face gone. “Will you?”
The last time I had seen Poppa look so defeated was in the last days in the summerhouse, before bone cancer took him. “I won’t ask her again,” he said. “Please stop.”
Swan did stop, landing heavily on the floor between Poppa and me.
Poppa trudged to the chair by the floor lamp and put his ruined face in his hands.
>
I would have gone to him, but Swan herded me upstairs, poking me in the backs of my knees with her beak to get me moving, but when I reached my room, Poppa spoke in my head, private-like.
You’re all I have left too.
I remained awake the rest of the night missing my parents, both dead to me in different ways. Swan flew in slow, watchful circles above my bed, but as much as I loved her, I couldn’t help wishing that I was dead too.
Chapter Eighteen
I spent the rest of the week awake and depressed. I had no desire to sleep or eat, so I didn’t—Rosalee had stopped cooking for me anyway, so not eating was easy. As usual, I countered the depression with tireless activity. I did enough homework to cover the next two units in all my classes, and I sewed two new dresses, all in the space of two days. Amazing how much you could get done when you didn’t have to waste time sleeping.
Wyatt rescued me from my low mood on Friday during one of his rare appearances at school, the first time I’d seen him since we’d showered together. The Mortmaine were training him into the ground, he told me, but he would be free to hunt on Sunday. He said it was all set.
When Wyatt picked me up around sunset that Sunday, I was no longer depressed, just wide-eyed and buzzing. After I proved beyond any doubt that I could take care of myself, Rosalee would stop hating me—that was enough to lift anyone’s spirits.
“That’s what you hunt in?” Wyatt asked, pulling out of the driveway. “A dress and heels?”
I was wearing a backless aubergine dress and matching lace-up boots that came to my knees. I’d wanted to wear something dark, and aubergine was the closest to black I had in my wardrobe.
“What should I be wearing?” I asked him.
“T-shirt. Jeans. Boots without heels.” He was describing his own outfit.
“Blue jeans are too complicated, and I don’t wear anything I don’t make myself. And these aren’t exactly stilettos.” I raised my legs to tap my heels together. “I could run a mile in these boots.”
He almost swerved onto the curb from staring at my legs, so he went all serious and eyes-on-the-road. “But can you fight in ’em?”
