A Murder of Magpies (25 page)

I had to close my eyes as she slid inside my head. Her feet carried her along a floor
in a hallway lined with doorways shrouded by tattered curtains. Her arms stretched
out and fingers snagged each curtain, snapping the fabric to the floor. I breathed
harder as she plunged further inside and found my sharpest memories.

How my lips pressed against Audrey’s. She was my friend Louis’s girlfriend. I helped
her find the condom tucked in my back pocket and made quick work of unbuckling my
belt. She tasted of weed and Sprite. I hoisted her onto the worktable in her dad’s
shed. In the darkness that smelled of gasoline, I fumbled for her body when a crack
of pain in my forehead killed my hard-on. Somehow, I hit my head on a shelf, and she
cackled as I lumbered outside into the afternoon sun in her mom’s rose garden.

How I held the phone in the kitchen of the apartment. I had dialed the nine and a
one but couldn’t push the second one. A spray of blood had squirted from Drake’s arm,
and he curled up beside the fridge devoid of food with foamy vomit dribbling down
his chin. I sighed and pushed the one button on the phone. The dispatcher asked my
emergency, and I muttered, “My father shot up on smack. Again.”

Vayda pulled aside one more torn curtain, but she was already in the room with me.
Her eyes crinkled as she sang an old Mickey and Sylvia song, “Love is Strange,” the
two of us playing guitar together. I kept picking the lead melody but my beat slowed
while I watched her, and I wondered if I was weird for wanting to stare at her—

“Stop!” I shouted, gasping as she receded from my mind, and warmth gushed in my skull
to fill the void left in her wake. In my head, she restrung the curtains to close
the doorways. She never smiled or frowned, only took in the things I’d endured.

My eyes opened.

The roof of Heidi’s house felt like an iceberg beneath me, unyielding and frozen,
the northern lights dimmed by clouds moving across the moon. Vayda was still astride
my hips, but she searched my face, concerned. “Are you okay?”

After several cleansing breaths, I drew her into an embrace, resting my head in the
slope of her neck. In-fucking-tense. My body hummed with the flutter of thousands
of magpies’ wings swarming inside me. She kissed my cheek, feather-light, and I laughed.
Unintentional. Embarrassed. Relieved.

“I’m cold,” she said. “Time to go inside.”

Back in my room, she offered up the gift she’d brought for my birthday. She clapped
and urged, “Open it.”

My mind remained cottony from letting her into my thoughts. I tore open the paper.
A book.
The Little Prince
. I once had a copy and misplaced it when I left Rochester. She probably already knew
that.

“It’s awesome,” I said and set it on my nightstand.

Vayda dragged over the trashcan and picked up some fractured plastic and shredded
papers. I sat across from her, and our fingers reached for the same mangled book.
We caught each other’s eyes, smiled, and kept cleaning up the mess.

Somewhere in the house, the phone rang. Chris entered my room and handed the phone
to Vayda. She listened, her brow pinched and fingers twirling her hair.

“What is it?” I asked as she switched off the phone.

She rose to her feet and brushed off her pants. “I need a ride to pick up
Dati
from Fire Sales. His car’s tires were slashed.”

“Why would someone do that?”

Her expression was frightened yet fatigued. “It’s what always happens. Every place
we’ve lived, it’s the same story.”

My head dizzied. Vayda held my hands and helped me up, and I sensed a distinct electric
field building between us, feeding the currents joining us together. “You’re honestly
afraid someone might hurt you?”

“
Gadjo
, I’ve looked over my shoulders for two years,” she replied solemnly. “It was merely
a matter of time before Black Orchard became like Montana and Georgia. We were supposed
to move to Vermont, but then Mom died and we ran. Each time we find a new home, the
time we can stay grows shorter. And once people find out what we can do, it only gets
worse.”

Vayda

According to the news, January reigned as the worst winter month Wisconsin endured
in a decade. Canadian clouds unloaded thirty-two inches of snow, and the cold was
harsh. With the first storm, Rain flew back to Georgia. Over two weeks, the days of
cancelled school were endless, and the snow kept coming. I squinted at the piles outside
the house. Fresh sleet crusted the mounds with ice. Ward warmed himself by the woodstove,
the door open and fire reflecting like hammered bronze in his hair.

I went into the kitchen and set a pan on the stove to warm milk and sugar. A hard-milled
flour sifted through my fingers. I added the yeast and some golden eggs, barely thinking
as I pulled together challah dough. After a bit, Ward leaned against the doorway separating
the kitchen from the living room, eyes focused on my hands working the dough.

“Think your dad wants us at Fire Sales?” he asked.

“
Dati
closed up shop early.” I shaped the dough into a ball and set it into an oiled bowl,
covering it with a towel to rise. “This sleet’s gonna become a wicked blizzard.”

He nodded in the direction of the front door. “Speaking of a storm…”

“What?” I washed my hands, dried them fast on my apron, and hurried to the living
room where headlights from a car parked outside shone through the windows. I pulled
my violet sweater over my hands and noticed Jonah on the stairs, also keeping an eye
on the headlights. His sling was gone, and while I knew he was anxious to stretch
his limbs again, he wouldn’t extend them to Chloe waiting for him outside.

Ward gestured to the car lights in the window. “Isn’t there something you can do about
that?”

Jonah shook his head. “I could try, but—”

“—that would show you learned nothing from what you did,” I muttered.

“Vayda girl, if I wanted, I could already be with someone else, but I’m not. What
I did with Chloe, no matter why I did it, was wrong. There’s my confession like a
good Catholic.” He leaned against the banister and ran his hand over the polished
wood. The dark flame in his eyes died down, and his voice changed to something more
sober. “Maybe it is a confession ’cause only God knows how sorry I really am. I tried
making things right with Chloe. It didn’t work, and you’ve made it more than clear
that you think anything else I try will make it worse.”

No. Absolutely not. He might’ve been sorry, but he wasn’t about to push the responsibility
for what Chloe was going through onto me.

“Things are already worse!” I yelled. “You wrecked another human being! You know what
happened when Mom messed around in people’s heads—Cardinal rule: It always comes back
to you, Jonah. Always.”

“And how many times do I have to tell you? I’ve done what I’m
allowed
to do. Maybe if you weren’t constantly shaking your finger at me, I could get a handle
on this. We’d be golden.”

He jerked away from the stairway and stalked toward the front door.

Ward, who’d stayed out of it as Jonah and I argued, cleared his throat. “I wouldn’t
do that if I were you.”

Jonah hung his head and moved back to guard his post by the stairs, pausing before
taking the first step. “I didn’t know this would happen to Chloe, and I wish you’d
let me try to fix it. You’re the one who said she’d get better with time, but it’s
plain as day that nothing’s changed.”

“Please don’t do anything,” I begged.

“I gotta do something, Vayda. Don’t you agree? Can’t you help me?” He waited for me
to say something. I lowered my eyes. “Fine. Do nothing. I guess I’m gonna have to
figure things out without you, and if it doesn’t work, then at least I tried.”

The heat from my brother’s frustration was unbearable, my skin absorbing rays of scorching
power. As he ascended the staircase to head back to his room, his fire freed my barriers,
letting my mind uncoil.

“He’ll calm down,” I muttered.

Ward dusted his fingers over my palm, comparing the bones of his thin fingers and
his palm’s breadth to mine. “Your skin is hot. Normally, you’re cold.”

“It’s him. Me taking his feelings as mine.”

I exhaled. The lamp hummed and shuddered, dark then bright, dark then bright.

Ward reached over to still the lamp’s swinging pull chain, and the flickering settled.
He lifted my hand and traced the outline of my fingers. I closed my eyes, enjoying
the prickle running up my spine from his touch.

“Are you afraid of your Mind Games?”

My eyes blinked open. “Yes. The way people react to them is worse. I told you before
we’re chased away wherever we lived. Georgia last time. Before that, it was Montana.”

The fire in the woodstove blurred as I recalled the Christmas lights twinkling in
Dad’s junk shop in Montana, always strewn above the front counter. The Cure’s doom-and-gloom
anthems mixed with the chime of a sale on a vintage cash register.

“
Dati
had an odds-and-ends shop called Baubles,” I began. “It didn’t make much money, but
we got by. In the back of the shop, past a beaded curtain, Mom arranged her tarot
table. The walls were painted red, candles everywhere, totems, herb remedies. Every
Tuesday night, a line of people went out of the shop and halfway down the street.
Nice Mrs. Murdock who knew everyone’s underpinnings. The thing is people don’t visit
a tarot reader to learn tomorrow’s weather. Mom meddled with deeper stuff.”

Ward’s eyes tightened. Sometimes the stillness I felt around him got in the way. I’d
made a promise to listen to his thoughts only when he was aware of what I was doing.
Right then I wished I knew what he was thinking. That my mother was trouble was obvious,
but did he think we enabled her to do bad things? It was easier to project these thoughts
as his than admit they could be mine.

I had to tell him everything. No more secrets.

“Like Hemlock, Mom uncovered bad deals. Someone decided the best retaliation was to
yap Mom was an occultist. The rumors took on some life. Jonah and I were teased. A
lot. Gypsy thieves. ‘Witch, witch, Devil’s bitch!’” I pushed back the chant in my
ears. “Mom lost her temper when we had to leave our church. People made things rough
for our priest. Mom was all, ‘If they want a witch, I’ll give them a witch.’ Her Mind
Games went public. People painted curses on our house and
Dati
’s shop. We had a black barn cat. Mom wouldn’t let it in the house, but
Dati
called it Nyx—”

“I don’t want to know,” Ward cut me off. “Especially since you don’t have any pets
now.”

Smart boy.

“We left town soon after. Mom was angry with
Dati
for making us go. That much I remember. She thought she could keep everything under
control using her Mind Games.”

“Sounds familiar.”

Jonah was reliving Mom, but at least he guarded his abilities more often than not.
As long as he didn’t get ahead of himself.

“You see why I keep the Mind Games under wraps,” I said. “I mean, how would an entire
school react if Danny or Marty talked about that night in Fire Sales? Or if Chloe
blabbed about how Jonah messed up her mind? People won’t let us be.”

Ward squeezed our joined hands, fire-shadows dancing over our faces. “So you flee
from one town and stay until you have no choice but to escape to another.”

I inched closer to him, my lips barely touching his. “Yeah, but there’s one thing
in Black Orchard I don’t want to leave behind.”

“And what’s that?”

“You.”

***

A scream reverberated off my skull.

I bolted upright in bed. My skin was slippery with sweat, and my braided hair lay
damp down my back. I didn’t know if it was dream residue or only me, but the house
was unsettled, the shadows too long, too wide. Too dark.

I crawled out of bed, the floor creaking, slid a cardigan over my camisole, and crept
out from my room. Across the hall, Jonah’s door was ajar. He slumbered on his stomach
while his iPod dock hummed a harp and string piece. A biography of Mary Shelley was
open on his nightstand. I shut his door, said a prayer he would sleep with nothing
going on in his mind.

Farther down the hall, a slant of moonlight streamed from Dad’s bedroom. My fingers
glided over the plaster walls in search of his energy. He hadn’t been in the room
since morning. The blankets were undisturbed, corners sharp, not even a pair of shoes
out of place.

The scream from my nightmare cut me again with its teeth, and despite the cardigan
covering my shoulders, I trembled.

The house wanted me awake. My eyes rose to the corners of the hallway, searching the
darkness, but I didn’t know what I was looking for. Eyes. Something watching. I couldn’t
shake the sense that I wasn’t the only one up and staring down these halls.

“
Dati
?” I edged along the stairway to the living room, lit with the same silver glow as
upstairs. The kitchen made no sound but for the droning icebox, and the study was
vacant. Yet Dad’s chair radiated warmth. Real warmth. He hadn’t been gone long. I
switched on the lamp and noticed a folder open on his desk, left abruptly.

“What’s this?” I wondered.

Real estate listings, commercial and residential, comments like “private schools”
and “historic district” jotted in Dad’s neat cursive. Listings in Oregon, Colorado,
and Maine, were organized and clipped in the pocket. I whapped the folder closed and
dropped it on the desk, hands aflame. If he was this far in his search, then a move
would come soon and Black Orchard would be behind us.

A car’s engine rumbled on the driveway. Chloe? At this time of night? I darted to
the window, shrouding myself in the curtain, and watched the headlights gleam against
the icy driveway. Sister Tremblay, in a black dress, climbed out of an equally black
sedan. Unkempt ringlets of hair spilled around her shoulders and a trail of dried
blood near her lip marked her pallid face.