A Murder of Magpies (26 page)

The barn door opened. Dad approached her with the lantern we used when camping and,
ever courteous, offered his arm for balance on the ice.

No time to grab my coat, I yanked on my blue Chucks and headed outside. Every crunch
of ice beneath my shoes made me flinch as I slinked closer to the barn where I squinted
through a knothole. The forest shifted with the wind, but the closer I drew, I overheard
Dad and Sister Tremblay. They were arguing

“Do you even know what that boy of yours is up to?” she shouted.

“Polly, you’re bleeding. You need to calm yourself,” Dad said.

She touched the blood on her lip. “Don’t tell me what to do! I can’t stand by anymore,
Emory!”

Sister Tremblay shook as she spoke, and a new cut split her lip, dribbling fresh red
down her chin. I pulled back from my watch point, heart amplified in my head like
orchestra drums. Seeing her cuts appear from nowhere, I didn’t know whether to be
terrified or astonished.

She pointed a finger. “Your boy’s working in a bad way. Jonah feeds off fear, lust,
and hate. I’ve seen his handiwork, and we both knew he has his mama’s temper!”

I splayed my hands on the weathered wood. Jonah’s handiwork? He fought Marty and messed
up Chloe’s mind, but to feed off it? That made him sound depraved.

Dad’s skin paled. “I can’t be with him every hour of the day. What am I supposed to
do?”

Sister Tremblay wiped her lip and closed her eyes, but the anger in her voice didn’t
calm. “You need to rein in Jonah or he’s gonna kill someone! Unless you bring that
boy out here so we can have a word with him—”

“You’ll what?” Dad asked. “Go to the Hemlock police? That won’t give you what you
want.”

The nun folded her arms. Months of watching us, gathering evidence of who we were
and what we could do, what did she have planned for us? I bit my lip to stop from
crying out. From screaming she had no right to hurt us. To stop myself from wheeling
out of control.

A drop of red descended from her nostril, and she sniffed it back. Stress might explain
the bloody nose, but the cuts that came from nowhere? A sickness crept over me, like
flesh rotting from the inside out. How could such a thing happen?

“Polly, you’re all riled up,” Dad murmured. “It’s not good for you, so stop. All this
anger isn’t very Christian.”

“I won’t let Jonah destroy lives like Lorna did,” she said. “He must be stopped. He
needs control. If you won’t teach him, then anything he does is on your head, Emory
Murdock.”

Dad’s shoulders widened with tension. “I guess it’s not enough that my life’s trashed
and Lorna’s dead all because your mama wanted to avenge a piece of trailer trash like
your aunt. Don’t threaten me unless you intend to follow through with it.”

I wrenched my hands around my braid.
Please,
Dati
, don’t start something with this woman. She’s out of her mind
.

Sister Tremblay’s irises were like slits in the lantern-light. The angrier she became,
the looser her accent grew, dropping all pretense of formality, until there was no
mistaking where she was from. “Aunt June raised me for years before my daddy took
me to Athens. June had problems, but she was my kin. Her boy lost both his parents
the night she died. All June wanted was help, but your wife got her killed and orphaned
that boy. Don’t forget that I knew Lorna. I knew her well, Emory. I sat through her
trial. She never showed remorse, and you stayed by her side as if she’d done no wrong.
You’re a stupid, stupid man. Everybody knew Lorna and Rain Killian tramped it up when
you came back to Hemlock. To put it straight, your wife was a whore.”

Dad’s rage threw a ball of fire into my core. Mom and Rain? My stomach rolled with
vomit, and my toes were soaked inside my Chucks. The ice and snow melted where I stood,
heated by the electricity in my palms, so that watery gravel squished beneath my shoes.

I’d seen the looks Mom and Rain shared. She’d sworn they meant nothing.

Dad clenched his hands into fists, trying to appear calm but so irate even my hands
quaked with anger. “Polly, I know the truth about my wife, one way or the other. No
need to call upon old ghosts.”

Why didn’t he defend Mom? Had she run around on him? I couldn’t tell what went on
in Dad’s head—he was too pissed. Every thought came out as a flash of red.

“Lorna was beautiful.” Sister Tremblay wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and
smeared the blood so that it coated her teeth. “She was also malicious, but you were
blind to that. You’ve always chosen to be blind.”

Dad glared at her. “First, you come here to tell me how to parent my son! Now
you’re
gonna talk to
me
about how I handled my wife? You think anybody could’ve restrained Lorna? Without
me keeping her in line, she would’ve torn up that town!”

Sister Tremblay reeled back from his shouts and landed against a bale of hay.

Dad didn’t stop. “I’d seen Lorna go out of control before, and she promised when we
got back to Hemlock things would be different. It took her a while, but it didn’t
surprise me when she ran with June again. Those two were thick as thieves. It was
only a matter of time before they got themselves in deep. Given what damage those
two could’ve done, I’d say we’re lucky June’s the only one she killed.”

My brows knitted together. I knew Mom and June had gone way back, but unlike Rain,
June never came around the house. Dad wouldn’t let her, and I had no idea why. He
sheltered us from June’s family. I pressed my eye closer to the hole in the wall.
Sister Tremblay pushed herself up from the hay. She pulled some straw from her snaky
curls and then wrapped her blood-streaked hand around the cross pendant dangling against
her breasts, winking in the lantern light.

“Lorna’s gone, but there’s no undoing how she cursed your family, Emory,” Sister Tremblay
declared. “You knew those twins would be like her. You knew how destructive they would
be without the right guidance. The least I could’ve hoped for was that you’d make
them learn from Lorna.”

Dad retreated to the shadows, pacing away from Sister Tremblay until only the silhouette
of the silver in his hair was visible. His squirminess and the forced swallow in his
throat became mine. Shields of paternal steel dammed the black flood of her gaze.
My knees shook, but I didn’t feel the cold night.

Lowly, he seethed, “Polly, you best leave my children out of this.”

The nun jutted out her chin. “I came here to get answers about Lorna, but I also came
to watch the twins. They aren’t innocent. They will hurt people, and then they’ll
be monsters.”

Dad gritted his teeth in a biting grin and laughed. “Monsters, eh? Usually, it’s witches
or gypsies or freaks.”

“You can’t tell me your boy isn’t friends with the devil! I’m here to warn you, Emory:
You’re going to wake up to another fire one of these nights.”

“You’re threatening me again. We both know Jonah isn’t harmless. Absolutely, he’s
manipulative, but his abilities didn’t make him that way. He’s not only his mother’s
child, you know. I’ve done my wrongs and repented, and I imagine Jonah will as well.
With time. If you’re worried about power and Mind Games, you’re better off keeping
your distance from Vayda. She’s the one to worry about.”

Orbs of energy in my palms sparked with lightning. What had I ever done to make Dad
say that about me? Through the knothole, I watched the lantern, and the currents raced
from my hands to the only light in the barn, which shattered in a blast of metal and
glass.

Over Sister Tremblay’s scared yelp, Dad hollered, “Vayda!”

I sprinted for the woods. Pulse compressing and releasing, blood sloshing as loose
and wild.

“Vayda, stop!”

I wouldn’t go back.

I was a monster, a girl to fear.

I plunged into the snowy thicket. More arduous than wading through knee-deep water,
I shambled past the pines snagging my cardigan and hair. With each passing tree, wood
snapped as limbs broke in response to the force purging from my being. Ice cracked
and dropped into the snow, gouging the mounds.

All this time being wary of Jonah, fretting what he would do, but
I
was the one to fear?

I leaned against a tree and tasted saltwater from tears collecting on my lips. The
bark under my hands grew hot until the wood smoked, and with a scream, I fell back.
Emotion as energy, energy as heat.

Mom didn’t teach me as she had Jonah. I wouldn’t learn. I was hurt. I burned. The
shocks, electric glitches, and the breaking lights happened more frequently.

Before I was always cold, but there was now a heat in me. A bit of Jonah. I couldn’t
be like him. I couldn’t be like Mom.

I could hurt someone.

I could kill.

It was only a matter of time.

Vayda

After midnight, Mom’s gait paces the stuffy hallway of the bungalow. I lie with my
pillow over my head, covering my ears, but hope for sleep is lost as Dad murmurs,
“Lorna, you’re carving a path in the floor. Come on to bed.”

“I can’t help it, Em,” she confesses. “I ain’t got any life in my hands.”

“Honey, please. Nothing’s worth getting yourself this riled up.”

“You don’t understand. I
need
to feel.”

Mom clambers into my room and rattles my shoulders. Yawning, I follow her to the hall
where Jonah rubs sleeping sands from his face. Dad lowers his head and lags behind
on the porch as Mom drags my brother and me into the dirt yard with the air thick
with heat lightning and humidity.

“Can you feel it?” she asks, frenzied. “All that energy coming up from the earth,
streaming toward our hands, and it’s ours!”

She clasps our fingers, a three-person circle, and a blast blinds me.

***

Emerging from the woods, I clomped through the snow toward Ward’s home. My face was
numb despite the electricity crackling in my fingers. Ward’s window was too high,
and ringing the doorbell so late would wake the whole house. I inhaled, filling my
lungs, and pointed to the window.

Open!

The window remained still.

“Come on, Ward.” I wiped my nose on my sleeve.
Hear me.
“I need your help.”

The nightly train blew its whistle. Snowflakes waltzed on the wind. After a minute,
Ward appeared by the glass. Barely awake, he noticed me below and opened the window.

“Vayda, what the hell are you doing?”

The words didn’t come, though I ached to scream. I collapsed to my knees in the snow.
A wail built from my belly up—a primal howl. Behind me, a tree branch cracked and
landed with a whoosh of falling show. The headlights in the Jaguar gleamed bright
though the car was off, so garish and blinding until they cracked.

It was me. All me.

Overloaded, overburdened. Exploding.

No wonder Ward avoided me after finding out about the Mind Games. I horrified everyone,
including my own father.

Clad in a much-loved Pixies shirt and sweatpants, his boots hastily pulled on and
unlaced, Ward was beside me and dragged me out of the snow. “Come inside. It’s too
cold out here.”

Sobbing, shocking his hands as he guided me, I trudged toward his porch. The cries
ripped from my chest and pushed me down to my knees on the steps. Ward held me close,
ignoring the growing puddle of melted snow around us.

“What happened?” he asked.

My voice wouldn’t cooperate. Even if he were telepathic, my thoughts weren’t coherent
enough to understand. My mom, who I thought was the most beautiful person in the world…How
much had she hid? And Dad, strong and unwavering and yet broken with grief, thought
I was a time bomb. He hid things as well, too many things.

With my forehead against the curve of Ward’s neck, the story of what I saw between
Sister Tremblay and Dad—what I’d learned about Jonah and me, the possibility of Mom’s
affair with Rain—all spilled out as messy as milk oozing from a broken glass.

The door behind us creaked. Heidi bundled her robe around her shoulders and pushed
aside her strawberry curls. “What’s going on? It’s after midnight.”

“Bad night,” Ward replied. “Heidi, I can’t send her home like this.”

If she judged me, she didn’t let on and held open the door. “I’ll put on some lavender
tea.”

My legs wavered. Ward shouldered most of my weight while escorting me to the couch
and mouthed thanks to his half-sister. She put her hand between his shoulders and
ushered him into the kitchen, leaving me alone with the ghosts whispering against
my neck.

Jonah abused his powers. He was sorry about what happened to Chloe, but he was also
adamant that his power could fix her. He didn’t think it was wrong to try. I knew
that. My parents were in love. I knew that, too. What if Jonah’s ego ruined the good
in him? What if my parents’ love wasn’t enough to stop Mom from having an affair?
She smiled at Rain, let him take her hand, and kept him in her life. They shared something,
and Dad never objected. It wasn’t normal. What even was normal?

Heidi entered the living room. I raised my barriers to block all confusion and hesitance
streaming off her. No more currents tonight. I didn’t want to feel. I wanted numbness.

She offered a pair of dry socks. “Why don’t you take off those wet shoes and put these
on?

The rubber of my shoes squawked as I kicked them off. Heidi picked up my sneakers
and disappeared. A moment later, thuds and clunks rang through the quiet house, shoes
spinning through the clothes dryer, and she wordlessly headed upstairs.

The phone rang. With Bernadette following close behind, Ward held out a mug of tea
while on the phone. “Yeah, Emory, she’s here…I don’t think she wants to talk.” I shook
my head, and he said, “Yeah, I’ll take care of her.” He clicked off the phone and
set it on the coffee table. “Your dad wanted to make sure you’re safe. He said he’s
sorry.”