A Murder of Magpies (6 page)

“Taos, New Mexico, in a hippie commune.”

“That’s different.”

“Or she’s a fishmonger in Seattle. Maybe she’s back in jail in Arkansas.” He jumped
for a low-hanging branch, missing it. “She used to send postcards but stopped a long
time ago.”

I stopped myself from touching his shoulder. Sticking my finger in a light socket
would do less damage. But I wanted to. I wanted to put my fingers on him and take
away the hurt, swallow it into mine. I knew the hurt of losing a mother. When I wanted
to bolt from him before, I’d been afraid of his anger, but it wasn’t truly anger.
It was grief. Even if he wasn’t
Rom
, we had this thing in common, and it was pain. Pain was something I could take. As
my hand caught his shoulder, a tic in the corner of his lips jumped.

I got it, and he knew it.

The woods thinned until we reached the main road into Black Orchard. Ward led me across
the road to a cobblestone driveway I passed daily. On each side, conifers like sentinels
guarded the driveway, threatening to collapse and suffocate any trespassers under
their weight.

I ducked into Ward’s coat and stayed close behind as he guided me down the driveway
where we came to an inhospitable gate.

He grimaced as he wiped away a spider’s gauzy web tacked between the metal bars, and
he wedged the gate wide enough until he could slip inside and heave it open wider.
“The button in the car makes it appear so easy, but this thing weighs a ton.” He waved
me forward. “After you, my lady.”

I walked around him, stopping as I came to his bowed head. His mischievous smile stretched
wide, and warmth crept into my cheeks; I had to glance away. A soft laugh echoed behind
me, not the mocking sounds that chased my mother, chased Jonah and me in Montana and
Hemlock. A gentle tease that, because I’d blushed, knew he unraveled some tight part
of me. He was
gadje
and utterly frustrating.

I wanted to hear his laugh again.

I walked around the driveway’s curve where his house came into view. The Victorian
restoration was deep lavender with dormer windows and spindle-trim painted magenta
and white. Three stories high, the distance from the ground to the tallest gable was
intimidating. A lightning rod curly-cued off a turret where a Velvet Underground poster
covered a window, Ward’s room I guessed. Half-dead ivy devoured the house, crawled
up from the earth to reclaim the wraparound porch. The ivy pulled as if wishing to
snap off pieces and drag them under the dirt after sunset.

A silver dog wandered off toward the evergreens, and Ward trotted across the grass,
tucking the dog under his arm, and met me on the porch. “Bernadette wants to say hi.”

My mother’s
vitsa
never let her keep dogs or cats because they weren’t clean. Yet we had barn cats
that my father fed with cans of tuna in Montana. I offered the snuffling schnauzer
my hand. Her irises were milky, and the fat stump of her tail convulsed. “She’s cute.
You bring her when you moved?”

“Like I’ve ever had a pet.” He set the dog in a wicker basket and patted her before
standing. “Bernadette’s my sister’s dog, but she likes me best.”

In the fading sunlight, the waves of his hair gleamed copper, which he pushed behind
his left ear to reveal a steel-ring cartilage piercing. As he rose from settling the
dog, his gaze locked on mine. I should’ve slipped away and waved him goodbye, but
I stayed. His chest swelled with breath. The toes of his combat boots nudged against
my blue Chucks, still I didn’t back away. Something held me because I needed to know
what would happen if I stayed beside a boy I shouldn’t be near. The tip of his tongue
wetted his lip. Heat melted my cold as his face inched near mine. My fingers twitched.
I wanted to touch him.

“Vayda,” he whispered.

I turned my face. “I should probably go. Here’s your coat.”

“I think it’s going to rain. I’ll get it later.”

I hopped down the steps.

“Vayda,” he said again, louder.

I stalled, spying a funny twist on his mouth.

“You have the longest hair,” he remarked.

“Thanks, I guess.” Again, we said goodbye, but I pivoted to see him on the porch,
arms crossing his chest. “Something working your mind, young man?”

He approached me. Our fingertips touched. A small
zing
, enough to make my fingers prickle. Again his mouth was close, his cheek not quite
against mine. I lowered my barrier to touch him. The energy was easy and light, a
tickle. I wanted more.

“It’d be cool to hang out. Without Jonah,” he said.

I wanted to see him again, but so many complications made it hard to say okay. The
memory of my dream—the pine trees, his hands. Why him?

I lifted my barrier, retreating. “I don’t know if I can.”

“I see.” He trudged up the steps and held his dog, scratching her ears. I thought
he was going inside with nothing to say until he swung around. “It’s the whole Romani
thing. Or maybe you want someone who isn’t a wreck.”

Before I could tell him it wasn’t either of those things—I wouldn’t have walked with
him if I had a problem with him being
gadje
, and I didn’t care what kind of background he had—he wrenched open the screen door
and disappeared inside the towering house. The door clattered behind him with such
force I covered my ears to drown the sound and his annoyance with me still echoing
where we had stood.

Alone, I kicked the dirt. “Shit!”

My vision swam, all the sharp evergreens jarring right. The woods were menacing as
I faced them, the points of the branches like knives seeking to cut and bleed me.
To open me. To Ward. My family kept the kinds of secrets we couldn’t share. With anyone.
I stayed away from everyone for fear that the truth might slip out. Hiding was exhausting,
loneliness tiring.

As I walked home, I wrapped tighter in Ward’s coat, but nothing stopped the chills.

***

A silver Toyota parked by the barn. Chloe’s car. I supposed when she’d dropped me
off and saw Jonah again some bit of remaining feeling for him rekindled. Neither Jonah
nor Chloe were around when I let myself inside.

Yet I remained by the open door a moment. Energy swelled around me, the snarl of regret
and want inside me. I tried to push out those feelings but only pulled them in deeper.
The bleak sky swarmed with clouds as if my unrest could influence the weather. My
hands vibrated, a smell of ozone touched my nose as sparks fractured around my fingertips.
Seconds later, raindrops pinged on the copper awnings, falling so fast puddles spread
on the gravel drive. Halloween was a few days off, and in another week, this rain
could well be ice. I was beginning to like the cold.

I backed away, slamming the door. The paranoia of locks remained undone, but I removed
the curtains from their hooks. Jonah always let in the light, and I closed it out.
I could pretend to protect the antiques from the sun’s glare. That was a fib Jonah
could push past if he so chose.

I spotted an iPod on the coffee table, tagged by masking tape scrawled with Ward’s
name and number. I wound my hand into my skirt to keep a thin shield between any remnant
of Ward and myself. Scanning his playlist, half the artists weren’t anyone I recognized.
Old Crow Medicine Show, Sun Kil Moon. My, what a strange boy Ward was.

I touched his coat and lowered my barriers for Ward. To really let him through. I
didn’t practice the Mind Game often. Sometimes someone’s possessions carried enough
energy to let me inside their head, to see what they did. Knowing what emotions adhered
to objects was unpredictable, and I didn’t like using those objects to work minds.

I held the iPod, concentrating, seeking Ward, when a massive wave of melancholy rolled
over me so strong my gut churned. The lights flickered, dimming for a beat before
glowing far more brightly than the
led
bulbs should’ve allowed. Dull-bright-dull-bright.

Then I saw him.

He washed his face in a bathroom with blue walls and white tiles. He was shirtless,
defined muscles on thin arms. Freckles dotted his shoulders. A tattoo of a gray-scale
raven began on his right shoulder and wound halfway down his bicep. It was an unkind
bird, a broken bird, its head swiveled so it glared as if to say, “Back off.” Trailing
away from his arms, I moved to his abdomen, which was boyish despite a shadow of muscles.
His unbuttoned jeans hung open below his hips and brought my curiosity lower.

My heart thumped faster as I lifted the telephone from its cradle and dialed the number
on the iPod. On the second ring, I hung up and yanked myself from his mind. Not before
I saw him scowl as he checked the Caller ID on his cell phone.

He didn’t call back.

***

There was little chance anyone from school would see Chloe leave my house, but she
crept out with her head ducked and face obscured by enormous sunglasses as she snuck
out after spending an hour in Jonah’s bedroom. I should’ve offered her a hooded cloak.
It’d hide her better.

She didn’t trust us. Didn’t trust what we’d say. Didn’t trust that she’d remain unseen.

Only certain souls deserved trust. Dad taught us that. Even if we hadn’t been so superstitious,
no one would’ve understood my family, how our minds worked. Not unless we counted
Rain, but he’d known about Mind Games since before Mom met Dad. Mom trusted Rain and
Dad with her secret, nobody else. She still wound up dead. Murdered.

Jonah plodded down the stairs in time with the rainfall. “What the hell were you doing?”

I took off Ward’s jacket and hung it on the coat tree. “What do you mean?”

“The lights in my room kept dimming when I was with Chloe,” he answered.

I lowered my face. Nothing got past him. “I was working a Mind Game.”

He whipped his body off the last step and stood over me, his long shape stretched
high over my head, burning. “You need to stop fucking around and get serious. Either
work your Mind Games or don’t, but this half-assed stuff needs to stop!”

Cold spread through my muscles, and I ducked out from under him. “It’s not as if I
don’t ever use them. I just don’t rely on them. What’s wrong with that?”

“Because you aren’t careful.”

“Careful?” My jaw dropped. “Are you for real? You work Mind Games all the time! You
can’t tell me you didn’t work one to get Chloe hanging around you again!”

He folded his arms and leaned against the wall. “You worry about you, Sis.”

“Jonah, someone knows we’re here. Someone’s watching us. This is how things went bad
in Hemlock. Mom wasn’t—”

“I’m not Mom!” He slammed his palm against the wall. “My Mind Games are fine! When
you use the Games only when they’re convenient and deny them the rest of the time,
you do things like screw up the lights! Why don’t you hang a sign flashing ‘Freak’
above your head?”

I jerked my face as if he’d slapped me. My hands tingled with his anger, my panic.

Jonah’s scowl shifted to the walnut coffee table. It was an enormous piece collected
from one of Dad’s first buying trips for antiques after we came to Black Orchard,
back when he was stocking Fire Sales. The legs of the table were thicker than my calves
and lavishly carved. The table could support both Jonah and me as we’d learned when
swapping out Rain’s contemporary chandeliers for ones to match the stone house’s period,
and yet now the heavy table hovered above the floor as if taking a deep breath before
it careened toward me. I had no time to react except to scream and steel my body for
the blow.

Nothing.

Less than an inch away, the table froze and waited for the next command from its master.
My arms trembled.

“You should’ve seen that coming.” Jonah tapped his temple. “Use your head like I use
mine. Get the thoughts before they become an action. You could have this kind of control.
This is what a Mind Game really is, Vayda.”

The door swung open. Glancing between Jonah, the table, and me, Dad slammed the door
behind him and hurled aside his wet raincoat. “Put it down!”

My brother lowered his hand. The table fell, and I slumped to my knees.
Why, Jonah?

Furniture polish from Fire Sales clung to Dad’s shirt as he placed his hand on my
shoulder, guarding me from my brother.

“
Dati
,” Jonah murmured.

“Quiet!” he spat. “What the hell were you thinking? Room! Now!”

Jonah slogged upstairs while I forced back tears I didn’t want to cry. “I’m fine.
Really.”

“I know you’re okay, Magpie.” Dad’s body droned with fear and papa bear-protectiveness.
He pushed my hair from my forehead. “Didn’t expect to walk in on such a scene.”

I gulped down a few calming breaths. I knew my twin. At least, I thought I did. His
temper, his anger because I didn’t see Mind Games as the gift he did, what if he let
that drive us apart?

My heart sped, and the lights buzzed, dimming a second or two. Jonah was right: I
needed control of my Mind Games, but how could I when I’d only seen them used to hurt?

“You’re thinking awfully hard there,” Dad said, sitting beside me, one knee to his
chest, the other leg stretched out. “This business with the lights didn’t start up
until last spring when that Pifkin boy—”

“I’m not talking about him. Nothing happened.”

“Except the lights go wild whenever you’re upset now.” Dad took off his glasses and
cleaned them on his shirt, carefully regarding me from under the black and silver
hair falling over his forehead. “Don’t get me wrong. Your brother’s in a heap of trouble,
but you also gotta get a grip, Magpie.”

“Sometimes I wish we could be normal,” I admitted.

“Yes, well, you are your mother’s child, and that little fact altered what your normal
could ever be.”

He sounded so accepting of Mom and her Mind Games, of what her abilities had produced
in Jonah and me. I didn’t have that peace. She died before I knew how to handle the
Mind Games, and I didn’t want to be like Jonah, testing them on other people.