A Murder of Magpies (2 page)

“You’re seriously suggesting a couple of kids broke every light bulb just like that?”
Dad’s voice rose. He gestured to the palsied lights. “Y’all would be better off hiring
an electrician before the school burns down.”

The room skewed left, and my vision blurred, head dizzied. Too hot, cluttered. My
hands aching—I shut my eyes. Monsignor and Sister Tremblay had to be staring, but
I couldn’t worry about them.

Energy. Rising.

Crack!

A fracture drove down the length of the fluorescent light above the desk. Sister Tremblay
yelped and snatched Jonah’s folder to her chest.

“Hell of a power surge.” Jonah’s black eyes searched for a way into my mind.
Not gonna let him in, not this time
. He was worried, but nothing was wrong, nothing at all, except that I felt like I
could pass out.

“Vayda, go get some fresh air,” Dad ordered. “You’re flushed.”

Monsignor dismissed me, and with the expected curtsey before hoisting my backpack
onto my shoulder, I cracked my knuckles one last time to diffuse the energy swelling
in my hands. I stepped out of the office, out of the glow of the stained-glass window,
and paced near the chairs where Ward waited. Jonah started this whole mess. Marty
had done nothing to me—this time. Marty never listened until Jonah made him. Ever
since that first fight, Jonah had his anger centered on Marty. Anything Jonah felt,
I felt ten times worse. When he was happy, he was very happy, but when he was angry,
he was furious.

Mom had been the same way.

“I promise you won’t go belly-up if you hold still.” Ward’s voice was deep, raw honey.
His head rested against his chair, his left eye cracked open, watching me.

I gave him a weak smile. I liked his voice.

Ward had been at our school only since Monday, and already the social boneyard where
Jonah and I roamed had claimed him. After we transferred in following Christmas break
nearly two years ago, we tried blending with the nameless, faceless uniforms, but
it wasn’t so simple. The other students never warmed to us, and we hadn’t to them.
We weren’t from here, didn’t look or act like them. We were among the Avoided, but,
as of yesterday, we had a shadow. A
gadje
shadow.

“How’s your hand?” Ward asked.

I glanced to my brother and father talking to Monsignor. That Jonah hadn’t chased
off Ward was a tacit tolerance of him. “A few cuts. I’ll live.” I twisted my black
hair, skimming my hips. “You hardly needed to play the white knight. Marty’s not much
of a dragon, more like a salamander.”

“Maybe I like fighting salamanders.”

Chipped, gray polish colored his nails. Artsy in an I-don’t-give-a-damn-I’ll-wear-it-if-it’s-clean
way. If Monsignor noticed, that’d earn Ward a detention or two.

“Listen,
gadjo
.” He didn’t deserve social devastation all because of my cavalier brother. He needed
to back off from us. While he still could. “Marty won’t bother you if you don’t bother
him. Tangling with him will never be forgotten.”

His mouth twitched, neither a grin nor a frown. “I don’t scare easily.”

He slipped on his headphones once more. Must be nice to be so untouched, unfazed.
Must be peaceful.

“Hey,” I called. He lifted one side of his headphones. “What are you listening to?”

“Music.”

Smart ass.

Thud!

A chair had overturned in Monsignor’s office and rocked ever so slightly. A chair
no one had been sitting in. Dad’s muffled voice came fast as he pulled Jonah by the
arm. From the dark expression on his face, we were in for a major talking to.

“We need to leave. Now,” Dad said as he steered Jonah out of the office.

He whisked us past the sanctuary where our footfalls echoed on wood floors polished
by nuns until glistening. The school was a dour extension off a century-old Catholic
parish. The walls in the language arts wing were painted rich blue, the Virgin’s color.
Hung between classrooms were carvings from the Stations of the Cross, thick with dust
except for Christ’s gaze, which followed us and knew my family’s secrets and sins.

Outside was better. Riding in the car, the windows lowered to allow in the fire-musk
smell of October, but there was something else, an odor of things buried deep in the
black earth. Dad steered into a parking lot by a grocery store. The heavy silence
in the car made it impossible to push back the memory of the last time we pulled over
like this. Instead of a parking lot, it’d been off a highway in a forest in northern
Georgia and, with the haze of morning fog guarding the Chevy we’d escaped in, Dad
had vowed we were going straight to Black Orchard, a town in Wisconsin near Canada.
There, we would start over.

Find somewhere new. Claim different names.

Dad pushed his fingers through his black hair, streaked with silver, and set his eyes,
the same green as mine, on my reflection in the rearview mirror. “This stops now.
Your mama might’ve called what y’all do Mind Games. But I won’t play.”

“Yes, sir,” Jonah and I answered.

“Mind Games, if you must work them, are private. Working them in public is how your
mama found trouble.” He twisted his wedding band. “We can’t risk a repeat of Georgia.”

I jerked my head to the view out the window. Black Orchard, Wisconsin. Easter egg-colored
Victorian homes lined the streets, and people spoke with northern accents, which sounded
friendly no matter what they said. But pretty towns and nice people could betray you.

Last time that happened, we escaped with nothing but our lives.

If it happened again, would we even have those?

Vayda

Evergreens formed a thick barrier along the road until we came to a driveway that
serpentined to a house. With flagstone walls under a soaring slate roof, it bore no
resemblance to the small Spanish bungalow we had left as a smoldering pile of ashes
in Georgia. The home contrasted oddly against the ramshackle barn some fifty-odd feet
away. That barn always creaked against the wind.

The phone was already ringing when I walked inside. I set down Dad’s canvas grocery
bag of coffee beans and nicotine gum and checked the phone. The Caller ID read
Hemlock, GA
. My breath hitched.

“Stop it,” I muttered to myself. “You’re fine.”

No one from Georgia ever called but Rain Killian—my godfather. Mom had always insisted
we be careful about who we let into our lives. Though we didn’t have a
vitsa
, a clan of all the families we knew, Rain was close, despite that he was
gadje
.

“Hey, darlin’, how’s the weather?” Rain asked. “You taking care of that summer house
of mine?”

“The house is gloomy and haunted by ghosts of blackbirds once trapped in the attic,
but—”

“I get it, Vayda dear, you hate the house.”

“It’s always cold, even in summer.”

“You’re thirty minutes from Canada. You can’t expect the tropics. How’s the boy half
of you?”

“Acting like he’s the dim one of the litter.” I paused as Rain muffled a laugh. “He
got in a fight.”

“Do I need to give him a talking to?”

So very Rain, like a second dad. I teased, “That’s
Dati’s
job, don’t you think?”

“Okay, not gonna step on old Em’s toes.” He backed off, and I felt the warmth of his
hug from over a thousand miles away. “Speaking of that devil, is your daddy about
the house? There’s trouble with your mama’s grave down here.”

My smile broke. “What about her grave?”

“Since the headstone went in, vandals have been desecrating the grounds. People here
ain’t forgetting what Lorna did.”

A sick kick jolted my stomach, and the canisters on the counter rumbled. A rainbow
of dry beans bounced inside their jar. My eyes scrunched shut.
Breathe. Calm down
.

Within hours of knowing my mom was dead, Rain entrusted Dad with the keys to a vacation
house he owned in Black Orchard. I’d never seen Mom’s grave. Her burial occurred after
we ran, and as such, we never properly mourned.

My voice came out terse. “I’m gonna hand you over to
Dati
.”

“Vayda, I don’t mean to upset you. Just giving you the facts,” Rain said.

I didn’t want to hear anymore. As I entered Dad’s study, he snapped away from reviewing
an auction catalog to take Rain’s call. I had a hunch this wouldn’t be one of their
typical talks about what was new on the museum scene.

With time to kill before I needed to begin supper, I wrapped an apron at my waist
and pulled together flour, salt, and several fat, brown-shelled eggs. Next, milk,
butter, and sugar warmed on the stove before I added yeast from an amber glass jar.
Boredom, distraction, whatever the reason, I enjoyed making bread, diving my fingers
through the powdery flour, using the strength in my hands to knead dough. Creating
instead of breaking.

Jonah poked his head into the kitchen. He’d changed out of his school uniform, opting
for a thrift store T-shirt. He laid a yellowed Henry James biography on the table
and tied back his hair. Glossy and one shade removed from black, we both wore our
hair long. Like Mom.

Picking up the sharp knife lying on the pine table, he ran the blade through sprigs
of fresh rosemary and thyme before dumping the herbs into the dry mix I sifted with
my fingers. “
Dati’s
still pissed.”

“And the Wonder Brain prevails again.” I dusted the table with flour, ready to knead
the dough. “We messed up.
I
messed up. I let down my barriers, took in too much energy. It released, and the
lights broke. A sideshow for all.”

The doorbell chimed. Jonah and I stared at each other. No one ever came to the house.
I wiped my hands on my apron and reached the entrance before my brother, and then
I opened the hinged speakeasy in the door. A delivery truck idled in the driveway.
All deliveries went to Fire Sales, Dad’s antiques shop downtown.

I opened the door to the man holding a flat box. “Package for Emory Murdock.”

“Let me handle this,” Dad said, suddenly beside me.

Cold spiraled to my limbs. I balled my hands so they couldn’t do anything unwieldy.
Dad took care of the deliveryman before fastening the chain and twisting the key in
the speakeasy. More clicks and spins down multiple locks as he barricaded us inside.
Wariness pinched his face, his back pressed to the door. Jonah and I shared a glance.
Going into Dad’s mind to gather what he was thinking was off-limits. Cardinal rule.
If he was riled up enough, Dad broke that rule on his own, and Jonah and I’d get more
than intended.

We didn’t need to know Dad’s thoughts. We all heard the name:
Murdock
.

Someone knew.

Someone
knew
.

The nervousness careening from Dad to my hands crackled. He waited until Jonah loosened
the drapes and shut out the world before he withdrew his pocketknife and sliced the
tape sealing the box. I yanked shut one sliver where the curtains weren’t sealed.
It didn’t matter that the woods around the house had grown murky with the half-light
of sunset. Anyone could be out there.

Dad fished through the packing peanuts to find a large envelope, opened it enough
to peer inside, and smacked it against the coffee table with a hiss. “Isn’t that nice?”

Cussing under his breath, he slammed the door to his study. I flinched, though not
from the noise. That wasn’t anger coming off Dad. It was fear.

Jonah’s breathing was loud, amplified by the sudden quiet in the house. He removed
a newspaper from the envelope.
The Hemlock Herald
, dated the Sunday after Thanksgiving two years ago. “Local Woman Dies in House Fire,
Family Disappears.” Below, a photo culled from our parish directory pictured my mother.
A metal clip pinned up her black hair, and her mouth spread in her scarlet smile.
Marker scrawled one word across the picture.

Gypsy.

Ward

Underneath the night sky by the backside of an evergreen forest, I set up shop on
the driveway of the rehabbed Victorian I now called home. With just a T-shirt under
a flannel one, I didn’t feel the cold.

Everything I needed was right there: a metal sawhorse dragged out of the garage, plenty
of sharp tools, and a gallon of orange juice. A pair of extension cords snaked out
from the garage’s open blackness. I switched on a work lamp and studied the sheet
of copper. Nothing to interrupt me.

The blowtorch’s blue flame hissed loudly despite my welding mask, so I kicked up the
volume on the cheap stereo stored in the garage. So old it had slots for cassettes.
The speakers worked, and my foot found the demented carnival bass of Wolf Parade’s
“You Are a Runner, and I Am My Father’s Son.” Already stenciled on the copper were
a handful of circles. The blowtorch was the easiest way to carve out the shapes. After
they were loose, I’d hammer them into small cups and attach them to the wind sculpture
I was building. Finding an old lightning rod with long arrows and a purple glass ball
in the center had been a nice bit of luck.

The kitchen window over the driveway slid open, and Heidi gave me an impatient scowl.
“Turn it down!”

I dialed back the volume a skosh and lowered the welding mask. Copper wasn’t always
the easiest metal to shape, but the rust patterns made it the most interesting. Didn’t
come cheap. The snaggle-toothed guy at the recycling plant told me a bunch was stolen
’cause the resale price was better. I didn’t much care as long as I could bend it,
burn it, hammer it, whatever.

Amid a shower of glittery sparks, the circles took shape. I killed the blowtorch and
slung it over my shoulder before punching out the metal. A scalding edge bit my index
finger, slashing and stinging in one swoop.

“Shit!” Blood dripped onto the rusted copper. Should’ve worn gloves. One lesson I’d
learned at least a dozen times.

With my hand wadded in my shirt, I let myself inside and bypassed Heidi, buried in
the walk-in pantry, on my way to the bathroom. The cut gushed blood, and rinsing the
wound with cold water felt about as good as jabbing in an icicle. My hand quaked as
I dug through the cabinet for bandages.