A Murder of Magpies (21 page)

“Listen, I’m not bending over when the problem’s on your end.” Frustration shortens
Dad’s usual languid twang, and his undershirt is damp down his back, the sleeves rolled
up to reveal the nicotine patch on his left bicep. “I’ll blacklist your ass in Georgia
and the Carolinas—hell, the entire south quadrant of this damn country—if you screw
me again. Don’t think I won’t.”

He slams down the phone and cusses a blue streak. Mom murmurs for Jonah to lay out
three tarot cards and pads across the pine floor. Her fingers skim the back of Dad’s
neck.

“There’s something yummy about a man who’s riled up,” she declares.

“Lorna, the twins…” He trails off, but his gaze intensifies on Mom. A heat more sultry
than summer nights radiates between them.

Mom busts out giggling and swats his chest. “You’re horrible, Em.”

After over twenty years with Mom, Dad can open and close his thoughts. Unfortunately
for Jonah and me, that means occasionally overhearing things neither of us wants to
know about our parents.

I shut my book with a groan. “Mom’s not the only telepath around here, you know.”

She bends over and shoos Dad’s hands from her hips.

Jonah lays out his last tarot card. “Reversed Queen of Swords. Emotions blocking logic.”

“Enough Mind Games, baby.” Mom clears the energy from the cards and wraps them in
a leather pouch before placing them inside a drawer. She then tucks my hair behind
my ears. Her touch is petal-light while she weaves my hair into a braid.
Don’t squint so much, Vayda girl. You’ll get wrinkles. Now give me a hand in the kitchen.

Yes, Ma’am.

Once we cleared the supper dishes from the table, Mom curls up in Dad’s lap on the
couch while Jonah and I kneel around the coffee table. A table fan churns out cool
air that flaps the four Yahtzee scorecards distributed among us. Mom’s on her fifth
Yahtzee. Dad smiles knowingly and squeezes her bare shoulder as she whoops. With her
messy up-do and cut-off Depeche Mode shirt, she looks more like an actress in a magazine
than a thirty-eight year old mom.

After Mom’s third win, Dad heads to the kitchen to pour a pair of scotch and sodas.
Game time dissolves, and I pick up “Macbeth” again and wait until I’m sure Dad won’t
know I’ve put my feet on the coffee table. He’d have a conniption fit if a scratch
marred the finish.

A car door slams outside. A moment later, a woman bangs on the screen door.

“Where is she?” June Forgette, one of Mom’s tarot clients, hollers through a split
lip.

Her hair in tangles and her neck blotted with welts, she pushes her way into our home
and is stunned. The burled walnut furniture and rugs hand woven by freed slaves, the
polished china on display and Antebellum-era drapes. From the exterior, the bungalow
with its terra cotta roof is simple. The inside, bulging with items handpicked by
Dad’s years in antiques, is worth more than the house itself.

June sets her wild glare on me. “Get that devil’s whore you call a mother!”

“That devil’s whore is right here,” Mom declares behind me. She cracks her knuckles.
“I don’t work from my house, June. If you need a consult, be at Antiquaria tomorrow
by noon, all right? Gotta take my family to Mass first.”

My gaze slides from June’s grimace to the quirk in Mom’s lips. What is that face?
Amusement?

As if snatching a balloon’s string before it flies away, June yanks Mom’s hair and
drags her out to the porch. Her hair clip lands on the steps and rattles before coming
to a stop.

“Mom!” I scream as the screen door slams in my face.

June hurls Mom down the stoop where she thuds against the clay dirt. Mom scrambles
up to her knees and yells, “Get your daddy!”

Before I can move, Dad’s already running out of the kitchen. He descends all four
steps in a single leap and heaves his lean frame into June. Dust from the struggle
tickles my nose, and a fierce wind bends the cypress tree next to the house so much
I fear it will snap.

“This is your fault, Lorna!” June shrieks as Dad struggles to tear her off Mom. “I
told Brett you consulted your cards and how you said he’s cavorting with that woman
like a pair of barnyard animals! He came at me with his fists, all ’cause of you!”

Mom claws at June’s bony hands. “I didn’t tell you anything that you didn’t already
know! It was in your mind!”

Beside me, Jonah hollers into the cordless phone, “Seventy-one Indigo Hill! Didn’t
you hear me the first time? We need the cops now, not later!”

My mouth runs dry as the fire pouring off Jonah sucks away any moisture. Even the
steamy night has grown arid. Because we live on the outskirts of Hemlock doesn’t mean
we need help less soon than the townies.

“I know what you do, Lorna. You’re not like the rest of that gypsy clan ’cross town,”
June hisses. “They don’t want you ’cause they know you work with the devil. You were
wild growing up, and you’re still wild now. We all should’ve stayed away from you,
but it’s too damn late.”

Mom’s hands illuminate with shimmering red. She fires a blast of energy, hurling Dad
and June to the ground. Her hair falls in snarls while a sparkle enlivens her.

“Get your ass up, June!” she orders.

June doesn’t have a chance to stand before Mom balls her hand into a fist and twists
her wrist, snatching June to her feet by an invisible pull. A jerk of Mom’s neck sharply
left, and the doors of June’s ancient Dodge fling open.

I can’t believe she’s doing this again.

“Lorna, stop!” Dad lumbers to his feet. “Let Brett and June handle their matters.
Don’t get involved. For God’s sake, don’t do this!”

Mom pushes June into the passenger seat. Dad reaches for her, but she holds up her
palm, which swells with a fiery orb. “I’m gonna be fine, Em. You know how it is. Gotta
clean up my mess.”

She climbs behind the wheel of June’s car. Ten seconds later, the engine rolls over
and Mom drives away, leaving Dad to bang his fist on the trunk hard enough to dent
the metal. Tears running down my cheeks, I slump on the steps.

Jonah puts his arm around me.
Is Mom gonna go too far tonight?

I can’t answer. I don’t know.

Massaging his bruising hand, Dad takes the phone from Jonah and dials a number. “Rain,
you best get out here. I got a problem with Lorna.”

With Mom gone, the air is empty, inert. I clean up the abandoned Yahtzee game. No
more games tonight. Jonah waits by the window, peeling back the curtains each time
he thinks headlights brighten the driveway. The buzz of the coffee grinder breaks
the silence. Numb and acutely aware we need to decide where to go next—Vermont sounds
promising, I overheard Dad suggest to Mom last week—we wait for something to breathe
life into our phantom-state.

“Lorna, what mess are you in now?” Rain calls as he enters through the backdoor.

Dad emerges from the room he and Mom share down the hallway. “She’s gone, trying to
fix things with June. This won’t end well, Rain.”

My godfather’s tanned skin pales. “You let her leave?”

Dad lowers his head. “You know damn well Lorna does what she wants.”

“Only ’cause you let her work you over. You always were whipped by her.”

Dad presses his lips together. The last time he and Rain argued about Mom’s abilities,
they didn’t speak for a year. If tonight’s bad, how long will it take before they
talk again?

“
Dati
tried to stop Mom,” Jonah intervenes.

Rain holds up his hands as if to calm the room. “Your mama’s a right handful. Takes
a hell of a man to corral her. Old Em tries mighty hard. She’ll be fine. A nutter
like June can’t hurt her.”

The words are hollow.

After forty-seven prolonged minutes, Mom’s silhouette appears at the end of the unpaved
driveway. Slimy oil, an impermeable layer of filth, wrenches my stomach the closer
she comes. She pauses outside the screen door, and when she enters, I gag on her energy.

Something has decayed and adhered itself to her.

Her olive skin is freckled with crimson dots. Both her hands crackle with a residue
the same shade as rusted iron. Crying out, I run to the bathroom to escape the rot.
Jonah chases me and shuts the door. He throws up a barrier around us to stop Mom from
eavesdropping. I raise my own wall to reinforce his.

“She’s gone mad,” I say.

“She needs us.
Dati
says we never turn our backs on family.” I don’t answer, and he growls, “If it were
you, she’d be out there taking care of you without question.”

“There was blood on her.”

“Which is more important—the blood on her skin or her blood in our veins?”

I don’t have a response. No matter what she does, she’s my mother.

I don’t want to go back into the living room, but I do because I must. Mom curls in
a ball on the floor. Dad hunches beside her, his forehead resting on her shoulder.
The pain flowing off the two of them buckles my knees, profound and shattering.

Rain leans against the sideboard under the front window. “Lorna, I’m your lawyer.
The police can’t question me. Spousal privilege protects Em, and they ain’t gonna
call your kids to the stand. You’re safe. So what in God’s name happened at the Forgettes’?”

Mom puts a hand on each side of Dad’s face. “June’s dead. Her brains blew out all
down the front of me. Brett sent her to bring me to him. He thought I tried to hurt
him by telling June to walk away from him, same thing I’d told her for years. Except
this time that man had a gun.”

Her face crumbles, and she howls like a trapped hound. “He shot her! Right in front
of me! Right in front of their boy! Her blood sprayed all over!” She examines her
stained hands, tears trailing down her cheeks. “This is June’s blood! After that,
I had no choice but to save myself. I’m not leaving you and the twins.”

Dad removes his glasses and presses the heel of his palm to his forehead. He pulls
her into his lap and rocks back and forth, holding her. “Oh, God, Lorna! What’d you
do?”

Dad’s agony reaches across the heat to thump hollowly against my heart. Mom rubs her
knees as she draws them to her chest, her focus on a painting of workers in a Georgia
tobacco field. “Brett had the pistol. He was out to kill me. I found his thoughts,
turned his gun around.”

Jonah slams his fist against the wall. “Mom, you didn’t!”

“Baby, that man was gonna kill me. What could I do?” Mom stretches her hand out to
Jonah, and he hesitantly takes it. I don’t know that I’d be strong enough to touch
her if she reached for me. She breathes hard, talks fast. “Brett Forgette has a hole
in his thigh and is telling the police I put it there. I aimed for his head, and I
would have put that bullet in his brain and had this mess be done. It’s my bad luck
that bastard flinched.”

There it was, what I always knew about my mother.

She would use her Mind Games to murder if given the chance.

Rain lights a cigarette, puffs slowly, and exhales blue-gray smoke. “Well, the upside
of this mess is that no forensic expert will say anybody but Brett pulled the trigger.
But people around here—knowing what you are, knowing what you do and what they
want to believe
you do—this will be a hell of a witch hunt. Lorna, darlin’, you might be wishing
you had killed that man by the time the dust settles.”

Vayda

Ward didn’t speak once I finished my story about that night in Hemlock. I’d had over
two years to think about what my mother did with her Mind Games, two years to know
why I resented my abilities.

Two years to grow more chaotic from not using them.

Despite my mother’s bravado, she had good parts, though I had trouble finding them.
I lived with the bad things she did. Some good existed in her. She kissed skinned
knees. She had stories about caravans with the
vardo
, and all the places her father lived before settling in Georgia. She had my father’s
adoration. That couldn’t make her all terrible.

“No offense,” Ward said, “but your mom was a total shit disturber.”

How sensitive of him. I draped my legs over his lap. “Well, I’m more inclined to say
something colorful like Mom liked her coffee black with two troubles, but go ahead
and cut to the quick. Saves time.”

He half-smiled. “I call ’em like I see ’em.”

Cardinal rule: Honesty was the best policy. Unless you were a Murdock.

“You know, the night Brett Forgette shot himself was hardly the beginning of the problems
she caused.” It sounded awful to say.

Ward traced his finger along the iron headboard of my bed. “Um, to refresh your memory,
I have lived through some bad shit. You’re not the only one.”

Yes, he’d witnessed awful things. Drake was an addict who neglected him. Not an excuse
but a reason, a pathetic, understandable reason. My mom did bad things because she
was bored.

I didn’t need to him to hold me and tell me everything was okay, but I wanted him
close. I couldn’t switch off how much I cared about him even though things weren’t
okay between us. Not yet.

After a minute, he asked, “How long have you worked Mind Games?”

“How long have you found yourself drawn to metal?” I returned. “It’s in you. Mind
Games are the same way. Jonah and I’ve worked them longer than we can remember.” I
raised an eyebrow. “No one could levitate Tonka trucks like my brother.”

Ward laughed, but his face swiftly fell. “Will you end up like your mom?”

I couldn’t answer. I didn’t know. Had Mom known she would end up the way she did?
I doubted her cards would’ve told her.

Ward stood and peeled back the curtain over my window, staring at the forest shrouded
with snow. The tendons in his neck flexed as he swallowed, stifling a cough. I moved
behind him. “It doesn’t take an empath to notice how tense you are. Will you let me
relax you?”

His nod granted me permission. My hands gripped his waist and then lowered to his
hips. A rush of calm flowed into him. The coolness spread through him, and he trembled
as his body gave in and relaxed.