A Murder of Magpies (23 page)

“Did he tell you he has quite an arrest record?” Rain went on. “He’s not some innocent
kid.”

I knew this, but having it pointed out was a kick in the back. “He’s not in that life
anymore. Trust me, will you?”

“Of course.”

Rain closed the backpack but kept out a drawing pad. Other than me, Dad was the only
person granted permission to review Ward’s sketches of metal sculptures. Rain smiled
as he paged through the pad. “Might be your daddy sees a shadow of himself in young
Mr. Ravenscroft. Once an artist, always an artist.”

I finished loading the dishwasher and retrieved the menagerie of cups Jonah accumulated
in the living room. The couch was empty, the blanket hanging off the cushions. I touched
the couch. The fabric was still warm. His black Chucks were gone from the mat by the
front door, too. Where the hell did he go?

I raced to the kitchen. “Where’s Jonah?”

Rain plundered the bowl of chicken in the fridge for one more wing. “Right before
I came out here, he said he wanted some fresh air. Too cold for me.
Brr
.”

I rushed back to the living room and slipped into my coat. Something wasn’t right
about this. My brother could hardly get off the couch for meals, let alone go for
a midnight stroll through the woods.

This was one secret he couldn’t keep to himself, barriers or not.

Outside, tracks other than Ward’s and mine trampled the ground between the barn and
the house. Snow powdering the evergreens gave their only definition. I spread my fingers
and sought out Jonah’s fire. Wavering puffs of steam rose from the soil under the
snow, and a heated, invisible fog illuminated the path around the barn. Pulling my
coat tight, I followed Jonah’s trail between the trees. The path was deliberate.

He’d walked this way before.

My feet sank inside my brother’s tracks. The tip of my nose went cold while I trekked
several hundred yards into the woods until the forest cleared. Seven pine trees marked
a circle. Jonah knelt in the snow, shirt gone, skin almost glowing under the moonlight.
He’d removed his sling, and his left arm dangled at an uncomfortable angle, the shoulder
and collarbone still blotchy with bruising. His wild, black hair fell around his chest.
With eyes closed, he arched his spine and stretched out his arms. What was that devil
up to?

I lurked behind a white pine and gasped as Jonah’s chest heaved. One hand thrust into
the snow, and a guttural roar tore from his mouth. The noise startled me so that I
tumbled back over a slick rock.

His head jerked, and his burning eyes found me. He smiled like our mother.

“Sis, come here.”

“Are you nuts?” I staggered into the clearing. “What are you doing?”

“Working with energy. Get down like I am. I want to try something.”

“I don’t trust you.”

“Read me. I won’t hurt you.”

Ward already tried testing me tonight, and I wouldn’t do it then. I wouldn’t do it
for Jonah now either. He knew I’d feel guilty for not believing him, but why should
I go along and blindly do whatever he asked of me?

Because he was my twin.

Because we were born within a minute of one another.

Hesitantly, I knelt before him. With his right hand, he guided my fingers over his
chest before placing his palm over mine. The skin, which I expected to be icy and
smooth, burned. My fingertips tingled. The heat from his hand moved through my skin,
past my bones, and rode a current toward my heart. Within seconds, our pulses matched,
mine elevated to meet his.

“Get ready,” he ordered.

“For what?”

A scalding surge rampaged through my body, flooding from Jonah’s hand to my chest.
I doubled over, sick from the blow but also invigorated. Red flashed behind my eyes,
and I saw inside his mind, saw myself through his sight, and sensed the crashing of
cold and hot between us. Surely, he saw himself, untamed, and felt the fear and awe
pumping in my veins. An orb of light the size of a supper plate rose between us. The
flare lasted a mere moment and extinguished as I snapped my hand away from my brother’s
chest and broke the filaments of our threaded energy.

“What in God’s name was that?” I asked, sweat trickling down my cheeks and growing
cold in the wind.

“I gave you a boost.” He grinned while he panted. “Our energy together is like a cold
front colliding with warm air. Lightning. This is what happens when we join together.”

“We shouldn’t mess with this.” I stood to wipe the snow from my knees. “I’m freezing
my ass off. Let’s go.”

I helped Jonah into his secondhand T-shirt, hooded sweatshirt, and sling. With his
shirts and ratty jeans, he was like any other guy at school. He was something else
altogether, a boy who dabbled in dark things.

A twig snapped in the woods. Jonah grabbed my hand, and our backs pressed against
each other. As he scanned left, I dispatched my feelers to the right. Nudging, prodding,
searching. Someone was out there, hiding in the trees.

Who is it? Can you tell?
Jonah asked.

I can’t find anything, just the night.

Again, my feelers raced out. A murky energy was nearby, though I couldn’t be sure
of where it came from. It felt familiar enough. Marty? Sister Tremblay? Maybe. She’d
been to Fire Sales and followed me at school. What was to stop her from coming to
the house?

“Let’s go,” I whispered.

I strode away with Jonah from his place in the woods until we came around the barn.
Under the lantern-light by the front door, Dad approached the house with a bundle
of firewood. I noticed a cloud of smoke where Rain puffed on his cigarette by the
porch.

“What are you two doing?” Dad asked.

“Only an evening constitution through the woods,” Jonah replied, speaking with the
kind of heavy drawl we’d heard on the old timers in Georgia. “
Dati
, I think somebody’s hanging around. Someone who doesn’t belong.”

Dad set down the firewood. “I’ll take a gander.”

Rain shook his head and held up his cigarette. “I stepped outside not more than thirty
seconds ago. Don’t tell me y’all are getting paranoid like your daddy.”

Dad glanced over his shoulder. “Being paranoid doesn’t mean someone’s not after you.”

Yet nothing was to be found.

By midnight, the fire in the woodstove crackling as flames ran over pinesap was the
only noise. Dad and Jonah were asleep, and Rain sat in Dad’s recliner as he leafed
through my scrapbook. I perched on the couch and propped Jonah’s legs on my lap.

“Em said he’s undisciplined,” Rain said, tilting his head at my brother.

“That’s an understatement,” I admitted.

“How so?”

How could I tell the man who vowed before God to guide Jonah that his godson trifled
with wickedness? What, if anything, had Dad told him about the swell in Jonah’s powers?
I wasn’t certain if Dad was even aware of how Jonah worked over Chloe, only that they’d
had a bad break-up, and I didn’t want to betray my twin’s secrets even if I didn’t
agree with his actions.

As if understanding, Rain switched subjects. “I guess your daddy made a friend. A
woman who works at your school, I guess.”

Friend
? Not quite. I picked at my skirt and muttered, “She can go to hell.”

“Vayda, mind your mouth. Your mama’s been gone two years, and if Em’s got himself
a lady friend…”

“No!” I held up my hand to silence him. “It’s not like that. She’s not a friend. There’s
a nun at my school from Georgia. Hemlock, actually, but she lives here.”

His eyes bulged. “Are you fooling me?”

“The name Polly Tremblay mean something?” I asked.

Rain leapt to his feet and banged on the study door where Dad often slept on a chaise.
My father opened his door and glowered. Without warning, Rain shoved Dad’s chest,
knocking him into the doorway, and yelled, “What the hell are you doing? When I set
you up here, you swore you’d tell me everything, and I was stupid enough to believe
you might keep your word for once!”

Dad massaged his sternum and snapped, “Rain Killian, you got five seconds to tell
me what this is about or we’re going outside for a talk.”

Rain placed his hand on Dad’s shoulder, but Dad shook him off. His face read of years
of frustration of watching his best friend dragged around by Mom without question,
frustration that everything he did for us might not have been enough.

“Em, you gotta use your head.” Rain leveled Dad with his gaze. “You know all too well
people down south still yap about how Lorna blew out every window in Sully’s market
with one of her little tricks. A southerner never forgets a soul’s earthly relations.
Now you’re either stupid or you’ve gotten complacent in these woods ’cause there ain’t
no reason for you to talk with June Forgette’s niece. Are you gonna tell me you forgot
it was Polly and her mama that convinced an entire town Lorna was a witch?”

Ward

“If you’re gonna fuck me up, make it count.”

The words sputtered from my mouth as my cheek crashed against the lockers in the empty
hall. Marty’s fingers dug into my shoulders and shoved me into the metal once more.
The salty copper of blood wet my mouth. I swallowed, sneering, “Hit me harder than
that.”

Marty let go. “That’s what all the bitches like you say.”

“Not surprising. Your dick’s so tiny they can’t feel it.”

From his lookout point, Danny chortled. “Oh-ho, shit!”

I shouldn’t have searched for a fight, but anger felt good. Easy. I never thought
I’d get this pissed at Heidi, but my hands clenched up at three a.m. when I descended
from the attic with a box under my arm and questions in my brain. The rage in my bones
was familiar, an old friend I bumped into who wanted to hang out again. It’d been
so long since I craved hitting someone for no reason other than to feel better. Unfortunately,
nothing got you knocked on your ass faster than hurling a French textbook at a bastard’s
head.

“You know, I’ve had that girlfriend of yours,” Marty hissed as he pushed my chest
into the locker. “Such a tease.” His voice rose high. “
Oh, don’t…don’t stop
.”

More anger bled through my mind as he crowed. I backed up and swung at him, catching
him in the jaw hard enough to daze him. Nobody talked about her like that, least of
all a dickless rat like him.

He shook off the punch and leered. “I still think about the way that one tasted. Sweet,
like a peach.”

“You leave Vayda out of this.” I threw as much of my weight into him as I could. A
blow from Marty’s fist to my ear rocked me, and I stumbled to the trashcan to puke,
but nothing rose from my stomach, drool and blood trickling from my lip.

“Want more?” Marty asked as Danny pulled me away from the trashcan by my collar. “I
can tell you all about the rock-n-roll she got from me.”

I closed my eyes and waited for another bash.

Nothing.

Opened my left eye, then my right.

Marty froze opposite of Jonah. In three weeks of healing, Jonah still wore a sling
as his tendons mended. Didn’t matter. He cast a jarring shadow.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he asked calmly. Too calm.

Marty’s skin paled. “Nothing of your concern, Silver.”

“Leave my friend alone.”

Danny freed me and I sagged, coughing, against the lockers. I choked down a mouthful
of blood, which immediately tried to climb back up. Jonah parted Marty and Danny with
a scowl and stood close.

“Get the hell out of here!” he yelled.

Danny was quick to bolt up the stairs, but Marty dawdled at the base of the stairwell,
baring his teeth like a pinned badger. “You know, I saw some crazy shit the night
I kicked your ass. I kept my mouth shut. So far. You wanna risk people finding out
you’re a freak?”

“If you were gonna say anything, you would’ve already,” Jonah snapped.

“Not unless there’s something I want. Something that’ll be too scared to tell me no.”

Vayda. Whatever he saw Jonah do in Fire Sales, that jerk thought it gave him some
advantage with her. No way in hell could I let him get near her.

Jonah cracked his neck, swift and direct. “You made your point. Go.”

Marty followed Danny up the stairs. I pulled away from the lockers, my lungs in a
full-on wheeze.

“You’re a mess, Ward,” Jonah remarked as he followed me into the bathroom. “Why’d
you pull that stunt? Marty could pulverize you.”

I snorted. “So could you.”

I ran some paper towels under cold water and checked out my mouth. My teeth had massacred
the inside of my cheek. Jonah readied more paper towels and kicked the trashcan closer
to dispose of the bloody ones. I tried to stop him from picking up one that missed
the rim, but he raised his eyebrow.

“You gotta be careful around blood,” I explained.

“Did your old man have something catching?” he asked, washing his hands.

“In a way.” Then I dropped it. Talking about Drake would make me angry all over again.

Jonah watched as I cleaned up, his face revealing nothing. No one could tell by looking
at him or Vayda that they had these abilities. Now that I knew, I was more aware of
a halo surrounding them. Something was strange about them, but defining it was impossible.
It was
there
.

He tore off a dry paper towel, folded it into a paper airplane, and shot it at me.
“People chase us off once they know what we can do, Ward. Why haven’t you?”

Gee, I loved loaded questions.

I shrugged. “Your family’s good to me. I guess I owe you guys.”

Jonah opened the restroom door, and we walked down the hall until he froze, slowly
spinning around. Sister Tremblay waited behind us. She regarded him with a coolness
as though approaching a rare bird while hiding a wire cage behind her. Covetous.

“What are you staring at?” I asked.

“Some students who should be in class,” she replied.

Jonah’s good hand balled into a fist, and he flexed his jaw. With a moan, the nun
scrunched her eyes shut and pressed her fingers to her forehead.