A Murder of Magpies (31 page)

Jonah smacked the back of his head. “You fucking liar. You denied having her. Don’t
you know it’s impossible to lie to me?”

“I was gonna bring her back, I swear!” Danny rubbed his head and backed away. “I couldn’t
let Chloe and Marty do what they said they wanted to.”

The front door opened. Chris stepped outside and exhaled as he saw me cradling the
old schnauzer in my arms. He eyed Jonah. “You found her?”

“Something told me where to go, who to talk to,” Jonah replied and elbowed Danny.
“Isn’t that right?”

“Sure,” Danny blurted. “I gotta go.”

He hustled his ass back to his car and sped away so fast the wheels shot an arc of
snow across the driveway as he fishtailed toward the street. I really didn’t care
where he went. My dog was back, and after a quick check over from her ears to the
toenails that clicked on the floor behind me hundreds of times, she seemed to be okay.
Before Vayda ushered me inside the house, I ran my fingers over Bernadette’s ears
and her chin.

Good dog. Damn good dog.

After dinner, upstairs, I lay on my bed in the darkness, Bernadette on my chest and
Vayda curled up against my shoulder. We didn’t talk or kiss, simply held one another,
and let our minds grow heavy. My thoughts were heavier.

I awakened after one in the morning. The room was hushed. Vayda was gone, and Bernadette
had taken her place. Soft snoring. Legs wiggly with dog dreams. I got up to brush
my teeth then wandered downstairs to the kitchen for some water. In the living room,
Chris watched television and muted the stand-up comedian.

“You’re up late,” I said.

“Long night. Lots on my mind,” he replied. “It could’ve ended badly tonight, Ward.”

An angry nail hammered into my mind, sinking through my brain. Anyone could tell Bernadette
was feeble. To take her away from what she knew, to terrify her—that person was soulless.
Chloe had every right to be furious with Jonah, but what she’d plotted for Vayda,
for Bernadette, was dangerous. It was more than revenge. It was murderous.

“Emory said you kids are having problems. Heidi’s gotten calls about them. About you.”
Chris didn’t sound angry but worried. “What do you know, Ward?”

I sat beside him on the couch and stared at the hushed television. “Oh, I know something.”

I knew Chloe and Marty were going down.

Vayda

Jonah brought me a slice of red velvet cake and perched on the sales counter. “Happy
birthday, Sis.”

As we’d watched the sun move above the horizon this morning, gold and silver rays
streamed over our faces and anointed our seventeenth year. We were strangers in these
bodies. He hadn’t needed to cut his hair, too. All that black hair lying on the barn
floor as if a dark bird was ripped apart, feather by feather.

I produced two books from below the register and dropped them with a thud. Amy Lowell’s
two-volume biography of John Keats, 1925 first edition, signed.

“Awesome,” he whispered while the book’s spine cracked upon opening. “This’ll occupy
me for a spell.”

“You need something to keep you out of trouble,” I teased. “You and your writers.
Aren’t our own lives enough?”

His hand hovered over the pages. “Writers get inside people’s heads. Get into thoughts
and feelings.” His voice was somber, face forlorn. “You think there are more people
like us?”

“Somewhere,” I ventured. “Can’t imagine we’re the only ones.”

My brother grabbed his coat and tucked his books under his arm. “I’m heading out.
We won’t get any customers. Ostracism at its finest, right?”

The showroom had been empty for days. Since our suspension, spending time at Fire
Sales was safest, but the idea of people tracking our every move intensified no matter
how cordoned off we were from the rest of Black Orchard. The only people in town who
spoke to us were Ward’s family. At the market, I couldn’t choose which box of speckled
eggs from the farm or select winter squashes without meeting someone’s scowl. Dad
said to hold up our heads, but the weight of angry stares curved my spine.

At home, the currents should have abated, and yet they were worse. If I walked past
the mirror, it watched. If I walked down the wall, it was too quiet and the darkness
breathed behind me. Sometimes, at night, I lay awake in bed, listening to the wind
shift in the attic like footsteps, and in a half-dream, I’d hear my mother’s voice
whispering,
They’re coming, Vayda. Soon.

Last night, Heidi and Chris brought Ward over for supper. It didn’t take long before
Heidi admitted she attended the “concerned citizens” meeting. Funny, we never knew
half the town didn’t trust us ever since Dad opened up Fire Sales. Maybe I should’ve
been shocked a mob with pitchforks and torches hadn’t shown up at our house. Dad was
in scramble-mode. Banishment moved faster here than down south, probably since the
people were so cold they did their duty and hurried back inside.

Since Bernadette’s disappearance and return two nights ago, Ward fox-holed himself
in the shop after school, keeping his dog close by in the storeroom. He should have
never aligned himself with us. No apology would suffice.

Dad lugged out a rosewood cabinet with an iron door. Busy work for my
gadjo
. I prepped my barriers to take the full strength of his emotions, yet for the first
time in two days, he wasn’t blitzed by rage but blunted, anesthetized. It was a relief
to slide through without any hang-ups once again. Dad crouched down and patted Bernadette’s
back before focusing his attention on Ward, who scraped the rusted iron with a sanding
cloth.

“Not quite.” Dad pointed to a clean spot on the bars. “This is what you want. Don’t
scrape any farther or you’ll damage the metal. When it comes to the wood, scarcely
touch it. Rosewood’s naturally oily, so the finish darkens with age. The flaws give
it life.”

Ward continued sanding the rust, flake by flake. A proud smile poked Dad’s mouth,
and he offered his student a wire brush to clean between the bars. Ward removed the
gloves Dad insisted we use when handling a restoration. “Why are you helping me?”

“’Cause if I don’t, you’ll do more damage instead of fixing things,” Dad replied.
“I’ve made mistakes. They cost me. If I can you teach something I learned by messing
up, well, that’s worth my time.”

Guardedness haunted Ward, and he spied me eavesdropping. His mouth ticked, too much
anger still running through him. I inspected his work and gave Dad a thumbs-up before
he headed back to his desk. For several minutes, I observed Ward while he scraped
and brushed, checking his progress between passes. He was heavy with thought if I
sought his energy, but I wanted the slide and dive we used to have. I wanted us back
before we hurt.

“
Dati
’s trying to wait until the end of the school year to move, give us time to properly
relocate his store and transfer our records,” I told him. “But it might be sooner.”

“How soon?” he asked.

“Spring break. If we can hold out that long.”

He didn’t break away from the cabinet. “Where are you going?”

“Mom got anxiety attacks in big cities, too much energy, so
Dati
won’t move to one. He’s found some property near Lily Dale—some spiritualist community
in New York. Real big into séances. Jonah and I won’t be so extraordinary there. Being
a vessel through which the dead speak trumps empaths, hands down.”

A wry arc tilted his lips as he imitated my accent. “Why, Vayda, were you being funny?”

“Your sense of humor’s rubbed off on me.”

“Hell,
I
want to rub on you.”

I tensed, shutting my eyes to beat back the memory of Marty holding me down in the
snow. Not the same as Ward. Not the same at all, I reminded myself. Because what Ward
wanted wasn’t to take, to overpower, demand. What he wanted was to share. Together.

“You’ll get your chance,” I promised, running my fingers up his spine.

We had plans for my birthday that night. Coffee. Movie. Time alone. In the dark. Every
time Ward kissed me, time and trouble pressed in on us so that I felt his hunger as
if it were our last chance.

I tugged my hand away from Ward’s back as Dad walked past, carrying the mail, much
of it documents for his wares. Strange how precise his furniture’s history was while
he muddled his past. Everything, his family’s disownment, his clan’s abandonment,
the miscarriage Mom had before us, his identity as Emory Silver, all of it bricked
up behind his personal barrier. Even before Mom died, he was a man of secrets.

Ward hid things, too. A painful history, ideas about what he planned to do, he was
private. Which was why I trusted him.

“Son-of-a-bitch.” Dad held up a piece of paper. “Magpie, where’s your brother?”

“He’s not here.” I gestured to the paper. “What’s that?”

“A letter from Polly Tremblay. She must’ve dropped it in the mail slot overnight and
Jonah found it. I suppose this here letter made him take off.” Anger steeled his voice
as he read aloud, “‘Emory, I’m afraid my files on Jonah and Vayda have been stolen.
You know how delicate that information is and if it falls into the wrong hands—’”

“I have them,” Ward interrupted.

The cold filtering through me halted. He what?

Dad snapped up from reading the letter. “And what in God’s name do you think you’re
doing with them?”

“She’s been hanging around so much. I wanted to know what she knew. She’s been making
threats.”

Darkness spread through the green of Dad’s eyes. “Boy, you stuck your nose where it
didn’t belong. What do you mean by making threats?”

“She said that Jonah and Vayda needed to be controlled, that they ruin people. And
she said she needed to keep a promise.”

“Jesus.” Dad pushed his fingers through his hair and motioned for Ward and me to sit
on the same fainting couch where I’d become Ward’s girlfriend months ago. Bernadette
whined and Dad lifted her into Ward’s lap. “Polly didn’t threaten anyone. She’s on
our side.”

What?
I popped my knuckles and released some of the uncertainty building in me. Months
of being afraid of what she knew about us, of not feeling safe when she was around,
and she meant us no harm?

“We don’t agree, never have and never will,” Dad went on. “You know that saying of
keeping your friends close and your enemies closer? That’s Polly. Because of the hell
that fired up when Lorna got June killed, I always feared someone from Hemlock would
come. Figured it’d be somebody from Brett’s side since he took the fall.”

“But she’s not
Rom
, right?” I asked, and as much as I hated Sister Tremblay, I almost was hopeful to
have another Romani nearby, even one who seemed to hate us.

“No. Southern bred and born, far as I know. Polly’s intimidating as all get out, but
if anything ever happened to me, she’d be there for you.”

A million questions swam through my mind. Faster and faster. I felt like I was spinning
and had reached the point of vertigo.

“Why Sister Tremblay?” I asked. “Rain was so mad when he found out she was here.”

“I couldn’t tell Rain ’cause I knew he’d get his fingers in the pie. I wanted them
separate ’cause he never liked Polly’s kin. He grew up with June, and there was bad
blood. When we came here, I needed someone else who knew your mama well. Polly and
your mama were friends of a kind. Lorna babysat Polly as a little girl. Back in the
day we returned to Hemlock after Montana, she and Polly caught up. Lorna saw Polly
has some
affinity
for emotions. Polly joined the convent in hopes of getting rid of it.”

“Another empath?” Ward wondered.

Dad held up his fingers, indicating a little bit. “Let’s call her sensitive.”

“Then in the barn that night and the cuts on her face appeared,” I ventured.

“She was angry with me. Rather than force emotion and energy outward, she clamps down
on it so it can’t hurt other people, only herself. She also picked up your emotions.
It was too much for her.”

So it
was
me who’d hurt Sister Tremblay. Me who’d caused gashes to open on her face and bleed.
Another whoosh of dizziness coursed through me. Dad put his hand on my shoulder. I
needed his steadiness to stop my mind’s reeling.

“Polly’s afraid you’ll be like Lorna. All kinds of power, be it too much prosperity
or love or the kinds of things you can do, corrupts if not guided. Lorna wanted you
and Jonah to be so great that nothing could touch you, and that kind of thinking is
how your mama wound up dead. Polly and I agreed it’d be best if you and Jonah had
another empath close, and she wasn’t to interfere. Telling you to mind yourselves
doesn’t teach you anything. That’s where I fell short.” He scoffed and shook his head.
“All this time, I’d worried about protecting you two from others and didn’t think
to protect you from yourselves.”

I didn’t know what to say. If he had told me in October Polly Tremblay wasn’t someone
to be concerned about…But again, Dad’s secrets created more damage than good, brought
up more questions than answers.

“Why can’t you be straight about anything?” I balled my hands. “About Mom? About Sister
Tremblay? You don’t lie, but you don’t exactly tell the truth. You let us be wrong
about people, to think they’d hurt us, when you know what they’re really like. And
if Jonah’s gone after Sister Tremblay because he thinks the wrong thing about her—”

I cut myself off but still held Dad’s eyes with mine.

He lowered his head. “I always figured it was safer to admit to the minimum than give
away too much and regret it later.”

I reached over to scratch Bernadette’s ear. Dogs trusted people. Even if they’d been
hurt by them, dogs defended their masters. Dad hurt us by not being up front with
Jonah and me, but he did it with his heart in the right place. Everything I’d thought
about Sister Tremblay, everything I’d witnessed since she’d come to Black Orchard,
how could I know what was true? “Rain said Sister Tremblay’s family turned Hemlock
against Mom.”