Beware the Wild (26 page)

“Sorry,” he adds when I'm quiet too long. “I'm pretty susceptible to caffeine since I quit taking those pills.”

I don't want to tell him.

“Hey.” He runs a thumb down my cheek. “What's wrong?”

I'm stuck in his sympathy. I don't want to shake it away. I want to go back to yesterday afternoon when everything was good and promising. I want to return to that dusky moment when we kissed and nothing else mattered. But I won't run from this.

“Heath, I have to tell you something.”

I hate the words as soon as I've said them. Generic and cowardly, they do nothing to prepare him for what's coming next. Even I don't quite know. I try to imagine how I'd want to hear that my brother was dead.

And then I stop trying.

“I haven't told you everything that happened last night.” I pause, waiting for a reaction, but aside from surprise, there's not much else. He has no reason to suspect the truth.

If I don't say it now, I never will. My throat begins to close, as if it might stop this horrible confession. “Nathan's dead.”

“What?” he asks, not because he didn't understand, but because he doesn't want to.

Swallowing hard, I continue. “Fisher was angry about the peaches. I don't even know how he found them, but he did and he
knew
. Everything happened the way I said except this bracelet protected me. He thought I'd lied to him. He thought I was trying to fool him, and—” The sight of Nathan's face as Fisher pulled the life from him is so clear
in my mind. “I didn't think Fisher would kill him and I'm so sorry, Heath, because I should have known.”

“How could you have known?” His voice is a faraway thing, all hollow and empty.

He moves away from me, to the living room, where he stops, staring through the window to the swamp. His eyes are dry as kindling, his body tranquil as a locust shell, clinging to the side of a tree.

I pull his hand into mine, biting my tongue against the urge to say soothing things. But I know how horrible soothing words can be when you're dealing with something so heavy it hurts, so I press my tongue against my teeth and fix my gaze to the broken fence.

“You should've waited for me.” His hand is cold in mine, and tense.

Arguing the point feels petty. “I know,” I say. “I'm sorry.”

“Did he say anything?” He turns to look at me. “How did it happen?”

Quietly
. “He was searching for you.”
His voice was hoarse from shouting
. “He didn't really seem to understand what had happened. I think he got stuck in that moment after the crash. For him, it was still that night. And then—”

I think of Phin's body hanging in the air. How easily it could have been him if Fisher had decided differently.

“And then, Fisher just—” I don't have to close my eyes to see it all again. Nathan's mouth frozen in a silent scream and full of light. “Fisher just took his life away. It was easy for him. Like blowing out a candle. Fisher's not even human. Maybe he used to be, but he's—oh, God, he's not anymore.”

Suddenly, Heath's eyes are full and wet. He slumps next to me, knees crashing to the floor. I collapse with him. His shoulders shiver against mine. My lips tremble and I try to push thoughts of Phin from my mind.

This could be me—the only one left to bear the memory of an entire life. It might still be me and right now I'm sure that if I lose Phin I'll take this bracelet off and sink into ignorance.

I think of Nathan, of his long arms and his sharp shoulders. I think of what his face must have looked like when he smiled, long and round all at once. I think of how graceful his fingers must have been when he vanished a quarter. And I think of his toes pointing up at the sky, his body melting into the swamp. I think of missing him, and for a second I'm Heath, and I'm afraid I'll suffocate beneath this pressure on my chest.

Be brave
, I think, grinding my teeth against the push of tears. “I'm sorry I can't remember all of him with you.” The words barely manage to squeeze around the painful lump in my throat.

His heart breaks across his face like a wave, then recedes. I watch a tear pull pale sunlight down Heath's cheek as he stares through the window, resisting his sorrow, hands fisted against his thighs.

“Nathan loved the idea of the swamp. He used to say the South had so much soul even the land commanded respect.” His laugh is a humorless flare, dying as quickly as it came, leaving us in a silence that isn't only silence. It's death and the swamp and Fisher.

I open my mouth, hoping the right words are somehow waiting inside, but there's only air. Words won't change that Heath is the only person in this entire world who can truly mourn Nathan.

Not even his parents will remember that he's gone.

Tears make Heath's face bright with sadness. “His favorite color was green, and I don't remember a time when he wasn't chewing on taffy or licorice or gum. He loved that stuff. Said it was his duty as the son of a doctor to eat the hell out of some sugar.”

Knowing such a small and inconsequential thing about Nathan does it. Tears sneak in beneath my laughter and I'm crying before I have a chance to stop, but I'm laughing, too, and Heath smiles.

It takes a deep, shuddering breath to get myself sorted again and when I do, I find Heath glowering. “What is it?” I ask, suddenly fearful.

“What about Phineas?” His voice is low and level and as serious as a hurricane. “Did Fisher hurt him, too?”

“No.” I brush at my tears, but they don't want to quit. “But he will. Tonight. He'll kill Phineas and then Abigail and Sheriff Felder and whoever else he can get his hands on, starting at midnight tonight unless—”

There's a soft sound behind us, a cry of alarm or distress and I turn to see Lenora May standing in the doorway with one delicate hand pressed against her throat.

“Unless I return to him,” she finishes.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

B
Y THE TIME
C
ANDY REAPPEARS
with a bag of books and a bottle of vodka, we've migrated again to the kitchen table and sit studying the wood grain as though it contains powerful secrets. She takes no notice. She breezes in, pausing at one cabinet before retaking her seat at the table, where she plunks the bottle and four shot glasses between us with determination.

“Now, I need a little stupid in me if I'm gonna do more than pretend. And for your sake, I'm gonna try.” She opens the bottle and pours. “You're welcome to have a little. Not that any of you need much more stupid. Hi, May. Lucky I grabbed four.”

Candy takes her shot and makes quick work of it. Nodding, Lenora May pulls one of the overfull glasses toward her as though she's been handed a fine meal without silverware. I leave mine in the center of the table. I may not know what I'm going to do, but I do know I can't do it drunk. Heath merely holds the shot between his fingers as if its presence is comfort enough.

Candy pours another round for herself and pushes a pile of books across the table: her collection of Clary General's Tales of Sticks Swamp. “Okay. Now that I'm stupid, let's talk strategy.”

“Strategy?” Lenora May sips her vodka, doing her best not to wrinkle her nose and failing. I don't know if she's aware how not in character this is for Candy, but I know it's huge. The last time Candy accepted anything without evidence as irrefutable as carbon dating was when Abigail told her she overheard Bennett Hob telling Matt Thurman he thought she was hotter than Miss Bonnie's jambalaya. And she only accepted that because in her eyes it was “believable enough.”

“Yes, strategy.” She pushes a book at each of us and pours herself a third smaller shot. I had no idea she could put so much away, but she's never done this sort of thing in front of me before. “If we're going to pretend or assume that all or some of these stories are true—and honestly, that's a bit of a stretch for me—then we might as well see how they all turned out in the end.”

“I thought everyone ends up lost or stuck or dead? I can't remember a single exception.”

Candy's smile is a little looser. “Those were only in the most popular stories. It's not as scary when you don't get stuck, and who tells non-scary stories at sleepovers? Read.”

I was never as obsessed with these as Candy. She liked them because she knew they couldn't be true, and I didn't care for them because I thought maybe they could be.

The collection is divided by supernatural category with two entire volumes each on ghosts, demons, and witches, and one devoted to strange sights and sounds like the
Wasting Shine and the voices of long-lost lovers. Under Candy's now entirely vodka-fuzzy gaze, we each begin to read.

I crack
Ghosts
, volume 2 and skim the table of contents for anything that looks relevant. The book smells a little musty and like the cheap perfume Candy wore through junior high, so sweet it even smells pink.

Flipping the pages, I find each story begins with its own pen-and-ink drawing. The first is of a Civil War–era soldier looking travel worn and anxious standing at the edge of the swamp. Just inside the shadows, a woman extends her arms, trailing gossamer sleeves behind. It's surprisingly detailed. The woman even has a fashionable freckle beneath her left eye. The artist has signed their name in the gritty ground and though I can't decipher all of it, the last name is distinctly Clary.

I keep paging through my volume, looking for anything that wants to leap up and smack my cheeks, but the illustrations are all for the stories I know: “The Boy Who Cries at Night,” “Mad Mary Sweet,” “The Hollow-Eyed Cur.” Though the beast of one tale looks suspiciously like the pale-faced creature that chased me on my first trip inside, there's nothing else new in these books. Still, with only eleven hours to midnight, I keep looking.

Lenora May stands when the clock dings two. “This won't help us. Half of these were written before Fisher and I went in and changed everything, and the other half won't tell us anything we don't already know.”

“Well, what do you suggest?” Candy asks, irritated that her books have been rejected.

“I don't know.” Lenora May heaves a pretty sigh and pulls her hair away from her neck.

Candy reaches for the bottle again, not that she needs it. The charm I gave her is there, a testament to how incredibly stubborn she is in all things. Leave it to Candy to be the only person in Sticks immune to Shine.

Realization floods my mind. She's not simply immune.

“Are you drunk?” I ask. At three shots in, she should be.

“Tipsy,” Candy corrects. “It's been an hour. I'm not
that
much of a lightweight.”

“That should be good enough. C'mon.” I know I'm onto something. I hope I'm onto something.
Please, let me be onto something
.

I tug Candy straight through the door. To my eye, the Shine is dim as dusk. I can barely distinguish it from the dark woods.

“What do you see?” I direct Candy's gaze to the swamp.

Lenora May clues into my line of questioning and leans in with interest. According to
her, intoxication should allow Candy to see Shine easily.

“I see a swamp. Mud, trees, and not much else,” she says, confirming my suspicions.

“Okay,” I say, remembering something else. “Climb the fence.”

Everyone protests at once, but I hold up my hands and say, “She'll be fine. Trust me. Candy, please.”

“Is the swamp dangerous or isn't it, Saucier?” Candy grumbles, but she does as I ask and vaults the fence with more ease than I'd have expected in her state. “How's this? Or should I walk inside and eat a few bugs, too?”

Though it's dim, I see Shine bend away from her the same way it did when she and Abigail tried to convince me there was nothing to fear in the swamp. Individual threads weave toward her only to veer away before touching. She swings her arms and spins, sending Shine flying away from her in a frenzy. By stubbornness or something else I can't begin to fathom, Candy repels all the magic of the swamp so solidly she can't even see it.

“How is that even possible?” Heath asks.

“That's not even all.”

Slipping Heath's grasp, I climb the fence and stand next to Candy. Light glimmers in my peripheral vision. Lenora May shifts as she watches the Shine close in around me.

“Shine's on me?” I ask. Their eyes confirm it. “Good. Now, watch.”

Reaching out, I take Candy's hand. I don't need to be drunk or starving to know what happens, Heath and Lenora May drop a curse in unison, which confirms what I suspected: Candy can repel Shine from anything, any
one
, she touches.

“I've never seen anything like it,” Lenora May says. “What does it mean?”