The May Queen Murders (34 page)

let go.

The awful shredding sound of each hair ripping filled my ears.

The locks gave up, and I rolled away, gawking at the dark rope in

Sheriff’s hand. He bared his teeth and leveled his boot on the fence,

ready to propel himself over. I ran again. If I found somewhere to

hide until my parents caught up, I might live. My scalp where the hair

had torn away was raw and slippery, but my only care was escape.

I charged across the fields and ducked under a leaning scarecrow’s

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arms. Voices behind me shouted my name, shouted for Sheriff. I ig-

nored the insects buzzing near my face and bouncing off my cheeks

as I tore through their hovering clouds. The empty stable where

Whimsy used to live was close, and I could burrow into the shadows

there.

My feet carried me through the field, and when I reached the barn,

I threw myself over the threshold. Much of the stable was filled with

hay, feed buckets, and some stall rakes that had yet to migrate to the

newer home for the horses. I staggered to Whimsy’s old stal , turn-

ing the corner to hide before slumping on the ground with my head

against the wal . My knee bumped a pail with abandoned grooming

tools — brushes with grooves to comb the horses’ coats, a metal hoof

pick, a sweat scraper. I grabbed the wobbling bucket to keep it from

falling over.

It wasn’t so long ago I had spied Heather dancing by lantern light

in this barn. I supposed that was the moment when I knew for cer-

tain things between us were different.

That first fracture.

It’d never heal. It wasn’t meant to. Heather was why I was here.

I’d learned everything she kept, everything there was to know. And

if Sheriff found me, then I’d killed myself by uncovering things that

were much deeper than just two girls, one with a secret, one with a

promise that she’d uncover it.

I saw Sheriff’s shadow before I heard him. Moonlight framed the

outline of his body in the doorway. His boots stepped onto the floor.

I brought my knees to my chest, balling myself. My parents had to be

close. They had to come soon. If they didn’t, I was dead.

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Sheriff rounded the corner of the stall and looked down at me.

“This was the best place you could hide?”

“Y-you can’t k-keep killing.” I pushed my back into the wood. “My

papa’ll know. My mama —”

“I can make y’all disappear. Like I told your daddy, woods are

wide. Nobody knows what all lives there. It wouldn’t be the first time

some family left the Glen when the name’s been disgraced, and I do

believe having a murderer in your family’s enough to drive you out.”

I grabbed for the pail of grooming tools, dumping out the brush-

es and picks before I flung the bucket at Sheriff. It bounced off his

shoulder and into the aisle outside the stal . His hand shot out to

grab me. “No more fightin’, Ivy.”

The hoof pick coiled in my fist, I brought down the curved edge

in the web between his finger and thumb and felt the pop of flesh

as I ripped it straight through. Sheriff yowled and grabbed his wrist

with his other hand. New blood speckled the floor and hay. I forced

myself to stand, and with an airless scream from my damaged throat,

I ran at him, arm back to plunge the pick’s curved hook in the side

of his neck. Sheriff fell onto my shoulder, but I pushed him off. His

body smacked the ground. His breath gurgled. I lurched into the

aisle and stumbled outside.

“Where is he?” Papa yelled, running toward me. He caught me

around my arms and pulled me against him.

“He’s inside,” I forced myself to speak even if every word scraped

my vocal cords raw. “He killed Marsh. He killed Terra. He’s been lyin’

to you for years!”

Papa’s nostrils flared, and he handed me off to Mama, who had

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come with him. She and I tumbled to the ground, her hands on me

and murmurs of Spanish soft in my ears. Papa placed his hand on

Mama’s shoulder.

“I’m goin’ in.”

Mama wrapped her hand around the back of my head. I rested my

cheek against hers. My fingernail ached where the root protruded

and bled. All the fight was out me, my body so sore I couldn’t move

again.

Rook’s acorn necklace hung over my heart.

I lived. I lived when Heather hadn’t. I lived, and I’d keep living.

After a while, my father exited the barn. Wordlessly, he walked

across the field in the direction of our home. Mama lifted her head,

and I caught sight of him with the corner of my eye. Papa brought

two pails of kerosene when he returned and poured them inside

the stable. He soaked the doors. He watered the land with fuel. The

fumes stung my nose and eyes, but I didn’t know if the tears stream-

ing down my cheeks were a reaction to the vapor or crying. Clouds

in the sky roiled thick and impenetrable. A storm that’d bring soak-

ing rain was on its way. Thank God.

“Ivy, stay back,” Papa said.

Mama helped me to stand, and we staggered, hand in hand, her

warm skin against mine.

“Don’t worry. This must be done.”

I wasn’t worried.

She reached into her purse and handed a pack of matches to my

father. “Timothy.”

Papa’s hand squeezed mine. Then he lit the match.

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The fire devoured the stable, the stal s, the hay inside sparking up.

Flames spread into the dried grass. Mama held me against her while

the ghost of Heather dancing in front of her lover turned to ash. The

bloodstains left from Journey’s death became char and flecks rose

against the dark sky as orange embers.

“Mamá?”
I asked.

“It’s only fair,” she said.

My parents led me away from the barn with the body burning

inside. Behind us, fire scoured Rowan’s Glen. Plumes of black smoke

roiled over the fields, and the wind carried pieces of hot ash, dropped

them farther away until more fields caught flame.

Ragged and torn, I was only vaguely aware of the sirens wailing

closer.

The land burned. Burned out the lies. Burned out the rot. Burned

out the secrets so buried they blackened and poisoned the roots.

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Chapter Twenty-three

And sometimes, Ivy girl, you know wrong’s been done

to you, wrong done on your behalf, and you best pray it’s

enough to be forgiven.

What do you do when the person who taught you how to fall in love

dies?

That question lingered from my dreams each morning. The only

answer I settled on was that you go on. Everything Heather had

taught me — to be joyful, to have dreams, to share yourself with

someone else — I took it and lived.

I reached out with my little finger. Rook’s looped around mine.

Mamie and Dahlia waited inside the old house, but the weather

was too nice, especial y for mid-June with the sun gilding Rowan’s

Glen. Black earth and lush green crops on every field. Rook’s move-

ments were wearied, and I wrapped my arm around his back as

much for balance as endearment. The bandage over his missing ear

did little to hold his glasses straight. Briar had sewed a band to fit his

head, but he couldn’t wear it until he healed. Time yet for that.

Inside Mamie’s home, Dahlia set out the mortar and pestle, dried

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comfrey root, and a kettle of boiled water with steam coming out

the spout. Here Dahlia didn’t wear the scarf. Her scars were a testa-

ment to the potency of the herbs. There was another bowl of wet, fat

leeches, drenched with river water.

“Which do you choose?” she asked Rook.

He wavered from the herbs to the leeches. “Does bloodsuckin’ ac-

tual y work?”

Dahlia caressed her film-thin cheek so we could see it.

“Dahlia,” I said, “we know you’d have nothing but a hole big

enough for a peach pit if it weren’t for leeching, but Rook’s lost too

much blood. Can’t you tell by his color?”

Her mouth managed some kind of ripple of a grin. “Your granny’s

recipe is on the table. You write it down yet in that sketchbook of

yours?”

“Indeed,” I replied and withdrew the book from the bag over my

arm.

My sketchbook wasn’t only a study of faces and scenery anymore.

There were words mixed in, everything from the hushed talks by

candlelight Dahlia and I had as we tried to reconcile the damage

done — my pencil capturing the story and our hands knotted togeth-

er in half-dark — all in the book. Dahlia and I spent time together,

more than her teaching what she’d learned from Mamie and Rose

Connel y, the way of charms and tinctures. She craved an under-

standing of her sister’s secrets.

I understood that craving.

Mamie’s recipe dictated to bloom comfrey root in hot water, then

to grind it up with the mortar and pestle. No specific amounts other

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than a feel for it. Drops of plant essence. Drops of venom. Sometimes

mixed at midnight or dawn, depending what hurt needed healing.

“You got too much water,” Mamie said behind me. “You need to

paste the boy, not bathe him.”

On the first of June, Mamie had come out of her attic and asked

for coffee. Mama, who’d been at my aunt’s house tidying up things,

dropped the coffee mug so it shattered into pieces. After so many

years of silence, I hadn’t thought Mamie would talk again. Losing

Gramps had thrust her into a quiet solitude, and maybe it took los-

ing Heather to bring her voice back, to remind her that silence meant

no more stories. I needed her stories, her secrets, her superstitions. I

needed them because they were
my
way.

“Yes, ma’am,” I replied and sprinkled more root into the mortar.

Mamie knotted an oiled red thread around Rook’s wrist. “Keep

this on, and when it frays, don’t you cut it with a blade, you hear? No

metal must meet this string. Bad luck on you, and you’ve had more

than your due share.”

A baby cried from the other room. Mama’s voice singing a Spanish

lul aby to Sage traveled through the house. She and Papa kept him in

a crib in their room most of the time. Aunt Rue took ill and wouldn’t

see him, spending the past week since his birth in her room. She

needed help but wouldn’t take the teas Mamie brought her, wouldn’t

listen to the urges for help. Baby blues, they first said. She refused to

name the child, and for three nights, he had no name until I rocked

him and mentioned to Mama how his eyes were wise.

It’d be nice to know what it was like having a brother.

“Your mama needs a rest,” Mamie said. “Baby’s looking yellow,

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and the sun’ll take that outta him.” As she left the kitchen, her hand

stroked my cheek. “Dahlia, be a dear and come along.”

She smiled as she left Rook and me in the kitchen. I set to peeling

off the remains of the poultice from his back, withdrawing a pained

hiss from him. The gouges were deep, the new skin thin. Angry pink

trails carved across his skin. He’d complained about how tight they

were, and Dahlia warned he’d be sensitive once the weather went

cool.

Once the new bandages were in place, I pulled my chair around to

his other side and moved for the one covering his ear, but he jerked

away.

“Don’t.” He stared at the floor. “I don’t want you to see it.”