A Murder of Magpies (3 page)

“Did I tell you he got in a fight at school?” Heidi’s voice came through the heat
register. Old house. Everything echoed. Everything.

Chris, her husband, scoffed. “Actually, I talked to him. He said some friends were
in trouble. He probably wanted to fit in, prove himself. Weren’t you ever the new
kid?”

No Band-Aids, but there was a tube of Krazy Glue. Meh. It’d work. I squeezed a line
of glue along the cut and pressed the edges together.
Don’t glue your fingers together, okay, dumbass?

Heidi’s voice kept traveling through the vent. “Oh, so you’re saying he should have
friends that get him in trouble? Jesus, Chris. If this is just the beginning—”

“You’ll what? Kick him out?”

“No…”

“Then it’s an empty threat. Everybody’s getting used to each other, Heidi. He’s been
here only a week. You said he couldn’t stay at that apartment.”

“There were rats!” Heidi sounded like rats were the worst sin of that place, but she
had no idea. “He’s lucky he doesn’t have tuberculosis.”

“So what are going you to do?” Chris asked.

My sight trained on the shiny blood seeping where I glued the cut. Heidi’s pause was
long.

After a while, she sighed. “I don’t know what to do with Ward. There’s no one else
to take him. Believe me, I checked.”

Not this again
.

Toenails scratched at the door until Bernadette, a geriatric salt-and-pepper schnauzer,
poked her ragged beard inside. That dog followed me everywhere and snored like an
amplifier in need of rewiring. If I weren’t already an insomniac, she’d cause some
wicked sleep deprivation.

Standing behind Bernadette, Chris raised an eyebrow at my bloodied shirt. “Do I even
want to know?”

“Art is pain,” I quipped.

“Dinner’s almost ready. Heidi wants you. While you’re at it, change out of that bloody
shirt. It’s gross.”

“Already ate.”

A microwave eggroll and coffee were astonishingly nutritious. Or not. Orange juice
might give me the vitamin C needed to kill a dry cough.

Chris didn’t leave the bathroom, inciting the devil on my shoulder to prod me with
his pitchfork. I asked, “You want fries with that? Or you got more orders for me?”

Bernadette rolled on her back, silently guffawing.

“That dog is a traitor,” Chris said. “So what are you building out on the driveway?
I saw the tools you brought from Minnesota.”

“It’s nothing,” I replied with a cough. “I’ll clean up afterward. Blood and all.”

Chris examined my hand despite my first instinct to pull back. “Metal, huh? A pencil
probably won’t land you in the ER in need of stitches.”

“You should see the other guy. I flattened him, seared him with a blowtorch, and left
him hammered.”

“You know, if you joked like this with Heidi—”

“She’d still think I was fucked up.”

Chris didn’t argue. I picked up the old dog at my feet and scratched behind her ears
with my uninjured hand. Bernadette blinked her liquid-brown gaze and apologetically
licked my hand as she traveled with me into the kitchen to learn what hell Heidi planned
to dole out.

Heidi was my half-sister from my father’s first marriage. I doubted she was thrilled
when the child welfare department of the fine state of Minnesota tracked down my one
responsible family member. Most Ravenscrofts had trouble staying out of jail. Heidi
spooned some putrid homemade baby food into her son’s mouth. At six months old, Oliver
knew goose shit was more palatable. Heidi wiped a green streak from her hair and motioned
for me to sit.

“St. Anthony’s is a good school. You cannot get off on a bad foot. The Pifkins have
some clout, so…”

Her silence implied everything I needed to know.

“Which kids got you in a fight?” she asked.

I set Bernadette in her dog bed and studied the cobweb-strung chandelier over the
table. “Nobody got me in a fight. I did it to myself.”

“I know this is different from what you’re used to.”

Oliver emitted a banshee-wail, and his sippy-cup nailed me in the shin before splashing
in Bernadette’s water bowl. I offered the cup to Heidi who paled as if handed raw
chicken.

“Wash it off!”

I tried to be helpful, but…This family charade was jacked.

I started toward the living room. “I wasn’t done talking to you,” Heidi called.

“Later,” I grunted and retrieved the backpack I’d dumped at the foot of the creaky
staircase. I found my sketchpad for my metal sculpting and came across a line drawing
I’d done during Lit class. The girl’s hair in my sketch was black and bled into her
skirt.

The phone on the end table by the couch rang. I should’ve known better than to answer
a Minnesota area code. Nobody good was up there.

“What?” I growled into the phone.

Drake’s low voice slurred, “Just checking on you, kid.”

A hiss escaped between my teeth. I’d heard this line before and lied, “I have homework.”

“I might get out soon.”

“And? What home will you go to? You fucked up. Again.”

Drake staggered to keep me on the line. “I suppose you’re living with your sister.”

“Obviously, since you called her number and I answered.”

My cough reared up. I couldn’t talk to that bastard. Without hanging up, I set the
phone on the table and tromped up the steep and shadowed stairs to my room on the
second floor. Bernadette tailed a few steps behind, and as I flopped on my bed, I
scooped her into my arms. Her fur was coarse and her breath reeked, but she was what
she was. No bullshit. Only something warm for my lap.

I didn’t miss Drake. I never missed him. So why did I have a bag in my closet with
enough cash and clothes to get me back to Minnesota if the whim struck? Minnesota
meant sickness and solitude, but as awful as they were, those things were familiar.

Black Orchard was a mystery. I didn’t trust the unknown, didn’t like it, didn’t want
any part of it, and it’d be so easy for me bail. Except whatever kept me in Black
Orchard had strong hands and didn’t dare let go.

Vayda

The pine forest crowded in closer. Steam rose from my breath against the chill. I
squinted past the evergreens, through the blue hour of dusk. Every rustle in the underbrush,
every shift in the wind prickled my skin. Maybe I wasn’t just over-alert. Maybe I
wasn’t alone.

“Who’s out there?” I called.

A squirrel chattered while it pawed the frost. The stoic, black trees kept their watch,
but my body refused to let go of the certainty someone was out there. The fabric of
my nightgown was stiff as I slid my hands to my legs, shivering. I wasn’t like my
brother—I didn’t push myself out there to find other peoples’ energy, it was drawn
toward me, and my feelers vibrated in my fingers and ached to dispatch into the woods
in search of a second beating heart.
Do something. I know you’re there.

Without warning, hands with scars twisting across the skin hovered over my waist behind
me. I reached for them.

Light.

Hesitant.

A smell—mineral with a metallic edge—grounded me as he held me. I liked being close
to him, whoever he was.

“Why are you here?” I asked and tried to see him, but he stopped me with his cheek.
“Who are you?”

“I’m around.” His mouth brushed the side of mine. “And I know what you can do.”

***

I lurched upright. My shoulders trembled from ghostly fingers following me out of
my dream, and I clutched my blanket to my chest. The sun streaked outside my window,
breaking the sky. The boy’s words, so softly whispered, made me uneasy. It was only
a dream, and yet the newspaper sent to my house proved it wasn’t my imagination running
amok.

Someone knew.

After everything Dad had done to wipe away any traces of our former lives, someone
knew the truth. I didn’t want to run again.

In the attic, something
thumped
. We didn’t use the attic, but on occasion, birds became trapped, pinned inside with
no room to fly. I lay still, waiting for more flapping, yet the silence thickened
and left me with the unsettling sense of something else inside the house.

“Just birds, Vayda,” I muttered and climbed out of bed. “Some damn birds.”

After dressing, I found Jonah with his feet propped on the kitchen table. A new book
rested on the placemat, a biography of Edgar Allan Poe. Mom wasn’t well-read, my
bapo
said his daughter hadn’t needed to read to be a good wife, but Dad wasn’t like him
and insisted we read as much as we could on whatever caught our interest. Biographies
were my brother’s quirk. As he reached for his morning coffee, he grinned. “Good dreams,
sleepyhead?”

I cringed. Why must he know
everything
? I picked up his book and tossed it at his forehead, but it froze mid-air.

He teased. “You can try all you like, Sis, but you won’t get me.”

“Show off.”

He dropped his hand, and the book thudded on the table. “You’re jealous ’cause you
can’t push like I can.”

Every Mind Game he worked was a push. In the way he forced energy and emotion out
and away, I drew them. He sought out thoughts. Thoughts came to me. He charged up
on his own feelings and released it as heat. I pulled everyone else’s and numbed myself
with cold to avoid becoming overwhelmed. He moved solid things with a thought. If
I concentrated hard enough, I felt the emotion attached to them. Twins, yes, but hardly
the same in the Games we played.

And I know what you can do.

The words from my dream snapped like pieces of brushwood, and my mouth tightened.
My brother tipped his head. “What are you fretting over?”

“You oughta know. My dream,” I answered.

“Those dreams mess up my head. Sister Tremblay will never be hot, even in dreamland,
but she does crack a mean ruler. And whip. You should see what’s under her nun’s habit.”

“Pervert. I’d rather not.”

“Eh, you’re right. Any dream with Tremblay is a nightmare.”

Most mornings, I’d laugh, but I was too shuddery as the coffee splashed against the
white bottom of my mug. My memory had jagged holes like torn fabric where the boy’s
face in my dream frayed. And as I rubbed away the tension in my arms, I wiped clean
the transparent handprints of a
gadje
boy I couldn’t quite recall.

***

Dad parked the Chevy in front of Chloe Halvorsen’s house, student ambassador extraordinaire
and Jonah’s girlfriend for four months once upon a time. Mom had said our heritage
insisted we be with others like us, but there weren’t any others. Not empaths—I’d
never met any—but other
Rom
. We were Romani. Jonah wasn’t bothered that Chloe was
gadje
. He dated her when she wasn’t working her way from lowly ballot counter to obvious
Homecoming court nominee. The second she came back from our last spring break with
a Key West tan and a plan for social hierarchy domination, she ditched the tall boy
who kept to himself. No matter what movies and rock stars showed, quiet guys with
black hair weren’t cool or mysterious. People mocked them, and if Chloe wanted the
tin-and-rhinestone crown during senior year, she couldn’t be with someone who was
a joke.

I sat in the Chevy, fingers splayed on the foggy window. The clouds rippled with every
shade of gray and blue like God scooped the ocean’s froth and threw it skyward for
a change. A storm was brewing.

“We can’t trust her. She wants something,
Dati
,” I said as he reached across my lap and muttered something about how doors of old
beater cars sometimes stuck. The Chevy’s doors never stuck. “Stop it. I won’t leave
until you tell me why you insist we dump our low-profile shtick.”

“It’s not a shtick,” he replied. “It’s who we are, and who we are doesn’t work here,
Magpie. Monsignor’s right. We need to fit in better. I’m going to some heinous Chamber
of Commerce meeting, so you’re not the only one suffering.”

“But hanging out with Chloe?” I argued.

“She’s a teenage girl, not the devil.”

“We can be one in the same.”

He snorted. “Don’t I know.”

I climbed out of the car with a canvas bag on my arm, and before I could change my
mind, Dad was gone. I trudged up the leaf-strewn sidewalk where I fingered the cutesy
garland of candy corn and pumpkin lights strung across the Halvorsens’ porch. An inflatable
pink octopus wearing a witch’s hat decorated the lawn for Halloween. “The Dunwich
Horror,” this was not. Lovecraft would shudder at this tentacled abomination.

Maybe Jonah and I hadn’t exactly been approachable, but since coming to Wisconsin,
the times classmates asked me to hang out numbered less than five. Keep saying no,
and eventually people stop asking. Even when Jonah dated Chloe, she and I were nothing
more than passing hellos. Then that morning she sent an email begging me to come over.

Maybe it was Find-the-Loneliest-Loser Day, and she decided I was her pet charity case.
Her usual method was to give the underlings enough attention to ensure they’d wear
a button with her smile plastered across it around student election time and that
the nuns and priests noticed her saintliness, but really, never count on Chloe to
be less artificial than the fruit flavors in a pack of Gummy Bears.

“Vayda!” she called while bounding down the steps, dressed in a purple plaid skirt
with coordinating tights and turtleneck. “I’m so glad you came! I half-expected Jonah
to be with you. It’s like you can’t do anything without him.”

“Oh, you know. Protective brother. You wanted me to scrapbook with you?”

Ushered into a home that smelled of cinnamon buns, I followed Chloe through a kitchen
that couldn’t squeeze any more beige into the design.
Act like everything’s normal, that you hang out with her all the time,
I reminded myself. Dad hadn’t asked much of me, and I tried to keep that in mind as
she led me downstairs. My jaw dropped. Dad had no idea that nothing was normal about
scrapmania in the Halvorsens’ basement.