A Murder of Magpies Read online

  “It’s always cold, even in summer.”

  “You’re thirty minutes from Canada. You can’t expect the tropics. How’s the boy half of you?”

  “Acting like he’s the dim one of the litter.” I paused as Rain muffled a laugh. “He got in a fight.”

  “Do I need to give him a talking to?”

  So very Rain, like a second dad. I teased, “That’s Dati’s job, don’t you think?”

  “Okay, not gonna step on old Em’s toes.” He backed off, and I felt the warmth of his hug from over a thousand miles away. “Speaking of that devil, is your daddy about the house? There’s trouble with your mama’s grave down here.”

  My smile broke. “What about her grave?”

  “Since the headstone went in, vandals have been desecrating the grounds. People here ain’t forgetting what Lorna did.”

  A sick kick jolted my stomach, and the canisters on the counter rumbled. A rainbow of dry beans bounced inside their jar. My eyes scrunched shut. Breathe. Calm down.

  Within hours of knowing my mom was dead, Rain entrusted Dad with the keys to a vacation house he owned in Black Orchard. I’d never seen Mom’s grave. Her burial occurred after we ran, and as such, we never properly mourned.

  My voice came out terse. “I’m gonna hand you over to Dati.”

  “Vayda, I don’t mean to upset you. Just giving you the facts,” Rain said.

  I didn’t want to hear anymore. As I entered Dad’s study, he snapped away from reviewing an auction catalog to take Rain’s call. I had a hunch this wouldn’t be one of their typical talks about what was new on the museum scene.

  With time to kill before I needed to begin supper, I wrapped an apron at my waist and pulled together flour, salt, and several fat, brown-shelled eggs. Next, milk, butter, and sugar warmed on the stove before I added yeast from an amber glass jar. Boredom, distraction, whatever the reason, I enjoyed making bread, diving my fingers through the powdery flour, using the strength in my hands to knead dough. Creating instead of breaking.

  Jonah poked his head into the kitchen. He’d changed out of his school uniform, opting for a thrift store T-shirt. He laid a yellowed Henry James biography on the table and tied back his hair. Glossy and one shade removed from black, we both wore our hair long. Like Mom.

  Picking up the sharp knife lying on the pine table, he ran the blade through sprigs of fresh rosemary and thyme before dumping the herbs into the dry mix I sifted with my fingers. “Dati’s still pissed.”

  “And the Wonder Brain prevails again.” I dusted the table with flour, ready to knead the dough. “We messed up. I messed up. I let down my barriers, took in too much energy. It released, and the lights broke. A sideshow for all.”

  The doorbell chimed. Jonah and I stared at each other. No one ever came to the house. I wiped my hands on my apron and reached the entrance before my brother, and then I opened the hinged speakeasy in the door. A delivery truck idled in the driveway. All deliveries went to Fire Sales, Dad’s antiques shop downtown.

  I opened the door to the man holding a flat box. “Package for Emory Murdock.”

  “Let me handle this,” Dad said, suddenly beside me.

  Cold spiraled to my limbs. I balled my hands so they couldn’t do anything unwieldy. Dad took care of the deliveryman before fastening the chain and twisting the key in the speakeasy. More clicks and spins down multiple locks as he barricaded us inside. Wariness pinched his face, his back pressed to the door. Jonah and I shared a glance. Going into Dad’s mind to gather what he was thinking was off-limits. Cardinal rule. If he was riled up enough, Dad broke that rule on his own, and Jonah and I’d get more than intended.

  We didn’t need to know Dad’s thoughts. We all heard the name: Murdock.

  Someone knew.

  Someone knew.

  The nervousness careening from Dad to my hands crackled. He waited until Jonah loosened the drapes and shut out the world before he withdrew his pocketknife and sliced the tape sealing the box. I yanked shut one sliver where the curtains weren’t sealed. It didn’t matter that the woods around the house had grown murky with the half-light of sunset. Anyone could be out there.

  Dad fished through the packing peanuts to find a large envelope, opened it enough to peer inside, and smacked it against the coffee table with a hiss. “Isn’t that nice?”

  Cussing under his breath, he slammed the door to his study. I flinched, though not from the noise. That wasn’t anger coming off Dad. It was fear.

  Jonah’s breathing was loud, amplified by the sudden quiet in the house. He removed a newspaper from the envelope. The Hemlock Herald, dated the Sunday after Thanksgiving two years ago. “Local Woman Dies in House Fire, Family Disappears.” Below, a photo culled from our parish directory pictured my mother. A metal clip pinned up her black hair, and her mouth spread in her scarlet smile. Marker scrawled one word across the picture.

  Gypsy.

  Chapter Three

  Ward

  Underneath the night sky by the backside of an evergreen forest, I set up shop on the driveway of the rehabbed Victorian I now called home. With just a T-shirt under a flannel one, I didn’t feel the cold.

  Everything I needed was right there: a metal sawhorse dragged out of the garage, plenty of sharp tools, and a gallon of orange juice. A pair of extension cords snaked out from the garage’s open blackness. I switched on a work lamp and studied the sheet of copper. Nothing to interrupt me.

  The blowtorch’s blue flame hissed loudly despite my welding mask, so I kicked up the volume on the cheap stereo stored in the garage. So old it had slots for cassettes. The speakers worked, and my foot found the demented carnival bass of Wolf Parade’s “You Are a Runner, and I Am My Father’s Son.” Already stenciled on the copper were a handful of circles. The blowtorch was the easiest way to carve out the shapes. After they were loose, I’d hammer them into small cups and attach them to the wind sculpture I was building. Finding an old lightning rod with long arrows and a purple glass ball in the center had been a nice bit of luck.

  The kitchen window over the driveway slid open, and Heidi gave me an impatient scowl. “Turn it down!”

  I dialed back the volume a skosh and lowered the welding mask. Copper wasn’t always the easiest metal to shape, but the rust patterns made it the most interesting. Didn’t come cheap. The snaggle-toothed guy at the recycling plant told me a bunch was stolen ’cause the resale price was better. I didn’t much care as long as I could bend it, burn it, hammer it, whatever.

  Amid a shower of glittery sparks, the circles took shape. I killed the blowtorch and slung it over my shoulder before punching out the metal. A scalding edge bit my index finger, slashing and stinging in one swoop.

  “Shit!” Blood dripped onto the rusted copper. Should’ve worn gloves. One lesson I’d learned at least a dozen times.

  With my hand wadded in my shirt, I let myself inside and bypassed Heidi, buried in the walk-in pantry, on my way to the bathroom. The cut gushed blood, and rinsing the wound with cold water felt about as good as jabbing in an icicle. My hand quaked as I dug through the cabinet for bandages.

  “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.

  Chapter Four

  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 mo
rning 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.