Crooked Crossroads (Child Lost Series Book 1)

by Trinity Crow

  "Oh, it's you," she said, her face unfriendly. "What do you want? You can't come back here.”

  I kept my face straight at that idiotic remark. I'd cuddle with Gabriel Garza before I came back to Deena's.

  "Hey, Deena." I made my voice reasonably polite, sucking up would only make her suspicious. "I think I left some books here. Can I look?" I held up the Tupperware. "I made some cookies," I said quickly before she could turn me down just to be a bitch. Her eyes went from flat to greedy.

  "Yeah, okay. But be quick about it."

  She unlocked the screen and took the box from me. Yes, she kept us locked out after school and during the summer unless the weather was truly horrible. Mom of the year, she's not. Deena turned quickly enough that the screen door slapped shut in my face. It was almost certainly on purpose.

  Mental red. I really did not like Deena. Before I even made it down the hall, she was back on the couch, eating cookies.

  "Don't break nothing," She didn't bother turning around. "Or steal nothing."

  Now I did make a face. What would I want from this shrine to Walmart and Deep South tacky? Her John Wayne collectible plates? The plastic chihuahua that lay on it's back drinking a Budweiser? Yeah, right.

  I moved down the hall to the room Nikki and Emily shared. Cautiously, I opened my other senses up. To be sure, I stroked my finger against Nikki's bedspread, the pillow, the curtains. Nothing. I tried the few toys Deena allowed them, clothes, furniture and came up empty again. Repeating this with all Emily’s stuff brought the same result. Nothing, nothing bad anyway. Emily had a collection of shells, rocks, plastic toys and stuff that were really bright with happy thoughts. I smiled at the image of Emily, square, solid and bossy. My smile dimmed.

  And bratty, I reminded myself, like they all were. For the most part, kids are like larvae, an unpleasant, but necessary life stage. It's not actually the larva's fault when you get down to it, but it still doesn't mean you want to touch them. I sighed. It was time for Plan B.

  "What's going on back there?” Deena yelled from the living room. I walked back up the depressingly dingy hall to answer her.

  "Can't find them," I said, "I guess I lost them."

  "Not my responsibility." she snapped, her eyes glued to the TV even though it was a commercial for jock itch.

  "I know," I answered pleasantly, for me anyway. "Are the kids out back? I'd like to say hi."

  "Yeah, whatever," Deena replied.

  I rolled my eyes at her amazing mothering skills and let myself out.

  I left the bag of vegetables by the back steps, not wanting to deal with Deena a second time. The cookies and the peas I had picked this morning went with me as I called Corky to follow me to the backyard.

  The kids were running around in circles, screaming nonsense. This seemed to be a favorite game among larvae. When they saw me, they broke in my direction, squirming and shrieking in excitement. I wasn't dumb enough to think their enthusiasm was for me. It was strictly Pavlov's dog. I was the bringer of food and they salivated in the form of ear-rupturing bellows of joy.

  "Brownies?" Nathan yelled, his eyes drooling with hope.

  "Cupcakes?" shrieked Emily, pelting along behind him, a manic look distorting her usual placid face. She spared a look over her shoulder. “Come on, Nikki, Artie! There are CUP-CAKES!”

  "Cookies…" I started to correct them when Corky trotted past me happy and excited to be part of the noise.

  "DOG!” screamed Nathan, stopping dead in his tracks “DOOOOOOOOOG!!”

  Emily, her head still turned, ran smack into him and tumbled to the ground. When she saw Corky, she let out a screech like a train whistle.

  The kid I didn't know, Artie, crept behind poor Nikki who had stopped where she was, her face blank as usual. Hiding behind the handicapped kid gave Artie points for survival skills if zero for hero.

  "Shut it," I warned them, "You'll have Deena out here.”

  Nathan elbowed Emily. "Deena!" he yelled in her ear.

  Emily's eyes grew rounder. She looked around wildly for Deena. It was saying something that she was more worried about her foster mother than a killer dog.

  Sighing, I led the way to the shade of a tulip tree and had Corky sit beside me. I popped open the box and offered Corky a sweet potato dog treat. He scarfed it happily, his thick tail beating his joy against the dirt.

  The new boy scowled at me from behind Nikki, but Nathan, “Scaredy cat, bossy pants" as Emily called him when she was mad, was first to protest.

  “Don't give that dog our cookies!” he said, pronouncing dog like a dirty word.

  Em came closer, disbelief on her square little face.

  "Cookies is not good for dogs!” She was all self-righteous in her defense of animal cruelty and cookie abuse.

  "Are they good for kids?" I asked sarcastically, holding out a walnut, chocolate chunk.

  Nathan shoved past her and grabbed the cookie dancing backwards as he ate it.

  I shook my head and he blanched.

  "Sorry, sorry," he muttered, dancing backwards and chewing as fast as he could, in case I made him give it back.

  "Nikki?" I called. "Want a cookie?"

  Corky, hearing cookie, rolled over on his back and pedaled his feet in the air, his tongue hanging out as he tried to look charming.

  All the kids goggled at him, except Nikki.

  "What's it doing?" Emily asked, fascinated. I passed her a white chocolate, coconut pecan.

  "He's trying to look cute so you'll feed him."

  "Woof!" Corky said, agreeing. The kids laughed, except for Nikki. I stared at her. She wasn't brain damaged. I had heard the caseworker talking to Deena about her and she had used words like emotionally disturbed and delayed development. I had a vague memory of her smiling once or twice when Emily hugged her.

  I pulled the little girl closer and pushed her to sit and folded her limp fingers around a dog treat. "Here Nikki, you feed him."

  Emily made a noise of protest

  "Don't look, buddy," Nathan warned Artie, "She gonna lose some fingers."

  Like a puppet, Nikki let me guide her hand to Corky's mouth. He curled his lips back and took it gently.

  "Whoa!" Nathan's eyes were comically round at the sight. He nodded once or twice to himself as if approving this whole feeding of the dog thing.

  "Can I look?" Artie whimpered. His dirty hands were balled up in his eyes sockets in a way that looked uncomfortable, to say the least.

  "Don't be such a baby, kid." Nathan dripped scorn. "That dog is okay."

  I put Nikki's hand on Corky's head and let her rub his silky ears, then handed her a cookie of her own. Artie sidled over and I handed him one without comment. He grinned at me shyly and scooted back a safe distance to eat it.

  "I'm ready for another," Nathan announced, his eyes tracking Nikki's movements as she bit into the cookie and chewed.

  "Everyone's getting the same number," I told him calmly.

  Nathan nodded, then stiffened as he thought of something. "Even the dog." he reminded me.

  "The dog is eating sweet potato cookies and you are welcome to eat one if you want," I told him exasperated. It's one thing to know that Nathan is a damaged, insecure larva, but it's another to deal with the constant whining.

  "Yeah!" Artie hooted gleefully, seeing a chance to get some self-respect back. "Eat a dog cookie, Nathan!"

  Nathan turned swiftly, his fist lifted and Artie flinched.

  "None of that!" I snapped, "Or you'll both eat dog cookies."

  "Well, the dog's had two already." Nathan's face was as sulky as his voice.

  I gritted my teeth, preparing to count to ten before answering when a loud giggle distracted me. I looked for the source of the sound and my mouth fell open. Corky had wiggled his head into Nikki's lap and was licking whatever part of her was in reach. She batted his drooling face away, laughing in pleasure, her eyes lit up and full of life.

  "Oh, my! Nikki!" Emily said in amazement. She stared up at me, her ey
es fierce. "That dog does magic?" she demanded.

  Shit.

  "Um, we kind of do it together," I said, though I couldn't take any credit for what was happening to Nikki at the moment.

  "Magic is for dummies." Nathan snorted. "It's not real."

  "Is that real, Nathan?" I pointed to Nikki who was giggling. My patience was pretty much gone. I couldn't imagine why people had kids on a voluntary basis. The thought made me wince. These four probably weren't planned for bundles of joy.

  I called Corky away from Nikki and the delight in her face died. She looked around. blinking, and then her face returned to its usual slack look. She was staring vacantly past us to where the lawn ended and the trees began.

  Corky whined and gave me what was definitely a reproachful look. He crept forward catlike through the grass, trying to reach Nikki.

  "Go on," I told him and he lunged into her lap with a woof.

  I reached out a hand to Nikki. Her skin was cool even in the hot sun. The other hand I rested on Corky for support, for safety, if I was being honest with myself.

  "Tiny trickle," I muttered to myself and when I opened my secret spooky sense, the world went gray. I wasn't anywhere near his ears and the world had shifted to shadow vision. My lungs burned from the deep breath I pulled in to stop myself from freaking out. This hadn't gone so well the last time. I pushed the panic down. No way was anything going to lick me with Corky right here. The faint sound of Nathan and Artie fussing over who would get the chocolate and who the white chocolate and Em trying to make peace grounded me and let me turn most of my senses on Nikki.

  She was as gray as the world around her, unlike the other kids who were bright blurs of color, Nikki was gray. Her heartbeat and her lungs swapped CO2 for oxygen, but whatever force of life that animated little kids, made them giggle at nothing and run in larval circles was missing from her. I took my hand away, shivering from the empty sensation she had projected.

  "There," Emily said, pointing a finger at the treeline. "They won't leave her alone."

  "Uh!" Nathan was annoyed. "Don't start that again." He had two cookies in his hand and a mouthful of a third. Emily had apparently divided them up, holding the box in her lap to guard her and Nikki's share.

  "Yeah!" Artie tried a sneer, but Emily's glare made him drop his eyes.

  "Who?" I asked, focusing on why I was here.

  Emily's eyes had traced the path of Nikki's stare and she held it now, though uneasily. My own gaze tracked theirs. There was a patch of shadow near the lawn’s edge, though the sun slanted the opposite way.

  "Them," she said simply and patted Nikki's shoulder. "Can you make them leave?"

  Dark doors made creaking noises in my memory and I hurriedly pushed them shut.

  "Corky." My voice sounded raspy to my ears. His sturdy warmth settled into position in front of me. Unblinking, his brown eyes stared across at the unnatural shadow. I had a bare second's warning as he lifted his head, but my skin still crawled as he sounded a long mournful howl. It started low and built to a call of pure emotion. I shuddered. I had never heard him do that before, and it was unnerving.

  I took a deep breath and wrapped an arm around him. I knew I could probably see the shades myself if I wanted, but his presence was reassuring. His doggy scent filled my sense of my smell and I felt that same grounding effect that I had from the kids' chatter. My eyes lifted to the treeline and double blinked, slowly and with intent.

  "Just a trickle." I breathed and let the world go gray.

  The kids faded to the edges of my sight. The heat of the sun and the itchiness of the grass faded as my other sense took over. At the edge of the grass in their own patch of darkness, they stood there, their colors loud and screaming wrong in a way that hurt my head. Jarring yellow and red boiled angrily with slicks of gold and a pukey gray-green. A man and a woman stood motionless, blood-streaked and gory in the middle of that sick miasma, their eyes horribly alive in the wreck their bodies had become. I could see a band of color moving from Nikki to these dead things. It was bright and fluttery with happy color and sparkles till it reached these wraiths, then it twisted in on itself becoming a corrupt noose of wrongness. I gripped Corky tightly, the one tactile thing left to me in this world of shifting sense and flicked a whisper of woo open.

  Jesus, JESUS!

  They were her parents, dead by their own hand. Shitty parents who had abused her and then taken their own lives when their evil had come to light. Even dead, they were still torturing her, leaching her energy, tainting her with the foul rot of their diseased souls.

  I let go of Corky and twisted to the side, vomiting up cookies and part of a capicola and provolone sandwich. Light and sound rushed over me, the kids shrieking in disgusting, the smell of grass and honeysuckle, the bright sun searing my eyes and the acid burn in my throat.

  "EEWWW!" Nathan screamed and shoved himself backwards. Emily was wide-eyed, torn between disgust and sympathy.

  But I didn't have time for them. I was flipping between horror and fury. The needle swung, then settled on furious. More than furious.

  What the fuck was the line to send? I fought to remember. Cast upon the wind?

  Thoughts of protection and circles fluttered past and I blew out a breath. Corky and I could handle this trash. I flipped myself wide open and pushed with all my might and the wind…came.

  It came like a hurricane, like a tornado. It whipped my hair and clothes and rifled through Corky's fur before racing across the field like a guided missile to Nikki's parents. From their panicked faces, they could feel it coming. The wind swept them up and ripped them apart. The loathsome stuff they were made of spun apart, flaking loose from their hold on Nikki, turning into shards of light so bright, I had to squint. The wind caught at the dissolved energies…

  No, no, I thought fiercely, not the wind, ME!

  I caught them upon the wind and flung their energy high above the trees. I split the wind's force to cast the shards as far from each other as possible and, hopefully, from this world to the next.

  It was brilliant. It was exhilarating. Power rippled through me. Beneath my hands, I felt the tremors of wrath from Corky's body as he growled. I sensed it a second later. Something was trying to ride the wind back in, something evil. I chopped it down and shut, flicking the castaway off like a bug and released my hold on Corky. Whatever it was, it would get no free ride today.

  I returned reluctantly to the everyday world, and it was worth it when I saw Nikki and Emily grinning at each other.

  "What happened?" Nathan was quite the rubbernecker. "You threw up and your eyes went all…" He twirled his fingers in the air and danced back and forth, making crazy faces.

  "No, she didn't," Emily defended me, her lip poking out. "It was more like…" She put her hands on either side of her head and wobbled it, making her eyes flutter back in her head.

  "Look at me!" Artie galloped past on all fours. "I'm a magic dog!"

  "Me too." The words came out in a giggle, and we all turned to stare at Nikki. She hugged Corky's neck and then chased after Artie, laughing like any other eight year old would.

  Nathan whooped and joined in. "I'm going to get you, magic dog, and all your golden eggs!"

  What the hell? Even Corky looked confused at that.

  "That's a goose!" Emily said sternly.

  "You're a goose!" Nathan was in his glory, running circles and teasing Emily.

  "You are." Nikki and Emily spoke at the same time, and then traded smiles again.

  "Duck, duck, goose?" Artie looked pleased with himself.

  Yeah, duck, duck, goose!" Nathan pumped his fists and jumped up and down. "Let's play!"

  "C'mon, Corky. Let's go before the serious circling starts." He woofed softly and we headed towards the gate. I wasn't worried the kids would say anything. They had learned the art of playing dumb a long time ago. Foster care 101: see no evil, hear no evil, because nobody gives a damn. I had faced down some nasty dead people and now had to deal with the liv
ing. A peace offering of cinnamon, cayenne brownies baked this morning was all the apology I was offering. Knowing Sayre's appetite, it would be enough. I wasn't so sure about Aren.

  Chapter 25

  I rode over to Crooked Crossroads, feeling two ways about the whole thing. I still felt no one had the right to dictate what I did with my life and this screwy ability, but at the same time, there was a nagging feeling that said Aren had been right.

  I stood in front of the shop, holding the brownies, feeling like an idiot. It was Sunday, the shop was closed. It could wait till Monday, I supposed. As I turned to go, I saw Corky was sniffing at the side gate leading to the backyard. They did live here. Stood to reason there would be a back door. Not that I would bother them. Maybe just leave the brownie and go. It sounded like an excellent plan. Peace offering delivered, no messy emotional interactions. The alley was narrow with a strip of plants bordering one side. Herbs, though how they grew in the shade of the building was anybody's guess. I climbed the back steps quietly as possible. Old wood stairs are not sneak-thief friendly. As I leaned down to put the brownies down, the door creaked open above me.

  Craptastic. I stood up and saw Aren staring at me through the screen door. Her eyes were surprised, but quickly changed to pleased.

  "Oh, come in!" she said, smiling. She looked down at Corky. "You're welcomed, too."

  I braced myself for uncomfortable feelings and followed her inside. Sayre, in striped satin lounging pajamas and furry slippers, waved at me from the table. And true to form, went for the food.

  "Hey, what did you bring?" Her nose twitched rabbit-like.

  "Brownies."

  Sayre leaped up. "I'll get the milk."

  Aren gave me a smile and shook her head. "You'd never know she just ate."

  "That was a snack," Sayre called, from the depths of the fridge.