by Meg Kassel
It only takes until the frozen foods section before my senses pick up a target. It’s a man, middle aged with a stoop that makes him look older than he is. He must have come here from his job, as the tie around his neck is tugged open. The energy he gives off is dark and saturated with an old, repressed hatred that’s seeped into every bit of him. Maybe he was made this way by someone. Maybe he was just born with bad wiring. Either way, he’s mine.
I don’t hesitate this time. I open my mouth and release the bee waiting behind my teeth. It flies low and straight to the man, landing on the cuff of his pants. The man opens a freezer case and pulls out a handful of individually wrapped burritos.
I’m walking past him when the bee stings. The man curses, scrabbles for his ankle. Burritos scatter to the floor.
Relief is instant. My joints unclench. The bees ease their frantic beating. I’m not done, though. I need another target to fully appease the bees. I find one in electronics—a woman. She’s shopping with a man and a beady-eyed teenage boy. The man snarls something at the woman, and the boy laughs. It’s a cruel sound. The woman glances away. Something dark and calculated hangs in the whites of her eyes. Pent-up hatred, probably aimed more at herself than anyone else. I release a bee and watch it wind a meandering path to the woman. She may kill the man and the boy. She may just kill herself.
I feign interest in a DVD sale bin until the bee stings. It punctures the flesh of her wrist, but she barely reacts. She lazily brushes the dying bee to the floor and shuffles on behind her man and the boy. Soon, two more people’s features will grace my horror show of a face.
At last, the bees rest. Strength seeps back into my limbs like a slow drip. The queen bee at the center of the hive, nestled below my breast bone, goes still and contented. For now, I let out a long breath and head for the exit.
I walk through the parking lot to the garden center. There are fewer cars there, on account of it being August and gardening being pretty much finished for the year. I lean against a pallet of mulch and gaze up at the sky. There isn’t a cloud in sight. It’s crystal-clear blue. The sun washes over my face, the exposed skin of my arms. I stare into the sun until its whiteness blocks out the blue. I think briefly of the people I stung today, but not with sentiment. The woman was awash in violent thoughts. She would have snapped without my sting. All I did was speed it along. The man has a little time left in him. He may last until the disaster destined to hit this community.
A threesome of crows alights on the edge of the store. The plastic mulch bags crinkle as a second body rests against them.
I don’t look. I know who it is. “Hello, Michael.”
I’m here, ultimately, because I followed this harbinger of death here. He and his kind have the talent of sensing where a terrible event is going to take place. All beekeepers follow them, and I am no exception. We feed off of fear, while harbingers feed on energy given off by the dying. It’s all very symbiotic. All very horrible.
If any of us could find a way to not do this anymore, we would. We would happily die.
The harbinger of death squints at the sky, then looks away, rubbing his eyes. “How does that not destroy your eyes?”
“I’m a difficult thing to destroy.”
“Hmm.” He runs absent fingers over a puckered scar that runs from his elbow up his arm. If you could see it, you’d know it covers most of his back. Under his shirt, Michael is a mess—burns, bullet, and knife scars. But that’s the way it goes for a harbinger. They get hurt like any human. I don’t pity them, though. Their curse is still quite generous. They’re not horrific to look at, like beekeepers are. They aren’t compelled to send psychosis-inducing bees to sting people. They weren’t tasked with the job of creating chaos.
“So, who’d you sting in there?”
I jerk my chin toward the tie-wearing man limping through the parking lot. “That one. He’s got time. And there’s a woman, but she’ll go quick. A day. Maybe two.”
Michael glances at the crows, then nods toward the man I indicated, who is fumbling with his keys and mumbling to himself. One of the crows swoops down and perches on the lamp closest to the man. It will follow him home and keep tabs on him.
“Will they take out others, do you think?” He can ask me this, because we’re friends.
It’s the only reason I answer. “It’s likely.”
Michael nods in his annoyingly good-natured way. “Okay. Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me.” I say it more harshly than he deserves. “Don’t ever thank me for it.”
“I’m not thanking you for stinging people, dumbass. You know that.” Michael rakes back his long hair. “You’re on edge, even after releasing bees. What’s going on with you?”
“Nothing.”
He raises one tawny eyebrow. “I saw you with that girl.”
His words slam into me. They’re like a judgment, a conviction, even though it’s absurd to think that way. Beekeepers don’t answer to harbingers, and in fact my and Michael’s friendship is a very rare thing. The only one between our two kinds that I know of.
It started on a whim during the Napoleonic Wars, some two hundred years ago. I’d been following Michael’s group for only a few years when I found him lying on a Prussian battlefield, holding together his sliced-open abdomen with his hands. He was dying, of course, and I wanted to see what happened to a harbinger’s body when it expired. I knew it transformed back into a crow, and after a few years the harbinger would once again be able to change between human and crow forms at will, but I’d never actually witnessed one of them die. So I sat in the blood-soaked field and talked with him until he passed.
It took longer than I’d anticipated. I ended up talking more than I should have, apparently, because after Michael regenerated, he declared us friends and has not ceased talking to me since. I denied the title of friend for nearly a century. In truth, I wasn’t very pleasant to him, but Michael never relented. Eventually, I did. I’m still not very pleasant to him, but I’m a beekeeper. We’re not very pleasant to anybody.
I was, however, unnaturally pleasant to that girl today, and I’m not happy that Michael witnessed it. “Your point?”
He shrugs. “She’s pretty. Don’t tell me you didn’t notice.”
“I didn’t.” Truth. “I don’t notice those things.”
Michael makes a scoffing noise. “Yeah, sure. You can’t tell me her looks didn’t impact your choice to not send a bee to her.”
“They didn’t. The only thing I see about people is whether or not I can send a bee to them.”
His light brown eyes brighten with interest. “Then why did you spare her?”
“She could see my true face.”
“Really?” He turns to me, head cocked. “How did she react?”
My mouth curves at the memory. “She said I was pretty.”
He laughs. “Well you can’t sting that one, can you?”
My smile drops. “I certainly can. She chews peppercorns to sort out hallucinations from reality.”
Michael shrugs. “So avoid her.”
“Unlikely. This is very small town.”
“How do you feel about stinging the one girl in the world who thinks your mug is pretty?” And this is why I hate Michael sometimes. His questions are unrelenting.
“This is not therapy, Michael.” Bees whirl around my head, sensing that I’m unsettled. “We have an arrangement—I tell you who I sting so you can take their energy when they kill or die, and you let me follow your group to the disasters you sense. I don’t need advice from a scavenger.”
“This girl must have really twisted your panties.” He clasps a hand over his chest, feigning hurt feelings. “You called me a scavenger, Dresden.” He’s fine. I know when I’ve hurt his feelings.
“You are a scavenger.”
“What if I called you a hive mouth?”
I sigh and look back into the sun. I’ve done altogether too much talking today. “Call me whatever you want, just don’t tell me who t
o sting.”
“All I’m saying is, it’s clear your instincts are telling you not to sting her. Maybe you should listen to them. Especially if she can see your true face. That’s very unusual.” Michael scratches his slightly stubbled chin and nods toward someone crossing the parking lot. “Is that the woman? The one with the flowered skirt?”
“No.” I shift my feet, feeling twitchy. “Why shouldn’t I sting her? You’re here because this town is going to be devastated. Which means the girl is likely going to die anyway.”
“People survive disasters. Besides…” Michael pauses. He scans the parking lot, and his voice drops, as if he’s concerned about being overheard. “There’s talk that change is in the air.”
Good Lord, here we go. Harbingers are such gossips. “What do your rumors have to do with me stinging that girl?”
His eyes flicker, crow like. For an instant his eyes go black, before fading to their normal pale gold. “Not rumors. Talk is the curses are changing. Possibly even weakening. That there may be ways to crack them. And if your gut is telling you something about that girl, think about trusting it.”
I press my fingers to my own eyes. “Let’s leave my gut out of this.” I jab a finger toward the exit doors, right at a woman in black jeans. “That’s the woman I stung.”
Another crow alights from the wall, follows her.
Michael rolls his eyes. “You could be a bit more subtle.”
“You could be a bit less idealistic.” I point to my face. “See this? The curse is not changing. It isn’t weakening.”
“Fine. Do what you want.” Michael throws up his hands. “I thought it might give you hope.”
I am so far beyond hope, I don’t even know the meaning of the word. At least harbingers can eventually find death. Granted, they have to be pecked to death by their own kind. Even then, their curse just gets dumped into some new, unfortunate, dying person. Still, there is an escape for them. There is nothing for me.
My queen senses my unease. She crawls around my lungs, restless. “I’ve been around a lot longer than you, my friend,” I say quietly.
Michael eyes me, then nods. “Yes, you have. But I’ll tell you, something’s in the air. Something’s…sour.”
“Maybe it’s your T-shirt.”
He laughs.
The third and final crow on the roof swoops off and caws loudly at us.
“That’s my cue.” Michael ducks between the pallets of mulch, pretending to tie a shoe. “You reminded me—save my clothes for me, will you, Dresden? I’m tired of abandoning perfectly good outfits every time I change.”
“I’ll drop them off at the motel you’re staying at.” I look away, knowing what’s coming next.
The smell of smelting metal hits my nose, then a large, puffed crow stands in a puddle of clothing. Michael, in his bird form, blinks up at me with red-black eyes. The crow caws once and jumps up, into flight. I watch him disappear behind Walmart, then I slowly pick up the harbinger’s clothing. “Nothing changes, you foolish scavenger.”
But I wish it would.
4
Essie
the snake doctor
Dr. Roberts always sits too close. I can smell his cinnamon gum. His stinky aftershave.
“Miss Roane, please look at me.” The voice is smooth as butter, cool as frost. “You know we aren’t going to get anywhere if you refuse to speak to me.”
I shift my gaze from the clock on the wall to Dr. Roberts, sitting in the chair opposite me. His tongue is forked again, unfortunately. I can’t eat a peppercorn because I learned that trick from Grandma Edie and Dr. Roberts disapproves of Grandma Edie. Probably because she’s not his patient.
“I’m not ‘refusing,’” I say. “I just have nothing to say today.”
“How can that be? You had quite an episode in the park two days ago.” He glances at my file sitting open on the table next to him. “It started when a stranger approached you while your aunt was running an errand and you didn’t know if he was real or imagined?”
It’s not a question. He shouldn’t say it like one.
And I still don’t know how much of Dresden was real. Part of him obviously was, but my feelings about the encounter are so unsettled, I haven’t allowed myself to think about it much.
“I’m fine now.” I am fine. Once an episode passes, I get a stretch of time when my mind is calm. At least, I’m able to sort out reality from the visions, which are milder. Nevertheless, the amount of antipsychotics circulating through my body makes me feel like a hollowed-out tree.
He scoots forward another little bit, bumping his knee against mine. “If you are having difficulty recognizing a person as a real thing, then it’s safe to say you are not fine.”
I press back into the chair. “It was a mistake, clearly. The boy was…strange-looking.”
Very strange-looking.
He removes and replaces his glasses for the twenty-third time during our session. He must not know what to do with his hands. “There are lots of strange-looking people in the world. It’s a problem if you are unable to identify them as people.”
Telling him about Dresden is not even a remote option. But I’d like to see Dr. Roberts take a look at Dresden and tell me he knows for sure what he’s looking at.
“I’ll do better next time.”
Dr. Roberts flicks out his long, snake-like tongue. Ugh, it’s so close. His eyes look hooded, too. I hope he doesn’t grow fangs. “Estelle—Essie—it’s not about doing better. It’s about being better. It’s about functioning in the world. I don’t think you’re able to do that right now.”
Uh-oh. Here we go again.
“You father is concerned about you. He agrees Stanton House might be the best place for you right now.”
Stanton House. The institution where plenty of members of the Wickerton family line—my family—are sent when they become too much for their families to handle. The place was originally built in the early 1900s because my family produced too many people not right in the head, and not enough sane ones to care for them. Although it’s a fine enough place—not some cold institution, but a home with a well-trained staff—many of my relatives have withered away and died in Stanton House for lack of another option. This is where my father wants to send me.
I meet Dr. Roberts’s gaze directly and force a smile. “I like living with my Aunt Bel.”
“What if your aunt can’t take care of you?” he counters. “She already has your grandmother to care for.”
My heart skips a few beats, starts to race. Does my aunt want me committed? Have I become too much for her? “I’d like to stay with Aunt Bel,” I say firmly.
Dr. Roberts leans back, shakes his head. He makes a note in the file. “I don’t agree,” he says stiffly. “As you know, your condition defies diagnosis at this time. The things you see are far too detailed to be considered classic hallucinations, and medication does little to help. Despite your condition being atypical, your family history of paranoid schizophrenia makes me believe you need a more controlled environment.” But that’s all he says about it. All he can say about it.
My gut unclenches. Aunt Bel hasn’t turned me out, then. She’s co-guardian with my father, so they can’t send me to Stanton unless she signs off on it, or I do something to hurt myself or someone else, which hasn’t happened. Turning eighteen next year is not going to emancipate me. I will probably always need a guardian.
No mystery where it came from, either. My father’s side has a colorful history going back to my great-great-grandma Opal Wickerton. She cut off her toes, believing demons were living between them, and ended up hanging herself from her clothesline.
About half of all her descendants wound up with mental disorders to one extent or another. I had a great-aunt who told such accurate predictions of people’s death dates, no one in town would go near her, and an uncle who took to carving Bible passages into his skin. My great-grandmother drowned herself in Pember’s Lake by tying her entire set of cast-iron skillets
to her limbs, so it’s little mystery why I’m sitting in a psychiatrist’s office and take a rainbow of pills every day.
I look pointedly at the clock. “Are we finished?”
Dr. Roberts slides glasses onto his nose and peers at me over them. His pupils are thin black slits. “For today, yes.” The s is drawn out in a long hiss. Like a snake.
God. Maybe I do belong at Stanton House.
I get up and head for the door. “Have a nice…afternoon,” I manage before slipping into the hallway.
Aunt Bel rises from the waiting room chair. She packs her crocheting into her massive purse and smiles. “How’d it go?”
“Fine.”
Her brows draw together. “Not fine.”
I jerk one shoulder and hold the door open for her. “He’s talking about Stanton House again. Says Dad wants me to go there.”
“Your father has no idea what’s best for you. The man can’t even take care of himself.” Aunt Bel’s mouth hardens. “He may dictate that you attend weekly sessions with that man, er doctor, but I’m still your co-guardian. You won’t be sent to Stanton House while I live and breathe.”
My breath hitches. “But you won’t live forever, Aunt Bel. I’ll wind up there eventually, won’t I?”
Her hand curls around mine and squeezes. “Let’s not worry about ‘eventually.’ That’s a long time from now.” She digs her keys from her handbag. “Anything could happen in the meantime.”
5
Essie
the farmstead fair
Three days later, Aunt Bel rounds up me and Grandma Edie, and we all go to the Farmstead Festival. It’s a big deal in Concordia, drawing out everyone. Aunt Bel is a fan, for reasons I can’t fathom. I’d rather stay home. I bet Grandma Edie would, too, but neither of us are in the habit of telling Aunt Bel no. She asks so little of us, so we go.
A breeze carries the scent of animals and diesel, sugar and grease. The town green has been transformed. Rows of crafters and artisans, and some junk sellers, have set up their tents. The sounds are many: the rickety-rack of amusement rides on metal tracks; the roar of fans in animal enclosures to keep smells out and draw cool air in; people talking, babies crying, children wheedling for another crack at winning a toy. All of it creates a cacophony of noise that makes my hands sweat and my temples throb.