Keeper of the Bees

by Meg Kassel

  “It wasn’t you.” I frown at the floor. “Perhaps it was a lucky delusion.”

  “Perhaps.”

  My knees are getting a little shaky. I tug his hand and sit on the edge of the bed. He eases down next to me. I look at our linked hands. “You should have come sooner. Why didn’t you?”

  “Because I shouldn’t.”

  “If you’re worried about my aunt—”

  “Your aunt is the last thing I’m worried about.”

  “What, then?” I ask. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  He cocks his head. A rueful smile pulls at his lips. “Are you so sure? I’m powerless to say no to you, and yet the day will come when I’ll have to leave, and this town is…” He trails off, shifting so hair falls over his face.

  “Stop hiding your face.” I tilt up his chin. “I know what you look like.”

  “I wish you didn’t.”

  “Why? Do you think I’d think differently of you if you had only one face?”

  His brows raise. “I would hope so.”

  “You make no sense at all.” He doesn’t. If he thinks all I see are those other features, and not the true person beneath, then he doesn’t know me at all. “What were you saying about this town? Is something about it not to your liking?”

  He sighs. “The only thing I like about this town is you,” he says, and my face warms. “But really, the problem with this town is that the crows are here. They show up to places where—I shouldn’t be talking about this with you.”

  “No, you should. Everyone treats me like I’m made of glass. Believe me, my head shows me things every day much scarier than anything that could come out of your mouth.”

  He grins, and it’s not restrained, or practiced, or sad. It’s just a grin. “You’ve seen what comes out of my mouth, Essie.”

  And I laugh. I plaster a hand over my mouth so I’m not too loud, but I really laugh. “You made a joke.”

  “I did.” He looks surprised. “The very reason I am here is a problem. Something…unfortunate is going to happen in this area. Something that will cause the deaths of many. I intend to do everything in my power to make sure you survive it.”

  I try not to react to his words. He’s watching me closely as it is, and if he thinks I may get upset, he’ll start to edit himself. Just like everyone does. “What kind of unfortunate something?”

  “There’s no way to know. I am here with a group of…people. Harbingers of death who are cursed in a way that’s similar to myself. They can sense when terrible events are going to occur. They are drawn to these events, as am I.”

  “That boy with you at the parade?”

  “Yes. His name is Michael.”

  “So like, a bomb is going to drop on us?”

  “I would be very surprised if that happened.”

  He sees me frowning at the wall, considering all the different ways a bunch of people could be killed in Concordia, Missouri, and turns my face toward him with gentle fingers. “Please, don’t worry. I told you, I won’t allow harm to come to you. We’ll get you out of town and away from here when the event is close.”

  “Oh, I can’t leave.”

  He blinks. “Why is that?”

  Oh crap. Crap, crap, crap. So much for leaving out the part about me being a suspect in the murder. I have to tell him the truth, now. “Because Detective Berk says so.”

  His gaze darkens. “They can’t seriously think you—”

  “They don’t have any better leads and they found my hat stuffed in Miss Leeds’s hands,” I blurt out. “She thinks it’s a long shot, but…”

  He shakes his head. “You won’t stay a suspect for long.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because I’ve known quite a few dark minds, like the person who killed your Miss Leeds. The fact that he brought her body to a public place—the park—tells me that on some level, he wants to be discovered. He will make a mistake.” He brushes his fingertips over my cheek, so light I almost don’t feel it. “So yes, I’ll be spying on you until this person is caught. If he tries to hurt you, he’ll have to get through me, and I’m quite indestructible.”

  “Indestructible?” I smile through a blush, so very unsettled—in a good way—by his words. “And here I was beginning to think you were such a nice, ordinary boy.”

  “Your turn to joke,” he says with a fading smile. “I’m not ordinary, Essie.”

  “That’s true. If you were, you wouldn’t like me.”

  He goes still. “If I were, I wouldn’t have to enter through the window to visit with you. I’d use the front door and greet your aunt in a civilized manner.”

  I look straight at him, studying his changeable face. He’s not lying—he is simply unaware that he’s wrong. Or perhaps he’d like to think that he’d be interested in me if he was an “ordinary” boy, but I’ve been around enough of them to know how they see me.

  Dresden. If you were ordinary, you would not be sitting with me in my room. You wouldn’t even see me.

  But he is here, looking at me in a way that makes my hands sweat and my throat dry. I can’t hold his words against him because it goes both ways. If I were an ordinary girl, I’d probably miss him entirely, like all those people who only see the shape of a young man, but not the young man himself.

  Maybe we’re here to give each other what the rest of the world can’t.

  Just then, a woman’s lips appear as his mouth. They’re full and young and contrast with the old-man nose just above them. They could have easily been my lips, if he’d let his bees sting me. But he didn’t, and that choice is the reason I’m here with him now, heart pounding, feeling cloud light and painfully clearheaded. Wondering if this is what falling in love is like and experiencing every possible conflict about that.

  All those days ago in the park, Dresden saw me, and I saw him. Like, really saw. And everything changed.

  On pure impulse, I reach out. He only flinches slightly as I touch the soft skin around his eyes. I pull my hand from his to rest my fingertips next to his temples. Thumbs, on the bridge of his nose.

  “What are you doing?” His voice is wary.

  “I don’t know.” I’m breathless, a little giddy. I don’t know what I’m doing, but the blood thrumming through my veins brings a surge of euphoric power. Perhaps the possibility of falling in love makes all other possibilities seem more possible. “I want to see your eyes,” I breathe. “Yours.”

  His face folds into an expression of hurt, sadness, infinite pain. “They’re gone, Essie.”

  His hands close around my wrists, and he tries to pull back, but I press my fingers harder and he stills. “No. They’re there.” Sweat slides down my neck as I watch the shifting features of his face. A shudder rattles through me, but I don’t release Dresden.

  “You wouldn’t know the difference anyway,” he says, letting his hands drop away. “You can’t know my eyes from the others.”

  I don’t know how, but I’m certain he’s wrong. It’s as if the image of them swims behind my own eyes, just beyond my consciousness.

  A pair of dark brown eyes shifts to blue, then to a rheumy gray, barely visible below a heavy, wrinkled brow.

  Then, slowly, they turn a clear, gold-green with a thick fringe of dark lashes. Black brows arch over them. They fit his face with such perfection, I gasp and cup my hands to his cheeks.

  “It’s you.” My breath hitches. “Your eyes. You can feel it, can’t you?”

  Those glorious eyes widen in surprise. He stares at me in wonder and something that looks a little like fear. Good grief, he’s beautiful beyond words. Far too beautiful for a defective piece like me, I think with a spear of worry, but his beautiful eyes don’t stay. They are swallowed up by a pair of heavy-lidded ones and are gone like an impression in the sand.

  “When it’s my features, it doesn’t hurt. It’s been so long…” he says roughly. His hand comes up. Shaky fingers rub his eyes, which look at me with an intensity I’ve never seen from him.
“I don’t understand. You shouldn’t have been able to do that.”

  “But I did. I can.” I bite my bottom lip as the room fills up with bright pink bubbles. “You’re beautiful, Dresden.”

  “It was a long time ago,” he says distantly.

  I laugh and try to be careful about the pitch. My laughter can go high and piercing when I’m happy. I also sometimes forget to stop laughing, which I’ve been told makes people uncomfortable. I tilt my head and lean back on the bed, bracing on my elbows. “I can’t always tell the difference between what’s real and what’s not. I hear and smell and feel things that no one else can. You know what people do when they see me reacting to the stuff my mind makes up? They cross the street, move their seat, leave the store. They’re afraid of me. Grown men look at me with fear. Like I’m a monster.”

  “They’re fools,” Dresden says with a frown.

  “So are you, for thinking that of yourself,” I say. “You’re beautiful to me. You see me. I have scary faces, too. You’re the only one, aside from the people living in this house, who sees past them. You have no idea how much that means to me.” I lay a hand on his chest, very gently. Barely touching. It’s buzzy and warm with all those bees in there. He jerks at my touch and winces, but his hand brushes my thigh, just above the knee, then tentatively settles there. His gaze drops to my mouth.

  “Essie.” He breathes my name. He’s close. The air between us zings, honey-scented and charged. “You are the furthest thing from a monster. You are light and grace and all the things I thought I had forgotten. It’s agony for me to be near you, yet I can’t stay away.”

  Oh my God, there is no resistance for that kind of talk. I smile at him, brimming with everything. Just, all of it, including a load of emotions I’ve never felt before in my life. My bones are jelly. In two seconds, my heart is going to burst straight out of my chest. “Just think,” I whisper. “If my great-great-grandmother Opal Wickerton hadn’t spontaneously lost her sanity before having six children and beginning the Wickerton curse, we wouldn’t be here today. Maybe it’s fate that brought us together.”

  “Your great-great-grandmother’s mental illness came on suddenly?”

  “Mm-hmm. Right before some religious massacre in the mid-1800s. Why?”

  Dresden goes completely still. My vision goes gray tinged. “What’s the matter?”

  He eases away from me, climbs off the bed with shaking hands. “I have to go.”

  “Why?” I scramble to my feet. “I don’t understand.” He looks at me from the corners of his eyes. I can see the whites—crescent moons of fear. It’s a look I’ve seen too many times. “Don’t do that.” Tears burn my eyes. “Don’t you dare look at me like I scare you.”

  He lets out a sound of anguish and rushes toward me. His hands close over my upper arms, just below the sleeves of my nightshirt.

  “I’m not scared of you,” he grinds out. “I think I just figured out…I think—” He cuts off, tips his forehead to mine. “I adore you. You make me forget that I’m cursed. You make me believe huge, impossible things. You make me want…” He shakes his head and sets me back firmly. “I will watch out for you, keep you safe, for as long as I am able, but I don’t know if I can come to you again.”

  My heart pulls at my ribs with an icy ache. My skin crawls with the sensation of skittering mice. I hug my arms around my torso to keep from touching him, but I step close. Too close, for sure, but they say the devil’s in the details. I want to see all of Dresden’s devils. “This makes no sense,” I say. “Why might you not come back?”

  His face is in shadow again, hiding his emotions from me. “Because I think I did something a long time ago that makes this thing between us even more unnatural than it already is. I have no business even thinking about you, and you…” He looks to the window with anguish. “You are defying the laws of nature by having a single kind thought about me.”

  “If it’s unnatural to enjoy being with you, so be it.” My chin jerks up. I’m all breath, no voice. “Dresden, I care for you—”

  “No!” He surges away from me as bees roar from his mouth. They encircle him like a buzzing tornado, forming a wall. His face is pure misery. His hands are tense claws dragging through his hair. “Stop, I beg you.” He backs toward the window.

  “I want to know why—”

  “I can’t!” he gasps. “I’ve done enough damage. But I’ll keep you safe. And I…I’ll find a way to free you. So help me, I will.” He turns to the window.

  Free me? I stand up and am swamped by a wave of vertigo. This night has been a barrage of wild, swinging emotions—too many extremes to reasonably process. It’s taking a toll. My ceiling, the whole roof is suddenly gone. Only the walls remain. I sit down on the edge of the bed. Above me, stars glitter in a black sky, and a low-slung crescent moon chuckles softly.

  “Dresden, I don’t want you to go.” It’s all I can say. It’s all I have left.

  “And I would give anything to stay,” he rasps. “But I want you to live, more.”

  His eyes close, and he disintegrates into a heavy swarm of bees. It streams through the window and is swallowed by the night.

  I watch the last bee disappear and sink onto my bed, curling into the fetal position. Blisters boil up and break on my hands, arms, that spot above my knee—all the places on my skin where we touched. The pain is tremendous, but the ache under my ribs is worse because I know that one is real. It’s like invisible forks are twirling the veins and muscle sinews like spaghetti. I curl my hands into my sheets and let the tears come. They come and come and come until my room is flooded by them. I fall asleep, sinking into a salty sea of my own tears, under sharp white stars and a moon that just won’t stop laughing.

  16

  Dresden

  a spoonful of honey

  It’s raining.

  I pound a fist against the harbingers’ motel room door. It’s the sort of place that accepts cash and hasn’t been updated in decades. The door is metal, but I’m very strong and my blows are causing it to rattle on its hinges. I rarely do this—visit the harbingers at their residence. They don’t like it. Aside from Michael, they don’t like me. The other three who travel with Michael tolerate our association, but prefer we keep it away from them. I’ve obliged, until now, as I stand here pounding on their door in the middle of the night.

  The door is jerked open by Lish, a tall woman with dark brown skin and a mouth not given to smiling. I’ve been following these individuals for a long time, and I admire this harbinger, despite her clear antipathy for me. Her body has lost a few things in her forty-some years—an eye; a finger to a knife fight; a gunshot wound gave her a bad limp—but her mind is powerful. Her group follows her without question.

  Lish scans me with her eye. “What?”

  “Michael.” By all the gods in the universe, I sound menacing. Bees fly all over the place in a disorganized mass. No wonder she’s looking at me with more disgust than usual.

  “He’s busy.” She moves to slam the door shut.

  My hand shoots out, braces the door open. I’m faster than a harbinger. “I need to see him.”

  “No.” She says it through her teeth.

  Another thread of control snaps, and my mouth floods with bees. I open my mouth with a growl, and they burst out, swarm around her in a chaotic, anxious cloud. I’ve never done this before—allowed my bees to purposefully frighten someone. It’s a new low.

  It doesn’t work, anyway. Lish’s dark eyes narrow, turn assessing. “Dresden—that’s your name, right?” She damn well knows my name. “He can’t come out right now.”

  “I’m not leaving.” Somewhere under my mania is a prick of alarm. There’s a bad edge to her voice.

  “Please,” I say, making a supreme effort to sound civilized. “It’s important.”

  She pauses, watching me carefully. Weighing something in her mind. Her full lips thin to a line. “Contain the insects and you may see him.”

  I must look desperate. I’ve
never been invited in before. My bees corral back into my chest. She nods to the others inside.

  The two other harbingers who are not Michael make noises of protest, of alarm. One raised hand from Lish and they cease. She presses a finger from her intact hand to my chest. Her teeth gleam white against her skin. “Don’t make me regret extending you this courtesy, beekeeper.”

  “I won’t.”

  Lish steps aside. I find Michael on the bed looking quite poorly. Lish and a male harbinger, who is new enough I don’t know his name, move to the rear of the cramped motel room to give us room. Or, perhaps, to stay as far from me as possible. Clothes are folded into piles on the other double bed. Food is stacked neatly on the desk. Garbage packed inside the waste bin. All evidence of a comfortable, tidy transient family.

  A third harbinger, a girl no more than twelve, is poised over a gaping hole in Michael’s abdomen with a needle and thread in one hand and a turkey baster full of clear liquid in the other. Her name is Adele, and she blinks at me before turning back to Michael’s wound.

  It’s important to not be fooled by harbingers. They’re far older than they look. Every time they die, they’re reborn and come back as children, but keep their memories and their skills. They don’t find true death with any frequency. Even then, their curse is transferred to some other unsuspecting human on the brink of death. Bad luck finding worse luck. Michael claims he was in the death throes of some awful seventeenth-century disease when the curse found him. I know nothing about Lish, but Michael once told me that the first thing Lish did as a harbinger was hunt down a particular man and kill him. Slowly.

  I don’t know how Adele became a harbinger. She is delicate and fragile, and bears some telltale features of a long-extinct royal family I vaguely remember. I do know she has been a harbinger longer than anyone in this room. She has sewn up many bellies during that time.

  I don’t ask what happened to Michael, this time. Something is always happening to harbingers. The ashen color of Michael’s skin isn’t good. If he dies here, he’ll turn back into a crow. After a few months to a few years in bird form, he’ll start all over again as a child. He usually comes back around ten years, but once, he returned at age six.