Keeper of the Bees

by Meg Kassel

He narrows his eyes on the driver. “Do you know her?”

  “Yes, she’s—was—on the murder case. She’s my cousin, so a possible target, and they took her off.”

  “Your cousin?” He frowns at Anne Marie Berk for a moment longer than necessary. “Do you trust her?”

  “Of course,” I say. “She and I go back. Before she was a detective she had to…deal with me a few times when my meds were off. She was nice. And like I said—she’s my cousin.” I frown at him, this time. “Why are you acting weird?”

  “Don’t know. Just…” He appears to shake off a thought. “I can’t let her see me, and you need to get to a hospital. She’s your cousin and a police officer.” His hands scrape through his hair. “I’m acting paranoid. I just want you safe.”

  “Thank you.” I link my fingers with his and squeeze his hand. Tears prick my eyes. “You should know it doesn’t change my feelings for you, what happened with my great-great-grandmother.”

  He sighs. “It should, but I’ll make it right, Essie. You need to know that. I’ll find a way to make it right.”

  “How?” We’re running out of time here. Detective Berk is almost here.

  He gives the ATV and driver a stricken look and brushes fingers down my cheeks. “I will find your aunt. Make sure she takes you to the hospital. No stops along the way. I’ll meet you there. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I say.

  He gently dissolves into bee form and flies away, toward town. Toward the destruction and my aunt’s house. My heart is a heavy weight in my chest. I’m tired of watching him leave.

  Tires scrabble on gravel behind me. I turn to see Detective Berk jumping off the four-wheeler. “Essie?” She runs up to me, grabs me by the shoulders. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes,” I say in a distant voice. “I’m…fine. I wish everyone would stop asking me that.”

  She looks at the hail chunk I’m holding against my head. “You’re not fine, clearly.”

  “Better off than most. Have you found my aunt?”

  “Teams are getting out now. The National Guard has been called. Resources are pouring in from all over the state, but it will take time, Essie.”

  I nod to the pile of wood that used to be the Stanton House. “I think everyone’s okay in there, in the basement. Except for, um, Dr. Roberts. He ran off.”

  “Yet you got out.”

  “Yes.”

  Her eyes narrow. “Who did I see you talking to just now?”

  “No one.”

  “Essie, I saw you with a man.”

  I smile up at her. A wide, unrestrained smile. “Maybe you were seeing things, detective. It’s been known to happen in our family.”

  Her lips thin. “Let’s get going. I’ll call in this location to get crews out here for these folks, if they aren’t already en route.” She tugs a helmet on my head and motions toward the ATV. “I have an extra shirt you can put on. You’re wet and cold.”

  I do as she asks, and after she gets on the vehicle, I swing a leg over the seat and sit behind her. “I need to go to the hospital.”

  She looks over her shoulder. Her eyes are two glowing balls of coal, smoking in her eye sockets. “You got it, Essie. Hold on.”

  29

  Dresden

  aunt bel

  The center of Concordia is a wreck. I don’t see Michael, but I glimpse others, moving around in their quiet way, collecting the energy of the dying. Tapping into the dark current of death. There are some new harbingers who have just arrived, drawn by the whiff of fresh death. They are scavengers, after all.

  I travel through the town to find Essie’s aunt. I desperately hope the woman is still alive. Without her, Essie has no one.

  Her neighborhood is in bad shape. Some of the big trees withstood the winds, but most of the structures were damaged to one extent or another. Essie’s house is one of the ones badly damaged but not destroyed. The garage is gone. The house’s roof and part of the upstairs exterior has been peeled off like the front of a dollhouse. A bed and dresser sit undisturbed and exposed in a bedroom. The massive maple tree in their front yard fell onto Essie’s room. But this is encouraging. If the house still stands, there’s a chance Essie’s aunt survived.

  I group my swarm under a piece of roofing that now lies in the backyard and change to human shape. I climb over the debris and into Essie’s house through the front door, which is surprisingly intact. There is some unfortunate irony in that the only time I can enter Essie’s home the proper way is after a tornado has ripped it apart.

  This is probably unwise. If Aunt Bel is alive and conscious, she’s going to panic when she sees me. I never would have interfered with a human’s plight in the old days. The “old days” being before I met Essie, of course. Now I’m a veritable humanitarian, scrambling through a pile of debris to rescue an aunt of the girl I’m in love with. The area is quiet. My hopes of finding the woman alive falter.

  I move efficiently, scrambling over the strewn contents. The living room looks as if someone shook it and rolled it like dice in a cup. Furniture is scattered all over. A rustling sounds from the basement. The basement staircase is blocked by the hutch from the dining room. I move it and head down the creaky steps. Aunt Bel is down there. She’s sitting on the floor, holding a cloth to a head wound, which is bleeding enthusiastically, and brandishing a large kitchen knife.

  “Hello,” I say, trying to keep in the shadows. “Are you hurt badly?”

  She squints, puts down the cloth to her head, and picks up a flashlight. The beam hits me square in the face. I shield it with my hand, not because the light is hard on my eyes, but because I don’t want to frighten her with my face. This close up, and with her looking so closely at me, the curse may not be able to conceal my true appearance from her.

  “It’s you.” Her voice is touched with awe. She puts down the knife and picks up the cloth again, presses it to her head. The flashlight remains trained on me.

  I flinch. My gut sinks. My skin is itchy, hands twitchy, and it occurs to me that I’m nervous meeting this woman. Her opinion of me matters, which is the most absurd thing ever. I have no chance of winning Essie’s aunt’s approval. Ever. All I could earn is her fear and disgust. I remind myself, firmly, that I’m not here to curry her favor, but to make sure she lives. That’s it.

  “We haven’t met,” I say. “My name is Dresden. I’m a friend of Essie’s.” Why did I tell her my name? “I came to see if you were hurt.”

  “Oh, I’m plenty hurt, but this little scratch is not the cause.”

  “You really should get looked over by a medic,” I say. “That looks like quite a cut.”

  “Superficial, but it’s going to need stitches.” she says. “Head wounds always bleed like a son of a bitch.” She holds up a hand. “Be a dear and help me up, will you?”

  I hesitate, truly unsure of what she sees when she looks at me. A person wouldn’t reach for the hand of a monster. Maybe the curse is hiding my true face. I take her hand and help her to her feet. She wobbles a little, and I steady her with a hand to her shoulders. “Are you okay?”

  She shines that beam in my face again, so close I can feel the warmth of the bulb, but I don’t move away. No reason, at this point.

  “Of course I’m not okay,” she says, waving the flashlight around. “A tornado just tore up my house.”

  I breathe out a sigh. She’s fine. She’ll survive, and Essie won’t have to endure the loss of another loved one. Time to get out, now, before she looks too closely for the curse to veil me and she sees what I really look like. I turn to leave. “I’m very glad to hear it. I’ll let you be. Medical personnel are—”

  “Hey there. You’re not leaving me down here, bleeding out of my head.”

  I really want to get out of here. I firmly tamp down the few bees trying to crawl from my mouth. “I’ll make sure the rescue cre—”

  “I’d be grateful for help out of this basement,” she says with a dust-crinkled smile. “In case the whole shebang decides to ca
ve in on me. And why aren’t you with Essie? My lamb isn’t hurt, is she?”

  That stops me. “No, Essie is safe. How do you know—”

  “Oh, I know who you are, Dresden,” she says with a dismissive wave. “I swear. All young people think everyone over the age of forty is oblivious. That we don’t pay attention to anything. Sorry about the knife, by the way. I thought you might be someone else.” She holds out her arms and I, lacking any reasonable alternative, pick her up. She’s a large woman, but I’m pumped full of energy, power, and lift her easily.

  “Oh! My, my,” Aunt Bel twitters in surprise. “I see why my lamb likes you. You’re certainly quite strong.”

  My nerves spark anew. In a few moments I’ll have brought Essie’s aunt to the trashed first floor of her house. The curse is most effective in making the human eye slide away from me. The veil which disguises me will grow thinner and thinner the longer we are in contact. She studies me so closely. Chances are, she’ll see me just fine in the light of day. There’s nothing I can do to minimize my appearance once the curse’s disguise fails. It’s a risk I’ll have to take.

  Aunt Bel gestures to a backpack, which I pick up and hand to her. She holds it to her bosom and I carry her up to the battered remains of the kitchen. I put her down and turn my face away, but Aunt Bel takes my chin in her hand and turns me toward her like a mother about to scold an errant child. She examines me with a practiced eye. “Look at you. Your face really does change like that—you know, she really drew the transition accurately in her sketchbook. Thought you were something she imagined, but clearly, you’re not. Unless the Wickerton curse has got hold of me, too, all of a sudden,” she says with a chuckle. “So tell me something, young man, what exactly are you?”

  “Um.” My mind blanks. Of all the reactions Aunt Bel could have upon seeing the truth of me, curiosity wasn’t one of them. Maybe she is affected by the Wickerton curse.

  “Well? I asked you a question.”

  Good grief. How to explain myself briefly. “I’m a…beekeeper.” My voice comes out rumbly, mumbling, and I have no idea how to go about explaining myself to her. I want to leave in the worst way to check in on Essie at the hospital. At the same time, I’m amazed that this conversation is even happening. “Do I not…frighten you?”

  “Frighten me?” She blows out a breath. “Son, I’m a trauma nurse. Seen a lot of things more scary than your face. I don’t know what a ‘beekeeper’ is, as I’m sure you don’t mean it in the traditional sense, but my Essie cares for you. That’s what matters to me.”

  “I…” love her. Would do anything for her. Am so thankful that you aren’t screaming at me right now. “Okay.”

  She keeps the wadded-up cloth pressed hard to her head and hands me the backpack.

  “That’s got to get to those FBI people—not the police,” she says urgently. “My girl isn’t safe.”

  I take the backpack. “Essie is safe,” I say. Best not to mention yet that her doctor attacked her. That’s Essie’s story to tell, how she chooses to tell it. “I left her with that female detective cousin working with the two of you.”

  Aunt Bel seizes my forearm. “What did you say?”

  “The detective arrived on a police vehicle,” I say, puzzled by the color draining from the older woman’s cheeks.

  “No. My God, tell me that’s not true.” Her grip on my arm tightens like a vise. “You need to find her, Dresden. Now.”

  “Why?” I ask. “I’m meeting her at the hospital.”

  She rests her head back against the wall and closes her eyes. She appears to be fighting for consciousness. Maybe she’s losing more blood than I thought. “You won’t find her at the hospital.” She jabs a finger at the backpack. “Keep it safe…find her…”

  Aunt Bel’s head rolls to the side as she falls to unconsciousness. I rush to her side and pick up the bloodied cloth she’d been holding there. The wound was barely bleeding, and it really was just a scratch. She doesn’t appear to have any other wounds.

  “She fainted.”

  I spin around at the voice. It’s Lish, standing over me in a wide-legged, crossed-arm stance. She’s wearing a man’s clothes, clearly taken from someone’s home.

  “How do you know?” I ask.

  “I’d know if she was dying. She’s not.” Lish nods to the door. “You should take her advice. Find Essie.”

  But if Essie isn’t at the hospital—and Bel seems certain Essie is not there—then I have no idea where to find her. The backpack! Aunt Bel knew something, and that must be in here. I unzip it and find a laptop and a file of papers inside. I put the kitchen table upright and place the laptop on it. Lish helps me wake it up, because I have very little experience with computers, and find files and files of…

  “Looks like surveillance footage,” Lish murmurs, after opening one of them and finding black-and-white scenes of the Roanes’ property.

  “Essie said her aunt had security cameras installed after Essie’s family became the target of a killer.” I point to one file on the desktop that’s separated from the others. It’s from a few nights ago. Lish opens it and hits play.

  The recording shows the front stoop of their house and part of the driveway. A car drives up, parks across the street. A figure gets out, dressed in black—the same figure I saw watching her house that night—and walks to the front door. The person unlocks the door, looks around, inadvertently giving the camera a full look in the face, then enters the house. This time, the scarf is not over the face, but hanging around the neck—her neck. There is no mistaking who it is.

  “Detective Berk. Her own cousin,” I say with a strangled cry. My head spins with this new information and with the dawning realization that I sent her off with this person. “I didn’t know. I thought it was a man.”

  “Typical.” Lish shakes her head. “No one ever expects the woman, but we can be every bit as savage as a man.”

  “No one expects someone to murder their own relatives.” A few bees escape my hissing mouth. “I sent Essie off with her.”

  Lish waves away my bees this time, as if they’re just a nuisance. “Then get the hell out of here. We’ll take this stuff to the authorities. Find her.”

  “I don’t know where.” My voice is even, somehow, but I’m a shaking mess inside. How could I have been so foolish? I scan the pages spread out on the counter. Copies of autopsy reports from the string of murders, medical examiner notes, test results, police documents she should not have. I don’t want to know how she got them. I riffle through the papers with shaking fingers. Somewhere in here there must be addresses.

  “Beekeeper,” Lish says.

  “What?” I ask absently.

  “Be what you are,” she says. “You can find her. You don’t need a map.”

  My fingers go still.

  “The curse will lead you,” she says. “You’re not the only one watching her.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask. “Wait. Why are you here, Lish?”

  “I want you to succeed, beekeeper. I want to believe that what we are can be undone.” She rubs her mangled hands on her pants. “I can’t go on like this much longer. The others don’t know how close I am to…requesting the mortouri.”

  I swallow hard, pushing back a clot of honey and bees. “Even if I can free myself from the curse and die, the rest of you won’t be changed.”

  “Oh, yes we will.” She turns her one eye to the door. I can tell she’s ready to leave, to absorb more death energy. “We’ll know it’s possible. It won’t be a story, but our story. It will be the hope I need to continue on.” She pokes me in the chest. “You need to trust. There will be other harbingers. The ones who are trapped as birds. Where they are, you’ll find her. Finish this, beekeeper.”

  She wants me to go searching for harbingers? I trust Michael, and the rest of his group to a smaller extent, but hunting around Concordia for a murder of crows that may have followed Essie is a tremendous risk that could cost time—time she doesn’t have. Still, I do
n’t see an alternative to Lish’s suggestion.

  I rub my chest, where the queen is settled under my heart. I think a wish, then change into bees.

  30

  Essie

  the end of the line

  “Why aren’t we at the hospital?” I ask. It’s a reasonable question. Perfectly appropriate. So I’m not sure why we’re here, at a ramshackle farmhouse on the edge of the Parker farm. A leaning garage sits fifty or so feet from the house. Crows make a dotted line up on the sagging roofline. They preen their feathers and watch. I feel very much on guard, and I’m not at all sure why. The smell of gasoline is so intense I nearly gag.

  “The roads aren’t passable.” Detective Berk gets off the ATV and helps me off. She’s so careful to keep my arm protected. So considerate. I’m mostly curious why we’re here. Only a niggling worry picks the back of my mind. She stood up for me. She’s on my side. Hell, she’s my cousin.

  Sodden corn stalks bow to the hot, damp wind rolling over the fields. The road is about a quarter mile away. It’s quiet out here. Sirens scream in the distance.

  Why do I hesitate on the muddy driveway? Why are my instincts telling me to run from this house? After all I’ve been through today, I should be grateful for a friendly face. Her face is very friendly, except for those smoldering eyeballs. But that’s not real. Not really real. I feel for my pocket and the baggie of contraband peppercorns inside, but of course they’re not there. What I wouldn’t give to pause everything and bite down on one. What I wouldn’t give for one moment of clarity right now.

  “Come inside, Essie,” Detective Berk says. She’s standing on the dilapidated front porch, and suddenly, she looks like a stranger. It could be that I’m used to her standard baggy pantsuit and scuffed pumps. She’s wearing a rain-sodden sweat suit, and it must be uncomfortable, soaked like it is.

  My feet just won’t move. I can’t fight it when they do this. “No thanks,” I say. “I’ll stay out here, if that’s okay.”

  Her face pinches in annoyance. “Essie, don’t be stupid. Come inside so I can see to that arm.”