The house was silent. Garret wouldn’t be home for hours yet. “Damn it.”
I huffed, pulling in more and more air until white spots popped in my vision. “One thing. That’s all I asked for.” I pouted, storming off to my room.
I slammed the door behind me even though the only person who heard it was me. It didn’t help. “Look,” I said to whoever or whatever oversaw my existence. “I’ll do the thing—the beasty thing—but I want one damn thing. One.” I stopped and thought. “Two. Two damn things.” The bed squeaked under my butt. I folded my legs in front of me. “Keep Garret safe, from me at least.” I closed my eyes. “And let me see my boy one more time.” A hot tear streaked down my cheek.
Warmth filled my soul—a pitcher running over from an over-pumped well. My heart stopped. The world stopped.
“Where you been?”
My breath let out, a smirk tugged at my lips. “You really askin’?” I opened my eyes, ready to look into a perfect set of baby-blues I’d ignored until it was too late.
Nothing. My chin quivered, sobs bounced my chest. “Can’t I see you? Can’t I at least have that?” I begged.
Like a thunderstorm in August, the air shifted, charged. It crackled on my skin, pulling each tiny hair on end. “Damn it, Rusty Kemp. You get your white ass in here,” I demanded.
Warmth hugged me, swirling with a frosty chill, an icebox left open on a hot day. Only just gone to rest, my beast stirred. The ghostly magic called to her. She lived there too.
I dragged in a deep, ragged breath. “Rusty,” I said, searching for the magic that lived inside me. Thick enough to cut with a knife, electric air crawled over my skin.
The stone at my neck glowed, a pale, soft white. My eyes burned, but I refused to close them. I wanted every second. Needed it.
Gold shimmering dust floated in the slim beams of light that poked through the cardboard window. Heavier, more willful.
A shift in the universe. Salty drops both happy and sad slid to the crease of my mouth. Bright blue eyes creased at the corner. He smiled. I smiled.
I reached out to him sitting in front of me, wrapping my arms around him. They fell right through. It was a tease. A universal “April Fools.” Here’s your love, back from the dead. Look upon him with magic eyes. But you can’t touch him. For eternity.
“I’m sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say, but sorry didn’t even cover it.
“I love you, Lynnie Russell.”
That was all my heart needed to break right in half. I couldn’t talk. Could hardly breathe. I wanted him to stay with me forever. I wanted him to love me forever. I wanted more than anything to take it all back. To go back to that night, the night I became that thing. My beast. I wanted Rusty Kemp more than I wanted anything in my whole life. He’d been right there all along.
“Shit,” I hissed. “I was a stupid kid. I didn’t know.” I shook my head. “Please. Stay with me. I don’t care that I can’t touch you. Just stay.” The desperation in my voice annoyed the beast. She turned and grumbled inside. “Tell God to save my soul. To let me into heaven.” My blubbering even started to irritate me.
“I can’t tell God nothin’. You got things to do here, Lynn. Things I can’t. Things not even God can do. You’re one of a kind, kid.”
Tears flowed into snot on my lip. I swiped it away. “No.” I shook my head like it’d make a difference. “You can’t leave me. You can’t. I need you. I got nobody.”
“Well, I can’t right stay here.” His smile stretched wide. “You got special things to do, Lynn. Go on, do ’em.”
“Damn it, Rusty, listen to me. I can’t. You hear? I can’t.”
He closed his eyes. The room went still, no crackling magic on my skin, no puffs of golden dust. Just him and me. “You got my heart, Carolynn Russell. Always have.” His eyes opened and the world stopped. “I’ll be here when you’re ready.”
My heart punched a hole in my chest. “I’m ready now. I’m ready.”
“Nah, silly girl. Go get your shit done. I’ll see ya in a bit.” His voice echoed, bouncing off even the trees outside. He leaned close. I waited for him to poof right through me. Soft lips pressed against my forehead. Instantly addicted to his touch.
Icy air flittered over my face. He was gone. Swooped off to wherever southern ghost boys go. I flipped through my pillows, flopping Nana’s old quilt onto the floor. Searching every inch of my room for one more taste of him. His scent lingered on the linen where he’d been sitting. I shoved my face into the blanket, sucking in a gulp of what was left behind.
My dying heart ached for him. For myself. For what could have been. What a cruel universe to entangle two souls destined to spend life apart. Even if he’d lived, I couldn’t be his. This was a fate I’d never escape. A curse that killed my soul.
They say love hurts. No one ever said loving things would kill you.
Old Women Have Old Ways
The front door slammed and I startled awake. “Lynn?” Garret hollered, home for lunch.
I didn’t move. Hadn’t in hours. The spicy smell of my boy had faded and with it the last of my tears. My pity party had officially been shut down. Rusty was gone, real and truly. I’d begged for one more time. I’d asked and I’d gotten. Figured the universe didn’t answer prayers twice.
My door flung open. Garret let out a quick, heavy sigh. “Damn it.”
Face pressed to the pillow, I mumbled, “What?”
“Where you been? When’d you get home?”
I lifted my head to look at him. Met with puffy eyes and a red nose—and surely the traces of murderous guilt across my face—Garret dropped to his knees beside the bed.
“What in heaven’s name…?”
I bit my cheek, refusing to let his name leave my lips. “Rusty,” I whined.
Garret pressed his forehead to mine and breathed softly. “I know.” His breath shook, but he didn’t let his tears loose.
“I just wanna stay in this bed until it stops hurting.” It wasn’t a lie. I’d lay there for the rest of my life if the powers would allow it.
He swallowed hard. “His mama called this morning, said they’re releasing his—him to the funeral home in Danville tomorrow. Asked if I’d help. With the arrangements and all.” I nodded, wanting nothing more than to crawl into a deep pit and never come out. “I told her I would.” I like to have come out of my skin waiting for him to let out the breath he held, the words constrained in it. “He was my brother, Lynn.” He swallowed again, but it did nothing to the knot at his throat. “My best friend and now…” Cheeks wet with fresh tears, he whimpered, “He’s gone. Just gone.”
Not gone. Not really. Wasn’t, anyhow. “I love him, Garret.”
He looked me square in the eye, suddenly remembering what happened that night. My birthday. “I know you do. Knew it all along.”
“Liar.”
One shake of his head. “Nope. Not a liar. A truther. And I’m telling you that was your person. And damn it, I miss him every second of every day, but if I’d lost you….” Another swallow. “I’d’ve died right along with you.”
All the air shot out of my lungs. I couldn’t look him in the eyes anymore. He’d know. He’d figure it out just looking at me that I was the monster who killed his friend, his brother.
He couldn’t know. Not just about Rusty, but about all of it. Me, Nana, the beast. It’d kill him. Nothing in this world or the next could’ve made me break his heart again. I’d keep that secret to my grave. Or his. Whichever came first.
“I’m gonna go see Nana for a bit. You be all right?”
He sat back on his heels. “Where you been, Lynnie? You all right?”
No. Not one bit. “Fine. Why don’t you call up Hattie to come over for dinner later?” I wiggled my eyebrows. “She’ll keep ya company.”
He pinched his lips. Guilt washed over his face, t
urning his cheeks pink. Like he’d done something bad. Like he wasn’t allowed to be happy. Garret would’ve walked off the end of the earth for me. I had half a mind to do the same. If only just to not have to see that look on his face again.
“You can be happy, brother.” I sat up and clapped a hand on his shoulder. “You have my permission.” If nothing else, please just be happy.
Garret was my person, would be as long as he was alive. My brother by blood and soul. The tether holding me to earth. A rock steadfast in my whitewater river.
“I’m sorry I told you all that stuff, Lynn. I should’ve—”
“I don’t damn think so, Garret Llewellyn Russell. You’re not gonna apologize for telling the truth.” A knot caught in my own throat, the balled fist of hypocrisy. “Listen to me.” I grabbed his chin. “Until I die, I’ll never, ever blame you for one bit of what happened.” Please don’t blame me either. “Live life. Be happy. Have babies.”
He blushed, looking down at his hands. “How can I do that without my brother?”
The truth, hot on the tip of my tongue, almost spilled out into his lap. “He’ll be here when you’re ready,” I repeated. A promise I prayed with all of my soul he’d keep.
Garret nodded, accepting my nonsense. “Yeah.” Swallow. “You gonna be home tonight? Have dinner at least?”
I hoped Garret really thought I’d been out drinking at the lake every night. Or finding a new man down at Maldoon’s. Anything but howling at the moon. Although, I hadn’t done that yet. “Will do,” I lied. “Now get your ass up off my floor, ya big ol’ pansy.” He kissed me on the head on his way out. “Call Hattie,” I demanded.
Garret stopped at the door. “We’re gonna be all right, Lynn.”
He’d be all right. I’d be whatever fate allowed.
Nana sat in her rocker on the porch shelling peas. Her fingers worked quickly over the shell, shoving each little green bead from its home in one swoop.
“Hey, sugar,” she said into my ear when I leaned for a hug, her knees held tight to the old metal bowl between them. “How’do?”
“Oh, fine,” I said, plucking a loose pea from her chest and popping it in my mouth.
The record player crackled inside before a new song started. “I guess we’re tellin’ lies today.” She looked up at me over top of her glasses, one thin brow arched.
I brushed twigs and leaves off the swing on the end of the porch where I’d spent most every summer night of my childhood. “Well, Nanny, I think you and I both know I’m not the only one lying around here.” She blinked at me.
For once in all of my twenty years, I felt like a grown up. A real adult with real adult things to say. It wasn’t the beast; it was realizing the people I thought were adults were no better than me. We all lied when it suited us. We all had secrets.
She set the bowl of peas on the table next to her chair, pushed the bucket of shells from between her feet. “I prayed you’d never know the word unpleasant.” Thin, strong fingers pinched tobacco from Papa’s old pouch, stuffing into his dark wooden pipe. “I prayed you’d grow up a willful woman. Marry a good man. Give your mama beautiful grandbabies. Die a nanny in your own bed.” Flame crackled to life at the end of a match. She puffed, slowly lighting her pipe. “God had a plan for you, darlin’.”
“God,” I scoffed. I’d come to learn God had no power in my world.
Smoke rolled out the corners of her mouth. “I promised your mama I’d let you live what life you had ahead of you.” Puff, puff. “She thought if you didn’t know…. Knowing or not knowing, fate comes anyway.”
I’d never thought my nana would’ve lied to me my whole life. And yet, there she was, pants on fire. “You gotta tell me now, Nanny, I gotta know. Why did Percy become the beast? Why wasn’t it you?” I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, desperate for anything she would give me.
“My story is a long one, Lynn.” She sucked her teeth. “It ain’t fair. It ain’t right and it ain’t the way it should’ve been, but there’s nothing I can do about it now.”
I slid off the swing and to my knees. “It’s my story now. Make it right now. Make it fair now. Help me. Why not you?”
Musky pipe smoke swirled in golden sunlight. I breathed it in, falling into the distant memory of Granddaddy Higgins. She’d picked it up the day after he died. I was certain she’d done it to live in his memory as often as time would allow.
“Divine Providence.”
I sat back on my heels and looked over my shoulder at the hawthorn, bright red berries ready to burst.
She swallowed. “I loved him so.” A finger poked at the ash inside her pipe. “He loved me right back.” I looked up at her, watching her eyes focus on long gone memories. “I knew what I’d become. Granny Gwen came for me when I was a girl, like I should’ve come for you. My daddy thought he could stop it, pray it away.” She looked down at me. “Ain’t no stopping fate.”
I closed my eyes and pressed my forehead to her knee. Her hand ran over my hair without a snag.
“Percy succeeded where Daddy failed,” she finished.
I looked up at her. Blue eyes flashed dark and back again. “I know you ran. I know you left him there.”
She puffed on that pipe until I knew it had to have been ash. “We shouldn’t’ve been out there. We’d’ve been married in just a few days. But we were young, not kids of course. Twenty wasn’t the same as it is now. Two young people in love, off in the woods for a night alone on a long summer night.” Smoke had stopped rolling out; she still puffed. “They were there waiting. The women.”
I nodded, seeing the scene again in my mind. “Ghosts of curses past,” I whispered.
“I ran that night. I left my love behind. Never did I think he’d become Cu Sidhe. I thought he’d be spared and my fate’d be changed.” She tapped the pipe against her chair, ash tumbling to the porch. “I begged Granny to fix it, take it all back.” A long, ragged breath heaved her chest. “Two days later, Percy came to me. Filthy. Black markings on his arm. Dressed in damp laundry he’d swiped from a line. Granny’s blood dried under his nails.”
I gulped back vomit. “Oh, Nanny,” I breathed. I’d killed Percy. He’d killed Granny Gwen. Who’d likely mauled the one before her. One day someone would meet me in the woods and continue the cycle. “Changing of the guards,” I repeated her words.
“I should’ve known it’d come one day, her death, my birth—or what should’ve been. She told me as much. My mama was an infant when Granny Gwen became the beast, left her babies, her husband. I was almost an adult when she finally came back for me. When I didn’t change, Daddy thought he’d won. He praised the lord it’d spared me. Mama knew better.”
“Nana Maureen,” Nana’s mama, “told me once before she died I had the blood of a warrior. I thought it was just the crazy talk of an old woman on her deathbed. She knew what I’d become.”
“Like my daddy, your mama thought we could stop it. Hoped it was just a tall tale come over from the old country. I knew it was true. I’d seen it with my own eyes. Granny Gwen, my fiery-haired twin. Rounded cheeks, hair like flames licking her pale face. Two years she walked the Arkansas woods, waiting for the day I’d take her place. Mama told everyone she was my cousin come to visit from Ireland.”
I stood, paced back to the swing, and plopped. It creaked under my weight. “You lived your whole life knowing this was coming,” I said mostly to myself.
“Hopin’ it wasn’t.” She pinched more tobacco from the bag, packing into her pipe. “Your granny Maureen told your mama what you’d be, warned her, told her to find you a proxy—your very own Percy.” Rusty. “Men folk don’t have the soul for it. Too wild. Too uncontrolled.”
“Human folk,” I said, remembering Avery’s words. “I won’t change. The rest of my life I’ll just be… this.” I dropped my head to my hands. “Until someone kills me and takes my place.” Not someone,
my kin. My great grandbaby. Or their poor human proxy.
Smoke swirled over her curly white hair. “Accept what you are, Lynn.” I had, honest I had. “Be Cu Sidhe. Be fair. Be righteous. Be with God.”
“God? Is God still with me?”
She plucked the bowl of peas from the table and went back to work. “God never left you, baby.”
“How did He let this happen to me? To Percy? To all those before us.” There was nothing in the Bible about green fury beasts coming to take unjust souls.
“God lets what needs to happen, happen. It’s people who label it good and evil. Divine. Providence.” She ran her thumb over the pod, sliding peas out into the bowl. “By the time I met your granddaddy, the whole town knew what’d happened with Percy. They called me a miracle. Said I’d survived a bear—hell, some even blamed the howler. Morticae Higgins was one of them. Eventually, I told him what we are. That my blood is cursed.” She watched a welcomed breeze rattle haws loose from their branches. “He chose this spot because of that tree. Fairies live there, he’d say. The day he carved into it, your granddaddy touched my big round belly, and swore he’d be whatever the heavens needed him to be. Let what is to be, be, Lynn.”
My head dropped back to rest on the swing. “I hate to break it to you, Nana, but there’s no God in what I am.”
She scoffed. “Fine, no God. Divinity isn’t a man up in the clouds wearin’ sandals and a white gown. It’s everything that holds the worlds together, baby. It’s in your blood.”
I let out a heavy sigh, rubbing my burning eyes. “What am I supposed to do about Garret?”
She nodded, grinning around the pipe held in her teeth. “Your great protector,” she said. “All that boy needs is a solid woman to keep him grounded, wash his britches, fix his lunch. Love him until the end of his world. He’s a good man, Lynn. You’ve seen to that.”
I sat up right and looked at her. “I took his brother from him, Nanny.” It hurt to say the words out loud.
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