“You plannin’ on cleaning that up?” I asked, nodding at the mess, arms folded over my chest.
He split a shell and let it fall to the floor. “Squirrels will get it.” He popped the peanut in his mouth and nodded at a woman who passed.
I closed my eyes and leaned back. “It’s an indoor station,” I grumbled.
Puck poked me with the toe of his sneaker. “Turn that frown upside down, pumpkin. Today is an excellent day.”
Eyes grudgingly open, I watched mamas scold their children. Watched men and women hugging and kissing, and refusing to let the other go. Pretending it wasn’t goodbye. I watched people hustling about, rushing to their next destination. A place of sadness. Rushed, forced life.
A child no bigger than a peapod trotted, her little sandals slapping the tile floor. She carried a rag baby and a confidence I wished I could borrow for a while. No mama or daddy, just the little girl running along.
I sat forward, senses on alert. Ears perked. A tall man in heavy boots scooped her up in his arms. On my feet, adrenaline engaged, I charged forward, the savior.
“Daddy,” she squealed.
He buried his face in her neck. Chest-rattling sobs bounced his shoulders. Stopped in my tracks by pure, true love. Mama caught up, belly round, grinning to each ear. Daddy rubbed a circle around her bump.
My chin quivered. I’d see sadness in a newborn baby or a gaggle of puppies. Too broken. Too damaged. So many things unsaid. Goodbyes ignored. The beast wasn’t alone in her frustration. I grew restless too. For a time I was desperate to forget. For a future I couldn’t imagine.
“You left me!” a woman screeched, the sound echoing off concrete.
Hattie’s sandy ponytail sat high on her head, and her big brown eyes glared at me. She stomped, boot heels clicking against the floor. “I’m liable to rip your hair right outta your head, Lynnie Russell.”
I looked at Puck. He winked, pointing a salty finger gun at me.
Fuck. “Hattie.” I had no lies for her. No energy to make any.
She punched me in the shoulder. “What in the holy hell, Lynn? How could you leave me like that? Leave Garret?” Tears welled at her lashes. Hattie looked over her shoulder at Puck, who grinned and nodded. A tear escaped when she rolled her eyes at him.
Silence as my lips refused to move. All those things unsaid tangled on my tongue. “I was scared, Hattie,” I croaked. “So fucking scared I ran through town as a fucking green beast to find a witch’s magic for help.” I clamped my hand over my mouth.
She shook her head. “You could’ve told me. You didn’t have to lie. Not to me.” She swiped away a stray tear. “Mama confessed everything to Garret the day after you left. He swore he’d watched that monster swallow you up. Was set out to kill it. You. Why didn’t you tell me?” Her voice thick with sadness.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “How?”
Quietly, she looked away, searching for words I knew didn’t exist. “You don’t have to be scared anymore. You can come home now.”
Over her shoulder, Puck watched, pinching his lips into a frown. I couldn’t. Havana was a place of dreams. I was the ghost. “I can’t, Hattie.”
“Sure, yeah, you can. Garret hasn’t touched your room. It’s all still there. Like you left it. And the sheriff… well, the sheriff just wants to talk to you. Just talk, is all. It’s just too weird for Havana, the deaths, the missing bodies, those girls, but that’s your home, Lynn. You have to come back,” she rambled, desperate.
“I’m not that girl anymore, Hattie. I miss who I was, and you and Garret and Mama and—” I couldn’t choke out her name. Or his.
“Her service was beautiful.” I closed my eyes, a tear fell, curving into the corner of my mouth. “Headstone’ll be in by Christmas. You could come… for Christmas.”
I forced a breath. “Love him, please. Love my brother for me.”
“You’d leave us just like that?”
“Hattie, Nana died. I hurt Garret. I ki—” I bit my lips, holding my unforgivable sin. I wouldn’t say it. The words would not touch my tongue.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” She swallowed hard. “You killed Rusty when you were… that… thing?”
All systems stopped. Breath clung to my lungs. Blood no longer pumped. She knew. Wouldn’t have said it out loud if she didn’t. She just needed to hear me say it. I quivered, “Yes.” I needed to hear me say it too. “On the first night I became Cu Sidhe, Rusty tried to save me and I killed him along with the others. I hadn’t meant it—even my beast doesn’t kill the innocent. He just got caught up in the middle of a battle no human belonged in.”
“Jesus, Lynn.” She shook her head like the good Southern woman she was turning out to be. “I’m so sorry, baby.” She pulled me in to hug. I didn’t have my nana or my mama, but I’d take my best friend.
Sobs bounced off high ceilings, clanging against cement walls. I had too much time ahead of me to fuss over the embarrassment of crying in public. It was in me and needed out. “I loved him. I love him. I miss him every day. I was so stupid, Hattie. Not knowing. All that time. How’d you let me be so stupid?”
She kissed me on the head. “Ain’t nobody telling Carolynn Russell what to do. Not since the day she was born. You think I could’ve changed that?”
“Garret did.”
“Well, Garret is a soul very dear to yours. There’ll never be a day that boy can’t turn your heart.”
“Will you take care of him?” I asked, wiping snot on my sleeve.
She looked down, corner of her mouth turned up. “Am I that obvious?”
“Like a damn full set of teeth on a Baker brother.” She laughed at our inside Havana joke and covered blushed cheeks with her hands.
“He stole my heart, Lynn. It’s so stupid, but I’m ass over teakettle for Garret Russell.” She sighed. “Is that okay with you?”
It was everything I’d dreamed. “I need you to promise me you’ll take care of him. Be good to Mama and try to keep my daddy in line as best you can.”
“How am I supposed to do it without you? How am I supposed to be a Russell without you?”
A wide grin pushed my puffy red eyes damn near closed. “You’re gonna be a Russell for me. I need you to be a wife to my brother, a daughter to my mama, and a mama to my chubby nieces and nephews. I need you to live a life I can’t.” Sometimes saying words out loud helped the healing along.
“Lynn, how am I supposed to live any life without you?”
“The same way I’ll be living lifetimes without you. Faith. Hope. Knowledge that the universe holds more than flesh and bone for the likes of you and me. It’s all I have. No better choice in life but to live it. Best get on with it.” Nana’s wise old voice come through mine.
“When did you get so wise, Lynnie Russell?” She grinned at me like a proud mama.
“The moment I realized I didn’t have any other choice but to be everything the universe has in store for me.”
“Havana, Arkansas is never gonna forget the likes of you.”
“I’d like to hope not.” I looked on my old friend with new eyes. A mother, a grandmother, a wife, and a corpse in a box surrounded by crying people mourning her death. In that morbid way, I envied her. I’d die alone in the woods at the hand of an unknown green beastie just as lost and scared as I was.
After a long, easy few minutes of silence, Hattie asked one more time with tears in her eyes. “You really not coming back?”
I wrapped my arms all the way around her and squeezed. She buried her face in my neck. Apple shampoo. She’d used it since we’d started high school. I pulled in as much of the scent as I could, storing the memory in a safe place. Sucking back tears, I whispered, “I’m sorry, old friend.”
Mended in Gold
I stood on a cliff edge, looking out over never-ending spread of green—true, earthly green. Treeto
ps so thick, a soul could get lost in them. Yellow, orange, and fiery red dotted the landscape. Autumn leaves swirled through the ravine.
“Don’t jump.”
I shook my head. I hadn’t jumped the first time. I fell. “I ain’t gonna jump. You thinking of pushing me off?”
Puck’s hand rested on my back. “Why would I go and do a thing like that?”
I didn’t look at him, but I knew he was smiling. He was always smiling. Every day was a terrific day. Or an excellent day. Days weren’t anywhere near.
“Do you like it here?” It was the same question he asked in all the other cities and woods we’d visited in our weeks together.
I nodded. “It’s nice.” I hugged my arms around my chest to block the cold.
“Not Havana, but it’ll do?” he repeated the usual answer he’d finally drag outta me.
I’d been a mess, a mean, ugly old trash bin and I knew it wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair to Puck. Whether for his benefit or mine, he’d lived up to his promise to be my friend, an ally. It didn’t really matter either way. I was happy not to think about it. About being truly alone. Thinking about Garret and Nana and Mama, and my life before the beast, wasn’t doing me any good either. That wasn’t fair to me. There was a life to be lived, and it was time I started living it.
“Would you ever go back?” Puck asked.
Hattie and Garret would hide me away, put me in the storm cellar at Nana’s, out in the shed at the Kemp’s. Until the day the beast slopped from my body and killed one of them, if the law didn’t find me first.
“I don’t think anyone in Havana wants to see Lynnie Russell’s face again unless it’s to lock me up or burn me at the stake.” As far as Havana knew, I was a ghost. “Let them think this monster gobbled her up.”
We stood shoulder to shoulder, surveying our temporary home. Marine fog swallowed hills in the distance. I huddled in my sweater.
“So, now, what do you think about Oregon?”
I looked at him, hardly moving my head. “It’ll do.”
Bacon. Coffee. Beautiful morning—or late afternoon in my nocturnal world—scent washed through the room. Cuddled under two quilts and a crisp white sheet, I wiggled my toes, stretched long.
Every single day for nearly two months. “Good morning, sunshine.” Like clockwork. Puck pushed through my door carrying two mugs—the only houseware item he insisted on toting from place to place. White cotton pants hardly clung to his hips. It didn’t catch my second glance. He’d been right, shifter types lose any and all modesty eventually.
“Mornin’,” I croaked and took my cup.
He laid on his elbow across the foot. “What are we doing today?”
Living with Puck was nothing like living with Garret. Puck was clean and generous. Every day he brought me fresh ground coffee, topless—it was Puck so I was certain that was intentional—smiling. What idiot would say no to that? Inside, I wished he’d go away. I couldn’t properly wallow in my grief with him around. Which was surely part of his plan.
“Actually, I’m feeling a little beastly today.” She yawned and stretched in her hidden space. It’d been weeks—hell, months—since she’d gone to work. I let her out to play every night—the safest time of the day—but chasing Puck and hunting deer are things for animals, not death, not Cu Sidhe. It kept her strong, but she wasn’t satisfied.
He wiggled his brows. “Titillating.” A deep draw of steamy coffee warmed my face. “I want you to be happy with me,” he said all of a sudden. “Are you happy with me?” A chestnut curl sprung out and fell over his forehead.
For a second, I thought about a movie Garret took me to see when I was a kid. A woman had her favorite writer locked up in a guestroom. She played nice and all, but really, she was crazier than a shithouse rat. I wondered if Puck had a big sledgehammer hidden in his pajamas. You know what I mean.
“I ain’t even happy with myself.” That was the God’s honest truth. It hadn’t taken long for my heart to harden and my head to soften after I left Havana. It was a miracle I wasn’t a big green beastie roaming the streets, clawing up unjust assholes and gnawing on the bones of philanderers everywhere I went.
He scratched over his floppy hair in a way that made me sneer and swallow back sorrow. In my head, only Rusty could muss his hair. Only Rusty could make me happy. And Garret, and Hattie, and Mama, and Nana, and hell even Podunk Havana.
He huffed, letting out a noisy sigh. “Get dressed. We’re getting out of this house today.” He held up his finger and pointed it at me like a daddy to his daughter. “You’re not arguing either.”
“Puck.”
He pursed his lips and cocked his head, a gesture I was learning meant he anticipated something shitty.
“I’m happy you’re my friend.”
A grin pulled wide, he flashed white teeth, carving lines around his mouth. “I’m happy you’re my friend, too.” He stood and gulped the last of his coffee.
“Do you think I’ll ever stop breaking?” I asked, sorrow sagging my eyelids.
He watched my face, something he did often, before answering. “I think before long you’ll be too strong to break.”
I thought of decades waking up in the morning with jagged stones in my soul. I should’ve died right along with Rusty and Nana. Saved myself the torment.
Puck sat on the edge of the bed in front of me. “Did you know in Japan, when a dish gets a crack in it, they fill that crack with gold?”
I didn’t know why in the world he was talking about cracks in Japan, but it stopped me from counting the days until I died.
“It’s called kitsugi. When a piece of pottery is cracked, or broken, instead of throwing it away, they repair it with gold. Gold strengthens the bonds and highlights the damage as a proud remembrance of impact. They embrace the change and boast its effect on the life of the piece. Repair yourself with gold, Lynnie Russell. Embrace the changes in your life. Claim your damage, remember its impact. Don’t allow it to end your existence.”
He leaned close, touching the tip of his nose to mine. We shared a handful of breaths. A hand wrapped around the back of my neck, Puck pressed his lips to my forehead. “Get ready, peaches. We’re going out,” he said, and left me to sit alone in my rented room to think about golden cracks.
Accepting my fate as a mythical creature had been a simpler task than accepting my future as a broken human. I owed it to myself, to the women—and Percy— who endured this life before me to live every day. Not another soul on the planet could exist like I could. The ghosts of Havana would haunt me until death, but it was time to let their rattling chains be silent.
Back in the Saddle
“Pull off up here.” I pointed, pushing the tip of my finger against the glass.
“Here?”
“Yeah, right here!”
Puck whipped the wheel, pulling into the lot at the last second, and parked his car in the gravel to the left of Ray’s Tavern. Dust swirled up from the tires. Neon beer signs blinked in blackened windows through the haze.
“This isn’t exactly what I had in mind for a night out.” He looked through the back window, lip curled. “Dinner. Dancing….”
I didn’t wait for him, shutting the door behind me without taking my eyes off the glowing letters perched on the roof. “No, this is perfect.” We longed for that devilish magenta, my beast and I. Weeks of catching rabbits and chasing Puck, practice for what I knew I’d find in a place like this. On a night like that. “He’s here,” I breathed.
Puck stood next to me, looking up at the sign. “You’re sure?”
My girl roiled, anxious to be free. “She is.”
“What an excellent day for a reaping.” He wiggled his brows at me, trotting off toward the door.
Chrome-spotted bikes leaned on kickstands out front, lined up one after the other. In the gravel lot, a handful of rigs parked sid
e by side. I shook away the thought that my daddy was in that bar drinking himself stupid and shoved through the door.
Only big enough for a pool table and a jukebox, the small space inside overflowed with people wearing worn leather dotted with stitched patches. All but a handful of heads turned and looked my way.
I ignored their stares, letting my eyes fall intentionally unimpressed but interested over each of them. A trick I’d learned blending in at Maldoon’s. Can’t be too eager. Can’t look like the wide-eyed kid I was.
“Howdy.” I leaned on elbows. “I’ll take a bottle of your finest piss water.” I winked at the bartender—a man old enough to be my granddaddy, gray beard skimming his round belly.
“Where’d you come from, sweetheart?” He grunted and pulled a bottle of beer from an ice box behind the bar.
I snatched the bottle, tipping it back, guzzling it dry in a single run. Slamming the bottle back, I looked him in the eye and let my accent do the talking. “Yell County, Arkansas.” Sudsy beer settled in my gut. My beastly girl rumbled, unsure but familiar.
“Well, then. Welcome to Oregon.” I fought the sneer his grin brought to my lip. He poured a shot of whiskey, slid it to me, and clicked one of his own against it.
I slammed it back and with two fingers, ordered more. Puck slapped a handful of twenties on the bar and nodded at the man, who seemed impressed.
“Thank you kindly,” I said to the old man behind the bar.
Carrying both shots, we moved to lean against the wall by the jukebox. “And thank you,” I said, handing my friend his drink.
Puck shook his head, his sly-grin dimple popped out. “Thank you, but I won’t drink.”
“You don’t drink?” I scoffed. “What are you some kind of teetotaler?”
“Not don’t, won’t.” He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall.
“Well, now you gotta tell me why.” I poked him in the ribs, feeling friskier than I’d been since my birthday.
He rolled his head to the side, dark eyes scanning my face. “Because if I’m drinking, you won’t be safe.”
And the Creek Don't Rise Page 17