by Nicole Maggi
I know you’re upset.
I can’t imagine what you’re going through.
I SWEAR I DIDN’T KNOW.
Please talk to me. Please.
The graveyard. Midnight. Tonight.
Was he insane? How stupid did he think I was? I dug my pen in so hard it tore the paper.
Upset is an understatement.
You have no idea what it’s like to watch someone die in front of you.
You’re a liar. You’re a liar you’re a liar you’re a liar
The thought of talking to you makes me sick.
I flung the paper over my shoulder. Within thirty seconds, it was back on my desk.
I’m not lying. I SWEAR.
I set pen to paper again.
PROVE IT.
His answer was instantaneous.
Fine. Graveyard. Tonight. Midnight.
Well, I’d walked right into that one.
“You have to get your mom to change her mind about Paris.” Jenny dipped one of her fries into the little puddle of ketchup on my plate. “It won’t be any fun without you.”
I looked up from the ketchup doodle I was making with one of my own French fries. I had no idea why I’d bought them; I’d lost my appetite the second Jonah’s note landed on my desk. “How’d we get on this topic?”
Melissa flicked a crumb at me. “If you paid attention to our conversation, then you’d know, wouldn’t you?” She grinned at me, but I felt the bite in her words.
“Sorry.” I pushed my fries away. “I just have a lot on my mind right now.”
“And a trip to Paris is the perfect cure for that!” Jenny waved a fry around before popping it into her mouth. I snorted. She was trying to keep us all light and happy and friends, and I had to love her for that.
“Well, unless Lidia gets amnesia or a brain transplant between now and spring break, don’t count on it,” I said.
Jenny crossed her arms. “Then I’m not going either.”
“Don’t be a drama queen.”
“I’ll take your place,” Melissa said. She took Spanish, a decision she cursed after finding out about the Paris trip.
“What am I, chopped liver?” Carly said to Jenny. “I’ll be there.”
“I know,” Jenny said, plucking a grape from Carly’s Ziploc bag. “It would just be so much better if we were all going.” She looked at Melissa. Including you.”
Melissa sighed. “I wish I could switch to French. You know what the big Spanish class trip is this year?” She slumped in her chair. “The Puerto Rican Day parade in Bangor.”
Carly laughed.
Melissa shot her a dirty look.
I tapped her foot with mine. “I feel your pain, sister.”
“It’s totally unfair,” Jenny said, though I wasn’t sure if she was talking about Lidia or the Puerto Rican Day parade. “But I have an idea to make up for it.”
“What’s that?” Carly asked, popping a grape into her mouth.
“I think we should go away for a weekend.” Jenny looked at each of us in turn. “Just the four of us.”
There was a pause while we all took this in. I chewed at my lip. I didn’t want to be the first one to shoot it down.
“My parents would never go for that in a million years,” Melissa said.
I breathed a sigh of relief and opened my mouth to say how I would never be able to go either. But before I could speak, Jenny said, “Well, I was thinking we could go to western Mass to look at colleges.” Her eyes sparkled. “Amherst and Williams for sure, and maybe some others. That way, we could sell it as an educational thing.”
“You know,” Melissa said, “my parents might actually buy that.”
Jenny looked at Carly, who finished eating a couple of grapes. “I could tell them I need backups for Juilliard,” she said, “which I do considering I’m never gonna get in. And Williams does have a good music program.”
All three of them turned to me. I shoved a bunch of cold fries into my mouth and took a really long time to chew and swallow. How could I tell them I couldn’t go to college? Sorry, guys, I have to stay here to protect a magical Waterfall. The fate of the world depends on it . . .
I looked at their faces, shiny with hope and the promise of an unforeseeable future. While I, meanwhile, saw my own future stretched out before me like one long, narrow road, stuck in this town forever. The fries tasted like sawdust in my throat. Suddenly, I wanted to go away with them more than anything. My desire for it was tangible, burning in my belly. I couldn’t go to Paris. I couldn’t go to college. At the very least, I could go to Massachusetts with my three best friends. The Benandanti owed me that. “Yeah,” I said. “Let’s do it.”
“You really think your mom will go for it?” Jenny asked me later when we were walking home from school.
“Go for what?”
She bumped me with her hip. “The girls’ weekend, silly. You think Lidia will let you do it?”
“I don’t know. I hope so.” It wasn’t Lidia I was worried about, though. It was Nerina. And Heath. One Clan member down, a Malandante mage on the loose, a spy to oversee . . . Yeah, it wasn’t exactly the best time to be jaunting off for the weekend, and who knew if things would be even worse by the time the weekend getaway rolled around? “I’ll figure something out.” All I could hope was that I could sell it to Nerina as a need-to-keep-my-cover deal. Then I’d worry about Lidia.
“By the way,” Jenny said, “what was up with Jonah in French class today?”
My throat went dry. “Wha—what do you mean?”
“The note.” She raised an eyebrow. “I mean, he wasn’t actually passing you the assignment, was he?”
I shook my head. I desperately wanted to talk to her about Jonah and get her advice. I could talk to Heath about the Clan. I could talk to Nerina about the Concilio. God, I could even talk to Bree about the Guild and the Malandanti. But I couldn’t talk to anyone about Jonah. Not one single soul. I swallowed hard. “He wants me to meet him tonight.”
Jenny stopped in her tracks. “You’re not going to, are you?”
“I—I don’t know.” I really didn’t.
“Lessi . . .” Jenny ran a hand through her hair. Somehow, the gesture made her blonde locks even shinier. “Do you think he wants to get back together?”
“No. Definitely not.”
“Then what does he want?”
To convince me he’s not a murderer. “Um, I’m not sure.”
“Well, it’s your decision,” Jenny said and started walking again. “But I don’t know if it’s a good idea.”
“Oh, it’s a bad idea. I have no doubt about that.” I looked sideways at her. “Doesn’t mean I’m not going, though.”
Jenny laughed. After a moment, I joined in and linked my arm through hers. I hadn’t laughed in days; it felt strange and good all at once. Even if I was just pretending the only complication in my life was a weirdo ex-boyfriend, it felt good.
“Be careful,” Jenny told me when I left her at the turn-off to her house. “And text me details!”
Yeah, right. I could just picture that text.
J not a mrdr! J But still evil. L
I waved at Jenny until she got to the top of her driveway, then sprinted the rest of the way home.
I didn’t have patrol, so I could conceivably sneak out and get to the graveyard. I paced around and around in my room, wearing the rug thin. Was this my life now? Even when I didn’t have patrol, I was either plotting to bring down the Guild at Nerina’s or sneaking out to see Jonah or—
I squeezed my eyes shut.
Or getting Called by a dying Clan member.
I looked at my bed. There was no way I was going to sleep tonight anyway. I might as well occupy my time with something worthwhile. And finding out whether Jonah had anything to do with Sam’s death was definitely worthwhile. At least to me.
The iron gate was slicked with ice when I pushed it open. Smoke-colored clouds covered the moon, and inside the cemetery was pitch-black. I wis
hed I’d thought to bring a flashlight.
I held my hands out, groping for obstacles. As I turned down one row, I stubbed my toe on an old marker, half-sunk into the ground with age. “Dammit.” My breath rattled as I waited for the throbbing to subside. This was a mistake. I should have stayed home and tried to get some sleep.
“Hey,” a voice muttered in my ear.
I yelped and jumped back, but a hand clamped on my elbow and turned me around. Jonah’s pale face loomed out of the darkness.
“What the hell is with you and your sister?” I said. “Did you both take a class on sneaking up on people?”
“Ssshhh.” Jonah dragged me into the shadows of a tall mausoleum. “I think I was followed here.”
“Are you kidding me?” I yanked my arm out of his grasp. “I’m outta here.”
“No, please.” The urgency in his voice stopped me. He looked around the corner of the mausoleum. “I don’t see anyone. I’m probably just being paranoid.”
“Jonah, this is such a bad idea. I shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t be here. We should not be meeting like this.”
“I know, but—”
The loud snap of a twig shut him up fast. I flattened myself against the mausoleum wall. After a moment, I slid to the edge of the cold marble and peeked out.
Nothing but wind and frost occupied the row between the headstones. I looked around for the telltale light of a Malandante—or a Benandante—but there were only shadows. Still, knowing there was a mage out there, I couldn’t trust what I couldn’t see. I turned back to Jonah. “We should leave.”
“Let’s go to the school. Under the bleachers—”
“No.”
Jonah flinched at my sharpness.
I inhaled deep. “That’s where it happened. I’m not going back there.”
His eyes met mine, and my breath hitched. His irises were ripe with concern, his gaze like the embrace we couldn’t share. I knew I should leave, right now, but when he looked at me like that . . .
“Come on,” I said softly. “I know someplace we can go.”
He followed me away from the mausoleum. I didn’t go back to the front gate; if someone was following Jonah, they’d be watching what they thought was the only exit. But I didn’t grow up in Twin Willows without learning some of its secrets.
When we reached the far corner of the graveyard, I felt along the tall, iron fence until I found what I was looking for. One of the rails was bent, the victim of a drunk driver’s crash eleven years ago. “After you,” I said to Jonah. I turned and swept my gaze all along the silent cemetery. If someone had followed us, they were invisible. I squeezed through the gap in the fence.
“Where are we?” Jonah asked.
“In the mayor’s backyard.”
“What the hell are we doing there?”
“Nothing. It’s just where that gap in the fence lets us out. Follow me.” There was a light on in the house; apparently, our fair mayor was a night owl. We edged around the lawn, careful to stay in the shadows.
“This is the town hall,” Jonah said when we reached the back door of the building next to the mayor’s house. “This is where we’re going?”
“Yes.” I stretched up onto my tiptoes and felt along the top of the door frame. Years ago, Jenny and I had discovered they kept a hide-a-key up there for whoever was running the early-morning AA meetings. We’d held many a candlelight séance in the basement rec room. I led Jonah down there and stood on the threshold for a moment. It had been years since I had been down here, but the faded carpet, the rickety tables pushed against the walls, the cabinets filled with games and toys—it was all the same. Nothing ever changed in Twin Willows.
Except I was here with Jonah. That was different.
“There should be candles and matches in the cabinet over there,” I said, pointing.
A faded, reflective yellow-and-black Fallout Shelter sign on the wall spoke to the room’s past purpose, but now I wondered what emergency would bring the whole town down here in the future.
Jonah lit two pillar candles and carried them to the center of the carpet. We sat down cross-legged, facing each other, the candles in between us.
“Okay,” I said. “Talk.”
“Alessia, I’m really sorry about Mr. Foster. Which one was he?”
I hesitated before answering. “The Lynx.”
Jonah looked at his lap. “Which Malandante was it?” His voice was low.
I froze. “What do you mean?”
He wouldn’t look up. “Which Malandante killed him?”
I stared at him. Did he really not know? Jonah was good at masking his emotions, but he wasn’t so great at acting an emotion he didn’t feel. And he didn’t seem particularly shut down right now.
I leaned toward him. “Look at me.”
He raised his head.
I searched those deep green depths for any hint of pretense. I couldn’t find any. But still . . . “You really don’t know?”
“Know what? Which of my Clanmates committed murder? No, I really don’t know.”
“Wow. You sound kinda down on the Malandanti.”
He exhaled hard. One of the candles flickered. “Just tell me which one.”
I sat back. “Relax. It wasn’t one of your Clanmates. No, it was the crafty little mage you guys employ to do your dirty work.”
“Huh?” Confusion clouded his face. “A mage? What’s that?”
Okay, now he was acting. He had to be. “Like you don’t know.”
“Alessia, I really don’t.” He balled his hands into fists and pressed them against his thighs.
“A mage is someone who can work the magic from the sites,” I said softly. “The Lynx was killed with the magic from Angel Falls.”
“Well, then, how can you possibly know it was the Malandanti? The mage could have been hired by anyone.”
“You’re kidding, right?” I pinched my forehead. “Who else wants to kill the Benandanti? Who else even knows about us?”
“People like Bree who have refused the Call, for one,” Jonah shot back. “You have no proof that this mage guy is connected to the Malandanti.”
“And you have no proof that he isn’t.” My fingernails dug painfully into my palms. “You really had no idea?”
Jonah grabbed my wrists and held my fists in his hands. The candlelight cast shadows on our skin. “Alessia, whatever you think of me, you have to believe that I didn’t know.”
I looked down at our hands. It felt as if an electrical current ran through the connection of his body to mine, into my very core. I wanted to believe him. I needed to believe him. But doubts still swirled in my head. “How could your Concilio decide something like that without telling your Clan?”
Jonah hunched his shoulders. “They might not have.”
“What do you mean?”
His grip on my hands slackened. “I— They don’t tell me everything.”
I swallowed, trying to keep my face neutral. Of course the Malandanti ran their Clans less democratically than the Benandanti did. Why was this a surprise to me?
Jonah looked past me, to the faded What to Do in An Emergency! poster on the wall. “I’m sort of on probation right now.”
“Probation?”
“Yeah.” His chest moved up and down, as though each breath cost him a great effort. “They— My Guide was kinda pissed that I didn’t, um, hurt you when I had the chance.”
I thought back to that night when the Panther had caught me in his mouth. One tiny movement of his jaw, and I would have been dead. I shivered. Jonah had saved my life . . . at the risk of his own, it seemed.
“Sorry,” I whispered, then clamped my lips together. Sorry for what? That he hadn’t killed me? That he was now in trouble for not killing me? That wasn’t my fault. I drew my hands slowly out of his and tucked them into my own lap.
Jonah leaned toward me. “I’m not sorry,” he breathed. Even if I wanted to look away from those green eyes, I couldn’t. “Alessia—”
&
nbsp; “Don’t. I believe you. But just because you didn’t help kill Mr. Foster, just because you didn’t kill me—it doesn’t change anything. You’re still one of them—”
He jerked back. “You’re right,” he said, unfolding himself to a standing position. “We shouldn’t be meeting like this.” The candle flames wavered in his wake.
A gust of wind blew through the rec room when he opened the door. The candles went out, and the door slammed shut, leaving me in utter darkness.
Chapter Eleven
The Dinner Party
Alessia
The bell chimed over the door to the hardware store, giving me a warm little jolt as I walked in. It had been over a month since I’d stepped inside, and even though Mr. Salter hadn’t reopened, it felt good to be there. Like at least one thing in my life was returning to normal.
“In here,” Mr. Salter called from the office. I slid behind the counter and stopped in the doorway to the office.
Mr. Salter sat at the desk, the glow from the ancient PC reflected on his face. My mother stood over him, pointing at the screen. “Now click on that with the mice.”
I rolled my eyes. “You two are like the blind leading the blind.” I jerked a thumb at Mr. Salter, who obediently rose from the chair to let me sit. “What do you need?”
“Sales receipts,” Mr. Salter said. “There’s a folder somewhere . . .”
I found it on the desktop and opened it. Scrolling down the list, I asked, “What do you need these for?”
“Trying to see if any of them jog my memory,” Mr. Salter said.
Lidia rubbed his arm, and he covered her hand with his, lingering there a little longer than friendly support called for.
I pressed my lips together and faced the screen. “Okay, the last receipt was from December thirteenth. The day of the blizzard,” I said. I leaned in. “No, wait. There’s a receipt from the next day, the fourteenth.”
Mr. Salter bent over my side, squinting at the computer. “That can’t be right.”