Mother of Crows: Daughters of Arkham - Book 2

by David Rodriguez

  There were shouts and catcalls. Abby couldn't quite make them out, but it didn't matter. She kept her eyes down, only focusing on her breathing and her feet. She was so intent on just making it to the exit that she almost collided with Bryce and Sindy as they entered the cafeteria together. Of course they would be here. Of course they would be here right now.

  "Hey, Abby. What's...?" Sindy halted when she saw Abby's face.

  Abby looked at her with undisguised hurt and anger and then turned to Bryce. Bryce was holding his phone, and Abby didn't have to guess what he'd just been looking at. It was too much. It was all too much.

  Abby choked down a sob and shoved past Bryce and Sindy. She fled, accompanied by a fresh cacophony of mocking laughter and drawn-out jeers.

  It didn't matter anymore. Bryce was with Sindy, and why shouldn't he be? Why would Bryce ever possibly choose her over anyone?

  She was Abigail Thorndike of Whorewich Hall.

  58

  The Strange Case

  of Josiah Baxter

  spring arrived right on schedule. The snow dissolved, leaving behind a carpet of deep, emerald-green grass. The lean times in the Baxter household were about to end, as every rich person suddenly needed their excellent gardener back on the payroll. Nate knew this meant his weekends were shot, but in a way, he was looking forward to it. Some normalcy would probably do him good.

  He'd reached the end of what the library had on Josiah Baxter's role in the Great Arkham Fire. Nate's ancestor, who he now realized was his seven times great-grandfather, was an infuriating cipher. Before the fire, he was a citizen; afterwards, he was a traitor. There was nothing at all in between. The Baxters, Thaws, and Hobbeses had all continued to live in Arkham without being linked to this terrible event. Even in the papers published just after the hanging, there were no references to the families at all.

  Nate asked his father about Josiah Baxter, but he'd never heard of the guy. Nate's paternal grandfather had died young of emphysema, so he couldn't ask him, either. The fact of the matter was that there was nothing left of Josiah Baxter. No old trunk in the attic, no storage closet full of treasures, no photo albums with the key to the mystery. Nate had to expand his search radius.

  There had been a Hobbes back in elementary school. In another place, he might assume it was a different family. Not in Arkham. This incestuous town kept all its citizens close. A Hobbes from the 1800s and a Hobbes from the 2000s were almost certainly related. Dawn Hobbes had never been a friend of his, but they'd never been enemies, either. Dawn lived down in Brookside, and despite his last visit, he didn't share Abby's superstitious dread of the place. He'd spent many years learning to navigate the neighborhood, and some habits died slower than others. He messaged her on Facebook and learned nothing.

  The Thaws lived out in the hills. Not the nice hills, either. The hills were technically outside of city limits, and the people there generally considered themselves Arkhamites when it suited them and nothing at all when it didn't. Unlike the Brooksiders, the people in the hills had been there as long as there had been white people in Arkham. Longer even, as many of them had Native American branches on their family trees.

  He knew a few Thaws from school. He remembered an older boy who had a reputation as a bully, and a younger girl, wide-eyed and quiet. He couldn't conjure any names and didn't have them on any friend lists. If he was going to talk to any Thaws, he was going to have to do it face-to-face.

  On the first real Saturday of spring, Nate got on his bike and rode the winding roads into the hills, up near the source of the creek that cut Brookside off from the rest of the town. Out beyond the town center, it was possible to find all kinds of streams and ponds alive with creatures.

  The paved roads quickly turned to dirt roads. Nate knew the back of his jacket would be spackled with a line of dust and mud when he got home. The properties up here tended to look like log cabins. Most had probably been standing since the fire. The fire had never climbed into the hills, and Nate wondered if that had something to do with Israel Thaw. He'd been named a conspirator in the arson.

  Arson, he thought with a frown. He was already internalizing the story he'd read. He had to keep a clear mind. If it turned out Josiah Baxter was part of some bizarre royalist scheme, Nate had to accept that. He didn't think it was true. It felt wrong, and combined with everything else he'd learned, he knew the facts had to be different than they initially appeared.

  He could barely accept what Abby had told him the month before: that not all Arkhamites were human. She'd described the strange, lamprey-like creatures and gave him the names of some of them: Mr. Harris, Mr. Weatherby, her own servant Bertram, and Sindy's ex-boyfriend, Eleazar Grant. He'd chuckled at the last one, even though it was all so completely insane. Thinking about the status-conscious Sindy making out with a fish monster gave him amused satisfaction. Even Abby had giggled at it a little, then she'd smacked him for getting her started.

  His rational mind accepted it. He'd seen all these men around. They were fairly normal. Nate liked and respected Mr. Harris. He had been an excellent teacher, and Nate was beginning to think about a career in biology; a research scientist or something like that.

  Abby said he was a monster.

  She also said he was a nice man.

  He wondered how the two mysteries intersected: the inhuman race and the hanged royalists. He accepted that they must be related in some way. If the croatan had been in the shadows of Arkham for the town's entire history, they at least had seen it happen.

  This sparked another question in his mind: how long did the croatan live? He asked Abby and she'd blanched. "I don't know," she said. "I never asked."

  What if they were immortal? Or, if they were so long-lived that they might as well have been? What if Mr. Harris had been standing on the village green when Josiah Baxter took his last drop?

  For now, he had to pretend this was a normal mystery. He didn't want to think that he was suddenly wandering into a nest of these beings. It gave him the willies to think that one might be staring at him from behind a human mask. He would have preferred to see their faces, and the more Abby insisted that he really would rather not, the more Nate wanted to.

  Nate felt better as he listened to the cheerful sounds of the surrounding woods. The spring peepers were waking up. It was silly to feel hope just because of a simple cycling of the seasons, but no amount of logic was going to kill the feeling. He was going to enjoy the clean scent of life on the ride out to the Thaw place.

  The Thaw home was on a dirt road off another dirt road, off another dirt road, off the main road, off the paved road, between the folds of two hills. It was a log cabin built from the weathered bones of trees. Nate wasn't sure it was the right place until he saw the name "THAW" on the mailbox. He stopped his bike at the gate and hesitated, wondering if someone was going to come out with a shotgun. Someone was home, judging by the dusty pickup parked in what might have been a driveway.

  Only one way to find out, he thought, and headed for the door.

  No armed man burst outside to curse at him. A couple of crows croaked nearby. Nate knocked.

  The door opened to reveal a middle-aged man, stout and pale from the winter. His hair was so blond as to be almost white, and when he spoke, he revealed a few gaps in his smile. "Help you?" he asked. His accent was thick enough that it took Nate a second to process it.

  "Hi, my name is Nathan Baxter." He paused and saw no glimmer of reaction in the man's nearly colorless eyes. "Are you Mr. Thaw?"

  "Yes, sir. Help you with something, Nathan? Lost?"

  "No, sir. I was looking for you. This is a little strange, but are you related to Israel Thaw?"

  "Oh, sure. If there's a Thaw within two hundred years or miles, he's blood. Harrison Thaw." He stuck out a meaty paw that was more scar than skin. Nate shook his hand and felt like he could be crushed at any moment.

  "The reason I ask, sir, is that my ancestor knew your ancestor."

  Harrison Thaw stared at Nate,
and then came a glimmer of recognition. "Baxter, you said. Related to Josiah Baxter then, I expect."

  "Yes! Yes, Josiah Baxter, that's right."

  "What can I do for you?"

  "Well, I was hoping that you might have some things of Israel Thaw's."

  "Why would you want something like that?"

  "I'm...Um... I'm researching my family tree for school."

  "And you found that, lo and behold, Josiah Baxter was hanged on the green."

  Nate stiffened. "Yeah."

  "Ayuh, came as a shock to me as well. Well, you're in luck, son. The Thaws have been in this cabin for nigh on three hundred years. Still have trophies from the French and Indian War in here."

  "I don't think I need to see those."

  "No, I don't expect anyone has much need of Indian scalps, anymore."

  Nate tried not to let his shock show on his face. Thaw grinned. "I'm just funnin' ya. Come in, boy. You look like you had a long ride up here."

  "Thank you, sir."

  "Sit down, and I'll go fetch what I have."

  Harrison Thaw gestured to a cluttered table in what Nate was going to charitably call a breakfast nook. The walls were covered with animal heads and antlers. Nate tried to ignore the lessons he'd learned from numerous horror movies about the clear warning signs of a crazed killer. Thaw was just an outdoorsman... who liked to shoot living things. A lot of living things.

  A few minutes later, Thaw returned with a leather-bound book. "That's the old man's journal."

  Nate stared up at him, flabbergasted. Thaw grinned a gap-toothed smile. "How do you have this?"

  "Three hundred years, Mr. Baxter. I got things up in yonder attic you would not believe. Israel Thaw called Josiah Baxter his true friend, so if Nathan Baxter comes to Harrison Thaw for a favor, you know it would be done. Now, would you like a soda pop?"

  "Yes. Yes, sir. Please."

  Thaw plopped a sweaty can of off-brand soda on the table and then left Nate alone with the journal. Nate did what he could not to test the man's hospitality and tried to skim to the relevant points as soon as he could. The journal, unsurprisingly, ended right at the Great Arkham Fire. Israel made no mention of setting it. He merely wrote that it had broken out. Like all the stout-hearted men of the township, he had gone out to fight it.

  Nate paged backward by days and weeks. He found mention of both Josiah Baxter and Luther Hobbes. It seemed like the three men were good friends-maybe even more than friends, Nate thought suspiciously. Israel referenced a brotherhood between the three of them that transcended simple friendship. The journal also made references to some kind of evil, and said that they were the only ones who could stand against it. He wrote like they were the Fellowship of the Ring or something.

  As Nate kept scanning through, he found there was a fourth member of the group. All four of these men were involved in the same thing and had made the same commitment to each other. The way Thaw wrote, any of them would have done anything for the others. It was the four of them against the world.

  But only three of them were hanged.

  The lone survivor of the group had a name that Nate recognized very well.

  Bryce Quincy Coffin.

  59

  Happy Birthday

  March 26th fell on a Saturday, which meant that Abby could have a party on her actual birthday. Normally, she would have been excited, but she dreaded it. As usual, Constance had sent invitations to everyone she knew. This year, she'd set her sights higher by sending a mass invitation to the entire arkhamacademy.edu mailing list. All must be called upon to celebrate the anniversary of the arrival of the Thorndike scion, Abby thought bitterly.

  Every student at Arkham Academy had been invited to Abby's party, but she knew that no one was coming to Whorewich Hall. Why would they? She would have been just as happy to cancel the party, but there was no stopping Constance. It all felt like a slow-motion scene from a bad action movie-you could see the disaster racing toward you, but you couldn't do anything to stop it.

  The trees were green with new foliage; the air rang with birdsong; and the sun was warm on her shoulders. A few streamers waved in the wind. Abby thought the streamers were pathetic and babyish, but her mother had insisted.

  She sat at a picnic table with Constance and Hester on the southeast lawn. She was surrounded by presents (all from her mother and grandmother) and snacks. There was too much food-way too much, even if only a fraction of the invited guests showed up-but they weren't allowed to eat anything until the guests arrived. Abby's stomach groaned. She wanted to yell that no one else was coming, but could not, so they sat in the sun and waited.

  Hester wore a scarf, large sunglasses, and a hat. She was having more and more trouble moving around, and once she was parked, she generally stayed there unless she found a compelling reason to move. Now she was a grumpy shape in gauzy white, occasionally uttering a grunt of disappointment.

  "I told you no one was going to come," Abby said.

  "Oh, nonsense," Constance said.

  "Abigail is correct," Hester said. "She has shamed herself, our home, and our name. People will avoid this place like the plague."

  "Mother!" Constance was shocked.

  Hester shrugged. "I did not create the world, Constance. If you desired a different outcome, perhaps you should have done a better job of raising your daughter."

  Constance shot her mother a horrified look, but Hester didn't seem to notice.

  Abby wished she could act surprised at her grandmother's words, but after the last few weeks of hiding out in the biology classroom with Mr. Harris during lunch period, she had become somewhat inoculated to emotional abuse.

  Movement caught her eye. Nate came up the lawn, clutching a present in his hands. He was the one person Abby knew she could always depend on, the only one who she could actually picture coming to this sad party to genuinely enjoy himself.

  "Oh look, the gardener's boy," Hester said. She took a deliberate sip of her iced tea.

  "Nathan, welcome!" said Constance. "We are so happy you made it."

  "Wouldn't miss it, Mrs. Thorndike."

  "Help yourself to some food."

  Abby lunged for it first, now freed of the obligation to wait.

  "Happy birthday," Nate said.

  "Thanks."

  "Welcome to the wild world of being fifteen." Nate had turned fifteen in January. Abby had a bit of nostalgia for his party: a fun afternoon and evening at his place with just his family.

  "I feel totally different."

  "You look taller."

  Abby grinned and began eating. She didn't care about her mother's usual concerns about eating like a lady. There was no one around to care.

  A few minutes later, two more people crossed the lawn.

  "Oh, how nice. Sincere. And is that the Coffin boy?" Hester said.

  "Sindy, Bryce, so lovely to see you both," Constance said.

  Both Bryce and Sindy looked a bit nervous to be there.

  "Thanks for inviting us," Sindy said, and from her tone it was obvious that the invite was a surprise.

  "We couldn't have a party without you," Constance said. One could almost believe she meant it.

  Abby looked at the both of them. Her best friend and the boy she'd thought was the 'one.' She wanted to hate them for getting together behind her back, but her rational mind intruded. There was no 'behind her back.' They were free to be together. More importantly, they'd come out to support her when no one else had. That was something, and Abby wasn't so rich that she could afford to throw away their kind gesture.

  Abby gave them both a small smile. "Hi guys. Thanks for coming."

  Bryce held out a small, wrapped package. "It's a pony."

  She accepted it and said, "I'll make sure to brush him every day."

  "Hey, Abs," Sindy said. She approached Abby with her arms open. Abby rose to hug her. The embrace was not tight, but it was familiar and carried the warmth of forgiveness. "I've missed you."

  Bryce moved off
, getting himself a soda from a bucket of ice. Nate watched him, and then got himself another soda a moment later.

  "Yeah, sorry. I've been... you know. Congratulations to you two, I guess."

  Sindy frowned. "Congratulations for what? It's not that hard to get here. It's like six blocks."

  "You're going out, right? You're his girlfriend now."

  "I'm his whem>now?"

  "You don't have to hide it for me. I mean, I appreciate that you would. I guess. I... I really want you both to be happy. You deserve it."

  Sindy looked at Abby with a raised eyebrow. "So pregnant brain is, like, a real thing, huh?"

  Abby blinked. "Huh?"

  "That's the only possible explanation for you thinking I would even consider dating, Bryce."

  "But you were hanging out a lot."

  "Yeah, like friends hanging out. Like you and the lawn boy over there, but you know, prettier. God, is that why you've been mad?

  Abby felt her cheeks getting hot, and she tried to count the blades of grass in the lawn beneath her feet. "I don't know. Maybe."

  "You could have just talked to me. Hey, Abigail. Look at me." Sindy put her hand under Abby's chin and tilted her face up. "I would never hurt you like that. No matter what happens or whatever stupid thing we fight about. You and me. Us. We're forever." She held Abby's face in both of her hands. "Do you understand me, Thorndike? You are my family."

  Abby's lip trembled as she looked at her best friend. "Above all else... sisterhood."

  Sindy's glistening eyes mirrored Abby's as she graced her with a perfect smile.

  "You bet your sweet ass, preggers." She grabbed Abby close to her again and held her there. The tightness in Abby's chest loosened and she noticed, for the first time, the day all around her. It was beautiful. On any normal day, there was little that could compare to a perfect spring day in Arkham. But today, after months of things getting worse, the weather seemed like a gift from the universe itself. She was spending her birthday with the three people she cared most about in the world, and she didn't even care that no one else was going to come.