In all, five of them are dead, and the others peer at me with a multitude of dark eyes as I take off my jacket and nestle the dead birds within the silk lining. I fold the jacket over, tucking them in.
“Thank you,” I say.
At once, the crows take flight, blacking out the sky.
The jacket and the suit pants I'm wearing have small tears and pulls in them from the birds' beaks and claws, but the front of my copper-colored dress shirt is ripped to shreds. If I hadn't been wearing the sturdy vintage suit … I can't imagine what would have happened.
With the folded jacket and the crows' bodies in my arms, I shiver against the air as it begins to rain. Sirens ring out in the distance. The rain starts to come down hard.
I walk back into the Hotel Doccione, to the front desk. “Call the police,” I tell the woman at the counter. “Someone's been injured on the roof. A cop. Tell them to hurry.”
Gran. I don't know where Austin is, but Gran's here, and I have to protect her.
I make my way to the atrium, where the party's going strong. For a moment, I can't find Gran, and I fear Rudy's come and taken her away.
But she's here. She's talking to James and Julie, and they all look up when I walk in. I set my bundled jacket on the table with the wedding presents and go to Gran.
“Have you seen my husband?” she asks. “He said he was going for a cigar, but he should have been back by now.”
Her eyes move down to my torn shirt and she freezes.
I take her hand and ask her to come away from the party with me, somewhere quiet. She tells me to calm down and tell her what's wrong, and explain why my nose is bleeding. I touch my fingers to my face. Blood. But I don't have any pain.
The words don't come easily. I was suspicious about some of Rudy's business deals and asked some questions. He became violent and tried to kill me to cover up his secrets. He tried to throw me off the roof, but first he admitted he had a man killed for a business deal. Rudy's a murderer.
She grabs me and squeezes me tight against her chest. “He tried to hurt you?”
James and Julie are also shocked, but run to get me and Gran some chairs. The party continues and we find a dark wall and a place to sit.
I explain that the police are coming, but we have to stay together until he's caught. I have to protect the people I love. Gran is crying and now Julie is too. James keeps repeating, over and over, that he can't believe any of this is happening.
My face and my neck are bleeding, and I've got blood soaking my shirt, which has transferred to Gran's beautiful blue suit. I try to wipe the blood away. “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I couldn't protect you.”
She tries to tell me to be calm, but I see my mother.
I'm so small and he's so powerful. I see my father, and my mother's eyes as they go dim.
Everything's a blur. Music starting and stopping. I'm flying, floating, on wings of birds. Some people scream when the cops charge in. I close my eyes.
* * *
Hours later.
Some medics gave me fluids, and I can stand again now, I think, but for the moment I'm sitting.
I understand the police searched the entire building, but Rudy wasn't found. Detective Wrong was discovered unconscious on the roof, and they took her to the hospital. We went to the hospital too, with Gran driving, and James and Julie in the car with us. Everybody else went home to await news. Gran and Rudy's honeymoon suitcases were in the back seat of her car, and we had to move them to the trunk.
At the hospital, information is hard to come by, as there have been strange things happening all across town tonight, but we found out a young woman in a blue dress matching Austin's description was brought to the emergency room.
We're now wait in the waiting room. Some men and women in police uniforms are here as well.
I've been to this hospital many times, to visit Austin after her surgery. None of the nurses recognize me. We ask about Austin, and describe what she was wearing, but they refuse to give us any confirmation or information.
Gran hasn't asked me for any more details about Rudy, but I can't stop talking. I tell her how I met Detective Wrong when Julie and I found Newt's body, and I've been talking to her ever since I became suspicious about Rudy's earnings. Now wouldn't be the worst time to break the news to her about my power, and I want her to know my secrets, but there are too many strangers sitting all around us.
Gran nods, but she isn't hearing me. She checks the time and says we have to get home soon to take care of Mibs.
I hear murmurs of people around us talking about killer bees swarming downtown, stinging people. The police, fire trucks, and ambulances were busier than they've ever been. Lightning struck City Hall and took out the power for an entire quadrant of the city.
How much involvement I had, or Rudy had, in any of this is anyone's guess, but I'm certainly not going to volunteer information to the police.
Gran's hands are folded together and her head is bowed. James and Julie do the same, and finally, so do I, though in my own way, there hasn't been one second since I went over the roof that I wasn't praying.
We wait.
* * *
Near midnight, a doctor comes out and says to the other police officers waiting in the room, “Detective Wrong is a little woozy, but she's going to be just fine. She asked me to send someone in to get the recording device that was on her person.”
The burly officer who patted me down the day I was at the police station stops in front of me. “Thank you for looking out for our girl,” he says. “She should not have been up there without backup, but Wrong's got some unconventional ways of doing things.”
“I shouldn't have put her in danger,” I say.
“That's our job. We do what it takes so folks like you don't have to.”
He offers me his hand, which I shake, then he disappears down the hall to see Detective Wrong.
“Excuse me,” Gran calls out to the doctor. “Any word on the young woman who came in?”
“She's our … she's my sister,” Julie says.
The doctor tells us to wait and disappears through the doors.
Gran's got one of my hands and Julie's got the other. I analyze the artwork on the walls of the waiting room. Typical generic prints of paintings of pretty countrysides. Terrible art that says nothing. It's all I can do to not cry.
A nurse comes through the doors and says one of us can come in, perhaps the sister. Julie doesn't admit to the fib, but insists I go in, as I'm “the boyfriend.”
I follow the nurse, who says, “She was stung over a thousand times. She should be dead, but she's making a remarkable recovery.”
She should be dead.
My bees—no, I—nearly killed her.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I step into the room, where a very red and swollen Austin is lying in a hospital bed. Only her pixie-cut hair assures me this person is her.
I clench my jaw to prevent reacting to this visual. The nurse leaves us alone.
“Funny meeting you here again,” Austin says.
I can't tell if she's smiling, because her face is so swollen. Seeing her like this makes me hurt.
“I am so sorry.” I want to reach for her hand, but hold back for fear of harming her more.
“I shot the sidewalk a bunch of times with a gun when the bees started stinging me,” she says.
She's not in handcuffs, so that's a good sign. “You didn't shoot any people, or rob any stores?”
“Not that anyone's told me.”
I take a breath for what feels like the first time in days.
“Zan, I don't know how I got there,” she says. “Or how I had a gun. The last thing I remember was watching your grandmother walk down the aisle.”
“I'm so glad you're not hurt.”
“I can't say the same for the sidewalk,” she jokes, but neither of us laugh.
“Are you in pain now? Can I get you anything?”
“Someone stopped,” she says. “I t
hought they were helping me, but they tore the necklace off my neck.”
“Good riddance,” I say.
“It was a gift from you.”
“No, it was a mistake,” I say, and after I look around to double-check we're alone in the room, I tell her everything I know. My theory is the necklace had some hypnotic power over her, and she was going to do Rudy's dirty work while he had the perfect alibi of being at his own wedding.
Tears come out of her swollen eyes and slide down her face into the hospital pillow.
“I think the necklace really was the same one The Hound Girl wore,” I say.
“She killed her entire family.”
“I know.”
Austin reaches for my hand. The swelling has already diminished in the time I've been here, and I can tell she's smiling. I lean over and kiss her very lightly.
“You're so sweet,” she says.
The nurse appears at the door and tells me to let Austin rest. I beg her for five more minutes. She says, “Two minutes,” and leaves us.
“Zan, you're a sweetheart,” Austin says.
“Your next gift from me won't be cursed, I swear.”
“I want to talk to you about something. It's very mundane and has nothing to do with witches or cursed necklaces.”
“Phew!” I say jokingly.
“I went to that fashion school to show them my portfolio, and I might be able to get in, even though the course has started.”
“What? I thought you were just visiting your parents.”
“I did both.”
My legs tremble, so I sit in the chair next to her bed, pulling my hand away from hers. “When are you leaving?”
“I haven't decided yet. But I want to make the right decision. I want to be free to do what's best for me.”
“I'm graduating in June, and I'll go wherever you are. We'll be fine.”
Another tear pools in her eye. “I think we should take a break from each other. You're so young.”
This room is bright and uncomfortable. Nothing happening today is real.
Austin, don't go. I think it but don't say it, my throat shut tight.
“This is for your own good,” she says.
“Don't tell me what's for my own good. I love you. I want to be with you. I don't care about any age difference. We have a future together, I've seen it.”
“You see what you want to see.”
The nurse returns, knocking on the door frame.
I turn away from Austin, away from her face.
She doesn't call me to her.
I keep my head turned, so I don't have to look at her as she hurts me for my own good.
I stand and leave the room. Austin says my name and tells me she's sorry, but I don't look back, because I won't let her see me cry. I won't let anyone see, ever.
* * *
I pull myself together before I step through the doors to the waiting room.
Gran is the only one here, and she says James and Julie have already gone home because their parents were concerned about them.
I tell her Austin's okay, and she comments on how strange it is when separate calamities all happen at the same time, and how there's something odd about this town.
She's still wearing my ring, on her wedding finger, even though her husband's disappeared. I wish I never had to see that ring again.
If Crystal was wearing the ring when she was hypnotized and shot Newt, that ring probably did the same thing The Hound Girl's necklace did. I have to get it away from my grandmother, for her safety.
I need it for myself.
No, I need to destroy the ring, hammer it into nothing, so it can't hurt anyone.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Heidi
In the darkest part of the night, while Zan is asleep in his warm bed inside the room with the striped wallpaper and the plastic stars on the ceiling, miles away, a taxi pulls into the parking lot of an unassuming gas station.
The man, named Jackson, steps out of the vehicle. He is seventy-one years old, plus three months and nine days. His skin is dark and his beard is white. He has come here because his dear friend is dying.
Heidi has left the door unlocked.
Jackson lets himself in. The cottage smells of rotting flowers and wine.
Her bed is empty, but he finds her in the bath, in water, her eyes closed. The air is humid, the water still hot. She opens her eyes as he turns his away.
“I'm sorry,” he says. “Shall I fetch you a robe?”
“I've nothing to hide,” she says. “Come, sit with me.”
He removes his shoes and hat and steps into the bathroom. At her suggestion, he folds a towel, blue, and places it on the closed toilet before taking a seat.
“Can I get you anything?” he asks.
“I need nothing.”
After a moment of no sounds but three drips from the tap, he says, “The police didn't catch him, but I believe we've scared him off.”
“I know,” she says, her eyes closed again.
Of course she knows, he thinks. She always knows, though not everything and not always in time. Giving Zan the clue about The Bridge, buried in a vision from her palms, had been her idea, and she'd made it appear accidental. How many accidents had the woman arranged in her life? Hundreds? Thousands? Had it even truly been Jackson's own idea to come here tonight, or had this been her plan all along?
His only part had been to point Zan in the direction of investigating Susan's death, and he'd nearly blown his cover by calling the boy by his name. Jackson wasn't as good on his own. He would be lost without Heidi.
Her eyelashes are half gray and half white, and her hair curls up where it reaches the water.
“And the necklace? Where is that?” she asks.
Like you don't already know, he thinks. “Somewhere safe.” It's still nice of her to ask, so they can talk.
“My great grandniece would have one day worn the necklace,” Heidi says. “Her path has now been altered, and the problems she faces will be only of her own.”
“I'll keep an eye on Missy and Fionnula.”
“I trust you.” She slides down a little deeper into the water. “How did Zan come to possess the book?”
Jackson leans forward and rests his face in his hands. “Beats me. My cat was able to retrieve the book from the boy's home. I've torn the pages and buried it, like you suggested.”
She closes her eyes, appearing to be asleep. “We're too late on that matter,” she says, her voice sad and brittle. “Even as I lose strength, the one we cannot see gains.”
“What are his plans?”
She opens her eyes. Her pupils are the color of ashes. “Not his plans. Hers.”
A woman. “Then it is not one of us.”
“No. Someone new. But we are not linked to her.”
“Neither is he.”
“Not yet,” Heidi says. “But she is calling to him, and soon she will know who he is. She's been feeding him, making him stronger, using his own bees.”
He tries to imagine this, but it's all too much. Everything is happening so fast. Not a man, a woman. This new threat could be anyone, and all he has are the old ways. Can the old ways help against new threats?
He asks, “With Rudy gone, and Newt gone, won't it be safer to bring the boy in with us?”
She makes a hissing sound and strikes the water with her hand, splashing his legs. “No! No more! It must end with us.”
He bows his head. “I shall honor your wish.”
“You shall honor what is right, what is good.”
He rubs at his eyes and forehead with his hands, commanding his emotions to stay low. When did his hands become so wrinkled? When did her hair turn so white?
“Shall I stay?” he asks.
“No. Send someone in the morning to collect my body. Burn everything else.”
“That's all?” He knows what he wants to hear, but she will never say the words.
“Goodbye,” she says.
He st
ands and gathers his hat and his shoes.
“Goodbye.”
Outside, the sky is turning from blue to violet.
When he gets in his taxi, he's surprised to find the leather seat is still warm.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I wake up at sunrise. Gran's still asleep and the house is quiet.
The sun is weak and I shiver as I dig a hole in the backyard, next to the tree, and lay the five little dead birds in there. I say some words of thanks for each one as a handful of their crow friends watch from the branches above me.
I cover them with my suit jacket before I pile on the dirt, so the dirt doesn't go in their mouths. I can't keep the memory of my vision from Heidi out of my head, the feeling of her being dead. Is this the end for her? Her brother's killer has been identified, although not yet brought to justice. I don't know how much time she had, but the vision felt close to me. Too close.
Overhead, the crows in the tree seem lost, as though waiting for instructions from me. I wonder if they're no longer getting orders from Heidi.
“You're free,” I tell them. “Build nests. Do whatever you want to do.”
I lean over to smooth out the dirt, and when I look up again, they're gone. I stand, dust off my hands, and go to the back door.
Inside the house, I find Gran sitting at the kitchen table, holding an empty coffee cup to her lips.
I wash my hands in the sink. Dirt is caked under my fingernails, because I didn't use a shovel to dig the hole. I didn't want to.
Gran hasn't asked me what I was doing in the yard. She hasn't said much since the wedding yesterday.
What can she say? At one point, she started to apologize, but I told her not to, and since then she's been withdrawn. She should have gone to church today. Eva came by to pick her up, but Gran said she'd rather not. Eva said they'd pray for her.
What can I do? My heart is aching, but I don't know how much of it is for me and how much is for my grandmother, betrayed by her husband on their wedding day.
Cups and dirty plates are strewn across the counter. I open the dishwasher and put away the clean dishes, then load it up with the dirty ones.
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