Swoon 02 - Swear

by Nina Malkin

  “Since it is believed to be intrinsic to the breeding ritual.” Mildly Sin says, “Is that so?” and smiles at his own hand, where a second firefly has joined the first.

  “You see, it’s the males who do the flying,” Jeremy continues,

  “while the females will choose a branch or a leaf to land on.” Fireflies form epaulettes on Sin’s shoulders; clusters attach like medals to the front of his PWT.

  Jeremy makes a high-pitched sort of snort. “They should call the girls fire lies.” Others, incredibly, enjoy this joke. “They just lie there and blink messages. Love messages.” Bending his elbows, Sin turns his palms down so Photinus pyralis can land on his knuckles like rings, align across his wrists like beads in a bracelet.

  “That’s how the males find them and, you know, woo them.” Excited by his own lecture, Jeremy shines, but he’s overpowered by Sin, who now has a halo of boy lightning bugs circling his head.

  “Sin!” says Mary-Kate, her voice hushed. “You’re like a Christmas tree!”

  “It’s amazing!” Eliza Lee Warren and Melissa Jane Pratt tout in tandem, hands folding spontaneously in prayer.

  “You’re amazing . . . ,” the girl I don’t know tells Sin.

  Kurt can no longer restrain himself. He goes, “Huh . . . huh-huh . . .”

  “They do seem to like me, don’t they?” Sin employs the full extent of his half-up, half-down, skewed smile. And then he extends his arms to his sides and drops his chin, mimicking the pose of the most renowned wrongly hanged man in the history of humankind. Any second, M-K and Co. will drop to their knees in worship. I’ll cop to being a bit agape myself.

  Sin knows exactly how long to play it, and when he lifts his head, he briefly levels his gaze on me. Then he gives a whoop and a rock star jeté. All the lady lightning bugs lift from him at once and waft away, suitors in slow but steady pursuit.

  XXIII

  With minds around him newly open, Sin spies Kurt, about to fire one up. He separates jerk from joint, presenting the latter to our hostess. “Would it be all right?”

  “Oh . . .” Shallow-set eyes, snip of nose, and smudge of mouth all attempt to meet in the middle of Mary-Kate’s face.

  Dare she? Oh, but she’d never! They don’t call it demon weed for nothing! Except . . . oh . . . Deliberation presents an excuse to step closer to Sin. She’s still pinching herself— the Sin Powers at her party—and he’s so sensitive and intelligent, poetic, even, the way he speaks, nothing like the gossip that went around about him last fall. You’d need to be as clairvoyant as a can of soup to divine this girl. “Can I make a confession?” She flutters a signal no doubt adapted from the female firefly. “I’ve never tried it before.”

  “It’s interesting,” Sin opines. “The way it alters perception.

  And this”—a swipe beneath nostrils for verification—“is the best there is.” That’s all. He’ll make no other pitch or chiding comment or insinuation that this is her last chance. There she stands at the precipice while he simply waits, holding her eyes as if he’s got a century. Now, propelled by mischief, nothing more, he taps the white paper tip to her bottom lip and then withdraws it.

  Mary-Kate giggles. Like she just invented giggles. And in that moment understands how malleable absolutes like “never” can be.

  I, for one, haven’t got a century. Still, I watch and wait and (the decision has been made) smoke and chat and munch the “smart” snacks and stand around and walk around, basically what you do at a party. Really I’m biding time, angling for my perfect opportunity, until I remember that “perfect” is a lot like “never.” With Duck giving me prodding stares, I steel myself and go up to Sin by a fig tree. With him, the girl I don’t know. “Excuse me,” I say, which she reads correctly as “Back off, bitch.”

  Then we’re face-to-face. “Look. Hey. Please.” I cast syllables. He can take his pick or collect all three. “Cute routine with the fireflies—taking the flea circus concept to the next level.”

  “You know I have an affinity to the animal kingdom; why not the insect world as well,” he says. “I suppose that’s why . . . uh”—he gestures toward the retreating girl—“she suggested I volunteer at Walden Haven.”

  I’ve heard of the place, an animal refuge off Stag Flank Road.

  They take in injured wildlife, nurse them back to health, and release them to their natural habitats. What a noble way for Sin to spend his summer days.

  “It’s humans,” he continues bitterly, “that confound me.” I lower my eyes, raise them with effort. “Sin, I know you’re mad at me—”

  “‘Mad’ does not begin to do justice to what I am at you.” His brows knit, his tone subterranean.

  “Still, I need to talk to you about something, and it has nothing to do with us.”

  He doesn’t say, “There is no us.” Part of him wants to, I’m sure. Instead he says nothing, so I forge on.

  “Okay, so, last month, Duck’s brother Crane went AWOL.

  Some people believe he just took off for, oh, whatever reason a guy would have to leave the girl he loves . . .” I feel my lip wobble and I bite it. “The family he loves, the band he started that’s coming together.” I inhale. Exhale. “Only from day one Duck’s been trying to convince me something strange and sinister and not just guy-going-guy is going on.” Am I making sense? Must be, since Sin still seems to be listening. “But I didn’t want to hear him, because I’m done with strange and sinister, okay; I want nice, I want normall. . .” Again, reign it in, stick to the subject. “Only after a while I can’t deny that things are happening and evidence is piling up. Like getting attacked by rosebushes. And me playing the piano when I can’t even play the kazoo. And you, Sin, okay—you happening. Yeah, I think it’s you making you happen; and clearly you think it’s me . . .” This is coming out badly. I thread my fingers through the curls at my temples and pull, aiming to straighten out my thoughts. One last shot: “Sin, look, here’s the thing: It wasn’t me kissing Tosh that brought you back. It was Antonia Forsythe.” The reaction is delayed, and not at all what I expect. Sin busts out laughing. Not his derisive wolf bark but that genuine response to something truly ludicrous. His dimple creases and a bona fide twinkle ignites his eyes and I know he wants to share with me just how silly-nutty-whacky it is. For a second, until he doesn’t. Dimple: shut down. Twinkle: still bright but the antithesis of merry. “Antonia Forsythe,” he says, “would make Mary-Kate Kale resemble a cross between Lady Gaga and Countess Báthory.”

  Lady Gaga I’m familiar with—and apparently Sin has caught up on his pop culture gaps in the last few days. As to this Báthory person, I make a mental note to Google her later.

  “So you know her?”

  “Antonia Forsythe? I knew her, past tense, as an innocent dimwit.” Sin rakes his forelock, gazes skyward, and returns his eyes to me, twinkle now tarnished to a dull how dare you. “I know that she died horribly—consumed by flames while her oblivious parents entertained glamorously in the great hall.

  And I know that her father’s gavel condemned me.” He’s trying to contain himself, show no emotion; he lowers his voice even further, his mouth barely moves. “If you mean to propose any impropriety between me and that poor unfortunate, I warn you, my lady, you insult me. And you’ve reached your limit for that already.”

  Innocent dimwit. Poor unfortunate. Descriptions that don’t exactly jibe with the image I’d concocted. My portrait’s of the pampered only child of adoring parents, her every utterance marveled at, her every wish fulfilled. Considering her mother’s regal background and frequent comings and goings, I assumed she enjoyed a London education, a Parisian wardrobe, a Viennese pastry chef, and a Pekingese lapdog. Surely Antonia was the envy of her peers, things being pretty straitlaced in eighteenth-century Swoon. Now, in the burning ire of Sin’s eyes, I’m abashed at my shallow assessment, based on a few lines from a long-ago newspaper, some fancy decorative touches to her living space, and my own prejudices.

  Yet, well, since I
’m already here, I might as well shove the other foot and both elbows into my mouth. Besides, he’s so righteous about Antonia Forsythe, yet he had no qualms about corrupting M-K Kale (not that a few tokes of the skunky-sticky ever corrupted anyone, but I need fuel).

  “I don’t mean to insult you,” I say, “but I’m obliged to Marsh, and to Duck, to find out all I can about Crane—me being the designated occultist around here. So if you’ll hear me out and shed what light you can, I’ll let you be and you won’t have to talk to me ever again.”

  The loyalty I show my friends must suit his strong, albeit skewed, sense of honor. He folds his arms across his chest in a posture that bids me continue.

  “Okay, first, this little ditty ring any bells?” Note for note, I la-la-la what I’ve come to think of as Antonia’s tune.

  I’d forgotten the effect my singing has on Sin; in the space of an instant his face melts, then hardens. “It is hers,” he confirms.

  “Do you know the lyrics?” I figure they could contain a clue.

  He shakes his head. “She would hum it incessantly. But were there words, I never heard them.”

  “All right, Sin, look. I know you view her a certain way, but according to Marsh, the Saturday night before Crane vanished, he called out Antonia’s name in his sleep. So is it possible she isn’t so immaculate?” He does me the courtesy of pondering it, then murmurs something I don’t catch. “What did you say?”

  “Women. I said, ‘Women.’” The way his arms are folded, I now see, keeps his heavy heart from dropping out of him.

  “With their fans and veils. With their smiles and insistence on politesse. Whatever really goes on in there, I certainly cannot tell.”

  I allow his trope against my gender. “Okay, Sin, here’s something less arcane than the average female.” I tell him of our sojourn to the east wing of Forsythe Manor; I tell him of the tarot reading. “Three questions, three cards: the Tower, the Lovers, and the Hanged Man. If you can unequivocally assure me that the Hanged Man isn’t you—that in no way is your latest incarnation here in Swoon tied to Crane and Antonia, then fine, I’ll give it up.”

  His arms fall to his sides and his chin points to his pain.

  “The cards would not read false; your interpretation must have some grain of sense,” he admits, resigned, as he lifts his head.

  “I can assure you of nothing, my lady. I can only tell you what I know.”

  XXIV

  I’ll take it—without interruption from the giddy guests at Mary-Kate’s. Duck included.

  “Are you getting anywhere?” he asks under his breath as Sin and I locate him on the sidelines of lawn chess.

  “Like pulling teeth,” I answer quietly. “From Jaws.” Then I turn it up. “You about good to go?”

  “I’m sure I can drag myself away.”

  Apparently Sin sees no reason to tell Kurt we’re out, so the three of us quit for the Cutlass. I ask Duck if we can drop him off and borrow the car, implying that Sin won’t speak in front of anyone else. I don’t know if that’s true, but the boy’s mood improves when he slides into the driver’s seat. First stop, Forsythe Manner, to deposit Duck. Idling in front of that imposing structure sparks a fever in me. Sin stares at the house too, as if to strip it to the beams for its secrets. Yet right now my sense is that neither one of us is a match for the place. Welcome taunts from every window, challenges from every stone, and once a familiar fragrance assails, I urge him, “Let’s get out of here.”

  The top down, the night delicious, the country roads a set of French curves—the part of me able to “be here now” is digging this. The rest of me tenses and tugs, impatient, unsure. “Do you want to just go to my house?”

  “No.” Clearly indecision isn’t among his faults—and on second thought, I must concur. I have no desire to revisit the scene of our love under current circumstances.

  “The green is right here,” he points out, though we’re headed in the opposite direction. “Shall I turn around?”

  “Please, no!” The village green, with its mighty ash tree—site of his long-ago execution, Pen’s near-fatal tumble, and the ceremony I performed that loosed Sin on Swoon . . . “Just drive.” I lift my profile to the stars and steal what snatches of “be here now” that I can.

  Which is how we wind up at the lake. The spot on the lake, known as the Spot, is where Swoon’s idle youth come to swim, smoke, lay out, make out—all away from prying eyes.

  At least that’s what it’s like by day. I’ve never been to the Spot after hours. Not that I know what time it is; the Cutlass’s dashboard clock is stuck at an eternal 7:40—one aspect of loving restoration Libo didn’t bother to address. There are few cars in the area where we park; pop music fizzes from one.

  The wooded trail to the lakefront is narrow, and we have no flashlight, but whatever sort of being Sin is, this is no deterrent.

  “Take my hand,” he says, reaching for me with scarcely a backward glance, simply ensuring I don’t sprain an ankle, crack a tooth. Chivalrous as ever.

  But I do as he says; I take his hand. It’s hard. It’s warm. It’s roughly callused. And safe and strong and capable of countless things, great and awful. Everything I remember his hand to be.

  How much simple hand-to-hand contact meant to us once, when he was a ghost in occupation of my cousin, and touch was the means to our encounters. How far beyond touch we traveled, all our senses locked and loaded, minds and bodies to their limits, hopscotching time. Yet at its core, it all comes down to this, the unconditional trust, the completeness, of our two hands joined. Is he thinking that now, as he leads and I follow?

  Toward the bottom, the path dips more steeply, our steps come faster, and Sin whirls me onto the lakefront with force enough to sunder us. But he holds on. Until, deliberately, he lets go.

  Not quite sandy, not quite pebbled, the shore isn’t as hospitable here as in more populated, and therefore pedicured, stretches of Swoon Lake. Such is the price of privacy. I’m too nervous to sit still, anyway, and Sin also seems to favor motion.

  The moon is low, and sloppily halved, a custard pie torn in two. Lapping ripples provide soft percussion. I want to lose my shoes and wade ankle deep in water I know is freezing; I want to remark on how freezing it is, how crazy I am to wade; and I want more than anything to hold Sin’s hand again. But that’s not going to be. He’ll tell his tale more to the lake than to me.

  Any wonder that after all this I’m now in no hurry for him to begin.

  “To me,” he begins anyway, “Antonia Forsythe was a shy, odd, awkward girl.”

  And beautiful? I won’t ask, but I want to know.

  “Though her gowns were surely made by renowned couturiers, they never seemed to fit, abrading at the wrist, buckling in the bodice. Still, she was lovely in her way. Fragile, with porcelain skin and gray eyes, a somewhat pointed chin. Her two most striking features, though, were opposites. First, her mouth—tiny, perpetually pursed, a rosebud afraid to bloom. In counterpoint, her hands—long and bony, and highly unusual for a girl of her stature, she used them. Not for embroidery or tatting lace, but in her garden. Antonia was always there.” Among the roses. Snipping, pruning, watering, mulching.

  How would Sin react if he knew I had a garden, prosaic as my veggies may be. Laugh, probably.

  “Or so it appeared to me, since that’s where I’d see her. Archibald Forsythe, the ‘spare no expense’ type with his wife’s money, commissioned me to build a gate for her stone garden wall, and he wanted something special—”

  “Yes . . .” I’m scarcely aware that I speak, and I break Sin’s flow, but I’m floored—I had no idea the gate was his creation.

  “I know,” I stammer. “It’s still there. A work of art.” A brusque thank-you and he picks up again. “What a joy to design something, create something. Horseshoes were my stock in trade; this was a rare opportunity, yet I hoped it might lead to more. I’d met Hannah by then, and I knew we were destined. I wanted to provide the best for her.” Hanna
h Miles. Sin’s first love. Redheaded spitfire who gambled with her life. And lost.

  “Since the work was so painstaking, I set up a temporary forge on the premises. I’d get my routine farrier affairs out of the way and then repair to Forsythe Manor. Antonia would linger, half-hidden among her roses, whenever I toiled nearby.

  I did find it strange she’d be permitted to, considering my . . .reputation.”

  Reputation, ha! Deserved reputation, as in fact. Sinclair Youngblood Powers never met an urge he didn’t indulge, and before meeting his Hannah, he’d visited many a bed and hayloft and forest clearing and scullery floor and maybe even this very lakeshore with any number of women and girls drawn to his dark charms.

  “But Lady Anne seemed to have little interest in her daughter, and Archibald was busy climbing the pole of judiciary ambition, so Antonia roamed. Of course, there was nothing untoward about it—there was only Hannah in my eyes, and Antonia spoke not a word to me. She’d skitter about when I was near, humming squeakily, her lips screwed up in seriousness. In truth it confounded me to be in the presence of a lady who did not seek my attention.”

  Ah, Sin. Still Sin. I cannot help but smile.

  “The damnedest thing, till it struck me: Antonia was an imbecile.”

  Right, uh-huh. Only a mo-mo would be immune to his allure.

  “A numbskull waif with neglectful parents—naturally, she gained my sympathy. I’d smile, remark on her lovely roses—but never get a glimmer of response. So imagine my astonishment when she kissed me!”

  Aha! Innocent idiot, my ass!

  “It was the day I installed the gate. Late summer, and a blazing afternoon; I was having a devil of a time lining up the hinges, cursing myself for having wrought so massive and unwieldy an object. The last thing on my mind was Antonia Forsythe. Oh, how I struggled and swore, stripped to the waist in the heat. When I finally got it, I stood back to admire my success, and then—in part to test it but also just to let loose, I launched myself with a howl and swung. An embarrassing position to be caught in by the young mistress of the house.” I’ll bet.