The only thing that kept me going was Silla’s hand in mine.
SILLA
Every step meant being closer to destroying the thing that had killed my mother, my father, my brother. Maybe Eric. Every step meant closing the circle, completing the trap.
NICHOLAS
The forest screamed as it burned. Cries from animal throats ripped together, winding around to create this one, awesome shriek. Heat tightened the skin on the left side of my face as we rushed around the perimeter. Step after step, through tall grass, over the road, stopping three times to paint a blood rune on a tree.
SILLA
A cluster of crows fell from the sky, trailing flames. The rest cried and flew, like black glinting sparks rising off the huge bonfire the forest had become. Their wails were lost in the snarling fire, in the column of eye-searing smoke.
NICHOLAS
We fell to our knees when we returned to the beginning. As I painted the rune onto a tree, Silla dug at the earth and buried the card case. We clutched our hands together, dripping our mingled blood onto the final rune, and Silla screamed, “Be bound, Josephine. Be forever bound!”
A snap of heat exploded. My ears popped. Silla and I were knocked backward. I didn’t try to stand but just stared up as the stars vanished behind billowing smoke, and wrapped my fingers around Silla’s.
The forest howled.
SILLA
I lay with my head tilted to one side. I could see orange glow against black grass; I could see my brother’s profile. His body was surrounded by crows. They hopped around, heads cocked and wings ruffled. Touching their beaks to his hair, his hand, his pants.
The crows. They’d stalked me but never attacked me. Warned us when Eric was possessed. Led me to Josephine’s body. Held all the animals in the woods so that she couldn’t escape the binding.
And Reese had been so good at flying with them.
I sat up.
“Silla?” Nick’s voice trembled. I knew he was tired—I could barely move myself. So much blood lost, so much running and desperation. But Reese—Reese was here. He was alive. The knowledge cracked through me with a surge of adrenaline.
“The crows, Nick. They’re … it’s Reese.” I crawled on my hands and knees into the center of them. “Oh, God, Reese!”
The crows exploded into the air, flapping around me. I stared at Reese’s dead face, imagining it sunny with life again. Imagining his laugh. The creases at the corners of his eyes when he smiled.
“We could bring him back,” I whispered.
“Sil.”
“With the regeneration spell. Just like with the leaf.”
Nick dragged himself next to me and took my hand. “Silla,” he whispered. “Think.”
Excitement raged through me like white light, buzzing in my ears. “I am! Bring back his body, and his spirit is right here. All around us in the crows.” I flung my hands out at them, outrageous laughter spilling upward from my guts, shaking my backbone and ringing in my ears. “We can heal his body, regenerate it, and then he’ll be able to jump back in. Reese!” I called to them, to all the flapping, agitated crows. “Reese, I can fix your body, you can have it back!”
The crows—Reese—cawed at me. My head swam and I gripped my knees, pushing my nails into them until it hurt. The idea—the promise of having my brother back—was almost too much. I turned to Nick. He would help me.
Nick was watching me, not the crows. His expression was drawn and tired, hard to read. “Nick,” I said.
“I’ll help you, babe, if this is what you really want.”
I grinned wildly, even as the world spun around me. I knelt so that I didn’t fall over, beside the corpse. I could do it. I had enough left in me. Soon it would be my brother.
NICHOLAS
I couldn’t look at her eyes. I couldn’t.
She held her shaking hands over Reese’s chest. There was no need for more blood—we were both covered in it already. Neither of us moved. I wanted to knock her aside, push her down, yell at her that this was wrong. He was dead—the body was dead—and bringing it back wasn’t any better than Josephine had been, or my mom had been. We couldn’t give life. We weren’t God.
The bloody mask was smeared almost completely off her face, in streaks that made her terrifying. She stared down at her brother. My chest constricted. Blood flowed so slowly through my veins, dragging me down. Turning me to stone while I watched my girlfriend prepare to resurrect the dead.
But she didn’t move. Her breath wheezed in and out. The hazy air stung my eyes.
A crow cawed. It landed on Reese’s forehead, claws breaking into his loose flesh. I drew back. Silla didn’t move. The crow cawed again, and I stared at its eyes. It—he—tilted his head and glared at Silla. He raised his wings and stood there, posed.
Silla’s face crumpled. “Reese,” she whispered.
Oh, Silla, babe. I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t make this decision for her, no matter how much I wanted to. No matter how wrong it was, she had to decide. I couldn’t take this away from her.
A choking cry exploded out of her mouth.
I reached out and our hands gripped together, squeezing. She wrapped her bleeding hand around her stomach. “Reese,” she said.
The crows took flight, spinning and singing, against the orange and smoky sky.
She collapsed to the side, against me. I circled my arms around her, stroked her hair, pushed my lips against her head. Her shaking vibrated through my whole body.
The heat of the fire dried the sweat off my face. Its crackles and roaring ripped through the air. I could barely breathe.
Silla whispered something, and I lifted her chin so I could hear. “Reese, Nick. We have to—have to hide the body.”
My hands tightened on her. She was right. With this fire, we’d be swarmed with cops and locals anytime. Silla got to her feet, swayed in place. I joined her, and my own weariness almost swallowed me up. Too much blood loss, too much adrenaline and energy wasted. But we had work to do.
We dragged Reese’s body into the forest, hacking on smoke. I grabbed a blazing branch and set it at his feet so that we knew he’d burn. Tears tracked down Silla’s cheeks the whole time, but when it was finished, she rubbed her hands on the grass and lay down, rather serene. I worried she’d lost it for a moment, but then she reached out for my hand and said, “It’s not a bad way to go. A funeral pyre like this.”
I squeezed her fingers and said, “Like old Viking kings.”
“You really do know weird stuff.” There was a smile in her voice.
We lay down together, near the cemetery wall. Silla put her head on my shoulder, and I closed my eyes. The world spun slowly under me, like I was being flushed down a toilet.
NICHOLAS
My memory was fuzzy still, even at the hospital. Apparently, blood loss will do that to you. I barely know how we got there. I just remember standing in the checkered hallway as they wheeled a barely conscious Silla away. Dad sort of caught me when I started to pass out again, and then I was blinking up at a dingy popcorn ceiling. Through the thin mattress, I could feel the bar under the small of my back, where the top half of the bed would angle up if I pushed the right button. There was no noise except a ringing in my left ear. When I used my hands to lean up, I realized there was a needle in my arm attached to one of those long plastic tubes, which was in turn attached to a bag of clear liquid. Saline or something.
It was a small but private room, with an old TV on an arm attached to the wall and a window with heavy blue curtains drawn across it. I was light-headed, but otherwise okay. Nothing ached or burned or pinched besides a general malaise that clung to my skin like I’d been awake for way too long. Only I’d just woken up.
From outside the closed door, I began to hear the muffled sounds of a hospital at work.
I studied the needle in my arm, wondering if it was okay to just pull it out. Surely I wouldn’t bleed all over everything. Or die. Briefly, I imagined all my insides squeezing
out through the tiny needle hole, in party shades of green and violet and pink.
The door opened.
It was Lilith, wearing an orange dress trimmed with rows of black fur. Fur. Like she’d come from the freaking opera. Which, I guess, she kind of had. Her hair was falling out of its perfect coif. Which I’d never seen, not even at six in the morning before her coffee. But she pressed her lips together, which were perfectly painted this awful, shiny red, and said, “Nick, don’t you even think about getting out of that bed.”
I gripped the edges of the thin mattress. “Where’s Dad?”
“Talking with the doctors. And the sheriff.”
“And Silla?”
“Unconscious but … fine.” Lilith’s eyes shone with something not quite evil. “Your friend said the fire was an accident.”
I rubbed my eyes to stall. “Um. Friend?”
“Yes. The boy who called us. Eric. He has a few injuries. Broken ankle, quite a bit of blood loss. He says you and Silla saved his life.”
There was a strange undercurrent to the information. As though what Lilith was saying was urgent. What was I missing? Some weird code?
She continued, “He said you were going to build a fire in the backyard, to burn a few of Reese’s things. Your own little memorial, as it were.”
I stared. Lilith was feeding me my story. So that when the sheriff came and asked me, I’d say the same thing Eric had. She was freaking helping me.
“The only damage was to our property, Nick. Your property, which your father holds in your name, of course, until you’re of age.”
God, I was slow. I licked my lips and said, “So—Dad could hold us responsible. Press charges. For the fire.”
Lilith nodded, crossing her arms under her breasts. She tapped the orange fingernails of her right hand against her left elbow. One at a time. “I believe I can talk him out of it.”
“Why?” The word burst out before I could stop it. I should have asked what she wanted in return, or just accepted her help and promised my forever gratitude.
She spread her hands wide and plastered an innocent expression over her face. “Why not? It was a tragic accident, but you survived, and certainly your father has plenty of money and properties, Nicholas.”
“God, don’t call me that,” I whispered.
“I’ll go speak with your father about putting this all behind us.” She turned and put a hand on the door handle.
“Wait.”
Lilith paused with her back toward me, knowing what I was going to ask.
“What do you want in return?” My firstborn child? Ten years indentured servitude?
Spinning on her heel, Lilith offered me her brilliant shark’s smile, the one that caught Dad every time. She looked about ten years younger. “Ah, Nick. All I want is the truth. I want the real story. The one with all the magic, the one with murder and jealousy and history. The one with that cemetery at its center.”
I gaped at her.
“Ta, Nick. Think quickly.” Lilith flashed her smile again, and was out the door.
Turned out, they believed the ridiculous story. Believed we’d been stupid enough to set fire to the forest accidentally.
And I told Lilith the truth the next morning. I think she believed me. The crows that hung around the hospital, and that followed our car several miles out of town, certainly helped. Maybe it was about time to purge her nickname from my brain and stick to Mary.
SILLA
My eyelashes stuck together, and it was almost impossible to force them apart when I woke up.
“Silla!”
Wendy leaned over my bed. My own bed. I’d woken up in the hospital that morning, terrified that everyone was dead. But Judy had been there, and given me a story for the sheriff. Said she’d talked to Nick, and had gone out to the cemetery to fill in Reese’s grave with the backhoe.
The doctors said I was only exhausted from the adrenaline and trauma, and to get rest. Which had been easy. I’d barely made it up to my room, I was so tired.
Behind Wendy, all my theater masks watched like a private audience. I moved my tongue, which was dry, and started to sit up. There was no nausea. No dizziness. Just the sleepy need for caffeine to wake up my bones.
“Silla!” She sat back on my desk chair. “We’ve been so worried. You’ve been asleep for twenty hours!”
“Water?” I said hoarsely. My throat burned. I couldn’t believe I’d been asleep for a whole day and still felt like crap.
“Oh, yes!” Wendy twirled around and grabbed a bottle of water off the nightstand. She looked good. A breeze from the open window teased at her hair. My eyes strained to see out the window, searching for crows.
Wendy touched my arm, then helped me sit up to drink. After downing half the bottle, I only felt a little better. “How is—is everyone?” Have there been crows? Where’s Reese? Did I imagine they were him?
“Eric’s fine. His ankle is broken, from running out of the fire, he said. He also said you saved his life.” She pursed her glittery pink lips, and I remembered that Josephine was gone.
“Yeah, something like that,” I murmured, wanting her to leave so that I could lie back down. Or run outside to look for Reese.
She quieted. “I can hardly believe what everybody is saying about you and the cemetery and the fire. Mrs. Margaret and Mrs. Pensimonry have been plaguing Judy with questions about you and the fire, about your whole family, and whether you’re … well, crazy.” Wendy winced apologetically.
“It’s okay, I think I am.”
Grabbing my hands, she squeezed them until I yelped. The doctors had stitched up my palm. “Sorry,” she said, letting my hands go like they were poison. But she stared at the bandages. “You really are … hurting yourself, aren’t you?”
I opened my mouth. It was the time to tell her the truth if I ever was going to. But even though the magic was a part of me, it was too dangerous to involve other people. I was too dangerous. Tears filled my eyes and I let them, giving Wendy the only mask she could understand. I nodded, and the tears plopped down onto my hands.
“Oh, Sil.” She climbed onto the bed and put her arm around my shoulders. “You—it’s just been too much. But I’ll help you. So you don’t have to do that anymore.”
“I think,” I whispered, inventing the lie on the spot, “I think Judy is going to take me away. To Chicago, where I won’t be trying to live all the time where they lived.” More tears fell as I remembered talking to Reese about moving away together. And I knew Judy wouldn’t mind. That only left Nick.
I hugged Wendy. A huge part of me couldn’t imagine leaving her behind. But what other option did I really have? Especially if the whole town was talking again. My family had been the center of their attention for months now. I was done. I sighed. “Where’s Nick? Is he okay?”
“Yeah, but”—she frowned—“his dad moved them into a hotel in Cape Girardeau last night. I should go call him, actually, to tell him you’re awake.”
“Sure.”
She hugged me tight again, and then slipped out of the room. Climbing out of bed, I dragged myself along the wall to the window.
I turned my face toward the east, toward Nick’s house and the forest. It was black and decimated, like the crumbling ashes of an ancient city. Towers and bridges ruined and fallen into decay. Smoke still rose in tiny ribbons from several places. But nothing outside our circle had burned. Not a single thing.
And I didn’t see any crows, though I searched the sky for them.
Soup was the only thing my stomach could handle. I was allover fragile, muffled, and shaky.
It hadn’t sunk in, what had happened. While I ate, my eyes caught the shifting ruffles of the blue curtains over the sink, and I forgot whole swaths of that night. Then the spoon clacked against my teeth, and it rushed back. I had to stop eating and close my eyes.
Gram Judy moved around the kitchen, present but not speaking, like she could tell I wasn’t ready to talk but wanted me to know I wasn’t alone. W
endy had left with a kiss on my cheek, and promised to come back and check on me. I watched Judy, wondering how I was going to tell her about Reese and the crows. Would she believe me? Or think I’d been totally out of it?
When the gravel outside crunched, I put down my spoon. Judy scooted out the door, and I heard her in the front hall, greeting somebody.
Nick came around the corner, in a pinstripe vest and black pants, and I was across the room and in his arms before I knew I’d moved.
His arms were around me, lifting me onto my toes, and I could smell his hair goo and the hotel soap clinging to his neck. He kissed my hair and said my name.
I couldn’t let go, even when he whispered in my ear, “Hey, babe.” I just held on, fingers in his hair, struggling not to wrap my legs around him, too. “Come on,” he laughed lightly. “Let’s sit.”
We did. Me in his lap. He spoke, and I brushed my fingers along his cheekbone and kissed him randomly, in the middle of words. He was telling me what had happened, how Eric had managed to get to his car and Judy had seen the fire from the house and come running. How we’d been taken to the hospital, and the story Eric had told to cover for us. About his deal with Lilith.
When he said, “Dad’s dragging me back to Chicago,” I put my fingers over his lips.
“I’m going, too.”
Nick’s eyes widened, and then he smiled. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. I can finish high school anywhere. Especially somewhere nobody knows me. Might be good to not be around so many … reminders. Judy has an apartment there, and I’ve already been thinking about leaving. Reese had even talked about it with me. Before.”
He wrapped his arms around me again. After a long moment he said, “How are you feeling?”
“Delicate. Strong. A lot of things. I think you saved my life.”
“I think you saved mine, too.”