Keeper of the Bees

  “I know you didn’t murder Meredith. I knew her, too, you know. The college is a tight community. You’re too weak. But how do you think I feel having to answer questions about it? My own daughter implicated in the killing of a lovely undergrad student. I don’t enjoy it, Essie. It’s embarrassing. I have a good job. If I lose it because of you…” His upper lip curls in disgust. “Forget it. I’m telling Dr. Roberts to double your dosage. Maybe you won’t be able to do any more damage that way.”

  With each word he speaks, slim metal razor blades fly from his mouth and imbed into my sore, torn skin. It takes everything I have to stand erect. To not scream and curl onto the floor in a whimpering puddle. My fingernails scrape my palm in a telltale repetitive movement, but I can’t help it. It’s too hard to keep still. “Please don’t do that. I’m fine now.”

  Grandma Edie lets out a sob and pushes from the table. I can’t see her very well, though, because that set of blades came at my face and blinded me in one eye. Blood flows over the other and down my shirt.

  “Bradley.” Aunt Bel’s voice could cut steel. “Leave now or I will call the police.”

  “Go ahead and call the police,” he scoffs. “I have the legal right to see my daughter. And I’m not saying anything that isn’t true. She is not, nor has she ever been, fine.” More blades fly from his mouth. They spray all over, me, the floor, slicing into Aunt Bel, who doesn’t react.

  I force my frozen mouth into a smile. “I’m much better.”

  He pushes a knot of blond hair from his watery, bloodshot eyes—the only indication of his intoxication—and aims a finger at me. “Let me put things this way, so there’s no confusion. If anything else happens that causes Dr. Roberts to call me in the middle of the night, you’re going straight to Stanton House. I’ll get a judge to grant me the right to commit you, and you’ll go.” He swigs down the last of whatever’s in the bottle and throws it in the sink. “I’m through with this. Your mother would never have left if you’d been halfway normal.”

  He couldn’t have found crueler, more punishing words. I turn back to the counter as a sob shudders out of me. I touch my face and all I feel is a mess of gashes and protruding razor blades. I pick them out and drop them on the counter, one by one. He can’t see. I don’t care anymore if he can. The part of me that works so hard to stay positive about myself crumbles to dust. A dark fantasy skitters through me of how better our lives would be if he weren’t in it. If one of these days he took a bad turn and wrapped his car around a tree. It could happen. As far as I know, he’s never driven sober. It’s a terrible thought, though. It makes me no better than him.

  “Enough!” shouts Aunt Bel. “You are a cruel bastard.”

  “I’m realistic.” His voice pitches into a strange key, making me think once again that maybe he contracted a touch of the Wickerton curse, after all. “Listen, Belvedere, this little institution you’re running here—with my money—isn’t helping Essie.”

  “Like you’d know what’s helping her.” That’s it for Aunt Bel. Her voice raises to a bellow. “You just want her locked away! Out of sight, out of mind. This ‘institution’ is the home of your child.” Aunt Bel puffs up like an enraged cat. “Now get out of my house!”

  He slams a hand on the counter—making every dish rattle—and storms out without a backward glance.

  We hear him shout, and my aunt leans over the sink to see out the window. “Looks like your father found a swarm of bees. He’s flapping around like a one-legged chicken.” Her lips curve up into a tight bow. “I hope they sting him up good.”

  Dresden. I can’t organize my body in any way that would allow me to walk to my aunt and look out the window, although I’d like to. “They won’t sting,” I say, dimly aware that I’m speaking at all. “That would make father more dangerous than he is, and Dresden wouldn’t do that to me. The bees are just to scare him.”

  Aunt Bel pauses, gives me a sidelong look. “Who is Dresden, dear?”

  Oh, right. I just said that out loud. Ah, well. I don’t care. It’s astonishing she even asked. And I’m not up for concocting a lie. “The beekeeper.” I wave a hand. “He’s my friend. Well, he was my friend. I don’t know what he is now.” My silent protector. A memory.

  She narrows her eyes. “I’ve heard you say that name before.”

  I can’t tune into her anymore. My arms hug my torso, fingers curling into my shirt. If Dresden were here, it would be his arms around me, siphoning off my fear, my dark edges. He would make me feel that calm clarity that only comes from being around him. His deep, rumbly voice would murmur reassurance, and I wouldn’t be slowly lowering to the floor right now with my eyes squeezed shut to avoid looking at the bloody kitchen. I wouldn’t be curling my knees up to my chest, rocking, humming.

  Aunt Bel sags at the sight of me. On top of her head sits a perfect little birds’ nest with three dead, freshly hatched chicks draped over the edges. Their little beaks sit wide open, as if they died waiting for a worm. The kitchen stinks of rotten eggs. “Oh, Essie,” my aunt coos. “You should have stayed in the car.”

  “I couldn’t leave you to him,” I sing to her in a high, terrible trill. “It’s me he wants to hurt, any-way-ay.”

  “It’s not you, my lamb.” She squints out the window, where my father is peeling out of the driveway in his nice red car. “It’s all him.”

  I swallow hard and peek at my arms. The cuts are gone, but my skin is tender everywhere, like I’ve been beaten. “Maybe I should just go to Stanton House.”

  My aunt smooths her hair without touching the sad little nest. “How about maybe we find you a new psychiatrist? I’m through trying to pacify Bradley Roane.” Her mouth twists. “We’ll need a second opinion, anyway, if that slippery bastard follows up on his threat to have you committed.”

  My shoulders slump. I am so exhausted, I could fall asleep right here on the kitchen floor. “You should go see to Grandma Edie.”

  “I will.” She lumbers down to the floor next to me. “In a minute. She’s okay. It’s you I’m worried about.”

  “Why?” I ask her. “Why do all this for me?”

  “Because I love you, my girl.” She brushes a hand down my cheek. “I’ll protect you, Essie.”

  For as long as I can.

  She doesn’t speak that last part aloud, but I can hear it. I wrap my arms around Aunt Bel and rest my head on her powder-scented shoulder. A portion of anxiety drains from me like a leaking balloon.

  The rest remains, wrapped around an aching knot of longing and loss that pulses with the name: Dresden. I know that was him out there, frightening my father with all those bees. I love him all the more for it. And I wish. God, how I wish…

  “Interesting, how easily he used that girl’s first name,” my aunt says.

  I lift my head. “What?”

  “He called her Meredith.” She shrugs, but her teeth are showing. “So what if he knew who she was from the college. It’s a strange thing, calling her by her first name like that. So familiar. So personal.”

  A chill rolls over my skin. “Do you think he—”

  “Of course not,” she cuts me off. Bites her lower lip. “Probably not. I don’t know. He has…multiple sides.” I don’t understand her face now. Her eyes are soft and hard at the same time. She hugs me tighter. “I just don’t want you in his care again. Ever.”

  The chill turns into a shudder. Maybe there’s a reason I don’t remember much from the brief time I lived with my father. Maybe I’ve blocked things out. If that’s the case, I’m happy to live with the amnesia.

  But there are some facts here, sprinkled among the theories, and one fact is that my condition is not getting better. I drop one hand to the floor, and it falls on a shard of ceramic from the mug my father threw. Turning it over, I recognize it as a piece of my aunt’s favorite Garfield mug. It used to read: I hate Mondays.

  I hand her the piece. “I’m sorry about this.”

  “About what? You didn’t throw it.” She wags a f
inger. “Don’t apologize for other people, Essie. They won’t thank you for it.” She takes the shard from me and tosses it up into the sink. “I’ll clean it up.”

  If I follow the pattern of my other relatives with the Wickerton disorder, my condition won’t improve. Already, it feels that way. I struggle more these days, and not just because of Dresden. Reality, and the reality my mind creates for me, are becoming indistinguishable. Maybe I won’t even notice when they finally lock me up for good.

  18

  Dresden

  all the impossible things

  I wanted to kill him. I did seriously consider the option.

  It took every bit of willpower to remain hidden when Essie exited her aunt’s car. I knew who he was the instant I saw him. The similarities in bone structure. The fair hair. He was her father, and my bees wanted to sting him. He stunk of a particular variety of darkness that sang to my bees like a siren.

  All I did was scare him, as stinging him would have turned him into a homicidal monster. Good for the harbingers, but not for the women inside that house. He hates them. Deeply. It would take so little for him to turn his rage on them. Essie is surrounded by dangerous men.

  I didn’t want Essie going inside that house, but hindering her free will is a line I will not cross. I interfered in the course of her life by allowing a bee to sting her great-great-grandmother. I will not take one of the few things she has left.

  However, if I had known he would be that horrible to her, I would have crossed that line and intervened, anyway. There is no excuse for abuse.

  Instead, I watched her go inside and face her horror of a father through the eyes of a half dozen bees buzzing around the hydrangea bush.

  My brave, brave Essie. I can’t imagine the things she saw. The terrible things her mind created for her while her father yelled and smashed and spewed his poison all over. If I could have gotten inside, I would have. Thankfully, I couldn’t. I probably would have scared Essie’s grandmother to death. It’s a good thing bees can’t hear. I didn’t want to know the wretched things that beast was saying to Essie.

  Seeing the result was bad enough.

  If I was charged with energy, I could kill Essie’s father with one blow. However, satisfying as that may be, killing the man in cold blood would not do good things for Essie’s mental state. And as I told her—I’m not a murderer. I can think about it, though.

  I cluster myself as bees in Essie’s neighbor’s peach tree and watch her father’s little red car tear an erratic line down the street.

  This man will have his day. I am certain of it. I will make certain of it.

  I’m too weak right now to challenge Essie’s father in my human form. If I followed him and tried a physical assault, I’d possibly lose. We beekeepers are compelled to release bees to sting the dark-minded, but fear is what sustains us—fear and all the chaotic, destructive emotions that come with it. Granted, the fear in that house was high, and I did absorb some of it, but I have stayed close to Essie these past weeks and that has left me physically weakened. Avoiding the center of town, where fear has begun to pump through the community like blood in a thick vein, has taken a toll.

  I’ll need to amend that. I’m no good to Essie if I’m depleted. There’s much energy to consume in the heart of Concordia. People are frightened. There are killings, with a murderer at large. An uptick in suicides. A scent on the air that makes those touched with even a bit of natural intuition turn a wary eye to the sky. Many know something is coming. They are afraid. But I am reaping none of it, staying away from the areas of public concentration.

  I’ll have to divide my time between looking out for Essie and getting myself charged up. I have little else to do until the harbingers learn more about the curse being lifted. Jonas’s words still burn in my mind. There is a way. It’s been done. And I will find out how to free Essie and perhaps even myself.

  I separate from the tree and swarm in the air, looking for a good place to settle, when a figure steps into the road. If I had a head to turn, it would be twisting straight off my neck right now. As it is, several thousand bees turn in unison.

  It’s her. Standing barefoot in the road. Her skin is so pale it’s almost transparent. Her eyes so wide they seem to swallow her face.

  “Dresden.”

  I can’t hear her, but I can see the shape of her mouth around my name.

  And I ache.

  There is no going to her. Partly because the old woman living directly across the street has her face pressed to the window. Changing to human form is out of the question for that reason alone.

  Give me a mouth to speak with right now and I’d be declaring my feelings to her.

  Maybe I should do that.

  She reaches up toward me, and I disperse my swarm, scattering bees in all directions. I can’t stand her looking at me like that, with all that need and hurt on her face, and not be able to go to her. Bees land on trees, roofs, lawns. They fold their tiny wings and go silent. Essie lowers her arm and her head and turns back toward the house.

  The neighbor with the too-big plastic glasses and too-thin front curtains shakes her head and shuffles back to her kitchen.

  I position a few bees on Essie’s gutter and peer over the edge to get a good view of her. There’s a cut on her hand. Tears on her face. She’s looking for me, of all the impossible things. I send one of my bees—one I am in control of—off the gutter and down in front of her. Instinctively, she holds out her hand. The bee falls into it, crawling over the pads of her palms, along the lines that denote love, life, heart.

  She cups her mouth over the bee and her mouth forms the words: Thank you.

  “What are you doing?”

  Essie whips around to see her grandmother in the doorway. Her hand closes around the bee, which buzzes nervously.

  Suddenly, I’m regretting the decision. If she squeezes, I won’t be able to stop it from stinging her. I watch Essie and her grandmother through the eyes of many bees, watching their mouths, reading their words.

  “Nothing,” she says to her grandmother.

  “I saw you with the bees.” A bony hand locks around Essie’s wrist. The other one, without the bee. “You know him, don’t you? The bee-man?”

  Essie nods on a sigh.

  “He and death walk hand in hand.”

  “No.” Essie’s eyes harden and soften at the same time in an expression I haven’t seen yet. “He’s protecting me. He-he… I think he cares for me.”

  The grandmother releases Essie’s arm on a sigh. “Ah, sweet child. He’s not here to protect you. He’s here because something terrible is coming.”

  “Like what?” She looks exasperated, or very tired. I can’t tell.

  “Plagues. Fires. Earthquakes.”

  Interesting. I wonder how she knows anything about beekeepers. Maybe knowledge was carried down with the venom in their veins.

  “Earthquakes in Missouri?” Essie says. “I don’t think so.”

  The bee trapped in the cage of Essie’s fingers begins to squirm. She raises her hand, as if just remembering it’s there, and opens her fingers. Granddaughter and grandmother watch the bee crawl to the tip of Essie’s index finger, then lazily take off, disappearing above the house.

  “You’re dooming yourself,” her grandmother says. There is a quiet in the old woman’s eyes. “Some creatures are not meant to be loved.”

  “Neither are some people.” Essie lowers her head and enters the house. She says something else, but her face is turned away from all the bees in the area and I can’t make it out. Her grandmother stands outside a few moments more, face turned to the sun, eyes scanning the small, parched yard. “Don’t harm my Essie,” she whispers.

  If I could, I would tell her that my intention is just the opposite. I wish I could say how sorry I am that she and her granddaughter suffer from agony I inflicted, but talking to this woman would be a mistake. All I would do is terrify her. And that would upset Essie.

  Quietly, I draw my bees a
way from the house and settle in a tall oak tree two houses down. To wait.

  The way time moves is usually of no interest to me. Slow or fast, the passage of it has been irrelevant for a very long time. But now, suddenly, I’m acutely aware of the slow tick of the sun tracking over the horizon. The interminable length of a day. The endless slide of stars across the night sky. The layers of me are peeling back like an onion, unrolling me back to a far earlier version of myself. I can’t stop the memories any more than I can speed up time. And I can’t speed up time any more than I can travel backward in it.

  I’ve never been so eager for anything in my entire, ceaseless life.

  I’ve never wanted to live more.

  19

  Essie

  another dead person

  I am tired of people dying in my town.

  I’m tired of hearing Detective Berk’s voice and seeing her face and answering her questions. I don’t like the looks I’m getting from the neighbors. It’s as if a toxic bubble has popped up around our house. Cars don’t even drive by as much, but I might be imagining that part. Probably, I am. I can’t imagine anyone would go all the way around the next block over to get to their house, just to avoid driving past our residence. That’s just ridiculous.

  But anyway. It’s been two days since my father’s visit. The cut on my hand isn’t healed yet. The cuts inside aren’t, either, but I’ve bandaged them, too, with pills of all colors and a daily injection, which isn’t fun. Detective Berk is in our kitchen again, eyeing the new brown coffee stain splattered into the plaster wall, courtesy of my father. We’ll paint over it, but we haven’t gotten to it yet. There’s a man with her who is not from around here.

  He says his name is Agent Gray and that he’s from St. Louis, but I don’t believe either of those things. He smells like Windex. His suit is the same bland brown shade as his hair. He’s middle-aged, or thereabouts, but his skin bears the creamy, smooth-skinned look of someone who spends little time outdoors. He’s a listener, by evidence of the lack of lines around his mouth. Listeners are the ones you have to be careful about.