Between the Spark and the Burn (13 page)

O
N THE ROAD.
I sat in the backseat with River, because Canto said that if we put some delirious, flu-ridden stranger next to her, brother or no, she'd cut out his heart and throw it out the window. So she was up front with Neely, where I used to be, and I sat between River on one side, and Finch on the other.

We went west. The miles passed. The hours passed. River slouched against the side of the car. He still smelled like the sea. Salt and wind and death and life and sand.

And then the singing began.

“We'll kick up our forces like true wild horses. We'll rant and we'll roar across the salt deep. We'll worship the white and give up the fight, for here lies the wreck of the violet leap.”

River had a fine voice, soft and low and true, and he sang the words in sweet, lullaby tones. But the face the song came out of was hollow and bruised and wind-whipped and mad. I didn't recognize the River I used to know in it. Not anywhere.

River stopped singing, groaned, and started tugging at his sweater. “I can't wear these human clothes, Vi,” he whispered to me. “They rub my fins wrong.”

Neely laughed.

Finch looked at me, and raised his eyebrows in a way that didn't let me know what he was thinking at all.

But Canto glanced over her shoulder from the front seat, and watched River, and her expression was alert and wary. “Neely, your brother seems really sick.”

Neely shifted his hands on the steering wheel and kept his eyes on the road. “He's fine. He's just got to burn the fever out.”

Canto kept watching River. “He doesn't look fine.”

“We're off the island and River is going to get better now,” Neely answered in a sharp, non-Neely voice. “So let's stop talking about it.”

Canto frowned, and turned back to the road.

River slumped against the door, sweater shoved to the side. He was half naked again, his lean chest clean and sea-salt free. He leaned toward me, and—

“My brother is keeping secrets,” River whispered, quiet, quiet, right in my ear. “I can tell. Neely always gets cranky when he lies.”

River moved his lips away from my cheek again. I stared at him from the corner of my eyes, stared at the way his torso curved into the top of his black wool trousers . . .

I remembered. I remembered
breathing in, and feeling soft skin under my cheek and warm breath in my hair, in the shack, with the nets and the seaweed, and he slept like an angel, and his heart pumped against my palm, like waves hitting the shore, and I took off my seaweed dress and lay down on the nets, and River started stroking my arms, just his fingertips, all the way, top to bottom, and I . . .

Finch put his hand on mine. I opened my eyes. He looked at me and shook his head. “Careful, Vi.”

I shivered and moved closer to Finch's side of the car.

Finch noticed things. He noticed things Neely didn't.

River used to notice things. He used to notice everything.

But now he was just a sea king. A half-mad singing sea king.

Canto started grilling Neely from the front seat, despite what he'd said. “What if River gets worse on the way to Colorado? Fevers are deadly, Neely. Maybe we should find a hospital.”

“He won't get worse,” Neely said. “Violet's with him now. She'll help him get well again. Tell them about the nightmares, Vi.”

I sighed. “Last summer I slept next to River every night and he stopped getting his nightmares.”

Neely winked at me in the rearview mirror. “See? River isn't going to get worse. Not when Violet's here. She makes him better.”

I flinched.

Canto looked at me, full of doubt. Even Finch looked . . . wary.

Finch thinks Neely is lying,
I thought.
And maybe he is.

My heart was so disturbed it skipped a beat.

“He could have a concussion, Neely.” I reached forward and put my hand on his shoulder.

Neely shook his head. “He doesn't. I checked. Volunteer EMT, remember? He's just tired and suffering the consequences of too much glow and too little food.”

Canto stared at Neely. “Too much
glow
? What do you mean?”

No one answered her, and she frowned again. “Whatever it is, you're going to have to tell me eventually.”

“You don't want to know,” Finch whispered. “You don't.” He leaned forward, moved Canto's hair, and kissed her cheek, slow and calm, just the once. Canto kept her eyes on the window, but she smiled. She did.

We stopped for a late lunch in the Appalachian Mountains. Neely pulled over at a scenic viewpoint. An ocean of trees stretched out all the way to the damn horizon. I didn't know there were so many trees in the whole world.

I wondered where Inn's End was, hidden in that forest. Maybe it had disappeared into the mist, like in the stories. I watched Finch, tried to catch his expression as he looked down. But his eyes were steady, no wildness anywhere, and no longing either.

There was snow on the ground again, and I was glad for it. I handed out apples from the picnic basket, and cheese, and the rest of the olives. River was still shirtless, and he'd kicked off Neely's extra pair of shoes too. He stood in the snow with his bare feet and refused to touch any of the food.

“I only eat seaweed and raw fish,” he said, voice gentle. “Like all my kind.”

“Well, we don't have either of those.” Neely's voice was patient, but his eyes were a bit sad.

River ran his fingers through his long brown hair in a gesture that I remembered so well, so damn well, that it made me shudder a little bit. Then he waved his hand out in front of him. “The entire ocean floor is our dinner table. All we need to do is gather the bounty.”

“We aren't on the ocean floor,” Finch said, patient, just like Neely, just like he'd been talking to mad sea kings his whole life.

Canto watched River. Closely. Her brow furrowed up and her dark eyes looked worried. Worried and . . . scared.

River is acting batshit crazy, Freddie. How can Canto believe this is just a fever? Is she starting to remember? What will we do if she does?

“Then what is all that blue above us?” River pointed at the sky. “It's the top of the ocean. See those white fluffy streaks? That's where the water has been stirred up from the fishing boats.” He paused. “Isn't it?”

“That's the sky. That's just the damn sky, River.” I looked at Neely. “How long is this going to last?”

“Not long,” Neely answered, quick, sharp, his eyes refusing to meet mine. “The madness just has to run through him. It'll break soon.”

My face felt hot, suddenly, blood churning and boiling, spreading down to my throat, arms, legs, feet.

Neely was lying.

“Safe in your bed you are at last.”
River was singing again, gentle, gentle, almost a whisper.
“Let the waters roar, Jack. All night long the storm did blast. Let the waters roar, Jack. Mind the shadows and watch your back. Let the waters roar, Jack. Riddle it out, find the shack. Let the waters roar, Jack.”

“You're all hiding something from me,” Canto said again, her voice drowning out River's singing. “And I hate it.”

She threw her apple core into the snow and got back in the car.

Finch followed. And then River, still singing softly under his breath.

It was just me and Neely and the trees.

The sun broke through the clouds and hit the side of his face. I saw a darkening there that wasn't shadow.

“You have a bruise.” I put my fingertips to his cheek. His face felt so much more familiar now. It felt more . . . mine. Whether I wanted it to or not. “Did this happen last night? Did River hit you too?”

But Neely just shook his head and got back in the car.

≈≈≈

We crossed the mountains and were camping in the snow again. The campground was closed, but we drove in anyway and set up our tents, no harm done.

I sat on a log and shivered and read Freddie's diary with a flashlight. Finch sat next to me. Canto built a fire with the driest wood she could find. I watched her for a while. Sometimes she seemed kind of . . . shy around Finch, and wouldn't look him in the eye.

Canto likes him,
I realized.
She really likes him. He's making her self-conscious.

After being on her own for so long . . . well, I understood. There was something about Finch sometimes that felt so . . . safe. Safe, snug, out of harm's way. Neely gave me that feeling, once in a while.

I looked at Cornelius Redding, sitting at the snow-covered picnic table cleaning the trout he bought from three fisherman we'd encountered earlier on the road. He looked up often, keeping an eye on his brother—who so far had done nothing but stand at the edge of the trees and stare into the snowy dark.

“No need to cook mine, Neely,” River called over his shoulder. “I'll eat it just as it is.”

Canto stared at River's back. “What are you going to do, rip it apart raw with your teeth? Neely, I'm really starting to worry about your brother.”

Neely laughed, and it was dark, and harsh, and not at all familiar. “He's just eccentric. He's always been eccentric.”

River turned around and caught my eye. And I saw it. The glint. The Redding glint was sparkling in his brown eyes again, and he wanted me to know. His breath froze as it hit the air—

“And the red red boy said good-bye to the seas and he took to the hills and he talked to the trees. 'Cause when the lone star sparks and the lone star shines, I'll look to my own, to the blood and the lines—”

“Eccentric or no,” Canto snapped, “if he keeps singing I'll take that knife of yours, Neely, and cut him open when he sleeps.”

Finch frowned, and Canto softened. “His singing is giving me the creeps, Finch. It reminds me of something. A bad dream I had once, I think.”

Finch said nothing. He just put his hand on her arm and nodded.

River looked at me and smirked. It was fast—fast as a blink. But I saw it.

We sat on a long log before a roaring fire in a campground somewhere in Tennessee and ate hot fish with salt and lemon. I was between River and Finch, and my body finally started to warm up from the fire, at least the part of me that faced the flames.

My gaze drifted down, down to River's hands next to me, long fingers picking at his food.

Those hands had pushed Finch's face underwater until he died from it.

Finch, whose red hair was touching my blond on one side, and Canto's black on the other.

Snowflakes started falling. Big fat ones. I turned my palms over to face the sky, and the flakes fell on my skin and melted at my touch.

Neely started laughing at something Canto said. His face in the firelight was tired. I wondered if anyone else had noticed how tired he looked all of a sudden.

We had kissed the night before, we had, it hadn't been a dream, River's brother, me, it was real. Neely had laughed and done it again and my stomach had melted right down to my toes, just as the snowflakes were melting on my fingertips.

River threw the rest of his fish into the fire and then looked right through me toward the trees. The glint was gone and his eyes were odd and dull and nothing else.

I glanced over at Neely, sitting on the other side of Canto, telling her one of his rich-boy stories, a grin shining under his tired eyes.

Finch reached out his hand and set it on my open palm, nestling his thumb up next to mine. And my anger started settling back down, right back down.

“Are you all right?” I asked him. We were all so focused on River that it was easy to forget Finch had died the night before. “Finch, are you sure you're all right? You still look too pale.”

Finch nodded, once, as cool as ever. His red hair had started shining again. Or maybe it just looked that way in the firelight.

I slid my hand out of his and got to my feet. I readied the moka pot and set it near the fire, and in a few minutes it was rattling and steaming. River sniffed the air and seemed to perk up a bit. His eyes started sparkling again and his shoulders straightened.

“Is that espresso?” he asked. The glint was back, just like that, and the smile too, that damn crooked smile.

“Yes, River,” I said.

“I haven't had coffee in a long, long time.”

I poured the joe into one of the blue tin camping cups we'd brought along and then handed it to him. He took a sip, and then sighed.

“I smell like salt. And the sea.” River took another sip. “Why the hell do I smell like the sea, Vi?”

“You used to be a sea king on a North Carolina island,” I said. I poured myself a mug of coffee too, and drank. “You lived in a hut and slept on fishing nets and tried to drown a red-haired forest boy as a sacrifice. Do you remember?”

River didn't answer.

Later, Neely turned on the radio in the car and we listened to Wide-Eyed Theo. He talked about the same mountain town in Colorado again, the one we were heading to, but this time he focused on the rumor of “a Highlander hung up dead in a tree.” At the very end, he mentioned that the town was still looking for the red-haired girl that stole the children.

A bad feeling started blossoming across my stomach. Queasy. Deep.

What if we finally find Brodie in Colorado, Freddie? Or another Redding half sibling, just as mad? What will we do?

The thought scared me so much I felt sick. So I stopped thinking about it.

I gave Finch the rest of my mug, and put the moka pot in the snow to cool so I could brew another round.

River drank the rest of his joe in one long swallow. He leaned toward me, smooth, his too-long hair falling across his forehead. His arms snapped out and wrapped around my waist. He pulled me into his lap.

My body folded into his like it had a mind of its own, my hip into the curve of his elbow, my face into his neck, my cold nose into the warmth of his bruised chin.