Between the Spark and the Burn (16 page)

And if it occurred to us as we ate that we drove halfway across the country based on the attention-starved ramblings of a town gossip, well, we just tucked into our meal and didn't say anything about it.

≈≈≈

The mountain storm began to blow just as River and I pulled back the covers and slid into bed. It rattled the windowpanes and howled at the doors and clawed at the cracks.

I dreamed River was kissing the hollow of my throat in the middle of a blizzard.

And when I woke up, he was.

He was warm as summer rain. Smooth as the sea, and twice as deep.

“Where did you get this necklace?” River asked. He moved the jade beads out of the way so he could reach the skin underneath.

Neely.

“Your brother,” I answered, quiet, barely even whispering.

“Of course,” River said. “It was our mother's. Our father gave it to her after our grandfather gave it to him. Did you know that?”

I shook my head.

“He must have gotten it out of the safety-deposit box in Switzerland, the bastard. You know, I was going to give this necklace to you for Christmas.”

“River, what's my name?” I whispered into River's ear, just to check, just to be sure.

“Violet,” he whispered back.

“And where are we?”

“In an ex-brothel called the Hollow Miner's Hotel. Gold Hollow, Colorado.”

“And who are you?”

“The sea king, of course.”

And then River's eyes were on mine and they were so bright and full of familiar rascality that I felt like laughing, and did.

“I'm back,” River whispered. His arms went around me and he squeezed me up and he smelled like coffee and midnight again and not the sea, not the sea, not the sea. “I missed you, Violet. I missed you so damn much.”

“What do you remember?” I asked, my body tight to his and his hands on my hips and my face against his shoulder.

“Bits and pieces. Enough.” He paused. “Violet, can you ever forgive me?”

I didn't think about it, not even for a second. “No,” I whispered. “I'll never forgive you.”

But then we were kissing again, and oh, I was so happy, I couldn't help it, sunshine was streaming out my fingertips and each and every atom in me was shaken up and sparkling with joy and I wanted everything to be like last summer, I wanted it so badly, and I knew this time it wasn't the glow making me feel this way, it couldn't be, Neely was making sure of that, Neely, what about Neely, no, don't think about it Violet, just enjoy this moment because it's not going to—

Footsteps in the hallway. The slap, slap of bare feet on bare wood. The creak of the floorboards and the doorknob turning because I'd forgotten to lock it because I wasn't used to locking things.

“Don't worry, it's not Brodie,” River whispered.

The door opened.

He was right.

Canto flew across the room and had a knife at River's throat before I took my next breath. She leaned over the bed and her black curls fell on my bare upper back and it was warm and soft and terrifying. I tried to sit up, and the bed jolted.

The knife went in deeper. I saw blood.

“Canto, what are you doing?”
And my voice sounded shrill to my ears and I hated it.

Finch slid out of the shadows in the hall. “She remembered,” he said, his eyes on mine.

“Is it true?” Canto asked, ignoring me, ignoring Finch, her eyes on River, only River.
“Did you drown him?”

Finch came forward and put his hand on Canto's right arm. “Why don't you hear him out before you gut him?”

Canto paused . . . and then pulled back the knife from River's throat. She moved to the end of the bed and just stared at us, her whole body shaking in little bursts.

“I told her that River went mad from the glow on Carollie, and that he drowned me,” Finch whispered. “But I also told her that Brodie is the real villain. The one we hoped to find, out here in Gold Hollow. The one I was mistaken for in Inn's End.”

Canto kept her hand on the knife and kept staring. River sat up. He put his fingertips to his throat and they came back wet and red.

Canto got up and stood with her back to the rattling window. “Let me tell you about Roman,” she said.

And I squeezed my eyes shut at that, and pictured the boys at the Hag's Shack that first night, and the ones who held me and Neely and Finch on the beach, all of them beautiful and dark-eyed and looking just like the boy on the poster, and I was already sick with sadness before Canto even opened her mouth.

She had stopped shaking. Her arms were stiff at her sides now, her black hair in tight, tight curls. “Roman was a Finnfolk boy. He . . . we used to . . . He was special, even for a Finnfolk. And then one day he just disappeared. Everyone told me it was the Finnfolk way, that he'd gotten bored and run off to the mainland, like half his brothers before him. There was another girl, I knew about her all along, so I believed them . . .”

Canto walked back to the bed. She put her left hand on River's chest, and with her right she put the knife back to his throat. “You drowned him. Didn't you, River.”

River didn't move. None of us did.

“You turned my whole island into your worshiping sea slaves every night just for the fun of it and you drowned Roman and then Finch and all of you lied to me about it when I didn't remember.”

The knife went in, just a little, and blood began to drip again, drip down River's neck and chest and pool in the swoop of Canto's left hand where her thumb met her fingers.

“Canto, put the knife away,” Finch said softly, red, red hair swinging as he shook his head. “Making River bleed won't bring Roman Finnfolk back from the dead.”

Canto kept staring at River. She stared at him like he was a monster.

Or a god.

I'd looked at him like that too, once upon a time.

Then Canto reached her arm back and let out a howl. The knife went flying into the wall across the room, and stuck there.
“You killed him,”
she screamed.

And I didn't know which boy she was referring to, Roman or Finch. Both, I guess.

“Finch told me about Neely's bruises,” she whispered, eyes on River's, still, still, all the steam gone out of her voice. “He figured it out. He figured out how Neely is the only reason you aren't glowing us all up right now and making us be your sea slaves, like before.” She swiped her hands across her cheeks, quick, and then put them back down at her sides. “Do you . . . do you know what that did to me? Watching Finch drown and being too glowed up to do anything about it? And then made to forget for days afterward? You drowned a forest boy and the only person I've ever loved and yet no one here seems to care. Why doesn't anyone care?”

“I care.” River. He'd said nothing up until now. Not one word. And then again. “Canto, I care.”

Silence.

“I was trying to stop.” River put his hands in his dark hair and made it even messier than it was from sleeping and kissing and almost having his throat slit. Blood oozed from the small cuts in his neck and slipped farther down his naked torso. “And I would have succeeded. I was holed up in Canada and not using the glow and everything was going well. I was hanging out on the docks and doing odd jobs when I heard about a story from a passing fisherman. He said there was a sea king with flaming red hair on a North Carolina island . . .” He paused, and I stared at him and his eyes looked deep and lost and sad, sad, sad. “I've started to remember. Bits and pieces. I remember getting to Carollie and . . . and Brodie was there and then he wasn't and then I was the sea king. I didn't drown Roman, Canto. But I think Brodie did.”

Canto and Finch went stock-still, and me too, all of us just stunned and quiet.

Brodie? Brodie had been there first? Had drowned the Finnfolk boy, had sparked up River before going to Inn's End? It was Brodie, all along?

Canto screamed again. Tilted her head back and screamed. And then she was quiet again. The whole room was quiet again.

“It's the truth,” River said. Finally. He blinked fast and his eyelashes grew shiny and wet. “For once, it's the truth.”

Canto glared at River and seethed and seethed like she was the only person in the world who had a right to hate him.

And then, after a few long, long minutes, she started to cry.

Finch put his arms around Canto and led her out of the room, closing the door behind him.

River crawled back into my arms, and he didn't seem rascally or sly anymore. He just seemed . . . naked, and wide-open, and scared.

“It's going to be all right,” I said. My hands pressed into his skin, trying to stop his shaking. “It's going to be all right,” I said, again and again, though I didn't think it would. Not a bit. Not at all.

I
WOKE UP
alone.

Neely and I found River talking to Wild Ann Boe outside in front of the hotel.

She had on a worn, green wool coat, and black boots. She had smooth brown hair and shifty gray eyes, though her smile was nice enough. She jerked when we opened the front door, and then darted across the porch right toward us.

“Have you heard?” she asked. “Have you heard about the missing children?”

I shook my head, but Neely nodded, and it seemed to encourage her.

“I saw them. I saw them following a tall young girl into the woods. She had red hair and played a tin whistle and wore a striped suit, just like in the
Pied Piper of Hamelin
. She led them off into the darkness beyond the mountains.”

The woman paused. Swallowed. Her hands were slim and red and shaking, and she seemed so upset, so genuinely upset, that I pitied her. I did.

“This happened before,” she said. “The children up and disappearing all at once. Sixty years ago all the children followed a beautiful, brown-haired man into the mountains too, and never came back. And then the bear-killer Nathaniel Mellingsather was found cut to pieces next to his own shotgun. Now it's all happening again. Why doesn't anyone care? Why isn't anything being done?”

“Wild Ann Boe, don't you have somewhere to be?” Miss Marple appeared in the doorway behind us, wearing an apron and a cunning look on her small, pointed face.

Wild Ann stared at her. “The children,” she repeated.

“Like those right there?” Miss Marple pointed to two eight- or nine-year-olds as they walked out of the café, their parents following behind.

Wild Ann opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. “Edith, you have the Devil sleeping in your hotel. Did you know?”

Miss Marple sighed and shooed Gold Hollow's gossip away with a flick. Wild Ann turned and slunk off toward the general store.

“She's harmless. Mostly.” Miss Marple, whose real name was Edith, gave us a shrewd-ish smile. “How did you two sleep last night? I thought I heard some screaming at one point, but that could have been the wolves. They get a little close in winter when the food is scarce.”

She stared at us.

Neely didn't say anything. I didn't say anything. The ex-brothel walls were just about as thin as you'd expect them to be, I guess.

“So was it just the wolves, then?” Miss Marple asked.

I nodded, and then, a second later, Neely joined in. I swear I saw a twinkle, a damn twinkling twinkle, in Miss Marple's eyes. I guess she was used to mysterious screams in the night.

“It doesn't look like it now, but another storm is on its way.” Miss Marple pointed one finger at the sky and one at Neely. “You're not going anywhere. Not today.”

I whipped my gaze toward the peaks. She was right. I saw the line of dark, hovering.

Damn it.

A storm was coming, and there was a barn boy in Maine, and no Brodie in Colorado, and Neely was looking more pale and tired every damn minute, and now we were stuck here again,
stuck
—

“You better come inside and have some oatmeal,” Miss Marple said. Her twinkling eyes were staring at me and Neely, and starting to look worried.

≈≈≈

Neely fainted at breakfast.

River was outside again, already finished eating his warm oatmeal with dried figs, cinnamon, cream, and butter. Finch and Canto hadn't come downstairs yet, and we had the place to ourselves. I told Neely what had happened the night before, with Canto, and River, and Brodie, and the Finnfolk boy.

He nodded, got up, and fainted.

I was down on the rug beside him, faster than the space between heartbeats. But Neely just sat up again, shrugged it off, and laughed.
Laughed
.

“You have to stop,” I whispered. “You have to turn it off. It's killing you, Neely. You'll let River suck you dry until you fall apart and crumble into the wind.”

Neely had another bruise under his right eye.

He was covered in them now.

River had noticed. Of course he had. I saw him staring at his brother over breakfast, eyes red and narrowed, the cuts on his neck looking raw and sore. Afterward he put a hand on Neely's shoulder and whispered something in his ear, but Neely only shook his head in response.

I knew River wouldn't want his brother to keep suffering for his sake . . . but I didn't think he was all that eager to go mad again, either. River, more than anyone, knew how bad things could get if he got his glow back.

Neely shook his head, and winced. “I can't. Look at him. Just look at him.”

River stood in a foot of fluffy snow on the sidewalk outside, framed by the hotel window and a shaft of bright yellow sun that seemed to be shining just for him. He looked lean and comfortable and like he owned the place. Behind him, Gold Hollow was still and quiet in the sun and the fresh, deep snow. The whole damn scene was picture perfect and ready for its close-up.

“If I stop, Vi, he'll go back to being the sea king.”

“Maybe he won't.”

“He will.”

“Maybe . . . maybe his madness was only Brodie's spark. And maybe it's worn off now of its own accord.”

Neely laughed his rumbling laugh, though his eyes didn't join in. “Do you honestly believe that?”

I shook my head. Slowly.

But a mad River was better than a dead Neely.

I helped Neely to his feet and he groaned when I touched his back.

“It's going to kill you, Neely,” I said again, and my voice went high at the end.

Neely didn't answer. He just breathed in and out, his hand on his ribs.

And then he fainted again.

He fell to the floor and I half caught him but I couldn't wake him up this time. I screamed his name and Neely's spine straightened in my arms, like someone stretching after setting down a heavy load. I felt something leave him then, felt it snap through the air. I looked outside, onto the porch, and River jerked, jerked like he'd been tugging at the end of a leash and it had finally broken. I saw it clear as day through the window. He spilled his coffee on the snow, and all over Neely's extra pair of boots.

River's expression shifted, and his eyes lost their glint. His arms stretched wide, and his chin pointed up to the sky and he went straight and tall and sea king again. He turned, and wandered off into the snow.

I leaned over Neely, grabbed his rich-boy sweater in my fists, pressed my nose into his neck, and let my brain scream and scream.

≈≈≈

Finch and Canto helped me carry Neely upstairs. We tucked him into bed and I waited for his eyes to open, any second,
come on, Neely,
but nothing. He was cold. Pale. Gray. Just like Finch after River drowned him and dumped him on the sand.

Canto kneeled by the bed and called out Neely's name and then patted his hand and her eyes were wet, and I guess mine were too. She looked at me, her red eyes meeting my red eyes. “Where is he?” she asked. “Where is River?”

I didn't answer.

“Where is he?” Canto asked again. “Violet, you need to find him. We'll stay here. Go.”

I looked at Finch and his eyes were worried and serious and he nodded at me too. “Hurry, Violet.”

I released my grip on Neely's sweater, one hand at a time. I slid off the bed and got to my feet.

“Don't let him die, Finch.”

“I won't,” Finch said, and meant it.

≈≈≈

I found River in the meadow.

He was stretched out on his back in the fluffy snow behind the old cars. A rusted yellow, a rusted black, and a rusted red, lined up before him like a congregation.

His sweater was on the ground beside him, a black lump in the white. And before he even said anything, I knew. It had started again. Already.

“Violet. There you are.” River put his naked arms behind his beautiful head, and smiled up at me. And it wasn't the crooked smile. It was the mad, lost smile.

I was pretty familiar with both by now.

“You're lying half naked in snow. Aren't you cold, River? Don't you even feel it?”

“This is snow?” River lifted his head and looked around him. “I thought it was sand.”

Another snowflake hit my cheek with a cold, wet plop. And then another.

I picked up River's sweater, brushed it off, reached down again, and held out my hand. River grabbed it, and I pulled him to his feet.

“Girl.”

I turned. Wild Ann Boe stepped out from behind the old red car, her old green coat swinging against her calves. “You need to be careful,
girl
.”

I didn't even answer her. I was watching the way River had perked up when she called out to me. Jaw clenched tight, posture erect and kingly. He stared down at Wild Ann over his nose and pointed his glow at her. I could feel it, feel a shift in the air between the two of them.

Her eyes started blinking, blinking fast.

I stepped between River and Boe, as if that would do any good.

But I guess it did because Wild Ann's gray eyes stopped blinking. Widened. She turned them right on me, and they opened up deep, like she was welcoming me to step inside.

“The Devil is holding your hand,
girl,
” she said. “Did you know?”

I froze.

A dark cloud passed overhead.

The sun was gone. It was dusky dark and suddenly the snow was pouring down.

I stood frozen, numb, my feet in the snow.

A raven cawed from somewhere far away, somewhere in the trees at the edge of town.

My wrists started throbbing.

You stop fearing the Devil when you're holding his hand.

Freddie had said that once.

And now here was this Colorado mountain woman standing in front of me, telling me that the Devil's hand was all up in mine.

Wild Ann turned to River, looked up at him, and seemed to forget all about me. Her eyes went blank. Dead. Her thin lips closed. River started humming and she joined him, humming in harmony, as if they were singing a duet, her high, him low. Humming, humming, humming out the nonsense sea sounds . . . the sound of
waves hitting skin, and the tide going in, and fish tails slapping and forest boys flapping . . .

I let go of River's hand.

Wild Ann's eyes darted right to mine again, dead, dead, dead. She stopped humming. “
Girl.
Did you know the Devil was following you? Did you know?”

And then she went back to humming with River.

And I just stood there, letting them.

≈≈≈

I saw the bookmobile first. Parked outside the Hollow Miner Hotel, bright red sides covered in mud and slush, the words THE ECHO LIBRARY BOOKMOBILE painted big and black and barely visible through puffs of snow.

And then I was running. Luke. Me. Bear hug.

I saw Sunshine while I was hugging my brother and smiled at her over his shoulder and she smiled right back.

“We barely made it, Vi,” she said, slow and lazy like it was a fine summer's day out and not a storm roaring and picking up steam. Her blue scarf whipped in the wind. “I hope you appreciate it. Luke had to come. Made me steal the library's bookmobile. My parents are going to murder me—” Sunshine flinched, and put a hand to her head. “They're going to be really pissed off. So I hope it was worth it.”

I let Luke go and squinted at him through the falling snow. God, it was good to see my twin brother again. It really was. “How did you know to come here?”

“After we left Riddle, we went home and checked on Jack and then talked to Sunshine's dad, who confirmed where you went based on the message you left. We barely made it before the storm. The roads were hell. Thank god Sunshine can drive like a guy.”

“But what about the barn boy? It was Brodie, wasn't it?” I had to half shout against the roaring wind—it screamed in my ear and tore at my hair and clothes like some lusty drunk in a Robert Louis Stevenson alley.

“We got there too late. The barn boy was already gone. And the two girls who reported the story are missing. We thought he came here. Have you found him? Have you heard anything?”

River came up behind me and Luke's eyes shifted toward him.

I shook my head. “He's not here. It was just an old woman, spreading rumors.”

Luke swore. He threw a few effs at the stormy sky, and then sunk down to sit on the snowy steps of the hotel. Sunshine went to his side and sat down next to him and put her head on his shoulder.

“It doesn't matter,” I said. “It really doesn't matter. I'm just glad you're here. I was worried about you. Both of you.”

“Ditto,” Luke called out against the wind, meeting my eyes and giving me one of his rare genuine smiles. “I see you found River,” he added, his eyes back on William Redding III, on his long, uncut hair, snowflakes swirling around him and falling on his shoulders.

“Sort of,” I said.

And then River started singing again, mouth open, head back . . . but his voice was drowned out by the storm.

≈≈≈

The blizzard raged outside.

Neely's fever raged inside.

I brought Luke and Sunshine and River upstairs, to Neely. River saw his brother stretched out on the bed, still as midnight. He kept humming, but he reached for my hand, his fingers closing around mine, still so damn familiar and comforting, despite
The Devil is holding your hand, girl,
despite everything.

Canto's eyes softened as she watched us standing there, our hands wrapped up together.

Neely slept on and Luke drew me into the hallway and made me tell him everything—Carollie, sea king, Neely, everything. And afterward he hugged me tight.

We spent the rest of the day inside, taking turns watching over Neely. His breathing was ragged and too quiet and his face was sunken and pale, and I felt broken, crushed, in my heart, in my soul, everywhere, damn it, damn it all.

The storm made twilight come early.