Between the Spark and the Burn (17 page)

Miss Marple sent three shots of brandy up to Neely—we told her he had the flu. Though she probably figured out that something more was going on.

The storm beat against the windowpanes and made them twitch and shake. The wind howled down the chimney.

“Violet,” River said to me as I began to climb the stairs back to Neely's room, to relieve Finch and Canto from his side so they could eat supper.

I turned around.

And that was all it took. He didn't even need to touch me this time. He'd gotten past all that. Way past. Now he could do it just by saying my name.

My eyes closed. I heard River's heartbeat, each soft thrust of his pulse. I felt the rocking of the waves, rocking my body to and fro, to and fro. I heard
selkies slipping out of their skins, slick, squishy grins, discarded flippers, zip, zipping zippers, sea breaming, ships screaming, sleep, sleeping in the deep, deeping . . .

I forced my eyes open. Slapped my hand down hard on the banister and squeezed.

Dizzy. Sick. Seasick.

This had been happening off and on since the cars and Wild Ann Boe. Supper was already a blur—the memory hazy around the edges, like it had been smeared with oil.

The feeling, the sea king feeling, the singing-in-the-sea feeling, was . . .

Everywhere.

In my head and in my heart and under my skin and in my bones.

River didn't want to be the sea king anymore. I know he didn't. Yet . . .

Neely woke up, sometime near midnight. He opened his eyes and I was the first to know since I was lying on the bed curled next to him.

“I'm okay, Vi,” he said, just like that.

And I guess I should have gotten up and danced and sang for joy. But I didn't. I didn't move. I didn't say a word. Some deep part of me thought I was holding him together somehow, my arms around his chest and my cheek nestled into the hollow of his throat, and if I let go he would break into a million snowflake-sized pieces and float away on the winter storm.

“Violet,” he whispered. His breath hit the back of my neck and my spine glowed, all the way down.

“Violet,” he whispered again.

And he kept on whispering, secret, whispery things that made my damn heart swell, on and on until I thought it would burst right through my chest, cracking ribs on its way out . . .

And then.

“But none of that matters, Vi,” he said. He kissed my closed eyelids. “You need to be with River. He's too strong and he used too much glow and I can't control him anymore. But you . . . you cut through his glow-crazy and he tries to be better, for your sake.” Neely shuddered, quick, quiet. “Go back to him. He needs you more than me.”

And I thought my heart would shrivel up at this, go hard and tight and mean like a street-starved dog.

But it didn't.

It just kept . . . glowing.

I left Neely and went down the hall and climbed into bed with River.

River mumbled beside me, and he reeked of sea and salt again.

Freddie, what's going to happen to us? Neely and River and fevers and sea kings and drowned Roman Finnfolk and mountains and storms and my heart aches aches aches and where the hell is Brodie and . . .

And I guess that's when it occurred to me. The thought that scared the bejesus out of me, scared me out of my gosh darn Freddiedamned mind.

What if . . .

What if the entire time we'd been hunting down Brodie . . .

He'd been hunting down us?

April

The first time.

In the wine cellar of Will's Manhattan townhouse.

My parents were both zozzled by six on rye whiskey and sweet vermouth. My mother tried to hoist me onto her friend's son between cocktails, a boy named Lucas White. He was heir to a shipping fortune and everything she wanted me to have.

I wore my jade necklace and my blue eyes and a white summer dress—one of three my mother had brought home from Paris that spring.

The Buccaneers. That's what people called the Reddings. Will's parents were notorious in New York City for spiffy parties and bottomless cocktails and affairs and scandals and hushed-up bastard babies and dabblings in the occult. But I thought they were glamorous and mysterious and everything I wanted to be.

The Reddings and the Glenships and my parents, Klaus and Sadie Van Homan, moved in the same richie New York circles. We'd all grown up together, all us children, all stayed up too late at parties because our parents were too drunk to call the car around to take us home. We'd all tried Scottish whiskey and bathtub gin before we stopped believing in Santa Claus. All been sent off to boarding schools before we knew how to spell our last names.

Will had just been another boy, another son of my parents' friends. He pulled my hair, dared me to throw my shoes off the roof of our building, taught me to smoke, showed me how to mix a mean mint julep.

But suddenly he was fifteen. And I was fifteen. And everything had changed.

Mrs. Redding turned out the lights because it was time to contact the spirits and the women screamed with delight and the men hummed with drink and what was to come and Will found my hand in the dark and pulled me downstairs.

The party went on screaming above, louder now that the lights were out, and their footsteps tapped out a rhythm on the ceiling overhead. The wine cellar had a trick wooden panel to keep out the nosy cops. We climbed through it and it snapped shut behind us. It was big and dark and smelled of wood and grapes and cool basement air.

Will opened a bottle of gin. He drank, and then I drank, and at first I thought the burn was coming from the liquor sizzling its way down my throat, and maybe it was, but then Will's lips were on mine and everything was burning, burning . . .

I thought the burning was love and I thought back then that love trumped all.

And afterward, as we lay on the floor, naked and scared and stunned, Will took my hand and said, “What did we just do?”

And then he grabbed me and held me. My cheek touched his hair and his nose touched my milky green necklace, the one he would later take from me, and keep with him always, because it reminded him of this night.

After a while, a long while, we got dressed. But we still didn't go upstairs.

I sat there, worrying a bit about bastard babies, until Will took my hand again. I felt his heat shoot through me, into me, same as the gin that had burned down my throat.

“I want to do something for you, Freddie. Something only I can do. If . . . if you could see anything, anything in the world right now, what would it be?”

“Anthony,” I said, not missing a beat.

Anthony used to sing me silly songs and swing me above his head and buy me little presents and tell me stories until I went to sleep. I loved him as much as any sister loved a brother. And he died like an animal, down in the mud and blood, in France.

Anthony.

Anthony.

In front of me. In his army uniform. One moment it was Will and then it was Anthony, smiling, his lips looking like he'd just said my name. I stood up. I cried out. I opened my arms to him . . .

He melted away. Dissolved into the bottles of wine. Like he'd never been. There was just Will. Only Will.

“I made that happen,” Will said, kind of grand and proud. “I can make things happen. It started a few weeks ago, and I thought I was going out of mind, but now . . .”

I screamed.

And screamed.

My screams joined the screams of the women upstairs. No one heard me, except Will. I threw my arm back and brought it forward and hit Will across the face as hard as I'd ever hit anything in my life.

And then, after his nose finally stopped bleeding, after his shirt was covered in soft, wet red, I took him in my arms.

I told him everything was going to be all right.

I told him I loved him.

I told him to never, ever, ever do that thing again, the thing that he had done with Anthony. He promised he wouldn't. He promised me with his whole heart.

≈≈≈

The wind screeched through the window and I jerked out of sleep.

Raw and naked and not a stitch.

Both of us.

What had almost happened before, after the bully last summer, and again in the Lillian shack . . .

The water sliding between us, over us, under us, pushing us together, Violet White and the Sea King, like in the story, except there was no story, not yet, no story of shacks and sailors and shanties and shipwrecks and ravens and wrists and seaweed and sand . . .

It had almost happened again.

River was tucked into my side and he was smiling in his sleep and he had no idea what he was doing or what was going on.

And it was as I lay there, still as death, skin to skin with a mad Redding boy . . . that I put two and two together. That I connected the dots.

“You need to be careful, girl.”

It was the scar. That was the first thing. I'd seen it when he was sleeping in front of the fire after being in the sea. A scar on the left side of his chest, right over his heart. I'd thought it was a shadow until I'd run my finger over it. He'd opened his eyes, and something . . . flickered . . . inside them, and inside me. But then a moment later I'd forgotten all about it. Almost like I was meant to.

“The Devil is holding your hand, girl.”

The second thing.

In the hallway, after I'd crawled out of Neely's arms and was on my way to River's . . . someone called out my name. I turned to find him standing outside his door, shivering in a fresh flurry of snow that blew in from a crack underneath one of the Hollow Miner's windows.

“Neely woke up,” I said.

Finch nodded, and smiled.

And then the smile disappeared.

“So you're going back to River.”

“Neely asked me to,” I said. “River needs me more.”

He held my gaze, and then nodded. Slowly. “Forget about River, and forget about Neely. What do you want, Vi? Who is it that
you
need?”

I walked down the hall, right up to him. I put my hand on his heart, felt the pulse underneath. “You are so good. How did you get to be so good? My grandmother Freddie used to say that everyone has a little evil in them. But not you. Why is that?”

He took my hand, and his eyes were clear and bright and true. “Being good is as easy as being bad. You just have to put your mind to it.”

And I laughed, a small, soft laugh, and had warm feelings about him . . .

Though something had seemed wrong, even at the time. Something I couldn't put my finger on.

The third thing.

Freddie's diary. Will becoming Freddie's dead brother and then becoming Will again. And River, turning into my mother in the guesthouse kitchen . . .

Pay attention, Vi. Don't sink back into it, don't let it in
 . . .

I turned over, shifting slowly so I didn't disturb River. I sat up, and pressed my toes into the cold, cold floor.

“Edith, you have the Devil sleeping in your hotel. Did you know?”

The storm beat against the windows and whined to be let in.

“Vi, where are you going?” River whispered.

“Nowhere,” I lied. “I'm just going to get a shot of cognac from the bar. I'll be right back.”

“Violet?”

“Yeah?” I looked at him over my shoulder.

“I love you.” River looked at me. Straight at me. Sane as sunshine. “I love you. I love you as
certain obscure things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul
.”

“That's one of my favorite poems,” I said.

And then I dressed, left the room, and walked down the hall.

“Neely.” He sighed in his sleep, and didn't move. I shook his shoulder, pressing my fingers into his soft, bare skin. How I hated to do it. He needed the sleep, damn it.

Shut up, Violet. You don't have a choice.

I shook him again. I felt the ridge of his scar under my fingertips. “Neely, wake up. It's important.”

“What is it, Vi?” Neely yawned, and gave me a sleepy smile. “Did you hear the wolves howling again?” He reached out and pulled me down to the bed, sleepy, sleepy.

I cuddled up into his arms and thought about just staying there and not saying anything about anything. Ever.

“I need you,” I whispered, a few minutes later.

There was a long pause. And then Neely sighed. “Is this about River?”

I shook my head. I put my hand to his face, my fingers on his new bruise. “Can you get dressed?”

Neely knew something was wrong. He'd woken up all the way now and the sleepy look was replaced with worry and strain. But he didn't ask any questions. He just slipped on his clothes and followed me down the hall.

We listened at the door.

Silence. No talking, no sheets rustling.

I didn't knock.

I turned the knob. Quiet, so quiet. Quiet as Poe and
The Tell-Tale Heart
and the
very, very slowly, so that I might not disturb the old man's sleep
.

I pushed open the door. Stepped one foot in, then another. I saw curly black hair lying next to red. Quiet, quiet, quiet, I walked over to them. Neely followed.

Eyes closed. Breathing soft. It was now or never. I pointed at the red hair, turned to Neely, and nodded.

He looked at me, uncomprehending. But he nodded back. He inhaled twice, short and quick. His eyes half closed in a wince and I felt the air sizzle around me.

I looked down. Down to Finch, sprawled on the bed, his arms around Canto.

At first I thought it was a trick of the eerie blue blizzard light outside, streetlamps reflecting off the snow.

Finch started to . . . shimmer. And then grow blurry. And then shimmer again.

I blinked. Rubbed my eyes.

Finch had . . .
stretched
.

He was a foot taller, toes sticking out of the blankets and touching the bed frame.

And his body was no longer Gene Kelly strong. It was skinny. Skin and bones skinny. Ichabod Crane and Uriah Heap skinny.

The red hair, though. That stayed exactly the same.

I pressed my fist to my mouth but I didn't scream. Neely put his arms around my waist and pulled me back into the corner of the room, into the shadows. “This whole time,
this whole damn time,
” I whispered, over and over. But it hadn't caught up to me yet, was still lying in wait, gathering its strength . . .

I saw Brodie's eyelids flutter. And then close again.

Finch was Brodie.

Had always been Brodie.

I felt sick, shivering, mucky, sweaty, sick. There was a roaring in my ears like I was underwater, drinking in the sea, like Roman, like Canto, like Finch—

Neely started to shake. His whole body, shaking like leaves on trees. And I thought maybe he was crying at first, but no, it was just the shaking. “He's my half brother. He tried to kill you. I should have known,” he whispered. “He could have killed us at any time, could have killed you, could have killed River—”

I tried to picture myself holding one of the knives, the one I'd grabbed from the picnic basket before waking up Neely, tried to picture myself sticking it in, through skin, through muscle, between bone, ignoring the screams, and the flailing, and the blood, pushing back the fear, I had to hit his heart this time, I had to get it all the way in . . .

I couldn't do it.

I didn't have to stand over him, didn't have to see the red hair, to know.

I couldn't kill Brodie.

Because he wasn't just Brodie. He was Finch now too.

Remember.
Remember Sunshine and the bat and the blood on Jack's back and your gushing wrists and your lips on his . . .

I slid out of Neely's arms.

I would do it.

I would.

Freddie, I'm going to do it.

I can't stop, I can't think, I can't let the fear fill me up, I can't let the doubt in, Neely is staring at me, he's still shaking, don't think about Neely, Vi, just go, go, go, red hair, don't look, don't look at Brodie's face, what if he looks like Finch, don't look, Vi, see his wrist? Look at his wrist, keep looking at it, slide the knife across, just slide it across, do it . . .

Now—

I did it. The knife slipped over his skin, like it was dancing, a thin red line . . .

. . . and then Brodie's eyes were open and he was screaming and Canto's eyes were open and she was screaming and everything was blur and chaos and Neely was there and I dropped the knife and scuttled backward, Neely beside me, our backs against the wall, like an execution, and Canto was sitting up and staring at Brodie and still screaming and then Brodie was staring at his wrist as the blood came and my only thought was,
What have I done? What the hell have I done?

“You cut him.” Neely's eyes weren't looking at me, only looking at Brodie, just Brodie. “Why didn't you ask me first? Damn it, Vi.
Why didn't you ask me first?
”

“Well, that's the million-dollar question, isn't it, brother.” Brodie held his bleeding wrist in his left hand and then he was right there in front of me, naked from the waist up, River-style, and it made him seem even younger, somehow. The pajama bottoms hung limp on his skin and bones, and he was tall and lank and red hair, just like before, just like last summer . . . but he didn't have the cowboy hat and his drawl had faded and I didn't know what to think or who he was or what to believe.