Stolen Away (3 page)

I climbed inside, kneeling on the window seat, where Elvis was hissing, his every hair on end.

Outside, Lucas swung his sword once, twice.

Crows cawed indignantly, a few flying toward the quiet of the park. He was repeating some kind of rhyme, but I couldn’t make out the words.

A crow landed on the ledge in front of me. I’d always liked the crows.

I didn’t like this one.

His eyes were too yellow, wrong somehow. Elvis swiped out a paw, missed. I could have sworn the crow laughed. A few more joined it—enough of them that I slammed the glass shut and slipped Lucas’s necklace over my head. It was heavy, made of iron nails twisted into the surprisingly
delicate shape of a leaping stag with some sort of leaf in its antlers.

One of the crows pecked at the glass so viciously that it cracked, blooming like a frost flower. I almost missed seeing Lucas blur, as if he were a watercolor painting soaked too long. He wavered, shimmered, and leaped off the roof.

The crows fled.

“Shit, oh, shit.” I rushed outside and peered over the railing, holding my breath. I didn’t want to see his broken body on the pavement below. I had to call 911.

I peeked.

He was gone.

“That’s impossible,” I said out loud. I leaned farther out but there was still no trace of Lucas, just a hawk riding an air current.

Disappearing boys in medieval costumes on top of crazy crows and crazier old women. Clearly
I
was crazy too. Because I should be snuggling under my blanket, dreaming about Robert Pattinson, not on the roof inspecting the balcony for crows and weird cute guys swinging medieval weapons over their head. But there was nothing here: no ladder at the side of the building, no window washer’s scaffolding, nothing to explain Lucas’s vanishing into thin air.

Nothing.

Only moonlight and the neon glow of the bar sign down the street. All perfectly ordinary; so ordinary, in fact, that
I might have imagined the whole thing if it weren’t for the iron stag around my neck.

I went back inside and sat on the lumpy couch, staring out the window. Maybe I had the flu. I felt my forehead. I was kind of warm; it could be a fever-induced hallucination. Of course, the stifling heat inside the apartment could explain my clammy skin just as easily. So maybe it was heatstroke.

Which still didn’t explain the very solid presence of the iron pendant.

I scrubbed at my face, as if that could wipe my brain clean.

Lucas had mentioned my aunt Antonia. I had her cell phone number, but she only ever answered it during the winter. She traveled out of the country during the summer months. I dialed it just in case, but there was no answer.

I put the kettle on for rose hip tea. My mom always made it when she was stressed out. An impending psychiatric breakdown was stressful. I was adding three spoonfuls of honey when Mom came in. She raised her eyebrows at the tea, tossing her keys in the ceramic bowl by the door. She’d made it during her pottery phase, and it was painted with pirate skulls. “Bad night, honey?”

I wasn’t sure how much to tell her. I didn’t want to end up in a doctor’s office until I figured it out. Because I didn’t feel crazy. Then again, wasn’t that a sign of
being
crazy? The iron stag slipped under the collar of my shirt when I moved
to put the kettle back on the stove. The cold iron brushed my skin, grounding me. No, there was definitely something going on. It wasn’t as simple as a hallucination. Besides, I reminded myself, Jo and Devin and even Bianca had seen Lucas at the ice cream parlor. If nothing else, he was real.

“There’s the weirdest thing outside,” she said, crossing to the window and climbing out onto the roof. “Come and see.”

Oh my God. Lucas’s broken body really was on the sidewalk.

I dashed past her and slammed into the railing in my haste to look out. My brain kicked in belatedly. If Lucas was down there lying in his own blood, not only would there be ambulances, but I was pretty sure Mom wouldn’t want me to see that kind of thing.

“Look,” she said softly, pointing to the telephone wire across the street. Bright red cardinals perched on the line, watching us. Another landed on the corner of the building next door. “Aren’t they beautiful?”

We watched them for a long time, their feathers red as raspberries.

“Have you heard from Aunt Antonia lately?” I asked, in what I hoped was a casual, normal tone.

She shook her head. “You know how she is.” Her gaze slid away from mine.

“She’s not in trouble, is she?”

“Why do you ask that?”

I shrugged. “Just wondering. Her cell phone’s off again.”

“She’s probably out of range. Or she’s avoiding collection agencies.”

It was a logical explanation.

But it didn’t ring true for some reason.

Especially when Mom hurried inside to fill a water bottle for the empty birdbath on the roof. She refused to meet my eyes, rushing so that she sloshed water on the floor. She didn’t even stop to wipe it up. She
always
wiped up spills and messes, even the dust visible only to Mom-eyes.

And she was dismissive of Antonia, even though I knew they were close. Whenever Antonia came home for Christmas, they whispered late into the night, as if they were at a slumber party. But neither of them answered direct questions. Why hadn’t I noticed that before? I felt strange, as if I were waking up from a convoluted dream I could only half remember.

There was definitely something going on.

Especially when she went straight to her room after a quick good night. She shut the door firmly behind her.

I focused on the few details I had. Lucas. The pendant. Antonia. Antonia was the only mystery I could work on right now. Though I did check the phone book for Lucas Richelieu. Not a single person with that last name in Rowan. I’d have to go to Jo’s and use her Internet to google him. In the meantime, I gathered up the family photo albums, even the small one Mom thought I didn’t know about. It was the only one with photos of my father.

I went into my room and sat on the bed, flipping through the albums. Mom and Antonia as babies, my grandparents. Granddad looked kind in his faded pin-striped suit. Grandma just looked kind of scary. The prom night pictures of Mom and Antonia were my favorite. The teased and crimped hair alone offered hours of entertainment. Mom at her first art show, sporting a very pink mohawk; Mom selling brownies at the school bake sale last year. We’d had so much fun that day. At the PTA meeting, the principal had suggested that parents dress appropriately, and everyone knew he meant Mom. So she did her hair in rollers and we wore fifties-style dresses and pearls. She looked like Bettie Page or a particularly evil version of Marilyn Monroe. The other moms had sniffed. But Mom was a better baker than they were, so our table sold out before noon.

There weren’t a lot of pictures of Antonia after she turned sixteen, and the few I could find were from Christmas. Our purple tree glittered in the background, tilting slightly under the weight of handmade ornaments. They were mostly paintings of Elvis Presley and fifties pinup girls that Mom did on the back of coasters she took from the bar.

In one of the photographs, Antonia and Mom toasted the camera with glasses of red wine. Antonia was laughing so hard she was falling over. The flash glinted off a pendant slipping out of her peasant blouse.

An iron stag with a leaf in its antlers.

I heard the murmur of Mom’s voice through the thin
walls as I tried to figure out what it meant, if it even meant anything at all. I crept to my open window, knowing hers would be open as well since the building didn’t have air-conditioning. I leaned out, listening carefully. Who could she be calling at one o’clock in the morning? I stretched farther out and caught the last few words.

“Antonia, call me. I think it’s starting.”

Saturday

I drove out to my grandparents’ farm under a sky the color of bleached bone. Heat wavered off the road, making the trees shimmy. The brown lawns of town gave way to fields of equally brown burned-looking corn and soybeans. My grandparents already lost ten acres of corn, and the stalks stood like forlorn guards with shriveled leaves and papery husks on one side of the winding lane. The pumpkin patches looked thirsty but they might survive. Even then, the harvest might not be enough to pay the necessary bills. The apple orchard was all that was currently standing between them and the last bank loan they were likely to convince anyone to give them, ever.

I loved the farm. I spent my summers here and every
autumn weekend until November. My parents weren’t interested, especially Mom, who grew up here and left as soon as she could. Rowan wasn’t exactly the big city, but at least there were no barns, no chores, and no squinting up at the sky every morning wondering if the weather was going to destroy your crops. The fact that I loved it did a lot to alleviate the tension between her and my grandparents. They wanted to leave her the thirty-two-and-a-half acres as a family legacy, but she wanted nothing to do with them. I happily spent as much time as I could here, especially since my bratty little brother, Cole, didn’t like the farm either.

Nanna was on the porch, her short white hair spiky around her lined face. She wore jeans and sneakers and a faded T-shirt with the farm logo. I was wearing jeans too, and the same T-shirt. This was the only place I ever wore jeans. I usually preferred long, lacy skirts and any blouse with medieval bell sleeves. Not exactly practical on the farm. I even had my hair in two long braids under a pink straw cowboy hat. No one at school would recognize me.

“Jo, you’re early, pumpkin.” Nanna smiled at me. Her golden retriever, Apple Betty, panted at me, her tail thumping listlessly on the porch floorboards. “Have some lemonade.”

I gulped two glasses, the cold juice hitting the back of my throat. It was already humid and gross out. Granddad hoarded
Farmer
s’
Almanac
s like they were gold. He’d gone through every issue and couldn’t find a hotter September or October on record.

“I don’t think it’s going to rain,” I said miserably.

She patted my cheek. “Don’t you worry on it. Rain comes when it wants to.” I’d tried telling my Environmental Science teacher that once, but he’d disagreed. I wanted to see him try and convince my grandmother otherwise. I had to grin at the image. She’d decimate him. “There’s my girl,” she said approvingly, not knowing what I was smiling at. “Go on and say hello to the old bastard.”

“I’m telling Granddad you’re calling him names again,” I teased.

She snorted. Old Bastard was the name of their goat. He was the oldest goat on the planet. He just refused to die. He was half-blind and he head-butted anything that moved, even if he did miss his target half the time. But he loved Granddad.

“Bring him a glass,” Nanna said, handing me another jelly jar of lemonade. I crossed the rut worn into the grass from countless daily walks to the barn. Old Bastard was the only animal they had left, except for Apple Betty, some chickens, and the barn cats.

I could hear Granddad cussing him. “Get outside, you lazy thing,” he said.

Old Bastard stayed where he was, chewing on one of the doors. The barn was dark, the air thick with dust and the smell of hay. I’d spent countless summer afternoons in the barn loft, eating Popsicles and reading novels about Anne Boleyn and Eleanor of Aquitaine. My parents were still
trying to convince me to go to university and be a history teacher like Mom, but I just wanted to write historical novels, like Phillipa Gregory and Victoria Holt, and run the farm.

“Hi, Granddad.” I handed him the glass. At the sound of my voice, Old Bastard made a weird goat sound and charged me. I leaped out of the way, and he got distracted by one of the fences.

Granddad shook his head. “He never did take a shine to you.” He wiped his face with a bandana. “Loopy old thing.”

I kissed his leathery cheek. His eyes were squintier than usual, and he smelled like cigars. “You’ve been smoking,” I accused.

He shot a guilty glance at the porch of the house, as if Nanna could hear us. “Be a good girl and keep a secret.” He slipped me a dollar. He’d been bribing me since I was three years old.

I grinned. “Okay, but you know those are bad for you.”

He wagged a finger. “Smoking is bad for
you
. I’m an old man.” He wiped his face again. “Hard summer, pumpkin. Hard summer.”

I hugged him, feeling useless and sad for him. “I know, Granddad.”

“Main well up and quit on us yesterday,” he said. “Turned on the hose and nothing came out.”

I winced. Wells only ran dry when it was so hot that even the groundwater running under the fields dropped too low for the pump to grab. They had two other wells, but the main
one watered the crops and the orchards. Granddad looked about a hundred years old. It was alarming.

He must have caught the worry radiating off me. “We’ll get through. We always do. Just have to call a water witch to find us a new well. Trouble is, she’s overbooked.” He flashed his usual toothy grin. “Go on, Jo-bug, before the Old Bastard makes a run at you again.”

Last time he’d caught me, I had a bruise on my butt and couldn’t sit comfortably for a week. I went around the other side of the farm fence, wisely keeping it between us. “You’re sure?”

“Your grandmother just snuck off to the orchard,” he tattled. “You know she’s not supposed to climb those ladders alone.”

I was crossing the lane toward the fruit orchards when Devin’s car rumbled up the driveway, chased by a huge cloud of dust. I blinked at him and Eloise when they climbed out.

“Dev, she got you up at this hour?” They were both decidedly
not
morning people. “Blackmail? Death threats?”

“I am an awesome friend.” Devin yawned.

“He really is,” Eloise agreed. She was wearing a gingham blouse, nipped in at the waist, and a huge white flower pinned behind her ear. “Plus, I bribed him with caffeine.” She handed me a paper cup of iced coffee. “I need your Internet.” Devin’s computer was in his room and his mom wouldn’t let girls up there, even if it was just Eloise or me. Actually,
especially
if it was us. “And backup.”