The May Queen Murders (12 page)

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didn’t leave mine. This time, I didn’t hold back and allowed the kiss

to widen. The relief of knowing I’d been wrong kept me floating. The

way he touched me grounded me, held me stil .

We sat with Rook’s arms draped around me, my body tucked

against his. I reached up to stroke the back of his head, pull him in

for another kiss, and my fingers threaded through his dark hair. Be-

ing next to him felt good. Better than good — as if my body smiled.

Rook’s head rested on my shoulder. “About two years ago, you left

your sketchbook in the art room at school. You draw real y wel .”

“No . . .” I swallowed back an embarrassed groan. He’d seen my

drawings, not just the ones I’d drawn in front of him that he knew

about, but now the others from when I was alone, daydreaming,

wishing. So many of him. The only person I allowed to see them was

Heather. If Rook had seen all of them, there was no denying how I

felt about him.

“Don’t get like that,” he said and prevented my hands from cover-

ing my face. “I have drawings of you, too.”

“You do?” I asked.

“They ain’t good, not like yours.”

Who knew how long we could’ve gone on, too afraid to grab the

other’s attention? When all that time I hoped Rook noticed me, he

had. Now that he pressed kisses along my jaw, I didn’t want him to

stop.

“Please don’t go,” I whispered. “Promise me you won’t leave the

Glen. Heather’s already leaving me behind.”

Rook pulled back. “What do you mean? She’s always with you.”

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“Not anymore. She’s running off all hours of the night. I lie to

cover her secrets. She’s hiding things.”

“Like what?”

I told Rook everything. How she’d been in the stable with some-

body she wouldn’t identify. How she quit walking to school with me.

How I’d seen her smoking weed with Milo. Rook listened as I con-

fessed everything I knew, everything that frightened me.

Heather had grown tired of me.

Heather wouldn’t heed the warnings.

“I’m scared,” I said, and I realized I was shaking. The wind wasn’t

so cold that I should’ve been trembling. “If I don’t do something,

she —”

“You can’t do anything,” Rook interrupted. “Heather has her own

life.”

“And if she gets herself hurt? Or worse?”

“I . . .” His attention went to the steep embankment.

I twisted around to see a flicker of red. A few rocks clicked to-

gether while rolling to the river. I jerked my hands off Rook and

scrambled to my feet, cursing under my breath.

She’d been here. She’d seen me with him, heard everything I’d said,

her secrets. I charged up to the fields in time to see her running.

A dash of curls.

A ruffle of a skirt.

A drop disappearing into the bloody hand of sunset.

Heather.

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Chapter Seven

The Markle girl, the sister, it’s hard to think of what she

must’ve gone through.

No one set about courtin’ her even though she was the

right age.

No one wanted that devil she had for a brother as their

kin.

Whimsy ran at a full gallop, matching my frenzy. I had to explain

what Heather had heard, why I was with Rook, and I prayed she’d

believe me, because the threads holding us were already so tenuous.

How simple would it be for one to snap? Then others would break,

and we’d no longer be tied together.

It wasn’t that I wanted everything to stay the same.

I wanted a change too. A life where I was noticed.

She’d jumped ahead without me. I’d never meant to hold her back,

and she must’ve felt like I had tied a string around her dragonfly and

never let her fly farther than her tether.

Find the red. Find Heather.

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Whimsy clomped across the earth. I had left Rook behind, telling

him to go home, that I’d find him later. I gripped the leather reins

and crossed the despairing lands. Spring in the Ozarks should’ve

been vibrant, but there was no life in the fields. The trees greened

while the fields remained the bare dirt of freshly dug graves, scare-

crows standing by as mourners.

I was leading Whimsy along the winding curve of the river close

to Promise Bridge when I saw a splash of color bolting through Pot-

ter’s Field. Since I couldn’t take the horse across the bridge, I dis-

mounted, trusting my mare to graze.

“Stay, Whimsy,” I murmured as I unclipped her reins. “Please

stay.”

Her ears pricked, dark eyes wide. Maybe she understood. As hard

as it was to leave her when other animals had been killed, I had to

believe she would be safe.

I made my way across the bridge’s splintering boards and down

the cove. My thumb snagged a blackberry vine’s pricker, and I licked

the wound, a smear of metal and salt spreading across my teeth. Even

after drawing my thumb from my mouth, the blood rinsed across my

skin, spiraling through the rings of my thumbprint.

“You’re bleeding.”

Heather came out from behind the blackberries and stared at the

red glisten, fists clenched.

“I-I’ll be fine. Look, Heather, I can explain —”

“You had no right to tell him those things.”

Her eyes went to the acorn necklace lying below my throat, and

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she wrapped her fingers around it, squeezing as if she meant to crush

it. I squirmed and pried away her fingers, tucking the necklace inside

my shirt. Heather’s lips curled back as she watched me, and then she

tipped her head and laughed. The sound wasn’t wind chimes tin-

kling. It was glass shattering. She shook her head, jiggling the bel s

and beads braided through her hair. My eyes met hers, and her teeth

were sharp and set hard.

“I t-told him ’cause we’re both worried about you,” I said. “You’ve

always known how I feel about Rook, so, yeah, I talked to him. Sorry

if it makes you angry that I care.”

“You care, huh?” she growled. “So that’s why you’re suddenly all

over Rook’s lap? You just have to be like me. Stop it. Stop it now!”

“H-Heather.” My throat was tight, my tongue dumb.

“You gotta get your own life!” she shouted. “It’s like you want to
be

me. You always have. You spy on me. It’s obsessed. It’s sick.”

“I-I —” My fish mouth opened and shut, opened and shut. The

graveyard blurred. The quarried stone markers tilted sideways, and

I wasn’t sure if I leaned forward, falling to the ground, or if the earth

somehow rolled up to meet me. “It ain’t like that! You’re never around

anymore, and I’m scared you’re runnin’ away! I talked to Rook ’cause

I needed to tell someone.”

She crossed her arms. “No, you told him ’cause you put him over

me. I see how you look at Rook. You gotta have what I have, do what

I do. God, Ivy, love isn’t only romance and secrets. It’s blood. It’s gory.

It gets ugly. You want that? Are you ready to get gross with someone?”

She started through the graveyard, and I followed her past the

etched stones, yelling, “Y-you know what’s gross? Runnin’ around

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the st-stable with someone at night, slutting off to the trailer p-p-

park. You ain’t in love. You’re just lookin’ to get laid and get high —”

Heather wheeled around, her hand colliding with my face, and

my neck twisted hard. My knees hit the ground first, then my palms,

bits of rock biting my flesh. The burn in my eyes turned watery, but

Heather radiated fury as she glared at me. “S-s-stop s-s-stuttering,

Ivy.” She snorted. “And stop following me everywhere.”

“I follow you ’cause you’re gonna get yourself killed!” I scrambled

up from the ground, a heap of blue skirt, black hair, and mud. If

Heather didn’t think I could be ugly and gross, I could. “The signs

say s-s-something terrible’s gonna happen, and it’s gonna happen to

you ’cause you don’t watch your back. Like you’re so damn special.

Either someone’s gonna get pissed that you’re skanking around with

the rollers or some roller might well do it, but you’re gonna wind up

dead! M-Mamie always said to watch the signs —”

“Enough! I don’t want you lookin’ out for me. I know what I’m

doing. I don’t need Mamie’s warnings. They’re lies, Ivy, to make us

afraid of what’s out
there.
You know what’s out there? People who

think we’re freaks. You ain’t stoppin’ me. Now, get outta my way!”

“Heather, I —”

“Don’t talk to me. You’re a ghost. You’re so worried about who’s

gonna die, who’s gonna be torn up like the dogs. It’s you. You’re dead.

To me.”

My heart fell from my chest to my hips. The noises I made while

struggling to speak were pig squeals, hideous and awkward.

Heather cupped her hands around her mouth. “Hey, Birch Mar-

kle, come and get me!”

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“I-I wouldn’t —”

“Of course, you wouldn’t. That’s the point. I’m not letting you be

my shadow anymore. Get a life. You can’t have mine.”

Tears welled in my eyes, hotter than my flushed skin as they

pooled in the corners before dribbling down my cheeks. My chest

was tight. I couldn’t breathe. Every harsh word Heather spoke ripped

through me.

I col apsed against the brambles. Heather stalked off through Pot-

ter’s Field, trailing along a path into the woods. I didn’t follow. My

body crumpled, the strength of my muscles gone and leaving behind

my shaking bones.

I shook so hard that I felt myself break.

"

Night smothered the last crimson streak of sunlight. I had no lan-

tern. At the cemetery’s edge, the trees jabbed the heavens. The bats

winged from their roosts in the forest, their bodies taking flight like

charred bits of paper.

I didn’t go home.

I spread myself flat on top of a grave, my back to the earth while

the night swam. The dirt beneath me was chilled, but I scarcely felt

it. I didn’t want to feel anything.

There’d be no forgiveness, no mending of broken threads. Such

things couldn’t be restitched.

I hadn’t tried taking anything from Heather, her privacy, her love,

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her life. I wanted none of it. I wanted my
own.
There was no explain-

ing that. She talked too fast and too angrily. Too frantic. Some panic

was in her. But I was angry. Raging. My tongue, swollen with venom,

hadn’t said the right things.

Slumber weighed on my eyelids. Yet a tingle of fear rooted in the

base of my skul . I shouldn’t have been out there. Something shuffled

in the dead underbrush of the woods. I rolled to my side, half expect-

ing to catch sight of a deer or coyote. There was nothing. Only the

forest where Heather had disappeared. All at once, the time I’d lain

in Potter’s Field stretched and removed me from the safety of home.

I scurried to my feet and faced east, away from the horizon.

“Heather?” I called.

We needed to get home. Now.

Something howled, something human
screamed
from so close I

couldn’t tell if it was inside the woods or elsewhere. Every hackle on

my neck raised and pulled my skin taut.

I scanned the trees and graves for disturbance. All was calm. All

was silent. A tense knot pulled at my gut. With dusk turning black, I

couldn’t see more than vague outlines. I breathed in . . . breathed out

. . . breathed in —

A sweet, rotten scent hit my nose. The same odor had permeated

the ground around Rook’s boots, my feet, reddened under the sky. I

choked on the blood stench, gagging while I clamped my hands over

my nose and mouth. I staggered between the grave markers. It was

all around me, and yet where? Left by Bart’s remains? No, the rain

had washed those away. This was
fresher.

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The dead leaves quaked, and a muffled
rustle-rustle-rustle
like

dusty bones rubbing together echoed. I watched the woods and

stepped back.

My spine pressed into something unmovable, something that

shouldn’t have been there.

I froze until the tremors came. My hand crept behind me, first

through the naked air and then against something warm. Breathing.

Something reeking of death.

With a scream, I darted away, but someone grabbed my arm only

to push me away, flinging me to the ground. My chin hit an old grave