Wildcat Fireflies (36 page)

The cat yowled.

“I’ll take that as a yes. But who are they? And was the Romeo comment in regard to Juliet? Do I warn her?”

Minerva didn’t answer.

I slowed my steps when the fence started, but took my cue from her. She didn’t slow down, so I assumed we were safe for the moment.

“Merry, merry Christmas!” a little, excited voice called out to me.

“Bodie?” I started, looking up into the trees to locate him. He shimmied down. “I’m sorry, you’re a monkey. I thought you were a boy. Have you seen a boy named Bodie?”

“It’s me!” He hugged my legs.

“No!” I pretended not to believe him.

“Yes, it is.” He giggled.

I tickled him until we were both laughing so hard we collapsed against the grass, huffing. My stomach hurt from using laugh muscles; they’d atrophied. “How’s it going?” I asked, rolling up on my elbow.

Minerva sat on the top of the hill, facing Dunklebarger and twitching her tail, like a lookout sentry.

Bodie’s face clouded. “Juliet is really tired. She’s leaving. I want to go with her.”

“Leaving?”

He nodded. “Everybody leaves. It’s her birthday, then she leaves.”

“To where?” I asked.

“I dunno.”

“Do you think you could get her to talk to me?”

“I can find Nico. But Juliet is working. Mistress hates her.”

“Do you think, maybe—” I broke off. I felt like an
idiot asking a six-year-old to deliver what might be the most important message ever.

“What? I can. I’m strong. Brave. Smart,” he announced, puffing out his chest a little more with each word.

“Can you give Juliet a message for me? And get it perfect? It’s really important.”

“Don’t none-deresti-ate me. It’s insulting.” Bodie wagged his finger in my face and I again thought of Sammy. He’d say the same thing and sound exactly like an adult doing it too.

“Okay. Tell her …”
What to say, exactly?
“Tell her that Meridian met her mom. Juliet’s mom loves her and she’s protecting her.”

“Why doesn’t she come, then?” he asked.

“I can’t explain right now, but can you tell her that?”

“You saw her mom. Mom loves her and is protecting her.”

“Yes, and I can tell her more. She has to come find me.”

“Come find you. Got it.”

“Bodie, be careful, okay? Don’t tell her in front of any adults.”

“I won’t. We never talk about ’portant stuff in front of them.” He smiled. “Bring me candy next time? Nicole has butterscotch, but I like grape Hubba Bubba.”

I nodded. Easy request. “Okay.” At least this time he wasn’t asking me to adopt him.

“Promise?”

“Sure, I promise. Grape gum.”

He disappeared over the berm and Minerva swatted at my head.

“I’m going. I’m going.” I crept back into the woods and ran all the way back to the truck. I needed to call Sammy. And hug Tens.

* * *

Tens still wasn’t back when I pulled into the parking lot. The tearoom was closed and empty.

I let myself into the cottage and turned on every light. I shivered. I looked at the phone.

“You can do this. You heard Bodie. Don’t underestimate kids.”

I grabbed the receiver and quickly dialed the number before I lost my nerve again.

I listened to it ring. I wanted it to go to voice mail and I wanted a real voice equally.
Torn much?

My dad’s voice said, “Hello.”

“Dad?”

“Please leave a message and we’ll call you back.”

Voice mail.

I opened my mouth at the beep but couldn’t force sound out. I hung up and stared at the phone as tears fell down my cheeks.

“Supergirl?” Tens opened the front door, crossed the room in double time, and wrapped me in his arms. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

I let him hold me and chase away my fear with his warmth and his strength. I mumbled, “Nothing,” into his neck.

He let me cry it out, holding me with that perfect strength, not overwhelming or overpowering.

He used the sleeve of his sweatshirt to wipe my face, but then he put it to my nose and commanded, “Blow.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. Love meant sacrificing a sleeve to the snot monster.

“What?” His expression was perplexed. “You’re phlegmy. I can’t reach the Kleenex.”

The way he said
phlegmy
just made me laugh harder. Finally he started smiling and chuckling too. We dissolved into the kind of laughter that goes around and around with each glance and giggle.

I cradled into his body, smiling, refreshed.

He brushed his thumb across my cheek, my lips. His expression turned serious. “Why were we fighting?”

“I don’t remember.” I didn’t. “Do you?”

He shook his head. “That’s why I asked. I came in here all prepared to stay angry and then I saw you and I can’t remember why.”

I traced his eyebrows, slashes of raven’s wing bracketing his coal-black gaze. “I saw Fenestra graves and an old lady died, so I saw Auntie again and Juliet’s mom was there and then Minerva tripped me and there’s a Nocti with a boy toy and Bodie came—”

“Slow down and start at the beginning.” He shifted, toed his sneakers off, lifted his feet up onto the coffee table, and hugged me closer.

So I started the story back at when Rumi and I left the Feast.

N
o staff and fewer kids meant I stayed up all night trying to make Mistress happy. The next morning I was barely able to keep on my feet. Patience and compassion were drained from my soul. I fought the urge to lock myself in my closet and refuse to come out.

Bodie tugged on my pant leg. “Juliet, I have to tell you something.”

“Not now, Bodie.”

“But—”

“Go tell Nicole.” I finished tucking the fresh pillow beneath a lax and fragile head belonging to Enid, one of the sisters. The list today felt more daunting and undoable than usual. I wanted the mental and emotional energy to sit and think. Contemplate the photographs, my dreams, my future.

“But—”

The sisters were situated and as comfortable as I could make them. One was unconscious and never expected to wake. Apparently, she’d been at death’s door for weeks, always one breath away from saying her farewells. The orderly didn’t know what was keeping her alive. It defied logic. The other sister had a broken hip. The nurse told Mistress, “You know what happens to old ladies with broken hips.”

We knew. That’s why they came here.

I was changing out the linens, delivering the meal tray, freshening the water pitcher, and checking their feet for cold. I always added a layer whenever someone’s toes felt too cold. It seemed to me an easy thing to do. My frigid feet never warmed and I wished someone would toss an extra blanket over mine.

“Oh dear, that tickles.”

I leapt back from the bed, my gaze flying toward the voice at its head.

“I didn’t mean to startle you, dear.” She seemed contrite and apologetic, rubbing her eyes with one slightly shaky hand.

“Hi,” I said. “It’s okay, I thought you might need another blanket or—”

“I’m Enid Fairchild.” She lifted a hand toward me and smiled. Her brilliantly white hair was pressed against her
head like a skullcap. It looked like she usually styled it in tight curls.

“I’m Juliet … um, Ambrose.” I shook her hand carefully, trying to make sure I didn’t hurt her. Rarely were patients here conscious or talkative, but when they were, I learned a library’s wealth of knowledge.

“Are you a candy striper, child?” She tried to raise her body higher on the pillows.

I leaned over her and added muscle to her efforts until she nodded. “No, what’s a candy striper?” I asked.

“Why, a volunteer who helps in the hospital. Do you want to be a nurse or a doctor?”

“No!” I almost shouted. I’d spent entirely too much of my life nursing and doctoring to want to do those things as a career. “Sorry.” I backed away from the bed, expecting her to scold me for raising my voice.

She blinked and glanced around. “We’re not in the hospital anymore, are we?”

I bit my cuticles, hating to be the one to break the news. “No, ma’am, you’re at Dunklebarger Rehabilitation Center.”

“Well, that’s a mouthful. Don’t you just love that name, Glee?” She tried to reach a hand out to pat her sister. Her hand fell limply when she couldn’t quite make it. Her sadness was a palpable curtain descending over her bed. “Can you move us closer? Please?” she asked.

Mistress would say no, but I didn’t see what difference it made. So I unlocked the wheels of Glee’s bed and pushed it gently toward Enid’s.

“That is sublime.” She brushed her sister’s hair away from her forehead. “Hello, my darling.”

I stepped back, feeling like an intruder.

“We’re twins, you know. Identical twins.” She smiled at me, her wrinkles like bird tracks across her face. They added a divinity to her smile that felt irresistible.

She made me think of Miss Claudia and Paddy, the first guests I met when I came here. I loved them. They were like grandparents, family that I never knew I missed until they died. Since then I’d kept my heart far away from anyone old who was alive enough to talk. Kept an emotional distance to protect myself, pretended I wasn’t attached to them or wished for something I couldn’t have, until I believed it.

“May I have a drink of water, Juliet?”

“Sure.” I poured her a clean glass from a plastic bottle and held the straw while she drank.

There was a twinkle in her eyes that reminded me of someone. Brilliant blue eyes like pictures I’d seen of the South Pacific Ocean. I yearned to see every body of water on earth. Wildcat Creek was the closest I had come to and that’s what kept me striving forward when Kirian left three years ago.

“I think I’ll sleep now. Will you be here when I wake?” Enid asked with the vulnerability of a young child.

I tried to give her reassurance that I didn’t feel. “Yes, ma’am. Probably.”

“That’s good. Very good.” She closed her eyes and drifted off.

“Sema?” I whispered at the curtains. I couldn’t remember if she was in here or not.

Sema peeked around the outside edge of the curtain. I envied her the smooth milk chocolate of her skin and the hazel green of her eyes. She’d be exotic and beautiful when she was grown, especially compared to the grass-fed heifer I saw looking back at me in mirrors.

“Can you stay in here? Come and get me if either of them wakes up?”

She nodded and disappeared back to her post at the window. She happily twirled herself into the heavy fabric. Part of me, the mothering part, wondered if I should be dissuading this obsession, but the other part didn’t want to take away the one thing that comforted the little girl.

The rest of the day passed swiftly, with Mistress adding more demands when she thought I wasn’t moving fast enough. The to-do list forever lengthened.

Finally, with two minutes to myself and an urgent need to empty my bladder, I sat on the toilet and leaned against the wall. Closing my eyes, I felt the pull of sleep, of something darker and more permanent. I was swimming in an ocean much more powerful and strong than I could ever hope to be. I didn’t know why I kept fighting the currents when letting go had a certain comforting appeal.

“Juliet?” A tiny hand shook my shoulder.

I jerked, almost falling off the toilet. “Bodie?” I shrieked. “Get out!”

“No!” He crossed his arms and planted his feet.

“Yes!” There was no dignity in this with my panties at my ankles.

“You ’ave to listen to me!” He narrowed his eyes, peeved and determined.

“Fine, what?”

“It’s a message. From Meri-de-an.”

“From Meridian? What were you doing talking to her? Is she here?” I started fumbling with toilet paper.

“Stop!” Bodie squealed. “Listen.”

I held up my hands in surrender. “Okay.”

“She met your mom. Mom loves you, protects you.”

“What?” I had expected an invitation to dinner or a fashion suggestion, anything but information about my mother.

“That’s what she said. Now, you heard it.” He backed out of the tiny servant’s bathroom and shut the door behind him.

I called after him, “When? Where? Bodie!” I stood and tripped over my tangled feet. “Damn!” I pulled myself together and trotted out to find Bodie for more details.

I was blasted by Mistress as soon as she saw me.

“Juliet!” she screamed.

I closed my eyes and schooled my face back to neutral. I couldn’t handle more physical abuse today. My bruises were better, but the bones of my back continued to ache. “Yes, Mistress.”

“Has Ms. Asura been here?”

Huh?
“Ma’am?”

Her eyes rolled white and wild. “When I wasn’t here, was Ms. Asura in my office?”

“Not that I know of.” Where was this coming from?

“You see everything that goes on here. Tell me.” She stepped toward me, looking like she’d beat the answer out of me. The problem was I didn’t know which answer she sought.

“I don’t know.”

She puffed up her cheeks and slapped a hand against the doorjamb. “She’s been here. I know it. Does she think she can interfere? This is
my
house. She’ll be at the Feast tonight. We’ll see who’s in charge here!”

I stood ramrod straight and silent, trying not to draw attention to myself.

She waddled past me. I thought she might have forgotten I was there, until she said over her shoulder, “I’ll be out late.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Do not take advantage of my hospitality.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The front door slammed and I sagged.

“Is she gone?” Nicole bounded down the steps.

I nodded. “Did you talk to Bodie?”

“Yep. Heavy message. Here.” Nicole handed me a wrapped bundle.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“Your costume.”

“For what?”

“Go find answers at the Feast. That’s where they are.”

“The Feast? Mistress will kill me.” Not an idle threat.

“She’s not here and you’ll be back before she is.”

“She’s going to be there and you know it.”