Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (21 page)

And over his screams, I could hear someone else. Someone behind me, laughing, in the dark. I lifted the lantern, but it didn’t penetrate the far corners. Laugh, laugh, laugh. 

“
River?”I cried out,my voice a whisper that couldn’t cut through Jack’s screams.“Please don’t be River,”I said to no one, because no one was listening. 

Freddie, help me
.
Gianni’s going to burn him, what should I do, what should I do? Something’s wrong with him and he’s not himself and I think I know why, Freddie, help me, help me, Freddie, please . . .
 

Gianni picked up the gasoline can. “Might as well get him good and drenched before the confession. Saves time.” 

And he lifted the can over Jack’s head. 

Freddie wasn’t going to help me. How could she? 

She was dead. 

I threw myself into Gianni’s side. He let out a strange, guttural yell and dropped the can. It went sprawling onto the floor.Thick fumes filled the air. 

Gianni jumped to his feet. His beautiful face was scrunched and twisted and he was howling and shaking my arm and I dropped the lantern— 

And then came the flames. 

And then came Neely. 

Smoke and fumes were everywhere, and I couldn’t see, but I heard laughter, and then Gianni was rubbing his eyes next to me and yelling
Where am I?
and the smoke cleared a bit and Neely was throwing old quilts and clothes on the fire until it was dead-dead-dead and I was trying to get Jack free and finally the last knot came loose and Neely was pushing us out of the room and down the stairs. 

We climbed through the broken window in the library and everything was jumbled and confused and my knee hit the windowsill and I fell to the ground and felt grass under my hands. I got back to my feet, keeping my eyes on Gianni,who didn’t look angry anymore,just confused and terrified and so damn lost. 

Jack wrapped his arms around me, and I held him. Tight. 

Gianni was still rubbing his eyes. 

“Gianni,” Neely said, his voice low and hard. “Gianni, look at me.” 

Gianni moved his hands away from his face. “Why am I here? What happened? Who’s this kid?” 

Neely reached out and grabbed a fistful of Gianni’s plain white T-shirt. He shook him, not rough, but not gentle, either.“Quiet. Be quiet, damn it.” 

“Did I start that fire?”Gianni kept looking from Jack to the Glenship attic windows and back again.“I . . .Something’s wrong with me, I—” 

Neely hit Gianni. In the jaw. Gianni went down in the dirt. He lay there for a second, not moving. Then Neely reached over, gave him a hand, and helped him to his feet. 

“Gianni,
focus
.” 

Gianni’s lip was bleeding, and the blood was running down his chin. But he met Neely’s eyes and nodded. 

“Here’s what you’re going to do,” Neely said. “You’re going to forget this all ever happened.You’re not going to think about it, you’re not going to ask questions.” Neely reached into his pocket, pulled out his wallet, and took out a pile of green. “Take this and keep your mouth shut.” 

Gianni just stood there, mouth open. Neely grabbed Gianni’s hand and shoved the bills into it. “Gianni. Go home
.
Someone might have seen that fire and the cops are probably on their way. So
go
. Get out of here
.
Now
.”
 

Gianni tightened his fist over the money. He nodded. Turned. Cast a look back over his shoulder at Neely, and then his eyes met mine. Held. Broke away. He took off into the dark. 

Neely grabbed my arm.“We need to get going too,Violet.” 

I shook my head.“He’s up there. In the attic. We have to go back—” 

A police siren ripped through the still air. Neely pulled on my arm. I grabbed Jack’s hand.We ran. 

G
ianni said you were looking for me.” Jack and I were sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace in the green guestroom. I gathered some wood from the garage when I got home, and started it up, thinking a warm fire might help after all that, if anything could. 

Jack had stood near me as I got it ready,as if not wanting to let me out of his sight. He’d been shaking, and was pale under the dirt still streaked across his face. But he was doing better now. The shaking had stopped. I’d given him an old black sweater of Luke’s to wear,and his cheeks were red from the heat. So he was warm, at least. 

“I’d left Sunshine’s,but Luke was still there and Gianni found me alone in my room and said you were waiting for me in the Glenship attic,” Jack continued. “It was weird, and he was acting weird, but I don’t know . . . I fell for it. It was stupid.I won’t,next time.Next time I’ll be smarter.” 

Jack’s hands clenched and unclenched. “He made me take off my shirt,and my shoes.He tied up my hands and said he was going to burn me alive.” 

I put my arms around Jack and hugged him. 

“I heard the laughing too,” he said. He tilted his head up at me.“Was it River?” 

I didn’t answer, and we were quiet for a while. 

“I found something today,” I said, figuring now was as good a time as any. “Some letters. You know that painting you have over there on the nightstand? Well—” 

“Is this about my grandpa?” 

I sighed. “So you know already.” 

Jack shifted and got to his feet. He went over and got the painting from the nightstand.“This is her,isn’t it? Your grandma? My dad told me things, when he wasn’t drinking. Things Grandpa told him.” 

“Yeah. It’s her. And that’s John Leap, your grandfather. He looks like your dad.” I stopped and took a deep breath. “And mine.” 

We looked at each other for a heartbeat. Two. 

“I found the paintings of your grandma in the ballroom,” Jack said, putting the canvas back on the stand. “That’s when I knew for sure.” 

“Show me.” 

I followed Jack,down the hall,and up the marble stairs to the third floor. I wanted to stop in Luke’s room as we passed, but I could hear Sunshine laughing inside. 

Jack walked to the far left of the ballroom, by the windows, and pointed at two small nude paintings, both of Freddie,both lost amidst the sea of bigger,fatter canvases that covered the walls. 

Now that I was looking at them closely for the first time,I could see that John Leap’s paintings had been done in the guesthouse.Same sofa,same wallpaper—there were even cans of paint on the windowsills. Freddie was white and naked and shining. 

Jack and I stared at the portraits for a while. And then we went back to the green guestroom. I pulled out Freddie’s letters, which I’d been carrying in my pocket all day, and gave them to Jack. He read them by the fire. 

And when he was done, his blue eyes met mine. And he smiled.“So our dads were . . . brothers.” 

I nodded. “Half brothers, it looks like.” 

“So I can live here now? Because we’re related?” 

“If Luke and I have anything to say about it, then . . . yes.” 

And he grinned again. Even after the night he’d had, the kid could still grin. 

I stayed with Jack until he fell asleep. I sat by his bed and read to him from
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
until his eyes closed. But then I woke him up before I left, and made him lock the door behind me. And I made him promise not to let anyone in, except Luke or me. Not for anything. 

I walked to my bedroom, closed the door, and sat down on my bed. Now that I was alone again, I felt empty, all through my insides. As empty as Montana, which I heard was the emptiest of empties, next to Wyoming. I went to one of the windows. They were black with the black night, which matched my black, empty sort of mood. 

There was an origami penguin sitting on a pile of books on the floor. 

I went downstairs to the kitchen. 

Neely was there, right where I had left him when we got back from Glenship Manor. He’d lit the two candles on the table, and things looked medieval. He was sitting on the couch, whistling Rachmaninoff. 

“Did you follow me and Gianni to the Glenship, Neely?” I asked him. 

“Yes.” 

“Why?” 

Neely didn’t answer. 

“Any sign of River?” I asked. 

He shook his head. 

“Why did you hit Gianni?” 

“Because I had to. We were running out of time and I needed him to listen to me.” 

“So you just hit people? That’s what you do?” 

Neely grinned.“No, I’m a philanderer. I . . . philander.” 

I laughed. I didn’t mean to, but I did. I gestured to the fridge.“Do you want some lemonade with ginger?” 

“You bet I do,” he answered. 

I made up another batch of Freddie’s feel-good juice while Neely watched, and then poured out two glasses. He took a sip, and sighed. “I feel bad about punching Gianni. It wasn’t his fault, what happened to him. Don’t get me wrong,I like a good fight.But that was . . .an unnecessary evil.” Neely put his hand in his hair and messed it up. He looked so much like River that I stopped breathing for a second. 

Neely put his hand down. His hair stayed tangled up. “It was just, the thought of him hurting a kid, hurting you, hurting whoever else, I just lost it . . .” His voice drifted off. 

I leaned against the table. “River doesn’t feel all that sorry for anything he does.” 

“My brother’s not as bad as he seems.”Neely looked up at me. His bruise was a darker purple in the candlelight, as if it had gotten worse throughout the day rather than better. 

“I know he’s not,” I replied. 

“He’s living with a gift.A powerful gift.And he’s alone. He has no one to talk to about it,no one to help him figure out right from wrong.” 

I drank my lemonade and didn’t say anything.I put my hand to the back of my neck.I’d gotten that tingling feeling,the one I’d felt before in the kitchen at night,the one that said
Someone is watching you
. I turned around. No one. I looked out the dark kitchen windows, into the night. Nothing but Neely and me, reflected back in the glass. 

I thought of the laughter in the Glenship attic. Shivered. 

Neely stood up and unzipped his Windbreaker. He wore a black T-shirt underneath, but that wasn’t what caught my eye. I was looking at the long pink scar that ran from Neely’s neck down the length of his right arm. 

“Damn,”
I said. And instantly wished I could take it back. Still, I wanted to reach out and touch that scar. I wanted to take my fingernails to it,peel it off,and see the clean, smooth Neely skin underneath. I fought the urge. 

“It’s okay,”he said. He grinned.“Sometimes I still lose my breath when I look at it in the mirror. You can touch it, if you want.” 

I did. I ran my fingers down his neck and then down his arm. The scar ended at his wrist, and the pale skin there was hairless and soft. Softer than it should have been. 

“It’s a challenge, keeping the thing hidden,” he said. “Especially when you’re a yacht brat who likes to take his shirt off in the sun like every other person.” 

“How did it happen?” 

Neely laughed. It was a quiet little thing, but still, a laugh. 

“River was fourteen,” he said, the corners of his mouth still twitching, “and I had just turned thirteen. My brother didn’t know about the glow yet.He was beginning to suspect something, though. He was beginning to suspect that he was . . .different.River and I were out on the beach one day, having a bonfire. River likes to start a fire whenever he’s upset about something. And, before long, the two of us got into a fight. When I wasn’t fighting other kids, I was fighting River.” Neely paused and smiled a little bit. “Me and my fights. Usually River knew how to handle me,how to talk me down while avoiding my fist.But that time, he lost control.” 

I knew this story. I knew what was coming. I closed my eyes. So River didn’t lie. Sometimes he didn’t lie. Not entirely. 

Neely’s hand brushed my arm.“It wasn’t his fault.That time it really wasn’t. He was mad and thought something at me. We all do it, think bad things at a person when we’re mad at them. But River’s thoughts aren’t just thoughts.They’re
weapons.
We were fighting in the sand, and I had him pinned,and . . .he made me see something. The bloody corpse of a girl. Floating in the ocean by my feet. Very morbid, very River. He didn’t mean to. He just thought it, and it . . . happened. But I got scared, and started running. Then I tripped. And fell. Right into the fire.” 

I opened my eyes. 

Neely put a hand on his scar and shook his head. “I fell right into the flames, Violet. I was on fire. River pushed me onto the ground and threw sand on me to stop the burning. He was yelling out my name and crying. Then I passed out, and that’s all I remember. I spent the next month in the hospital.The world’s most expensive doctors did what they could. And this is what is left.” 

Neely looked down at his arm. He was still kind of smiling, but his eyes looked darker. 

I put my fingertips on the puckered white skin of Neely’s forearm.“I’m sorry,”I said,because I couldn’t think of anything else. 

“Look,I know that River’s done . . .bad things.”Neely paused. “I know about the old vintner. And the Spanish twins. And that little Scottish girl. I know about all of it, all of the others. And I hate it. I hate it so much. But River is my brother. He was there every time I shot my mouth off as a kid, every time my temper took over and I was suddenly fighting three kids at once, all of them bigger than me. He never backed down, never ran, never told our dad, never even asked me to stop, or try to change. He’s broken his right hand six times.He’s always been there for me. Always.” 

I wanted to ask about the vintner, and the twins, and the Scottish girl. I wanted to hear more about River as a kid, before the glow. 

But when I opened my mouth what I said was:“I heard laughter.”I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. “I heard laughter in the attic. Before you arrived. It wasn’t Gianni. There was someone, back in the shadows, watching and laughing.And it wasn’t sane.It was hysterical. And terrifying. And—” 

“Hey, just forget about all that.” Neely took my wrist for a second.And then let it go.“Just don’t think about it. I’m going to take my brother home and this will all stop. Okay? River . . . he isn’t himself.”