Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (30 page)

Jack was right.We’d talked and talked about this,and it always ended with Jack, seeing Brodie run, and us knowing what that meant. Brodie lived. He was gone and he didn’t leave a trace. And we’d looked. Hard. 

Luke gave River a cool, manly half hug. Then River squatted down and pulled Jack into him.Their hug wasn’t cool and manly. It was just strong, and genuine. 

“I’m going to get this kid some coffee,” Luke said, finally. “Jack, should we see what’s going on in town? Maybe some kids in the square saw a pack of zombies. That sounds about right on schedule.” 

Jack grinned. He detached himself from River, and, without a backward glance, followed Luke down the path into Echo. 

It was just River and Neely and me. 

River ran his hand through his hair and leaned against his car. “Grandpa told me something once. I was a kid. I didn’t know about the glow yet.Grandpa was getting old, and his mind would drift sometimes. Mostly he would talk about Freddie, and things that happened to them when they were young. But this time, he looked straight at me.
You’ve got to abstain,
he said.
You’ve got to abstain if it starts getting out of control. It’s the only way.
” 

There was silence for a little while, as we all thought about that. I listened to the leaves shake in the trees, and the waves hit the rocks below. I listened to my heart cracking, re-forming, growing, because it was no longer small, and shriveled, and starving. 

“If I’m going to go after Brodie,”River continued after a minute or so,“I’ll need to abstain. I’ll need to be alone. Completely alone. Otherwise . . . otherwise I don’t trust myself to do it.” 

“Brodie said you had to go mad, to make the glow obey you.” I slid my hand into River’s and squeezed. “What if your grandpa was wrong? What if stopping does nothing, and Brodie just gets stronger and stronger?” 

River shrugged. “I’ve got to try, Violet. I either stop, or I keep going until I’m as mad as him. Which would you choose?” 

Neely shook his blond hair at that and laughed.“I’d be willing to go mad if it meant I got to kill that little cowboy. I’d kill him so hard—” 

River put his arms around his brother and hugged him. Then he released Neely and grabbed me. We held on tight, as tight as we could, and River put his lips to my ear. 

“I’m going to disappear,” he whispered. “If I screw up, and use the glow,Neely will find me.But if he doesn’t find me, then I’m doing something right. Let me stay hidden. And when I come back, I will be stronger. Better.” 

River’s fingers went into my hair, and he held me even closer. “Brodie thought you would die. What is he going to do when he finds out you didn’t? Maybe he won’t care. But I’m not taking any more risks. Neely is going to stay in the guesthouse. He’ll stay until I get back.” 

I nodded, my cheek moving against his shirt. I didn’t mention that Neely hadn’t been able to stop Brodie from trying to kill me before. 

River kissed my cheek, and my forehead, and my earlobe. Neely was watching, grinning, but River didn’t care and neither did I. 

“How am I going to sleep without you?” River murmured into my neck.“Vi,I’ve never been scared of anyone in my life, but my red-haired cowboy brother scares the hell out of me.But I don’t care.I don’t care if I have to sell my soul to the Devil.I don’t care if Brodie
is
the Devil.I’m going to kill him.Like he tried to kill you.And I’m going to make it stick, so help me God.” 

And then he kissed me. On the lips.
Deep
. I closed my eyes and sunk into it, trying to feel that melting feeling I felt before, at the cemetery, that first time. 

But the scars on my wrists started hurting. And I saw a flash of red hair. And then
just like that
I was feeling Brodie’s lips on mine as my blood soaked through our clothes. 

I pulled away. And I could tell by the look in River’s eyes that I didn’t have to say anything,not one damn word, because he understood. 

River reached into his pocket and pulled out another bookmark. It was a hundred-dollar bill, folded into the shape of a star. He put it in my hand. 

And then he got in his car. 

And drove away. 

R
iver left. And Neely stayed. 

Jack was living with us now too.He’d been through devils,suicides,attics,witches,fires,knives . . .but he was all right somehow. 

Neely built a fire pit in the backyard by the guesthouse, and the five of us—Luke,Sunshine,Neely,me,and Jack— liked to roast sweet Italian sausages and corn on the cob after dark. We did it all summer long. 

Sometimes I slept in River’s bed, out in the guesthouse. Neely didn’t mind.Besides,I liked his laugh.I liked that he looked like his brother.We didn’t talk about River.And we both stopped reading the papers. We didn’t want to know. Not about him, and not about Brodie—what they were doing, and who they might be hurting. Not yet. 

The last night in August, a week before I started my senior year, I was sleeping in River’s bed again. I rolled over onto my side and sunshine hit me full in the face. 

But it wasn’t the light that had woken me up. It was voices. Outside. I pulled my clothes over my head, my heart racing. 

It couldn’t be. 

But it was. 

I stepped outside, and there were my parents, pulling 

suitcase after suitcase out of a taxi. My mom caught sight of me, dropped her bag. I walked into her arms and we hugged like hugging was breathing and we’d been holding our breath for a long, long time. My nose was buried in her long hair and she smelled of strong European coffee and delicate French perfume and fresh Parisian rain. But underneath all that was the tang of turpentine, like always. 

I was mad that she left, and then came back, like it was nothing. Like she had no explaining to do, like she had no responsibility to be around. But my parents were going to do what they were going to do, regardless of what I thought about it. I had to take them as they were, and hope they did the same for me. 

My mom talked fast. She talked like how my thoughts ran on in my head, fast, fast, fast. And she started talking fast now. She talked and talked about Europe and museums and an art show in Paris and I only half listened because I was hugging my dad and just taking it all in. 

“Violet, did you hear me?” My mom put her hand on my arm. “Your dad sold out a show in Paris and what do you think that means it means we have some money to spare finally that’s what it means. Oh, here’s
Luke
.” 

Luke was outside by that time and he came running down the steps. He started crying a little bit, which was strange because I’d never seen Luke cry. Our dad had that far-off look in his eyes as he hugged him, a look I suddenly realized I had missed like crazy. Then Neely and Jack came out and we had introductions.Introductions led to talking about art, which took us to the shed, and then the guesthouse, and we talked about everything that had happened since they left, which was almost nothing,because we didn’t tell them about River and Brodie and Freddie’s letters and Jack’s blood being thicker than water and Sunshine and the bat and the boy by the tracks and my shaking hands with death and stabbing the Devil in the chest and what I was hiding under the long sleeves I was wearing in August. 

Later that evening, I was sitting on the steps all by myself, wondering again what forgotten corner of nowhere River was holed up in
.
Night was falling on one of the last days of summer, and my River blues hit, as they tended to do near sunset. I could hear Neely and Luke laughing as they gathered twigs and branches. We were going to spend the night camping in the backyard. My dad was putting up a dusty green tent he found in the Citizen’s cellar, and Mom was painting in the shed with the door wide open so she could watch everyone. Jack was churning ice cream in an old hand-crank machine, and Sunshine was sitting beside him, squinting in the dying light, trying to read some old Boy Scout handbook from the library about how to build a fire. 

I was wondering if River was getting his glow under control. And if he was lonely. If he missed me, like I missed him. But then Neely was in front of me, holding out a stick with a marshmallow on it and demanding I join in the fun. So I did. I roasted things and ate homemade ice cream and painted by moonlight and slept in a sleeping bag on the ground. And the night blurred into one big blaze of nothing and everything. I was safe. And content, even with my River blues. 

I glanced over at Neely, lying on his side by the fire. I thought he was asleep, but he opened his eyes and looked at me, as if he knew I was thinking about things. He grinned. And that grin cut me deep. 

Freddie often told me that you’ve got to be happy when you can, because life won’t wait for you to take the time.And she was right.She’d learned that the hard way. Freddie was human, and she’d made mistakes. But she learned how to hold on to her happiness somewhere along the line. She prayed to God, and held on. 

I ran my fingers over the scars on my wrists. Life was safer, without River. And less. Less breathtaking. Less terrifying. Less stirring. Less . . . everything. 

Damn. I really miss you, River.
 

Maybe it was just the leftover glow talking. Maybe it was the glow giving me my River blues . . . but it felt real. And my feelings, pure or not, were the only thing I had to go on. River had manipulated people. And murdered people. He was wicked. Not as wicked as Brodie,but . . .still wicked.It was better that he was gone, better that he was out of my life. I knew that, logically. What I
felt,
though, deep, deep down in the darkest dark of my heart, was that I didn’t give a damn if River was evil. I still liked him. Maybe I even kind of loved him. 

And maybe that made me wicked too. 

Nate. 

Joanna Volpe. Agent, Stephen King lover, fellow night owl. You watched
Diabolique
for me. I owe you. 

Jessica Garrison.You knew exactly how to squeeze the goodness out of my little devil book.If you ever want to run from some coyotes, I know a place. 

Everyone else at Dial and Penguin, especially Kristin Smith for that drop-dead cover. 

Simon Ålander, for his brilliant hand-lettering. 

Sandra,for letting me stay up reading as late as I wanted.Jason, for your active imagination—I always really liked that about you. Erin and Todd, for playing the Egypt Game with me that one summer night. Loren, for the tree house. 

Joelie Hicks, for your love of books. 

Erin Bowman, for always being there. 

Four-Posts, for FITA in Space. 

The Lucky 13s. 

The Friday the Thirteeners, for that thread about unicorns. And the red-haired boy, for the skull. 

(www.apriltucholke.com) is a full time writer and a member of the Lucky 13s, a community of authors debuting in 2013 from major US publishers (thelucky13s.blogspot. com). April digs classic movies, redheaded villains, big kitchens, and discussing murder at the dinner table. She and her husband—a librarian, former rare-book dealer, and journalist—live in Bend, Oregon, at the edge of the forest, where the air smells like pine and coyotes can be heard howling at night.