Between the Spark and the Burn (2 page)

September
Can still feel Will's lips on me. On my neck, stomach, back, hips, thighs . . .

The diary felt warm in my hands, like it had kept a little bit of living, breathing Freddie in it.

I was lying in River's bed, in the guesthouse. I hadn't done that in months. The lamp with its red fringe shade was shooting blood-colored slants across the bed. I could see smudges on the nightstand where my fingertips had disturbed the dust.

Freddie's diary wasn't a day-by-day-er. She listed months but not years, which fit my mysterious grandmother to a damn T. She couldn't give too much away. Even in her diary.

I'd only read the first line and already I felt filled up and ready to burst.

Will. River's grandfather. Neely's grandfather. Brodie's grandfather. I wasn't surprised that the diary opened with him. It felt like locks clicking and puzzle pieces snapping into place.

So I read the first line again.

And then again.

I couldn't seem to make myself move past it and read on.

Maybe I was a coward. A Freddie-coward. Maybe I didn't want to know this person who let boys like River's grandfather kiss her thighs.

I kept reading that one line, over and over, never getting any further, holding my breath, letting it out, holding it again, until the book floated down onto my chest, and I drifted off to sleep in between one word and the next . . .

Something banged in the kitchen. My heart jumped into my throat, the way it does when I sleep too hard and wake up too fast.

Neely?

River?

Brodie?

And then it all came back, boom, and I was there, right there, me and Brodie standing by the railroad tracks, the dead boy at our feet, Brodie's flaming red hair, tall and skinny as they come, Brodie, in the guesthouse kitchen, my blood covering his neck and shoulders, his face pushed into mine, the smell of copper and steam and madness hugging me up just as I hugged him up and Luke had the knife at Neely's throat and River just stood over the kettle of hissing water and—

I turned off the lamp. Strained forward in the dark.

Click.

Click.

It was Brodie's boot heels clicking on the floor. It was.

I put my hands to my face and my screams were as silent as the moonlight cutting across the end of the bed.

And then I stopped.

I threw back the blankets. I was done silent-screaming. If it was Brodie, then he'd get me no matter where I was, so I might as well meet him standing up.

Besides, I'd asked for this. I'd wanted something to happen. And now it had.

I went to the kitchen, feeling my way down the dark hall.

Click.

Click.

The guesthouse kitchen was empty, no one, not a soul, no moka pot on the stove, no cups in the sink, no smell of coffee in the air, no tall boy in the shadows.

The wind was beating on the kitchen shutters, making the latches shake. That's all it was.

I breathed out. And in.

I'd been ready to meet him. Hadn't I?

I opened the windows. It was black, all black, outside. A storm was brewing out on the ocean. I could smell it more than see it, smell the sea being stirred up, pushing salt into the air. Maybe we were finally going to get some snow.

I pulled my cardigan tighter. The guesthouse had heating, and was one-tenth the size of Citizen Kane, with lower ceilings, so it was actually warmer sleeping here than in my own bed. But then I usually wrecked it all by opening the windows to let the sea air in.

I looked around the kitchen.

One boy. Coffee. Lies.

Two boys. Coffee. Fighting.

Three boys. A knife. And blood, blood, blood, blood, blood.

A snowflake blew in through the window. It floated up, and then twirled down to land on my cheek.

≈≈≈

I felt the heat first. Before the fingers, and the palm. It permeated my dream, warmth pouring down my back and making me shiver with the goodness of it in the cold, cold room.

“Vi, wake up.”

I pushed my eyelids open. Neely's hand was on my upper back. I turned over, and his hand moved to the pillow beside me.

“Neely,” I whispered.

“Hey,” he said, and smiled, ear to ear, his eyes glinting so bright I could see them even in the dark.

A pause.

“Did you find him?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

He shook his head. “It was just a bunch of bored, lying kids with some mischief to burn off.
Evil fairies prey on small Connecticut town . . .
It was a long shot. I should have known better. Tabloids.”

He laughed.

I slid over and Neely stretched himself out on the bed beside me. We both stared up at the dark ceiling.

“It's cold in here,” he said.

“It's Christmas Eve,” I said back. “December. Maine. Notorious.”

“Yeah, but that radiator over there is clinking and clanking away. No, it's cold in here because you opened the windows like someone with a death wish.”

“That too.”

Neely laughed again and it was low and rumbling and chuckling and made me want to laugh right along with him. He lifted his arm and pressed something on his wrist. His watch lit up. “Eleven thirty. Almost Christmas Day.”

I turned my head and looked at him. “Merry Christmas, Neely.”

He grinned. “I got you something.”

“A present?”

“Yeah.”

“No you didn't.”

“Yes I did.”

“But I didn't get you anything.”

“That's okay.”

“Well then, give it here.” I was grinning right back at him.

“No way. You'll get it later, when we open presents with everyone else. You guys put up a tree like I told you to?”

I shook my head, and my hair rustled against the pillow.

He sighed. “Fine. This morning we're getting a tree. First thing. All you have to do is walk into the woods past your backyard, and chop. Throw some lights on it. It's not hard. You're worthless, all you little Rembrandts. Get your head out of your paints. Christmas comes but once a year.”

I reached up and turned on the lamp by the bed. Neely jumped into focus. Blond hair, the roots a bit darker now that they weren't bleached white by the sun. Big smile. Beaming blue eyes. Broken nose. Tall and long next to me on the bed. No bruises. At least not where I could see them. He hadn't been fighting, then.

Good.

It was nice to see him again. It really, really was.

“Want some coffee?” I asked.

He nodded, looking at me in the same pleasant way I was looking at him.

Freddie's diary was still lying on the bed. I moved it to the nightstand. I wasn't ready to tell Neely about it yet. Not him, not Luke, not anyone.

I buttoned my yellow cardigan over my long white nightgown—the one Luke hated, because he said it made me look like a wailing Victorian ghost—and then put on a pair of striped wool socks to counteract the freezing floor. Neely was already in the kitchen, warming up the moka pot and pulling down espresso cups from the cupboard.

I watched him as he poured the steaming coffee. I breathed in the salty sea air and the roasty toasty espresso and the clean soft smell of falling snow. The flakes were blowing in stronger now, dancing around Neely's head. He handed me a cup and I sipped the coffee, slow, and looked around the guesthouse.

It still had the chipped teacups and the yellow cupboards and the patchwork quilts and the paintbrushes drying on the counter and the tubes of paint scattered on tables and windowsills. But all of them meant something more to me now. Things had happened here. Important things. Kissing and lying and cooking and cutting. The guesthouse would never just be the guesthouse again.

“What are you doing?” Neely asked.

I'd finished the joe, turned on one of the dim kitchen lights, and started digging around in the closet by the front door.

“Here it is.”

“Here's what?”

I looked at Neely over my shoulder. He was leaning one hip into the kitchen counter in the same graceful way that River used to. He was barefoot too, even with the cold, and he had the same pretty feet as his older brother.

A snowflake flew in and landed on the top of his left foot, right on the smooth skin at the base of his big toe. And something about it, about the snowflake melting gently on his pretty Redding foot, made my stomach flutter.

I turned back to the closet. “I found this when I was looking for the Citizen's blueprints last summer—we never did find that secret passageway . . .” I pulled the brown wooden box out, stood up, and brought it to the table.

“That thing is never going to work,” Neely said.

I picked up the frayed old cord, plugged it in, and static filled the kitchen.

“You were saying?”

Neely laughed.

“I've been listening to the radio a lot since you left. Something about hearing things from the wider world . . .” I paused. “It's been appealing to me. I was fiddling with the vintage Freddie radio in my bedroom one night, looking for this AM station that plays
War of the Worlds
every Saturday. But what I found was this.”

I spun the dial, right, left, right again, and there it was. A man's voice, deep and cultivated like Orson Welles's, speaking of, started rolling over us.

Hey there, believers. It's Wide-Eyed Theo. I'm here. You're here. And it's the witching hour. That means it's time for your daily dose of
Stranger Than Fiction
. Are you ready?

First of all, Merry Christmas to those out there who still honor the conventional holidays. Good for you. And in the spirit of festive things, our top story tonight comes from a woman in Toronto who claims that a man calling himself “Father Christmas” has been visiting her each year on Christmas Eve since she was fifteen. He's attractive, bearded, and in his mid-forties. He doesn't seem to age. According to her, she wakes up to find him standing over her bed. They share one loving night, and he's gone the next morning. The woman's husband, who sleeps in the bed next to her, has never woken up during the visit, and seems not to
 . . .

And then. The part I was waiting for. The part I wanted Neely to hear.

 . . .
Last but not least, I mentioned the other night that a small community in the Appalachian Mountains has been seeing, quote, “a boy with flames in his eyes and hooves instead of feet.” This is all I've got, so if you can make something of it, then you're smarter than me. But I'm going to squeeze my source for more info tomorrow. Stay tuned.

I clicked the radio off. “Well? Is there anything to it? It's got to be better than the tabloids, right? A boy with devil-feet? That could be something. It could.”

Neely looked at me. “River's been gone for months. I've always been able to track him down before, Vi, but now . . . nothing. No stories, not even in the local papers. No one is talking. Maybe it means River's just hiding out somewhere and not using the glow.” Neely paused for a long second. “Still, for some reason, I'm starting to get . . . frantic.”

Neely didn't look frantic, standing there, all tall and smiling with that chipper gleam in his eyes that said I'm-one-second-away-from-laughing.

Freddie used to say there were many ways to lie, and most didn't use your mouth.

I wrapped my hand around Neely's arm, the one with the scar.

“We'll find him,” I said.

Neely put his hand on mine. “I know. It's just . . . what kind of shape will he be in when we do? I have a bad feeling, Vi.”

A cold wind burst in through the window, and we both shivered.

“Maybe he's just holed up in some pleasant place like Quebec City,” I whispered. What is it about snow in the middle of the night that makes you want to whisper? “We'll find him wearing a red knit scarf and he'll speak flawless French and eat poutine every day for lunch.”

“Yeah,” Neely whispered back at me, not smiling now. “But I doubt it.”

I hugged him then, hugged him up hard, like I'd been wanting to do since I first saw him. Because I doubted it too.

Standing there in the kitchen with the smell of coffee and the cold and the snow and Neely's arms tight around me, all I could hear was the little voice inside my heart that whispered,
None of this is going anywhere good, anywhere good at all
 . . .

F
IRST THING,
N
EELY
woke us kids up at dawn, just as the first pink was squeezing into the winter sky. He made us all march through the fresh fallen snow in Citizen Kane's backyard to get a Christmas tree.

Sunshine had a thick blue hat pulled down over her long brown hair, and her brown eyes were clear and lazy. Whether Neely fetched her at the Black family cabin down the road, or whether he'd found her in Luke's bed, I didn't know. Sunshine's parents, Cassie and Sam, were already used to their only child spending most of her time at our house, so I guess the transition to her dating my brother had been pretty easy.

Luke looked happy. He carried an ax in one hand, and Sunshine's fingers in the other. The early-morning light brought the red out in his hair, and Jack's too.

Jack was singing a song about snow that he made up as he went along. The serious, quiet Jack I'd known last summer, the one who organized those kids in the cemetery to fight the Devil, the one who'd been tied up in the Glenship attic, the one who had his back sliced up by Brodie's knife . . . he was pretty much gone.

Jack was still serious when he painted, but otherwise . . . I guess life at Citizen Kane suited him. Now he was all about running around the house for no particular reason other than the joy of doing it. Or making “forty-ingredient sandwiches” in the kitchen with Luke, and then daring him to take the first bite. Or drinking too much coffee too late at night and then jumping up and down on one of the guest beds for twenty minutes, begging me to join him.

My parents accepted Jack into their life, as if he'd always been there. As if they'd always had an eleven-year-old son and just forgot about him for a while.

I never told them Jack was their nephew. Half nephew. Or that Freddie had an affair with a painter and it led to my father. Or that my father had a drunk brother who wasn't a great guy and was dead now anyway so what did it matter. Maybe I would tell them one day, but I hadn't yet.

Luke and Jack picked out the tree, a straight pine, just taller than Neely, and started chopping. Snow fell on them from the branches above and they laughed. Sunshine was by my side, drinking coffee from a thermos Neely offered her. Neely put his arm around my shoulder in a companionable way and the tree fell over into a cloud of fresh snow like a spoon dropped in a bowl of powdered sugar.

Neely had come home for Christmas and I was about as happy as I was going to get, all things considered.

≈≈≈

Roaring fire in the library. Check. Tree decked to the nines with glass ornaments found in the attic. Check. Blizzard smashing the world up outside. Check. Sunshine's parents cooking for everyone in the Citizen's big kitchen. Check.

My own parents set aside their paints for the night and Mom dug up some crispy yellowed sheet music from somewhere and we sang about the holly and the ivy and the three ships sailing in and the feast of Stephen. We ate juicy organic ham with mustard and maple syrup, and buttery potatoes, and spindly baby parsnips, and roasted chestnuts, and brown beer gingerbread. We drank spiced apple cider and hot buttered rum.

And then we opened gifts. I got a new knit scarf, black with white stripes, from Cassie, Sunshine's mother. Sunshine gave me a classic novel about one boy's journey of impossible coincidences and random fornications. My parents gave me a bottle of perfume, the same Freddie used to wear, brought to me all the way from Paris. Luke gave Jack his own set of paintbrushes, brand-spanking-new, and I gave them both a screen printing kit, which seemed to excite them in exactly the way I hoped it would.

And so on. Though I didn't see Neely's present, the one he said he'd gotten for me, and I'd been looking forward to it too.

After sunset the blizzard blew away again, and we all went outside to see the sea and the stars. The snow pressed in around our ankles and the sky went on forever and I sort of thought,
This is a pretty good day.

The adults played cards at a card table rustled up from the cellar.
My
parents, playing cards just like normal parents, though my father had always said card games were for children and halfwits. Sunshine's mother and father sat with their skinny behinds on the edge of their chairs, and took the game very seriously, with Cassie calling for breaks every forty minutes so she could brew up more Darjeeling. She grew up in England and ran on tea like River and Neely ran on coffee.

Eventually I followed Neely into the kitchen and watched him put thick chunks of dark chocolate in a pot, add some whole milk, and some maple syrup, and melt it all until it was steaming. He spiced it with cinnamon, and a pinch of chili powder, and a shot of espresso, and poured it into an old stainless steel thermos. And then we tromped up the three flights of stairs to the Citizen's cluttered, dusty, beautiful attic.

“You look pretty,” Jack said to me as he sipped from his mug of chocolate, the steam making his cheeks pink.

He was nestled into his usual place, right up next to me on one of the old sofas. He had on the black hand-knit sweater he'd gotten from Cassie, and my new black-and-white scarf, because it was freezing. Silver-white frost blossomed across the round windows, and the air was light and sharp. Luke had plugged in the space heater, but it hadn't worked its magic yet.

“You do look pretty,” Neely said, sitting down on my other side. “Your blue eyes look bluer in the cold. Did you know that?”

“Freddie's eyes were like that too,” Luke said. He glanced between Neely and me and looked kind of snappy and smart-alec for a second, like he knew something I didn't.

But the hell if I was going to ask him about it.

“I painted a portrait of Freddie once, outside on a bright day in February.” Luke's expression went a bit deep and distant. “I was just a kid, but I remember how hard it was to mix the blue for her eyes—it was the color of the ocean and the sky and . . . every color in between, somehow.”

I smiled at him. “Luke, you get so poetic when you talk about art. It almost makes you likable.”

Sunshine grinned. She leaned back into my brother, and he tucked a blanket around both of them and then his distant look went away.

“You know what makes you almost likeable, Vi?” he asked. “When you forget to act smarter than everyone else for half a second. When you stop being eccentric long enough for a person to get a word in edgewise. When you stop wearing our dead grandmother's clothes and put on something that doesn't smell like dust and closet.”

Sunshine laughed her throaty laugh. “I do like your new dress, Vi. We were all sick of seeing you in a dead person's clothes.”

My dress was silky and long and black and came with a smooth, pale yellow cardigan that had small pearl buttons. My mother had bought it in NYC during my father's art show in October and given it to me for Christmas. I ran my hands over the skirt again. I liked the way it slid back and forth against my cold thighs, soft as air. I probably should have been saving it for a special occasion, because I didn't get new clothes very often, but what the hell.

I heard the grandfather clock in the library chime—it sounded quiet and gentle from this far away, like it didn't want to wake anyone up. The clock had been in the house since the beginning. It broke years ago, and stayed that way until Jack went and fixed it with nothing but a wrench, a screwdriver, and a positive attitude. That kid was smart as hell and twice as charming.

I looked down at his freckled face and his auburn head. He was trying to stay up late like the rest of us, but his eyes were doing that squinting thing that always gave him away—even though Neely had put that streak of espresso in the hot chocolate. Jack yawned, and huddled down farther into the couch, and his long hair stuck out wild and frantic above his head. I figured I should probably try to cut it soon, if he'd let me.

I sighed, and then squeezed out from between Jack and Neely. Cold attic air hit me and I winced.

I'd brought the old guesthouse radio up earlier and now I set it on a table by the sofa and looked for a plug-in. I found one of River's little origami creatures hidden behind the couch as I was digging around back there for an outlet. Another hundred-dollar bill, folded in the shape of a turtle. My fingers closed around it and the River-missing feeling came back, just for a second. It was sharp and strong and unmistakable, like the smell of freshly brewed coffee.

“What are you doing over there?” Neely was watching me from the sofa, his eyes half closed, sleepy, sleepy. “Come back. It's cold over here and you're warm.”

I put the turtle in my yellow cardigan's pocket, gave Neely a quick smile, and turned the knobs on the radio.

Static, static, static . . . and there it was.

Hello all ye believers of the strange and true. It's Wide-Eyed Theo. I'm here. You're here. It's the witching hour and time for your daily dose of
Stranger Than Fiction
. I hope you all made merry today and are full of good cheer and well-being. Feel free to curse a scrooge, any of you that are into the bewitching arts . . .

“What the hell is this, Vi?” Luke talked right over Theo like he didn't give a damn that I was trying to hear.

“Shut up and listen, Luke.”

Luke shut up and we listened to tales of a pack of teenage grave robbers and a woman who thought she was a cat and a boy who claimed he could see the future.

And then . . .

. . . the small town in the Appalachian Mountains continues to be plagued by “a boy with flames in his eyes and hooves instead of feet.” I received an update on this today. Apparently this devil-boy commands a flock of ravens, and sneaks into the bedrooms of sleeping adolescent girls to steal their dreams. His birds attack anyone who intervenes. My source wishes to remain anonymous, as the locals are a superstitious sort with, quote, “little trust in each other and even less in the law.”

If any of my listeners has an itch for adventure, I would like to direct you to Inn's End, Virginia. If you can find it. It's not listed on any maps, being “too out of the way and too full of misanthropes,” according to my source.

A devil-boy with fiery eyes and goat feet, stealing dreams. If you can believe that, people. And you should, because you're believers.

It's Wide-Eyed Theo, signing off for the night.

Go forth and find the strange.

“That's it,” I said, looking straight at Neely just as he looked straight at me. “Theo mentioned it three times now. It's got to mean something. This is the one.”

Luke raised his eyebrows, cocky and scornful, and Sunshine looked at the opposite wall and wouldn't meet my gaze.

But Neely just grinned, and shrugged.

≈≈≈

Neely didn't go off to the guesthouse afterward, and neither did I. He crashed on the faded art deco sofa in my bedroom, and I didn't say boo, because I was fired up about the devil-boy story and didn't feel like being alone, and besides, who cared anyway.

Before Neely fell asleep, he came and sat on the end of my bed. He pulled something from his pocket and then opened his hand. A necklace of small jade beads sat on his palm. He lifted my hair, slid the chain underneath, and clasped it shut.

“Merry Christmas, Vi.”

I touched the warm green stones. Jade green. Freddie's favorite color.

“Don't even try to give it back. It's yours and you will keep it.” Neely's eyes were gleaming with high spirits and a late-night shot of hot buttered rum and not-taking-no-for-an-answer.

A minute or so passed with neither of us talking, and me just running my fingers over the necklace and smiling, and Neely just sitting there looking at the necklace and me behind it, like it pleased him in some deep way.

“I found Freddie's diary,” I said then, since I had to tell someone.

“Where was it?”

“Buried in the stack of books on the library floor. Probably been there since she died. I would have found it years ago if I'd ever bothered to put those books away.”

Neely laughed. “That'll teach you.” He reached for my hand and then turned it over and started rubbing his thumb over the center of my palm, softly, slowly, as if he wasn't sure he should be doing it.

“I haven't read it yet,” I said. “The diary, I mean. I couldn't bring myself to get past the first line.”

“You will,” he answered. Quiet.

“Neely,” I said, after a moment. “If I keep sitting here in Citizen Kane, staring at the sea and doing nothing about anything, I'll go mad. A devil-boy with fiery eyes, stealing dreams . . . That sounds like as good a lead as any. I say we take it. And this time I want to come with.”

Neely was quiet for a bit. Then: “You have, what, a week before school starts again?” he asked, not looking at me, still rubbing my palm.

I nodded. I listened to his breathing until his eyes met mine. “Violet, do you ever wish that you'd never met my brother? That he'd never come here, that he'd never glowed you up in the first place and started this whole thing?”

“All the time. All the damn time, Neely.” I paused. “But I'm still going with. I want to find River. And Brodie. Both. I want to do something. Anything. I miss River. I worry about him. Sometimes I think about—I remember . . .”

I didn't finish my sentence and Neely didn't make me. He just dropped my hand, went over to the sofa, slipped off his shoes, and tucked himself in.

“Neely?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think River ever told the truth? Like when he said my sleeping next to him kept his nightmares away? Or when I held him in the attic, and he told me about your mother dying? It wasn't all just lies and glow, right?”

Neely laughed, a whispery, nighttime laugh. “Not even a liar lies all the time, Vi.”

A few minutes passed.

“Night, Neely.”