Mistwalker (23 page)

We stepped over notebooks to get to my window. It was the second time that week that a cop had been at my door. This time, it didn’t seem to be for me.

My cousin Scott stood on the porch, and my parents went outside. Bailey pulled my blinds, and I lifted the window as quietly as I could. Though the lights made no noise, the patrol car’s idling engine did. It was hard to pick out words; whole sentences came out garbled.

Bailey leaned her head against mine and whispered. “I think he said the case is going?”

“Going where?” Neither of us knew, and we weren’t even sure that’s what he really said. I pressed against the screen. Its dusty weave made me wheeze, but I held my cough.

“What?” my mom barked.

That rang out, clear and pure. But what followed didn’t. Frustrated, I closed the window. Gesturing at the stairs, I said, “I’m just gonna go ask.”

“You have work to do,” Bailey said. As if she hadn’t just been pressed to the window with me.

She only said it to prove she was trying to do her job. It didn’t stop her from scrambling after me. Since it was probably family business, she stopped at the top stair. I went down first, Bailey right behind me, to wait
for Mom and Dad to come inside.

When they did, they were fire and ice. Mom’s face was scarlet, Daddy’s dirty white. They shut the door with Scott still on the other side of it. Startled to see me, Dad shook his head and set my mother’s arm free. “I’ll make coffee.”

He passed me without a word, and my heart sank. Reaching for my mother, I asked, “What’s wrong?”

“You should get back to work,” she said.

I refused to move. “Mom.”

“Scott’s not sure,” Mom said, her voice thick with judgment. “But he thinks something’s going on with the grand jury.”

Glancing up the stairs, I took comfort when Bailey pressed her hands to her chest. She didn’t have to say anything to know exactly how I was feeling: wounded and wary and afraid. I rubbed my mother’s back, like she used to rub mine when I was little and sick to my stomach. “What kind of something?”

Still furious, my mother snapped, “Like I said, Scott’s not sure. He came all the way over here to stir us up because ‘there’s chatter.’ I hear chatter all night on dispatch. There’s no need to run over, lights flashing, for
chatter.
”

“There’s nothing wrong, though, is there?”

Daddy emerged from the kitchen. Behind him, the coffeepot gurgled—an ordinary sound that seemed so out of place. The house groaned, shifting beneath our feet. And in the distance, the foghorn went off again. It lowed in the dark, distant and lost.

“Bad news travels faster than good,” Daddy said.

“But I’m supposed to testify.” Turning between them, I couldn’t tell if I was talking or begging. Panic ran through me; it stole my reason and my sense. “I was there! Doesn’t that matter?”

Mom clamped a hand on my shoulder. “Willa, stop it. Until there’s something to know, you need to settle down. I’m sure Bailey has better things to do than tutor you. Get on up there and quit wasting her time.”

Nudging me toward the stairs, Mom waited for me to go. How she expected me to work I didn’t know.

The grand jury wasn’t even the trial. It was a bunch of shuffling papers and looking at evidence. The way Ms. Park explained it to me, the grand jury was there to decide if there was enough evidence to charge Terry Coyne with killing my brother.

I was there. I saw it. I felt it. I knew exactly who fired that gun. It was a damned given, so what was going wrong with the grand jury? I’d pointed out the right picture in the mug shot book. My feet pounded on the stairs. Bailey caught me by the shoulders.

“It’s okay,” she said. “It’ll be okay.”

When our eyes met, though, I knew it wasn’t. Bailey was the one who had optimism on her side. Instead of certain, she looked worried. No doubt, I looked crazed. Between the two of us, I expected we had a right to be both.

TWENTY

Here I am, rampant.

I stand in the lamp gallery, a jar in hand. The light inside it doesn’t glow so bright as the one that spins behind me. When I hold the jar high, it seems almost empty.

Four in a hundred years. It’s an impossible task, and it always has been. Sisyphus and his rock. My humble self and these souls. I’d laugh, but nothing’s funny anymore.

I keep throwing myself off the lighthouse. Again and again, I plunge into the sea. Ripped apart and reincorporated, I find the smallest pleasure in the fact that it’s starting to hurt. My veins bear no blood, my flesh contains no bone. But whatever magic keeps me together, it’s exhausted and aching.

The masquerade of breakfasts and dinners is over. If I were a real boy, I’d be parched. Nothing to drink for days—could be a week or more. Letting time slip away is a gift to myself. Better than music boxes or books or nonsense, all the nonsense I used to wish for.

As autumn cedes to winter, I cede to the mist.

Like a monk, I shaved my head. Like an ascetic, I stripped to the waist. No shoes, no gloves. No tie, no hair oil. Now I realize the true choice I had when I took Susannah’s place. The soul collection only distracted me. It was more fundamental than that. Or should I say, more elemental.

Be human or be mist. Lure the next Grey to the island or surrender. All this time, the island knew, the lighthouse knew, that I was meant to succumb. Magic mocks me. It laughs and echoes through the trees.

The only reason Willa came was to put on a show. To delight whatever ancient god or demon that resides within this rock.

Reason tells me she was a pawn, but the elements have no reason. They’re capricious and unknowable; they contain no conscience. I hate her, I curse her. I stand here at the edge of my world with her brother’s soul in the palm of my hand.

I’ve no idea what will happen if I break the glass.

What happened when I captured him? It’s a question that only now occurs to me. Did I impede his progress to heaven or hell? Do those ethereal realms even exist? This bottled light could be anything—a breath, a thought. The whole sum of a being, and I keep it in a cupboard, like last summer’s jam.

Leaning over the rail, I hold the jar aloft. The lighthouse groans, the beam making another pass. When the light drowns me, I drop my prize. My whole purpose for being. Four souls in a hundred years; now I have but three.

The sea roars, and the gears grind. Everywhere, wind swirls and whispers. These raw aspects of nature clamor; they devour the sound of glass breaking on the rocks. Avidly, I watch. But there’s no light lifting ever skyward. No flicker delving into the deep. It seems—when I set free a collected soul—that nothing happens at all.

I’m disappointed.

Because I can, I call the fog until it’s thick around the light. I, too, am capricious, so I banish it by sheer force of will. Then I fling myself over the side again. The sensation of gravity gives way to a sudden, concussive ache.

When I come back together, I find myself standing in front of the cupboard. My remaining three jars tremble. Pulsing with light, they seem to react to one another. And when I reach for one, the lights within them dim. Perhaps they realize what comes next.

Perhaps they realize that
I’m
the monster on the rock.

TWENTY-ONE

Because the fog was so erratic, some of the juniors started gathering the little kids in groups to guide them to the school. Parents walked their kids to the base of the hill, then we waited until we had a whole class to lead.

The heat from the path thinned the haze, giving us a clear shot from the village to the school. As long as everybody stayed on the pavement, we could get up safely and back down again at the end of the day.

Somehow, it just got organized. Seth had kindergarteners, and Bailey scored the sixth-graders. They had no trouble herding their classes to Vandenbrook.

It wasn’t so easy for me. I ended up with fourth-graders. Though I couldn’t prove it, I suspected their parents gave them Red Bull and straight sugar for breakfast. They were old enough that they argued about holding hands, and little enough that they could disappear in two seconds.

I lost the Lamere twins the second day and nearly had a nervous breakdown. Calling my throat raw, I scoured the path from top to bottom four times. Right when I thought I’d have to call the police, I found them. They sat on a stump just off the path, building a faery house out of shells and sticks.

After that, I made my kids say one letter of the alphabet each, in order, all the way up the hill. If a
J
or a
Q
dropped off, I knew I had a runner.

Denny streamed past with her white blond hair and an orderly line of first-graders. It wasn’t until she got the whole class ahead of me that she turned around. And it unnerved me, because she met my gaze on purpose. Her face was soft, her lips pursed.

She looked thoughtful. Or sorry. Something sympathetic, and it dragged a cold touch along the nape of my neck. That wasn’t the face of the girl who’d spat at my feet or gone riding with my boyfriend. I raised my hand to acknowledge her.

Fog curling around her pale head, Denny only stood there. Then, out of nowhere, she said, “I liked Levi, you know.”

Stiff, I tried to nod. “There was a lot to like.”

Whatever had stopped Denny pushed her to move again. She swept up her first-graders and flowed on toward school. Her voice echoed in my head. It hurt in a whole new way to hear my brother’s name. Like forcing a needle through a blister and going too deep. It left me with a sour taste in my mouth.

I turned back to my fourth-graders, then heard Nick calling in the distance. It was another blister to recognize my name on his voice, actually. We hadn’t talked since the bonfire; I wasn’t sure I wanted to. But his little sister was in fourth grade, and she hadn’t been at the base of the hill when we were ready to head up. They must have been running late together.

I put one hand on each of the twins’ heads to keep them from wandering and called back, “I’m not going anywhere!”

From the pale, Nick appeared. He was shaggy as ever, clinging to his sister’s hand. But instead of letting go, he plowed into my fourth-graders and pointed back to town. “Your mother’s been trying to call you. She says go home right now.”

My heart knotted, and I shook my head. “I can’t, I’ve got to walk them up.”

“She smells like cheese,” Jamie Lamere volunteered beneath my hand.

Nick clamped him by the back of the neck and nodded me away. “I’ve got ’em. Seriously, Willa, you better go.”

Fixed in place, I hesitated. But just for a second, only long enough to hand over Ash Lamere, too. That one thought I smelled like onions, and he wanted to start the alphabet. I thanked Nick and ducked away from them, walking just short of a run. Pulling my cell from my pocket, I shook it, like that would make it ring or something.

Suddenly, the fog burned off. Not gradually; instantly. It was so clear, I could see the church steeple at the other end of town. Completely bare, trees stretched their naked limbs, sharp, black streaks against the sky. There were no clouds, not even a contrail to break the expanse of blue. This light washed everything brighter. Cleaner.

As I turned the corner onto Thaxter Street, I slowed. An unfamiliar car sat in front of my house. Its shape nagged at me as I came up the walk. Like I should have been able to place it. Once I opened the front door, it made sense. Ms. Park, the prosecutor, stood in the middle of my living room.

She held her elbows at awkward angles. Kinda like she wanted to comfort my mother but didn’t know how.

When I stepped in, she looked to me. Her smooth poker face revealed nothing, and my mother saved her the trouble of speaking.

“They’re not gonna charge Terry Coyne,” Mom said coldly. Blame flowed from her. She held out a hand to me, and that was soft. But her face was hard. Her eyes were diamonds, flashing from my face to Ms. Park’s. “There was a problem with the
warrant.
The bullets in his car
don’t count.
”

Ms. Park tried to soften it. “They don’t, and I’m so sorry. But this is only a setback. We’re running down a lot of other evidence.”

“There wasn’t any,” I said, lips numb.

“There’s always more evidence,” Ms. Park replied. She even sounded like she believed it. “And we still have you.”

“Then let me talk,” I said. “I saw it all. I was there. They have to listen to me.”

“And they will. But you’re not enough, Willa. Not for an indictment, not for a conviction. And I’d rather convict Mr. Coyne in five years than let a jury find him not guilty now.”

Throat raw, I spun toward Mom, then back to Ms. Park. It didn’t make sense to me. The bullets made a connection, yeah. But I’d seen it all. I was there. I could have sat in a courtroom and pointed him out all day long. For the rest of my life, I’d never forget his face in the night, and that should have counted for
everything.

My voice broke as I insisted, “But I was
there.
”

Ms. Park said something soothing and meaningless. That only ticked my mother off, and she started shouting. It was a hazy mess to me, voices tangled up. High and low, loud and soft.

When it got hot, Ms. Park said she’d come as a courtesy, that she wanted to make sure Mom heard it from
her,
and not the news. Ma told her where she could shove that courtesy.

The next thing I knew, Mom had chased the prosecutor out of the house. I followed my mother to the porch, just in time to catch her. She didn’t faint, she just gave up on standing. Flailing at the world, she didn’t want to be set down gentle, but I did it anyway.

Curling around her, I tried to soak up her tears. I tried to calm her—like Ma Dyer said, I tried to help her breathe. But this was a kind of drowning nobody could save her from. Especially not me. I was going down with her. I could only manage one thought, tangled in grief with her like that.