Wink Poppy Midnight(8)

And after my life so far, after all the quiet, especially now that Alabama and my mother were off in France . . . you’d think the pandemonium would have stressed me out. But no. I liked it.

I heard footsteps on the stairs, and Wink returned, wearing a green dress that seemed kind of old-fashioned. But what did I know about clothes. I usually just wore black pants and black button-downs, like Alabama. He liked to dress like Johnny Cash, or a gunslinger, minus the guns, and I figured if it was good enough for Alabama, it was good enough for me.

Wink’s red hair was still crazy and wild. It bounced out around her little heart-shaped face and made her look even smaller and younger. She smiled at me, and I smiled back.

“How was the gingerbread?” she asked.

“Great.”

“You met the Orphans.”

“Yes.”

“Can Mim read your cards?”

To my credit, I just nodded.

Wink’s mother spun around from the stove and ushered me into the closest chair at the long wooden kitchen table. She pulled a stack of worn tarot cards from some hidden pocket near her hipbone and held them out to me.

“Pick three.”

I did, and set them on the table. Wink and her mother leaned over me.

Wink pointed to the first card. “The Three of Swords.”

“The Three of Swords is the card of loss, and broken relationships,” Mrs. Bell said. Her voice wasn’t dreamy or mystical, it was practical and matter-of-fact, like she was talking about the weather. “Things that are missing will not be found again. The Two of Swords is the card of tough choices, but the Three of Swords . . . you’ve already come to terms, and made your decision. Your feet are set on a path. Whether the path will be the right one . . .” She shrugged.

Wink pointed to the next two cards.

A naked man and woman looking up at an angel.

A crowned king in a chariot, two horses in front.

“The Chariot and the Lovers.” Wink smiled.

“What do they mean?” I asked. But Wink just shrugged and kept smiling a mysterious Mona Lisa smile.

My mother had written a mystery a few years ago called Murder by Tarot. She visited several tarot readers in Seattle for research. She later told me and Alabama that some of the readers had been charlatans, some had been keen observers of human nature, and some had been inexplicably and eerily accurate. And as far as she could tell, the true readers had no connecting factors. Some were old, some young, some were bright-eyed and animated, some were quiet and detached. One of them had even guessed my mother’s deepest secret . . . a secret she’d never told anyone. When Alabama and I asked her what the secret was, she just turned away and didn’t answer.

Mrs. Bell, job done, lost interest in me and went back to the stove. Wink stood by my chair, not saying anything.

I got up and took her hand. We walked through the kitchen, out the screen door, slam, across the yard, dogs barking happily, and headed into the deep dark woods, toward the setting sun.



A MILE OF pine needles crunching underfoot, darkness descending, trees tall and black, twisting forest path, cool night air. It got cold at night up in the mountains. Even in summer.

Wink was holding my hand and not saying a word.

Poppy had said I should get to know Wink. That we should be friends. But I wasn’t just obeying her orders. There was really nowhere I wanted to be more than walking side by side, step by step, with this Bell girl.

Her fingers moved in mine. Tightened.

“Wink?”

She looked at me.

“What’s it like? What’s it like growing up on a farm with a bunch of brothers and sisters and a mom that reads tarot cards?”

She shrugged. “Normal.” She paused for a second. “Isn’t your mom an author? What’s it like to have a mother who makes up stories for a living?”

I shrugged back at her. “Normal.”

I didn’t go into it all, about Mom leaving with Alabama. I just didn’t feel like making myself sad. And Wink was bound to guess anyway, when she didn’t see my mom or brother around all summer.

The creepy mansard-roofed Roman Luck house came into view, four tall chimneys pressing at the dark sky. I stopped and caught my breath.

Maybe it was because we were in the middle of the woods, near an abandoned house, trees on all sides and no-one-to-hear-you-scream, but I got a bad feeling all of a sudden.

Everything was dark. Thick, thick silence.

And then I heard a laugh.

And another.

Muffled voices.

More laughter.

And then came the flames. Orange and silky, waving at the sky.

A kid stepped back from the pile of wood, smiling, the way boys do whenever they manage to start a fire.

I looked around.

Damn it.

We’d walked right into the middle of a Poppy party.

Poppy’s parties were quiet, secret things, made up of the Yellow Peril and a few sycophants. The parties moved around. Sometimes they were in Green William Cemetery, or on the overgrown main street of one of the nearby abandoned gold rush towns, or by the Blue Twist River.

Sometimes I was invited to her parties. Mostly not.

The Yellow Peril were Poppy’s inner circle—it was a reference to opium, because, you know, Poppy. But everyone just called them the Yellows. Two guys and two girls and none of them half as evil or as beautiful as her. Poppy liked to lead the guys on and would give all her attention to Thomas one week and then Briggs the next. Just to keep them on their toes. The girls were Buttercup and Zoe. They dressed like twins, though they weren’t. Always in black dresses, red lipstick, striped socks, and a twin set of cunning looks in their eyes. But Buttercup was tall and had black hair to her waist and Zoe was tiny and had short brown curly hair and both were pretty but definitely not sisters. I’d never spoken directly to them in my whole life. They didn’t matter. Not when there was Poppy.