Dark and Shallow Lies(16)

I follow the boardwalk around the side of the house to sit on the front steps again. I can’t stop shaking, and I don’t want Honey to see me like this.

Across from me, on the dock, I catch another glimpse of dark red hair. Seems like Case didn’t go far. Now I’m more angry than scared. What gives him the right to come skulking around here trying to freak me out? It’s an asshole move.

“I know you’re over there,” I call out. The safety of the well-lit front steps is making me brave. “You planning on staying out here all night?”

Nobody calls back, but someone steps out from the shadows and into the light.

Dark red hair. But not Case.

It’s Wrynn, Case’s little sister.

Wrynn is nine, but she seems way younger. Scrawny and bug-eyed, she always looks startled. Like life has taken her by surprise.

“Comment ?a va, Grey?” she says. How’s it going? A question that doesn’t need answering. She gives me a little wave with one hand. I wave back, and she hurries over to sit beside me on the steps. Like I invited her for tea.

Wrynn’s barefoot. She has on cutoff shorts and a ratty old camouflage T-shirt, probably a hand-me-down from one of her brothers. Her hair spills across her shoulders and down her back.

“I was catchin’ lightnin’ bugs,” she tells me, and she holds up a glowing jelly jar.

“Be careful running around out here without shoes on,” I warn her. “Case killed a cottonmouth out behind the house just now.”

Wrynn gives me a funny little smile.

“Case is out with Daddy. Huntin’ frogs with Ronnie and Odin way over at Lapman Pond. Won’t be back till mornin’.”

The fear I felt in the shed pricks at me again, and goose bumps pop up on the backs of my arms.

Case’s gift is bilocation. The ability to physically exist in two places at once. The ancient Greeks talked about it. And some of the Catholic saints were supposed to have been able to do it, too. It’s documented and everything.

Here in La Cachette, everybody knows that Case can do it. His grand-père – his daddy’s daddy – had the very same talent, they say. Elora used to swear she’d experienced it firsthand. She’d know for sure Case was at home asleep, but then she’d come sneaking out of a late-night party up in Kinter – always with some boy – and there’d be Case. Standing in the driveway. Pissed as the devil and real as anything.

It’s enough to make my head spin.

“Grey?” Wrynn’s voice is small and sad.

“Yeah?”

“You miss Elora?”

“Of course,” I tell her. “I miss her a whole lot.”

“Me too.” The words come out in a rush, like she’d been waiting for permission to breathe them out to someone.

Wrynn is the only sister in a house crammed absolutely full of boys. She’s been Elora’s shadow since she was old enough to walk. And Elora has always been so good to Wrynn, paying attention to her and helping her with her hair and playing pretend with her when nobody else could be bothered. Wrynn has a wild imagination, and she always has some game going. Dragons and wizards and princesses.

“Wanna hear a secret?” she asks me, and I nod.

Wrynn leans close to whisper in my ear. She smells like grape soda. I feel her breath on my cheek, and her long red hair brushes my shoulder.

“Everybody wishes dey knew what happened to ’er.” Something shifts in Wrynn’s voice, and she doesn’t sound sad any more. She sounds afraid. Her words are hushed and breathless. “But dey don’t wanna know. Not really.” She pulls into herself and shudders.

Wrynn’s bottom lip quivers, and she sucks it into her mouth and works at it with her crooked baby teeth. She’s chewing so hard I’m afraid she’ll draw blood. When I put my arm around her, I feel her bones rattling. I’m surprised I can’t hear the sound of her pointy little shoulder blades knocking together, right through her skin.

Wrynn isn’t afraid. She’s scared about to death.

From over at Evie’s house, the sound of wind chimes moves through the night air. Twice as loud as it was earlier.

Insistent.

“Do you have a guess, Wrynn?” I ask her. “About what might have happened to Elora?”

Wrynn looks at me and nods. “Only it ain’t a guess.” Her eyes are dead serious. “I waited one hundred and one days, so I can tell da secret now.” Something skitters in the back of my mind, like a spider. Some bit of a story I’ve almost forgotten.

“What happened to Elora, Wrynn?”

She buries her face against my side. “It got ’er, Grey.”

“What got her?”

“Da rougarou.”

I remember the legend then. The Cajun werewolf. We used to scare each other silly with stories about a snarling wolflike creature that prowled the fog-covered swamplands on two legs. Hart used to tell us that if we left our windows open on full moon nights, the rougarou would come slinking in and rip us to pieces, right in our own beds. Then he’d eat us up. Bones and all. Nothing but blood-soaked sheets for someone to find come morning.

“That’s not real, Wrynn,” I reassure her. “There’s no such thing as the rougarou. It’s made up.”

“It ain’t made up,” she whispers. “It’s da truth. Cross my heart.”