Our Crooked Hearts(48)

“What do you mean, huh?”

Delicately she placed a palm over its top. Bottom, whatever. It didn’t matter, I knew how to open it when the time came. “I’m wondering if he’s right about like calling to like. I look at this and I don’t feel anything. It’s pretty, but I wouldn’t necessarily know it was even magic. What does it feel like to you?”

I took it back, sandwiched it between my hands. The metal was the same temperature as my skin, its grain so softly burnished it felt like fur. “It makes me hungry,” I said. “I hope I never have to use it. The idea creeps me out, honestly. But I couldn’t not take it. It makes me hungry just to hold.”

“That’s sort of how I feel in a garden,” she said. Then, abruptly, “My mom’s grandmother was a yerbera. My dad just told me. And I’ve been thinking. When all this Marion stuff is done, I want to be better. I want to use magic to help, you know? No more selfish shit. There’s this practitioner in Pilsen, I know she’d take me on as her apprentice if I asked. When I’m done with school, or maybe before, even. Lazar is right, I think. About working stronger if you work with what’s in your blood.”

“Wow. That’s so cool. That’s … you’ll be amazing.” I bit the inside of my cheek. “It’s just, I’ll miss you. I’ll miss working with you.”

Under any other circumstance she would’ve reminded me we were sisters. Now she sighed. “Let’s just get through tomorrow, okay? Let’s get that over with.”

“You think it’ll be over after tomorrow?”

“Not really,” she said. “You?”

I held the golden box to my chest. There was a slight vibration to it, like a purring cat turned down to its lowest setting. It made me feel braver about the shadows gathering in the upper corners of Fee’s room, that would turn into breezes and whispers as soon as we turned off the lights.

“Personally, I think we’re fucked.”





CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX



The suburbs

Right now

When I closed my eyes I could feel it, the way your body remembers roller coasters. Billy’s arm around me, pulling me in, and the whole warm dreaming world gone underwater.

When I kiss you, it won’t be our first kiss.

I opened my eyes and the rest of it tumbled in.

I peeked out of my room around dinnertime, the house so quiet I got scared my dad had gone somewhere. Then I heard him talking behind his bedroom door. My heart leapt before I realized he was calling into the void of her voicemail.

“Where are you?” The pleading in his voice made me prickle all over with cold. “I need you. Your daughter needs you. We had a deal, goddammit, and I’ve kept it. Now you keep it. I swear to God, if you leave me alone with this…”

I leaned into the quiet that followed the threat, then lurched back from the sound of his fist meeting wood. Four blistering bangs, then silence.

That’s when I stopped being angry at my dad. There was only one person to blame, and even he couldn’t reach her.

I retreated to my room. I was scrolling through texts from Amina, trying to figure out how the hell I could respond—the last one, from an hour ago: Either your dad took your phone or you’re dead—when I heard my parents’ bedroom door fly open and hit the wall.

I jerked upright. My dad pounded across the hall and my heart clawed its way to my throat and when he threw the door open I saw right away he wasn’t angry. He was terrified.

“Where’s the box?” he said.

“The box?”

“The box you took from the safe.” He was breathing too fast. “Give it to me.”

I reached under my bed, to where I’d stashed the cigar box, and held it out.

“Jesus H., Ivy, not that one—the golden box!”

“The gold—” I shook my head. “I left that in the safe. I didn’t even know it was a box. What’s in it?”

Something was balled up in his hand. He dropped it on the bed, fingers trembling. “Are you sure you didn’t take it out? You’re absolutely certain?”

“Yes. All I did was pick it up and put it back. I couldn’t even tell what it was, I thought it was solid metal…”

The longer I babbled, the eerier his silence. He was too pale, his skin drawn too tightly over his bones.

“The person you thought could’ve broken in. Describe her again.”

I did, watching his face for recognition and seeing none.

“Okay,” he said, when I was through. “I’ll keep—trying to reach your mother. And if Hank gets in touch, can you please tell him to call me back, for god’s sake?”

I didn’t reply. I was looking at what he’d dropped on the foot of my bed. Slowly I leaned forward to pick it up: the button-up work shirt I’d given to the pale stranger, by the creek. The one she was wearing when I tailed her home from the 7-Eleven.

“Where did you find this?”

My voice must’ve sounded normal enough, because a fractional smile skated over his face. “Floor of our closet. You must’ve dropped it when you were snooping. I don’t think you’re cut out for a life of crime, kid.”

The shirt smelled like sweat and fried food and, oddly, my mother’s perfume. I squeezed it in bloodless fingers. “Dad,” I whispered.