Our Crooked Hearts(78)

One of his bedroom windows overlooked the left side of the house. I searched for convenient pebbles to toss and found massive decorative boulders. Then I remembered who I was dealing with and sprinted to the front.

He was sitting on the porch with his head tilted back, white T-shirt and pajama pants and an empty matchbook in one restless hand. I could smell burnt-out matches but no cigarette. When he saw me, he moved to his feet so fast I knew he’d been waiting.

Our bodies collided at the bottom of his steps, my nose in clean cotton tinged with sulfur dioxide, his buried in my chemical hair. Our breathing rose in sync and I clung to him, pressing the golden box into his back.

“What happened?” he murmured. “Something happened.”

I rose on my toes to reach his ear.

“Can we go to the tree house?”

Billy stiffened and pulled away to look at me. “The tree house.” His eyes so wide, so full of hope, it could break your heart. “Ivy. Do you … do you…”

“I remember.”

He collapsed a little. “I thought you did. When I saw you running up the lawn. You look—you look like yourself. Not that you didn’t before, I just—”

“It’s okay. I know.”

He gathered me up, pressed his nose to my neck. “You even smell the way you used to.”

“Like what?”

His voice was muffled by my skin. “Like wild things.”

My eyes burned. His hair was so soft on my cheek.

“What made you remember?”

“Let’s talk in the tree house.”

He nodded, but he didn’t let go. “What happens if you forget again?”

“I won’t.”

“How can you know that?”

“Tree house,” I repeated.

“Okay,” he said softly, then sighed. “It’s been a long time. Let’s get something to cover the cobwebs.”

We walked into the house still half-entwined. Everywhere he touched me was electric, everywhere he didn’t was waiting to be touched. Gremlin tap-danced our way, then froze, darting a sniff at my feet before racing off into the darkened den.

“You don’t smell that weird,” Billy whispered, looking after him.

I laughed a little, very quietly. “It’s not … it’s spellwork, on my feet. I’ll explain.”

His brows went up and his hand tightened around mine. We moved like a two-headed animal up the stairs, to a linen closet with a squeaky door. I should’ve been down where his dad wouldn’t see me but neither of us wanted to let go. On the way out I took a windbreaker from a hook, something with a pocket to tuck the golden box inside.

There was no ladder to the tree house, you had to climb the tree itself. I went first and Billy threw the bedding up piece by piece. It was damp inside and strewn with dead leaves but it smelled the way I remembered. A little like my old cigar box, plus rain and must and that dense green scent at the base of a leaf stem. I layered two comforters over the old boards, arranged the uncased pillows, and waited for him.

I was right, this was the best place we could be. It was built with skill and love and it was even weatherproofed, one shed-size room with a peaked roof and three windows and a doorway you had to kinda swing yourself through. Better than that, it was nestled in the branches of an old oak that had held me so many times as I grew. We would be safe here.

Billy pulled himself inside. He looked at me, then around the little house. “This was a good idea.”

“I know.”

Of course I used to pretend this was our actual house, his and mine, and around the time I hit ten I dreamed it as a wedding house, the place we’d live in when we were married. Not that I ever told him that. The air shimmered with the ghosts of our younger selves, our secrets, our heads side by side on the wooden floor. All the times I wanted to kiss him or hoped he’d kiss me. The walls and our faces were patterned with leaves turning under moonlight.

“Come here.” I reached a hand out and tugged him down, the last of my energy tipping out like spilled salt as we went horizontal.

“You asked me what happened,” I said. “All the things I couldn’t remember—everything about you, about magic—my mother stole them from me. And she locked it all inside a golden box.”

I could feel the whole warm line of his body beside mine. “That’s not a metaphor, is it?”

I shook my head, slipping the box briefly from my borrowed jacket pocket to show him. It felt like a loaded gun. “I do believe she thought she was protecting me. I just don’t know if that’s good enough.”

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “That’s … I’m so sorry.”

“I can’t sleep yet,” I murmured. “The person I thought was in my house the other day, she’s someone my mother knew. Another witch. My mom and aunt have been gone for days and I’m sure she has them, or hurt them, I don’t know. We’re safe while we’re here, but I have to find them.” I pressed my fingers to my eyes. “I can’t even keep track of what I know, what I could use to find them. I could scry, I could sleep…”

He nodded. “You should sleep, you need it. I’ll stay awake, I’ll watch over you.”

“No, I mean, I could sleep to dream.” An ache filled my rib cage as I made another connection. “I’ve spent years believing I didn’t even have dreams. But that was one more thing the box took. When I was a kid, I could do anything when I dreamed. Even pull people in with me.”