Our Crooked Hearts(79)

“Ivy.” His eyes were so soft. “I know.”

He did know. I remembered now. When Billy was a kid, he had nightmares. They tended to start up after his mother called the house, erratic bursts of maternal interest that never lasted long. When the nightmares got bad, I’d pull him into my dreams.

We smiled at each other, and when he kissed me we were still smiling.

Until we weren’t. He was beside me, then above me, propped on one arm. He ran a hand firmly down my body, rib cage to thigh, then held me there and pulled me up, closer. We kissed and kissed and it wove the air to silver and the silver touched every part of our skin, until he sighed against my mouth and said, “Oh, my god. Finally.”

“Second kiss,” I said.

“It was better. It was even better.”

We laughed together in the dark. Everything outside was a barbed-wire knot, but we were in here. I didn’t know joy and sorrow could lodge together so tightly. I didn’t know how to accept all my mother had taken from me, how to think about everything I’d gotten back.

He was running a hand over the sleek flank of my borrowed activewear. “Shit. I’m gonna have an exercise video fetish now. Tell me to do a push-up, okay?”

I laughed and kissed him again. I felt like a kid who’d come into sudden possession of an ice-cream truck: all mine. Then I rolled away, because I needed my brain right now and otherwise I’d never stop. Billy nestled in behind me, his arm across my chest. “Sweetheart,” he murmured into my dirty hair.

The endearment filled my chest like honey, the kind of drowning sweet you could lose yourself in. I tried to think cold-water thoughts, any thoughts. I heard Marion again, when I asked if she’d hurt my mom and aunt.

They’re not dead. I’m not that merciful.

Not dead, but not here. So, contained. Somewhere. I sat up.

“What is it?”

“I have an idea. A place we can check.” I looked at him. “Can we take your car?”





CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT



The suburbs

Right now

Billy’s car had a busted AC. All the windows were down and the wind came roaring off the highway, pummeling my head and making it easier to hold my thoughts away from me, where they wouldn’t hurt. My sense of time was pulpy. The car clock said 3:07 but that had to be a lie. The night had already stretched so long.

Maybe Marion was packing extra minutes into every hour to make room for me to come find her. To find them. She and my mother and Aunt Fee had lived through a nightmare. Now I was going to look for them at its source.

We’d climbed down from the tree house and Marion wasn’t waiting for me. Billy grabbed keys and shoes and a bag of pretzels just in case and still she didn’t come. But that didn’t mean her eyes weren’t on me.

We hit our exit and a few minutes later we were driving through a college town. Campus was a warren of lawns and pedestrian walkways and parking garages. We got as close as we could and I still couldn’t see what I was looking for.

“I’m gonna find a place to park,” Billy said, turning his blinker on even though it was the middle of the night and there were no other cars in sight.

“Wait,” I said. “Pull over here quick.”

When he had I turned to him and took his hands and said, “You know you’re not coming with me.”

“Ivy,” he began, and I shook my head.

“If I’m right, and they’re there, I can’t be focused on protecting you.”

“You wouldn’t—” He cut himself off, thought about it. “But if she … what if she comes at you with a candlestick or something? You need someone watching your back.”

“It’s not gonna be a candlestick. And if she knows … I mean, look at us.” I waved at the space between our bodies, a zinging arena of heart arrows, basically. “She knows who you are, to me. She could use it.”

He dropped his head. “I hate this.”

“This is what it is to be with a witch,” I told him. “You have to let me be stronger than you.”

His eyes went wide and he kissed my knuckles. “With you,” he said, grinning. “With a witch. I’ve known you were stronger than me since I was seven. It’s awesome. I just hate that I’m a liability. I wish I could help you.”

“You are helping me. You’re my getaway vehicle, right? Also my getting-there vehicle. Also my—”

He kissed me. “I’m your ride. So I wait here. Watching my phone in case you need me.”

“Wish me luck,” I told him, and stepped out of the car.

When I was alone I could let myself feel afraid without worrying he’d try to stop or follow me. I slipped around the side of a concrete building. I was starting to mistrust Google Maps when I saw the narrow sidewalk.

It ran beneath old lamps, their bulbs the safety-orange of construction lights. At the path’s end was a house built to such sinister specifications I didn’t need to see its sign to know I was there. I’d read about it on the drive and learned it had been closed for a long time, for renovations. But there was no scaffolding, no sign of work in progress. Just an unlit house on a lawn of clover in the center of a dark campus. I reached the end of the path and stopped.

The library’s front door was open. Just like the house in the woods.