Perspiration beaded her face—from her effort not to cry out in pain? We were both actors in our roles. And worse, we both knew it.
I started unwrapping her bandage, found the material damp with sweat. Every morning, I changed her dressing. Ever since she’d been attacked.
A week ago, she’d ridden out to check our dead neighbor’s well levels. One of our water pumps was spitting sand, sounding like a straw at the bottom of a milkshake. So she’d decided to investigate, going out alone early one morning when I’d been asleep. In the note she’d left, she’d pointed out that Allegra could barely carry her, much less both of us, and she assured me that no Bagmen would be out in the daylight.
As long as she had her salt and made it back before sunset, she’d be safe.
Neither of us had even seen a Bagman, except in my drawings. At first I’d been petrified that they’d overrun us, but months had passed with no sighting. So I hadn’t gone hysterical when I found her note.
To keep myself busy, I’d done a thorough cleaning of the house. I couldn’t stand the ash that accumulated over everything, grew sickened if I let myself think I could be breathing someone’s cremated remains.
As I’d been working, Mom had been miles away—stumbling upon three Bagmen in a pump house.
Two of the things had been licking at a wellhead. Another had stood between her and the door. It’d knocked her salt from her hand, so she’d charged, tackling it into the sun, both of them tumbling down cement steps. . . .
Now as I unraveled the first layer of bandage, I remembered how I’d listened to her tale, dumbstruck by her bravery. The badass Karen of old had made it home—without a single freaking Bagman bite, just a couple of bruised ribs.
Or so we’d thought.
Second layer of bandage. Like an idiot, I’d wondered if the attack might not be a good thing, a catalyst to jar her back to her ballsy ways.
Third layer. This task was testing me in ways I wasn’t ready for.
Where had that thought come from? Shame on you, Evie.
Shame. On. You.
Final layer. Don’t you dare gasp at the sight. Don’t inhale a breath. Calm. Act like it’s better.
Reveal. I clamped my lips together to hold back the surge of vomit in my mouth. Swallow it back down, you stupid coward with your stupid shaking hands.
The wound was hideous.
At first the injury had been just a cluster of bruises. Then it’d turned squishy. Now it looked tight, a sack of blood about to burst. Like a tumor growing out of her side.
The bandage was doing nothing but making me feel better—allowing me to think I was making a difference.
“It’s . . . better today,” I choked out. “I really think so.” With wobbly knees, I crossed to the antique pitcher and bowl—the ones we’d previously used as quaint decorative pieces. Now back in service.
As I wet a cloth to clean her skin, I took a moment to collect myself, gazing in the mirror at her room’s reflection.
This space was also a shadow of its former self. The burgundy and cream décor, the rich silk wall hangings, and the lace of her canopy bed were now all drab, the colors muted.
Despite my best efforts, ash continued to steal inside, steeping everything we owned. Layer by layer, that ash was erasing what we’d once known, erasing who we were.
I broke my stare, meeting eyes with Mom. Oh God, she’d been watching me when I was unguarded! Shame on you, Evie.
Had she caught a glimpse of the helpless frustration churning inside me? Of course—her eyes were glistening with unshed tears. But she said nothing, playing her role.
“Let’s get you cleaned up,” I said brightly, determined not to be helpless. Because wasn’t that just another way to say useless?
Exactly as that Cajun boy had once described me. Bonne à rien. Good for nothing.
As I washed Mom’s torso, I realized he’d been right. I couldn’t cook, sew, repair, or hunt the vermin and snakes that had survived. I was a clumsy and inefficient caretaker.
Never in the history of mankind had there been a better time not to be useless.
But I wasn’t going to be for long. . . .
Once I’d finished cleaning her up and rewrapping her torso as best as I could, I said, “Mom, I’m going out to find you a doctor today.” I might as well have said I was going to find her an Internet connection. Or a rainbow. “If I ride fast, I can make it to the next parish before sunset.”
The mere idea of heading away from this place, out into the world, sent a thrill through me. Then I felt guilty. How could I be excited about leaving my mom?
Was I so desperate to flee the misery at Haven House?
Every time I got that overwhelming urge to leave, I feared that I might truly be a coward at heart.
Or could it be more? Had something begun at the End, at the end of the world?
What I wouldn’t give for an answer! Since I’d stopped taking my meds, I’d started remembering more about that last drive with Gran. But those tiny flashes of recollection were never enough to make sense.
I recalled that she’d asked me to take her Tarot deck out of her purse, to look at the Major Arcana. I remembered the smell of her purse—Juicy Fruit gum and gardenia hand lotion. As I’d shuffled through the cards, they’d felt so big. . . .
“What are the odds that there will be a physician, Evie?” Mom asked. “And even if there is, the doctor will never have whatever is necessary to heal me. Be realistic.” Was her voice fainter than it’d been yesterday? “And your plan to ride fast ? A week ago, Allegra was about to keel over just from walking to the neighbor’s. She won’t make the property line now.”
Did Mom think I was just going to sit idly by and do crosswords with her? The last time I’d sat idly by hadn’t worked out so well for us.
What if I could’ve somehow used my visions to save our friends and loved ones . . . ?
Hell, the only positive thing about the voices was that they kept me from dwelling on the past, on what could’ve been. More than a dozen kids spoke in my head at various times, as cryptically as Matthew always did. This morning as I’d debated bringing Mom breakfast (knowing she’d turn it away), they’d ranted:
—Crush you with the Weight of Sins.—
—Red of tooth and claw!—
—We will love you. In our own way.—
“Evie,” Mom said, “I want you to dress up real nice and take a basket of cans over to Mr. Abernathy.”
The former animal control officer of the parish? “A basket. What do you think we are—rich?” The cellar full of cans that was supposed to last us years? We were down to weeks, were already rationing to the point of constant hunger.
“Do this for me, honey. Relieve my worries.”
In a mock-horrified tone, I said, “My mom’s pimping me out to a fifty-year-old dogcatcher.”
“He’s only thirty or so. And he’s a widower now.”
“You’re serious?” My mother, once so independent, now wanted me to go throw myself on the mercy of a man.
The woman who’d fought the old boys’ network of farming—and dominated—planned to offer up her daughter.
Don’t scream; keep the banter light. “Then why stop with a basket of cans, Mom? Don’t you think showing up with a fourteen-year-old sister-wife in tow would be more appropriate?”
“He’s one of the last people in Sterling, honey.”
Outside, the daily winds were starting up, pelting the shuttered windows, rocking Haven House until it creaked and groaned.
When the wind stirred up the ash, obscuring the sun, the temperature dropped. I busied myself smoothing another blanket over her. “Then maybe you should go out with Abernathy.”
“I’m forty-one and currently in no condition to go make nice with the boys. Evie, what if something happened to me? What would you do?” Ever since the attack, she’d been asking me this. “There’s no one here to look out for you, no one to protect you. It preys on my mind, thinking of you alone here.”
I recognized Ogen’s grating hiss. I’d figured out that at least some of the voices belonged to characters I’d had visions of.
I recalled the winged boy I’d glimpsed the night of my party. Maybe he was the one saying, I watch you like a hawk.
And the sparking, electric-looking guy? Had those been his lightning javelins? Perhaps that was his Irish-accented voice saying, Eyes to the skies, lads.
I’d seen those boys and the blurry-faced archer lying in wait. Now they were in my head among many more. Could any of those kids possibly be real?
Boys with wings and lightning javelins. Horned creatures like Ogen. Death . . .