ten.
It was late afternoon by the time Marsden and Wynn left the library. The sun remained blistering, pounding the dusty pavement with waves of heat. Marsden didn’t welcome it, even after a solid hour of overpowering air-conditioning—and even though she was still chilled from the inside out after uncovering the unknown about her father’s death.
She’d always had questions for him, but not for anyone else. Why would she when the truth was obvious, regardless of what the papers had to say?
Death by suicide, nothing else.
Her hand shook as she unlocked Wynn’s bike, then her own, from the rack on the sidewalk.
“You ready to go?” She hoped she sounded normal, though her mind was racing. All these years of living with the covert nestled into her heart like another hollow chamber, the idea of death, whatever its form, should be something she was used to. “I have to stop at the post office on the way back.”
“Who are you writing to?” Wynn leaned over and squished the books that wouldn’t fit into her own bike basket into Marsden’s. Her eyes lit up with curiosity. “Like a pen pal? Where are they from?”
I’m writing to the dead. They come from places all over, just to see the covert.
She kept her smile casual as she hopped onto her bike and headed down the road. “Not a pen pal, no. Just a payment I have to mail for Dany.” A white lie, boring enough that Wynn wouldn’t think twice about it. Through the gaps of the houses along the highway, the Indigo was visible. Marsden caught flashes of the setting sun, winking off the river like bits of lightning. The faint metallic smell of the water floated through the air and tingled her nose. And though it was getting close to dark, there were still rental boats and canoes out, their shapes black wedges of shadow cutting close to the shore. She heard distant hollers and laughter and the splashing of water.
“It’d be neat if you did have a pen pal, don’t you think?” Wynn asked.
“Sure.”
“Because you don’t like the kids from your school very much.”
Marsden was surprised enough that it took her a few seconds to respond. She showed a sudden prolonged interest in the buildings they biked past, the same tourist-friendly ones she’d seen all her life: Poseidon, where you could order takeout fish and chips and rent fishing equipment by the day; Spokes, for bikes if you wanted to explore the town and the long Indigo coast; the Glory Heritage Museum, where they did slideshows of the town’s historic gold rush four times a day, carefully edited to end before Duncan Kirby lost his mind. “Who says I don’t like them, runt?”
“No one.” Riding along on their bikes, there was the slightest of breezes, and Wynn’s nest of hair was only getting messier, clip still missing. “But I can tell. You’re never on the phone with anyone like I am with Caitlyn and Ella. And you’re always home, working.”
Her sister was shades of Shine, lecturing her, and it would have struck Marsden as amusing if she weren’t already on edge. Wynn never seemed bothered by stares and slights, was still mostly oblivious—but that would slowly change with time, with age. When she knew the truth and began to view Glory through it. When the friends she had now learned to see her through that same truth, too.
“I’m always home because that’s where I work,” Marsden said carefully. “And just because you don’t see me on the phone making plans to hang out with anyone doesn’t mean I’m not, right?”
“I guess there was that boy looking for you outside the covert yesterday.” Wynn’s earlier curiosity was back tenfold. “Does he go to your school? What did he want?”
“Just—oh, there’s the post office. Let’s go.”
Marsden was greatly relieved to bike a bit ahead, to avoid having to answer her sister’s questions. Jude was more dangerous than not, his sudden presence in her life like the key to a change she wasn’t ready for.
“Uh-oh, it’s closed,” Wynn said, coming up alongside her. “The windows are all dark.”
“Dany had stamps at the house, so I just need the box anyway,” Marsden said. “Wait here for me, okay?”
But her sister was no longer listening, was already reading one of her library books pulled from her basket as Marsden swung off her bike, leaving it standing alongside the curb.
She’d been prepared for the post office to be closed when they’d left for it. In fact, she’d planned it that way. For as long as she’d been mailing away bits of her guilt—and it’d been years now—she’d always used the after-hours box outside the entrance. She already stuck out in the town—she didn’t need her letters to be remembered, too.
She slipped an envelope from her purse.
After skimming the woman’s body in the covert yesterday, she’d taken the five-dollar bill to the boardinghouse’s front desk and changed it for singles at the till. After the newspaper had been delivered that morning, she’d scanned the small column hidden deep in the local news section that was dedicated to covert updates, searching for the woman’s name, then looked for her address in one of the phone books in the lobby (Dany kept both local and state ones for boardinghouse guests to use; beyond that, Marsden was sometimes forced to call the operator to ask for an address). She’d addressed a plain white envelope, slipped in a dollar bill—it was always a dollar whether she skimmed five or fifty—stamped it, and sealed it shut.
Where there should have been a return address, she’d left the envelope blank. As she always did.
Now Marsden dropped it into the mail slot, heard the shimmy of it as it slid down.
It’d started with Caleb Silas, of course, the first body that she’d skimmed. Her guilt, the letters.
She’d known skimming was wrong, just as she’d known she was going to keep doing it. At first, because it was rebellion—against her new home, her father being gone, her new life. Then it became a weapon, a means to an eventual escape. And soon, a compulsion, the only way she could ever understand why her father left. The only way how, given her blood and its dark magic, she could hear from him, be told that his death had nothing to do with her. How, as long as she kept going, she could also hear from those she skimmed, be assured they understood why she did what she did.
But he didn’t speak to her. No one in the covert ever did.
So she talked to them with these letters, this money. An apology of sorts, sending back a portion of what was rightfully theirs. Or, even more than an apology, the absolution she would never earn. She would always owe a debt.
The problem was Wynn might end up being the one to pay it. Marsden’s guilt was slowing down her saving, keeping them in Glory even longer.
Jude Ambrose. He might end up paying, too. Jude, with his hard slash of a mouth and so much fiery sadness in his eyes.
Away from him right then, safe from the spell of his face, she was nearly sure she was making a mistake agreeing to his searching the covert. She was risking him finding out she was a skimmer, after all. What if she couldn’t make herself lie about stealing from Rigby? What if she had no choice but to show Jude what she was still hiding? Had to then make him see firsthand the proof and depths of his brother’s misery?
The note. A simple and terrible handful of scrawled lines in Rigby’s now-recognizable handwriting—those Os, the Ts:
I’m sorry, Jude, I never wanted you to know.
I told myself it was Dad.
I didn’t want to stop.
But I didn’t mean to do it.
They were nearly out of downtown when Wynn caught sight of the pop-up kiosk on the sidewalk. Marsden saw the cheap souvenirs on display as she biked past—magnets, mugs, key chains, most emblazoned with some kind of symbol representing the Indigo. All false—blue instead of mud.
Wynn turned her bike toward it before Marsden could stop her.
“Hey, it’s getting late, I’ve got to get started on dinner,” Marsden called after her sister, exasperated. She’d already taken a look at the menu, knew exactly how much time she needed. She would be cutting it close—the library had taken longer than she’d thought it would. To be fair, she’d only planned on looking up one death, not two. Running late also meant she’d have to wait until tomorrow to talk to Shine about her dead husband. As with all of Nina’s girls, her mother’s evenings and nights were taken.
“But I need another hair clip, remember?” Wynn got off her bike and walked over to the kiosk. The vendor was busy talking up a group of tourists, leaving Marsden to roll her eyes more freely over the merchandise. No hair clips as far as she could tell, but stuff she hadn’t seen from afar—snow globes, bottle openers, postcards.
And a row of protective charms suspended from display hooks. Little Duncan dolls, complete with blood-splattered legs and miniature guns.
Marsden drew back, both annoyed and flustered. She remembered Shine’s humiliation at seeing the things, and felt touches of it herself, hating that it was one of the few things she still shared with her mother.
She wanted to get away before the vendor saw them. He might recognize them and back away himself. Even worse, though, was that he might not know who they were. Would then try to sell them charms. Would tell them all about the legend of mad Duncan Kirby. “We really should go, Wynn. No hair clips. And if dinner’s late, Nina’s going to cut some of my pay.”
“These charms are so stupid,” her sister whispered loudly, leaning in closer to the display to examine. She wrinkled her nose, as though they even smelled bad. “The covert’s just a place. And how would having dolls of our great-great-uncle protect someone from his ghost, anyway?”
Marsden had to grin. She’d known Wynn had seen the charms for sale before—everyone in Glory had—but had never thought to ask how she felt about them. Disdain, her sister’s not caring yet, was about as good of a reaction as she could ask for. Caring too much about anything, that was how traps happened.
“Well, they can’t even get the color of the river right—we all know it’s not the least bit blue.” She shrugged. “Ready to leave for real now, runt?”