A WHISPERING NOISE WOKE HIM. He felt like he’d been sleeping for years. He opened his eyes and found he was lying on a blown-up raft in the barn. A gallon of water was beside him, some bread and saltine crackers. His stomach rumbled, and he tore open the package and ate half of the crackers in a minute, sucking on the beady grains of salt. Mae wasn’t in the barn, and the whispering noise was gone—maybe it’d been a dream.
He glanced up at the skylight and saw the haziness of almost-dusk and wondered how long he’d slept. He inhaled the rest of the crackers, liking their flaky weight in his empty stomach as he stood, unsteady on his feet. The boat was covered by the white tarp and he leaned against it, caught his bearings. He felt better. He felt, for the first time in a long time, hungry. It was a good feeling. The feeling of being alive.
I didn’t kill her. He knew that now, no matter what they said. The memory of the dream with Ro ripped through him and he held on to the boat. He hadn’t killed her. It’d been an accident. Probably no one would ever believe him, no one except Mae, but at least he knew the truth.
There was a bucket near the raft—Mae must have put it there in case he got sick again—and next to it was a blanket and a twisted rope of sheets. He remembered falling in and out of sleep with fever dreams so vivid he might have lived them. How many days had passed since he’d been sick, stuck in the barn? Mae had been here, taking care of him, and Ro had too, somehow. He’d been with Ro, and—
A smell hit him. He sniffed under his sleeves, got the foul stench of sweat. He peeled off the T-shirt, took it over to the sink near the fridge. Mae’s pocketknife was there, along with a bar of soap. The tap was working, so he scrubbed his face, his neck, under his arms—he’d gotten thinner. He glanced over at the door and then dropped his shorts and splashed water everywhere, running the soap along his body, dripping suds onto the concrete. Christ, it felt good to be clean. It felt like he’d died and come to life again. Hell, maybe he had. He didn’t know what to believe, the dreams were mixing into things, clouding his head, but he was alive and now he knew what had happened with Ro that day. He hadn’t lost his temper, hadn’t hurt her. It didn’t matter that she’d said no about marrying him. He’d only loved her, and he loved her now, and that was the truth.
He started washing the shirt he’d taken off, and his shorts too. He wrung them out as dry as he could and then slipped them back on, cool and damp. A creak came behind him and he grabbed the knife as the barn door swung open. A second later his grip relaxed. There she was, five foot and not much more, with that thick hair of hers and that pixie face he was glad to see. Mae was wearing cutoffs and a thin T-shirt, and the start of a smile was on her mouth.
“You’re awake.” Her feet were quiet across the cement and then she was in front of him, her bag strap slung across her shoulder, her brown eyes peering up at him with concern, like she was his Florence Nightingale or something, his guardian angel. He felt embarrassed. She must’ve seen him sick—throwing up, ranting with fever.
“I feel better,” he said, not sure what to say, not sure what she’d been witness to. Come to think of it, he didn’t recognize the shorts he was wearing. He cleared his throat, feeling jittery, like he’d just chugged a Coke. “Much better,” he said, “thanks to you.”
A corner of her mouth turned up. “It was nothing.”
“Are we…still safe here?” Was he still safe in the barn—that was what he really meant, because he was the one who shouldn’t be here.
She nodded. “I’ve seen Fern around, but no one else,” she said. “And my dad’s out hunting right now, trying to keep his mind off things.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Probably it’s fine.”
“Probably,” he repeated, and he guessed that had to be good enough.
And then Mae’s hand was on his shoulder—so gentle. It was her touch that made him really look at her, and he found himself staring. Her brown eyes were distant sometimes, lost in thought, but when she glanced his way it was like the sun on a boat after being caught in a storm.
He looked down, remembering the garden. The night he’d gotten sick. He forced himself to examine the dust on the floor, and then the sink, the wet bar of soap. He could feel her standing beside him; the air was charged with her so close.
“How long was I out?” he asked.
“A few days.” She searched in her bag and then pulled out a package wrapped in tinfoil. “I would’ve made more but didn’t expect to find you awake.”
He opened it. Three homemade chicken sandwiches with the crusts cut off. His mouth watered just looking at them.
“Thanks,” he said. “I never eat the crusts.”
A hint of a smile on her lips again, and it warmed him to see it. Her face was smaller than Ro’s, and he liked the way it looked. No makeup, no earrings. She was just herself, and though she didn’t talk too much she had a presence to her, a quiet that made him wonder what she was thinking.
“I know you took care of me,” he said. “Don’t remember too much else.” Except the dreams; he remembered them.
“You scared me.” Mae ran her hand over his discarded shirt on the counter. She touched it tenderly, same way she’d done to him when he was sick. It was all coming back now, how she’d taken care of him. She’d brought him water, and painkillers, made him sit up to swallow them. “You wouldn’t go to the hospital.” She was still holding his shirt and he looked away, not wanting to stare.
After a moment she reached up and tilted his chin so he was facing her. He let her—unsure of what she was going to do. Her fingertips were soft and she held his gaze as she reached up with her other hand.
There was the lightest brush against his forehead. “You feel normal. Not as hot.” She leaned in again. “Stand still,” she said, and then she was dabbing near his temple with a tissue. He winced as red blossoms spread across the whiteness.
“Your cut’s bleeding again. Did you scratch it?”
“Must have.” He steadied himself on the counter as she wiped at his head.
“I’m glad you’re better.” The tissue was wet with his blood, and she looked worried. “Do you remember what I told you? When you were sick?”
That was when he saw her worry for what it was: she was hurting too. The pain of it was all over her face, her narrow shoulders. A heavy sadness underneath her skin. And then he remembered the thing she’d told him—what, an hour ago, a day? He’d been lying on the raft; she’d been holding a cold washcloth to his forehead. And she’d told him her grandfather had passed.
Christ, it wasn’t fair. Some people had to deal with so much death and others only their own. His heart ached for the girl in front of him. Mae Cole was something special. She didn’t deserve all this pain. No one did.
“Hey.” He grabbed her hand. “I’m sorry. About your grandfather.”
The light in the barn was fading fast, but he could still see her eyes flood before she spoke. “It’s okay,” she said. “The doctor told us he went fast, that he wouldn’t have felt much. The funeral’s tomorrow.”
He didn’t know what to tell her. What he wanted to do was just hold her, but that didn’t seem right either. “You want to talk about it?”
She shook her head. Tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “Do you remember what else I told you? When you were sick?” She reached into her bag and pulled out the green book. “I got it back. We have everything we need.”
He thought he’d be excited to see it, but instead a wariness filled him. He stared at the coffins on its cover, wondered if the ritual could do what Ro had sworn it could.
“Only I need to show you something first.” She nodded at the ribbon. It was marking a place toward the back and he turned to it, and then nearly dropped the book.
The drawing looked so real, like the ring might just slide off the page. The cut of the stones, the shape of them, the detail—it matched the one he’d given Ro, he knew that for sure. The worry snake slithered in his gut.
“Ro couldn’t have drawn this,” he said. “I gave her—”
“I know,” Mae cut in. “Your ring came from the same place as this book.” Her eyes moved between him and the sketch. “Which means…” She let out a nervous laugh.
“We’re related,” he said, then shook his head. “No. We can’t be. No way.” He felt nauseous, like he might be sick again. Ro had seen the ring and thought they were family. His hands were shaking, and then Mae touched his elbow. He tore his eyes from the page to look at her.
“My dad was adopted,” she said softly. “I just found out….I don’t think Ro knew.”
He took a step back, all of it sinking in, flooding over him. If only she were here right now. If only he could tell her.
“So actually,” Mae said, “you’re the true Cole.”
He stared down at the sketch of the ring, hardly believing it. But it was his, all right. Back when Ro had first told him about her family book it reminded him of what his mother used to tease him about. I suppose you’re like your daddy, thinking you got magic in your blood. Thinking you’re special. He’d chalked up Ro’s book as coincidence—there were plenty of stories of old magic in the South, that was what he’d told himself—ignoring all the signs that it could be something more. That his mother could have been talking about the same sort of thing. But his dad had left them when he was a little kid, and she’d hated those stories ever since.
“Did you know you had roots here?” Mae asked. Before he could answer, she pressed on. “Is that why you came?”
“My uncle offered me a job in Gulf Shores.” He’d moved over this way for work, but Ro was the one who’d brought him to Blue Gate. “I stayed because I met your sister.” And meeting her had felt like home. Funny, he kind of felt the same way around Mae now. If he was being honest.
“I never expected this…,” Mae said, trailing off. She got that distant look again.
“Never would’ve expected any of this, Mae.” It was strange as hell that he’d ended up at Blue Gate, back where his family was from—but that didn’t really matter, not now, at least. What mattered now was the book. “You got this off Lance after you said you couldn’t. Ro’d be proud.”
Mae shrugged; there was a flush over her neck. “You’re a Cole,” she said. “So the way I see it, it’s yours.”
“Only one reason why I want it.” He looked into her eyes to ask permission, holding back the urge to touch her cheek. “Are we going to try this or what?”
She searched his face, maybe to see if he meant it. The start of a smile came to her lips, as if she was satisfied with what she saw. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”
In the woods there was a hush in the air—but Cage felt stronger, hopeful even, and it was because of Mae. She was moving fast and quiet through the dark like it was second nature, and then they were finally breaking out from under the trees.
Ahead the cemetery was lit by moonlight. She climbed up the iron gate with her heavy bag over her shoulder and dropped to the other side, and he followed her.
Together they passed the statue of the angel, then went all the way back to the blackened tree and her grave. They stood there for a minute, staring at each other, until Mae pulled the book from her bag and opened it.
“I brought what we need,” she said. “At least I think so.”
“Tell me what to do.” He wasn’t sure of anything, just that they had to try it.
He glanced up at the sky, the scatter of stars overhead, the moon, and when he looked back at Mae she was sitting down. He sat too, the grass damp and cool. The green book was on her lap and her legs were folded underneath her the way a kid would sit. Behind her was the spindly old tree that’d been split by lightning, and the headstone, the etching of Ro’s name.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
It was like Mae knew things about him before he did, because now he could feel his head throbbing, his insides still hot. “Better than I look.” It was painful to be here by Ro’s grave, to think about raising her, but he didn’t want to change his mind. “Let’s just get this over with.”
“I don’t like it either,” she said, seeing straight through him again, all the way to his soul, but she opened the green book anyway. Watery moonlight fell over its pages.
“Do you want to do it?” he asked.
Mae paused, holding a flashlight over the last page. “This is it. I think you should read. I’ll help.”
She leaned forward and handed him the book, and when he took it his heart hurled against his ribs. Then she set a crumpled piece of notebook paper beside it and he blinked, realizing what he was staring at. He’d dug it up near the cherub.
“First we should think of how we love her,” Mae said. “Hold her in our minds and our hearts.”
Touching the book was weird; it was warm and humming under his fingers, or maybe he was shaking. He glanced up, saw Mae’s hands balled tight—she was nervous too. She was whispering something, it sounded like Good deeds for good, and then she was saying Ro’s name over and over.
Think of Ro. Cage imagined her. Her green eyes with that gold coming through around the irises. The gap between her front teeth. The way she laughed so loud, like it was shooting all the way up her spine, bursting from her entire body.
He looked over at the choppy dirt and grass, the pair of graves. What would his mother think about what they were trying, what would Ro’s dad? His head started to throb again as Mae grabbed her bag. She reached for his hand and turned it up, and then dropped Ro’s gold locket into his palm. He made a fist, felt the cool metal against his skin.
“Keep holding it,” she whispered. She dug into the canvas again and placed a shoe box in front of him, and then a bundle wrapped in a red sweatshirt, a paper bag that looked greasy at the bottom, and a jar with something dark floating inside it. He did a double take. It was a hoof, a horse’s hoof.
He turned to Mae, found he was speechless.
“I didn’t kill them,” Mae said. “They were…already dead.”
“You didn’t kill them,” he repeated slowly. His head was hurting even more now; it felt like someone was pressing down with pliers.
“Are you ready?” She flicked on her flashlight and the page in front of him glowed. She glanced over her shoulder, looking toward the cemetery gate, the narrow path. “I think we should start.”
“Okay.” He stared down at the book, and the ink went sideways. There was a smell in the air, a stinking sweetness, and now it felt like the pliers were digging into his eyeballs. He blinked.
On the page was the heading A Ritual for a Raising. Below it were words in clumsy writing. Down at the bottom of the page was the smeared thumbprint. He knew he was stalling, but he wasn’t sure why.
“Okay,” he said again, louder now, and then read the first line. “ ‘Harbor love in your heart, while in your hand hold the loved one’s belongings.’ ” His voice sounded jerky to his ears. “ ‘Then begin the offerings. For death feeds life as blood feeds the ritual.’ ” His tongue felt mangled, almost like he’d been hit in the mouth. “ ‘And little creatures show the way.’ ”
He didn’t dare look at Mae, didn’t dare slow down. Keep going, keep going. “ ‘A cat for nine,’ ” he said as Mae pushed the red sweatshirt in front of him. He stared at her as she unrolled it. Inside was the little black stray. His stomach heaved, but he had to keep reading.
“ ‘A bird for vision,’ ” he said, onto Ro’s copy now, that pink pen over the notebook page. Mae slid the shoe box on the grass in front of him, the blackbird inside half eaten by ants. The smell rose and clung to his nostrils. He guessed what was coming next and forced himself to look back at the book.
“ ‘A horse for the passage,’ ” he said, dreading each word. Mae set down the jar, a single hoof inside it. Hell, this had better be worth it.
“ ‘A snake for new skin.’ ” There went the paper bag, the snake dropping onto the grass as she shook it out. It was a dark olive color, a cottonmouth with its head chopped off.
“ ‘Laid out in a row of four, only this will open the door.’ ” The night around them was quiet, not even a breeze, and he felt drowned by the heat. His sweat was dropping onto the paper, onto his hands, which were covered in something black and dusty.
Mae was whispering again—“Roxanne Elizabeth Cole, Roxanne Elizabeth Cole”—her voice burrowing into his brain as the letters on the page blurred. But he kept on.
“ ‘Then save the most brutal for last.’ ” He paused, stumbling over the next word. “ ‘Chana for a life, since all should be equal. Do these tasks and see the return,’ ” he read, “ ‘except if the earth has traveled the sun.’ ”
He’d reached the end of the ritual; there was nothing more to do. He looked up, and a coldness hit him right in the chest. Across from him on the ground, Mae was sitting with her back straight. Her hands were gripping her knees and she wasn’t moving, was hardly breathing. The worry snake slithered up his throat, and he thought he might gag. He could feel someone’s breath, right in his ear. It had to be Mae.
“I can feel her,” she whispered.
The blackened tree behind Ro’s grave started swaying. Everything else was still—the woods were quiet, unmoving, the cemetery silent. The angel statue was a gray ghost in the night, and there were the spikes of cut flowers beside the graves and the shadowy hunch of the empty caretaker hut. Nothing else moved, not a leaf. All was quiet and still. Except for the tree, which was slanting beside them.
Mae’s eyes were squeezed shut and the branches behind her were wavering.
“Do you see it?” Cage asked. “Do you…?”
She opened her eyes and in them he saw fear and he felt it himself, it crawled up his spine, up to his heart, all the way up to his skull.
He could hear something now, faint. Almost like a voice—only it wasn’t coming from outside, not from the cemetery or the night air—it was coming from inside him. He shut his eyes and felt his ears hollow out like he was underwater and then his insides went panicky and he couldn’t move, he couldn’t breathe, it was like he was dead. He was so tense he felt himself separating from his body, or growing out from his body, and then he wasn’t just his skin and blood and bone but also the earth around him and the little stones and the grass in the cemetery and the dark sky above—he was all those things at once, he was either dead or all of life itself. When he opened his eyes, time slowed and lengthened and he looked down and saw he was standing now, that he and Mae both were, and now they were turning, stepping toward the gate because they could hear the creak of hinges and it was her—he knew it was her, she’d found her way back, she’d come home to them and his head was splitting like he was being broken apart and the air was cold, so cold, and the gate swung open, and…it was not Roxanne—it was not Roxanne.
The thing stuck its head through the gate. Mae let out a rush of breath beside him and the deer turned and sprinted off, its hooves fast against the dirt.
He could breathe again. He took a step toward Mae, felt for her hand, and gripped it tight. Her face was wet, she’d been crying. She looked stricken; she’d lost her sister all over again.
The book was on the ground next to Ro’s grave, but it seemed wrong. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected to see—Ro coming through the gate? Ro, alive, like none of it had ever happened?
He was still holding Mae’s hand and her thumb was circling his palm and he watched the small movement, it was the tiniest whirlpool, and then he remembered his dream—how strong Ro was, how she always knew what to go after in life. Maybe it’d just been his imagination, or maybe she’d really come to him in his sleep, but he knew suddenly that he was in this cemetery not for her but for him. He was the one who wouldn’t let her go. He felt himself sweating all over, the fever was back, rolling over him like a wave, and then Mae pulled her hand away from his.
She sank to the ground, knelt as if praying. He looked down at her small shoulders and thought of Ro, how he would’ve done anything to save her. But she wouldn’t want this, not this way. Ro had never needed saving her whole life and didn’t need it now.
He replayed the memory of her over and over again. He wanted a wormhole, he wanted to stretch out the past, go back to that very moment when she was still alive on the boat, so he could tell her goodbye one last time. But it wouldn’t have changed things and now she was gone, and the only person beside him was Mae.
He knelt down next to her. “Are you okay?”
She nodded, still mute.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“I thought it would work.” She turned to him. “The sacrifices, the ritual. We did everything right,” she said. “I thought, I almost thought…”
He shook his head. He’d read everything in the book, exactly how it was written. He hadn’t missed a thing. The grief in Mae’s eyes cut into him. It was his own pain too, like looking at himself in a shard of glass. He got a flash of green kudzu, those vines covering him, wrapping around his bones so tight. Maybe they’d messed up the ritual, or maybe they had done it—and it just took time to work. Or maybe they were both in a bad way, so confused they didn’t know what was real anymore. But he wouldn’t say a thing because he didn’t want to see Mae upset again.
She sniffled, wiped at her eyes. “The worst thing is, a part of me was scared that it was her.”
“Why?”
She looked down at her hands and something twisted inside him. “Don’t get upset if I tell you.”