forty-seven.
There was a sound at the bedroom window.
“Mars!” Wynn’s voice, sounding panicked from across the room.
Again. A series of small, dull thumps.
Something was being thrown at the window screen.
“What is that, Mars?”
Marsden opened her eyes to see Wynn sitting up in her bed. Moonlight shot in through the window and everything was tinted grays and blacks, smears of smoke. The outline of her sister’s bed hair was again the wild bristles of an oversize paintbrush.
The sound came once more, still soft and now more than insistent.
Marsden climbed out of bed, kicking aside the blankets she’d been using despite the heat of the day lingering in the night air, turning it soggy and full. Her pulse raced, her heart crept into her throat. She supposed it should have been caused by fear, but she knew it wasn’t.
Jude. It could be no one else.
She peered out through the mesh of the screen.
He was standing out there just below the window, a mere blur against pale moonlight. His face was nearly hidden in the dark.
Still, she would have known him anywhere.
He must have seen her move behind the mesh, because he lifted his arm in a wave.
Marsden pushed open the screen and leaned outward, letting the slightly cooler night air wash over her skin. The moon had left a thin silvery sheen on everything, wiping away the hot, dry dust of day. Farther beyond him, she could see the swaying treetops and scraggly brush of the covert, the shadowed line of the fence that encircled it. It was just hours ago that they’d walked through it, holding a tin full of cash and with the knowledge they could finally stop listening for the dead.
“What are you doing?” she called down in a loud whisper.
“I was trying to be goddamn romantic.” There was embarrassed, disgruntled laughter in his voice. “I wanted to wake you up by tossing pebbles at your window.”
The corners of her mouth twitched. “You were aiming wide—you kept hitting the screen.”
“Crap, sorry. I have a good arm, I swear—I blame only having one eye. Anyway, I couldn’t sleep—I forgot that Karey and Langston snore like hell when I said I’d stay over. And . . . I wanted to see you.”
Heat rose along her cheeks. “It’s the middle of the night.” She tried to sound like boys coming to her window after midnight was an ordinary occurrence.
“I like nights. Plus, chocolate-chip waffles, if you’re up for it?”
She laughed. “Come to the kitchen door.”
“Okay.”
She pulled the screen shut and turned around. “Go back to sleep,” she said to Wynn. “I won’t be long.”
“I wasn’t sleeping—and neither were you. I could tell by the way you were breathing.”
No, she hadn’t been remotely close to sleeping. Thoughts of Jude and the day had crept into her brain and wouldn’t leave.
Her father’s winnings were in an envelope, folded into an old winter scarf tucked into the highest shelf in her closet. She could have stuck the bills into her boots as she’d done with cash from the covert since she was nine, but it felt wrong. Like going backward. Even the money that Nina had already returned—silently, coldly, her mouth set in her familiar moue of displeasure as she handed it over—was now stored elsewhere, a coffee container Marsden had taken from the pantry that she’d emptied of its fragrant contents.
After finding Rigby’s tin, Marsden had led Jude to where her father was buried in the covert and listened for him. Eight years, and she’d never guessed the truth of his dying—she wanted him to know she would no longer wonder about him, all her questions had been answered. I don’t hate you. I’ve never hated you. I’m sorry you’re no longer here. His voice had rolled in like soft thunder, so that for a handful of seconds, the woods blurred and the air felt full of echoes. She’d cried at his understanding, at finally accepting what was.
A part of her still hurt to think that he’d died for that money—that in a way, his life hadn’t even been worth the four grand, since Rigby had panicked anyway and still ended up killing him. But she understood panic, too, understood desperation and how it could make someone do things that could lead to the unthinkable. When she thought about her father from now on, she wouldn’t always automatically think of the river or of rainstorms at night. Instead, she’d think about how he liked the radio loud and his pretend tea spiked with pretend sugar.
She grabbed a T-shirt from the closet to wear over her tank top. “I know you were sleeping, Wynn, because of the state of your hair.”
“It’s Jude outside, isn’t it?” In the half-light, her sister resembled their mother more than Brom, more Marsden than a stranger of a father. “Do you like him?”
“Yes, I do. Is it okay if I do?”
“He’s nice—and he likes your waffles. But he sure gets into lots of fights. I guess because he looks like he wants to fight a lot of the time.”
Marsden grinned and pulled on the shirt. “He doesn’t really want to fight all the time.”
“Was the cookie tin his brother’s?”
“Yes. Now go back to sleep.”
Wynn slid back beneath her covers. Marsden noticed she hadn’t bothered to change out of her clothes from the day, as was typical.
“He killed himself, just like Lucy did,” her sister said.
Images of Rigby and Lucy, each covered in blood, a boy named for a song, a girl with Alice in Wonderland hair.
Marsden sat on the edge of Wynn’s bed, unsure of what to say. Until Lucy, her sister had never known any of those who died in the covert. And until Rigby, she supposed, simply because he’d been Jude’s brother. “He did, yes.”
“He listened to that voice in his head, then—just like Lucy listened to hers. If he’d been like Grandma, he might have had someone else to listen to, since he was in the covert.” Wynn drew the covers to her chin, sounded sleepy again already. “Sometimes, lately, I hear them. I wonder how close it is to what she used to hear.”
A chill ran through Marsden’s blood. “You can hear the dead?”
“Not words or anything. But a really strong feeling that tells me something.”
“Finding Rigby’s tin out there today”—Marsden shivered, remembering how she’d heard the dead with her bones, with her teeth—“was it not because of the detector?”
“It was. But it also wasn’t. I just . . . knew where to go. And then it was there.”
“Wynn, I can hear them now, too.”
Her sister sat up like a shot. “Really?”
Marsden nodded. She wasn’t sure if she wanted Wynn being able to hear the dead—not that it was up to her—but she felt better that neither of them was alone in it. “Let’s keep this our secret—you know Mom doesn’t like you in the covert anyway.”
“Have you talked to her?”
Marsden had not seen Shine since Brom and his confession about his stealing, the admittance of his strange and twisted love for her and her dead husband. The topic of why she’d told Nina about the money remained untouched and was an eruption in the making. Now, Marsden was no longer sure she wanted it to erupt. What could she say that wouldn’t just be making things worse between her and Shine? She didn’t know if she could trust her mother to ever pick her or Wynn over Nina—worse, she didn’t know if she cared that it didn’t really matter anymore. “Talk to her about what?”
“About us moving from the boardinghouse, remember? We still need more money.”
“Actually, Nina’s going to give me a raise, so that’ll help a lot.” And we also have an extra four thousand dollars. That’ll help a lot, too.
Shine would still fight them leaving, Marsden knew. Maybe she would even threaten to turn her back to them if they didn’t stay, her love for her daughters as volatile as a storm over the Indigo.
But things had changed. Brom was over, no longer her mother’s prince. And Nina would be more than happy to see them gone from the house, considering what Marsden knew about her. Which meant except for her daughters, Shine would be alone. How far would she go to prove her desperation was greater than theirs?
That was something Marsden didn’t know. But she was no longer going to pay for her parents’ decisions—or be the excuse for their failures.
Wynn went to lie down again. “And Jude can still be your boyfriend, wherever we end up living in Glory.”
In the shadows, Marsden had to smile. It was hearing it stated so naturally, how Jude Ambrose was very much her boyfriend. She liked how it sounded, those words put together in just that way. She liked it a lot.
“Okay, I should go, or Jude’s going to start throwing more rocks at the window.” She slid off the bed and stood up. “Don’t tell anyone about him showing up here so late, all right?”
“Only if you make waffles for breakfast.”
“With chocolate chips, I know. Hey, we should try something new next time, okay?”
“Like what?” Wynn said through a yawn.
“I don’t know. Banana anise muffins.” Marsden shook her sister’s foot through the blanket. “Rice porridge. Steamed buns.”
“What’s all that?”
“You’ll see, runt. Now, good night.”
Downstairs, she flicked on the light above the stove before quietly opening the back door.
Jude closed the gap within seconds. His mouth was hot, the thrill of his tongue against hers both primal and sweet. He still tasted like cinnamon. She didn’t give an inch, pushing back even as she felt she was barely holding on.
Then his stomach growled, and they both laughed, their lips still tangled together.
He pressed his mouth to her neck, making her ache. “Christ, it’s late, but I’m not sorry at all for coming over.”
She pulled back and did a onceover of his injuries.
Beneath the porch light, he was a palette of colors, from pink to red to purple, his bad eye at the dark end of the spectrum. Cuts everywhere that were properly scabbing now. She thought he looked like he’d challenged an entire gang—a gang made up of his father, his fists, and bottles of alcohol—to a fight and was lucky to have walked away in the end. She had a hard time connecting the image of that man to the one she’d met, the one with the cool blue eyes and cultured accent who barely looked at her as she stood in his kitchen beside his son.
Marsden held the door open, and Jude was about to step inside when he suddenly stopped.
“Wait a second, I almost forgot him out there.” He stepped back out and lifted something from the floor of the porch.
Him?
He held a water-filled glass bowl, and inside, Peeve swam in circles. In the half-lit kitchen, the beta’s fins were minute flashes of deep color, glowing and winking.
“I was thinking your sister could adopt Peeve.” Jude shut the door with his foot. His cheeks had taken on a hint of blush. “You said she’s always wanted a pet, and he’ll just be sitting in a bowl in her room, so she can’t get into trouble for that.”
“But Peeve was Rigby’s.” Her pulse in her throat hurt. She knew how much it all meant, him bringing Peeve.
“I keep worrying I’m going to forget to feed the poor sucker.” He placed the fish bowl on the table. “I’d feel guilty forever. And Rig—I bet he would have gotten a kick out of Wynn. I was going to give her all his Shindiggs tapes, too, but I figured you guys already had that covered.”
He said all of this with a new kind of ease, the acceptance of his brother being gone, of Rigby being an imperfect person. Jude had been anger that had nowhere to go, a bird smashing its own wings as it battered at an unbreakable cage. But even the worst of cages had its weak spots, bars that could be bent away to lead to escape.
Marsden had escaped with him. She could never leave the covert entirely behind, but it was no longer all she saw ahead. She’d bent bars of her own.
She leaned up and kissed him, more gently this time, thinking of his cuts and bruises. “She’ll love Peeve. Thank you.”
Jude pulled her close. “More.” The word was soft, rough, and desperate against her mouth. “I won’t break.”
“But you’re hurt.”
His eyes said he thought she was, with everything they now had between them that would never be simple or go away completely. “You’d tell me if you weren’t okay, wouldn’t you?”
Marsden ran her hands through his hair, touched his lucky scar. “I won’t break.”
“So, then, more. Please.”