11- the harbinger
The moment I hit the sidewalk on Dredge Street, it’s a struggle not to break into a flat run. But that might draw unwanted attention. Every step puts distance between me and Reece. Me and answers.
Me and the entrance to a rabbit hole I may not find my way out of.
I let out a few ragged sobs once I’m back in the safety of my parked car. My forehead tips against the steering wheel as I pull in long, deep breaths. The familiar smells of Jolly Ranchers and the vinegar potato chips stuck between the seats unwind my nerves. My car. Safety.
I should drive home right now. I shouldn’t be sitting here, waiting for Reece. Hell, he might not even show up.
The minutes tick by and collect. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty. I’m beginning to think he ditched me until the passenger door wrenches open, and he throws himself inside. He slams the door and turns to me with hot, furious eyes.
“What the hell are you, a stalker?” he asks without preamble.
Why, yes I am. “No, I just—”
“What were you thinking, Angie?” he snaps. “You could have been killed tonight.”
It takes me an extra second to respond because—whoa, he’s in my car. “What were you doing there? Don’t tell me you were sightseeing in The Dredge.”
“Maybe I was. It’s none of your business.”
“I’ll tell you what’s my business.” Fury curls through me like a ribbon of heat, squashing good sense like a bug. “Seeing my mother’s features on that-that thing’s face on Friday night. You know what he is.”
There. Done and done.
He draws back. “What did you say?”
My vision tints red. My stomach clenches to a tight knot. I hadn’t known I was going to show my hand like that—I hadn’t intended to—but there’s no walking it back. The truth is out, and I will find out very soon if the biggest risk I’ve taken in my teenage life will also turn out to be the biggest blunder. “You know very well that was me in the parking lot with the purple hair and the glasses. I’m Sparo. I’m the girl you ‘rescued’ Friday night from that guy with the-the…” I circle my hand impatiently. “Changing face and the bees.”
The corners of his mouth lift. “Yeah, I knew that was you.”
“You did?”
He rolls his eyes. “How could I not?” He leans toward me, crowding my space. I press back into my seat. “I was this close to you, Angie. Makeup and wigs don’t change your face.”
“Why the pretense, then? Why not just call me out on it?” Good grief, why does he have to be this close? “Why be all manipulative and fake about it?” I ask with full knowledge that this is not the question I should be asking right now, but my thoughts swirl like dry leaves in the wind. My cheeks burn at the thought of all the times we spoke and he knew the truth. He probably had a few good laughs over it.
His gaze dips to my lips. “I was curious why you seemed so determined to hide such an amazing part of yourself.”
“It’s none of your business,” I say, tossing his words back at him.
“Touché.” He nods. “You’re amazing up there. Powerful. So beautiful it’s impossible to look away from you. So completely different from the quiet girl in school.” His thumb brushes my cheek, unleashing a spray of tingling nerves. “I wanted you to admit it was you,” he says quietly. “The only question is, why the disguise?”
If he’s trying to distract me, he’s doing an epic job of it. “Sparo and I are separate.” For reasons too complicated and fragile to explain to you. “I want it to stay that way.”
He frowns. “I have no choice but to keep a part of myself hidden, but I don’t understand why you do.”
My defenses rise into full protection mode. Deno and Lacey—my dad, too—have asked me why. I’ve never said. “My music is separate. It has to be.” I say it again with finality. “Reece, who was that man?” I whisper. “And what is with the bees?”
Reece lets out a long breath but doesn’t pull back. “Angie, that’s not an easy question. The answer is…”
“What?” I counter. “Too much for me to handle? Me and my little, simple human mind can’t grasp it?”
He blinks at me. “Angie, it’s a lot for any mind to grasp. That man you saw isn’t a human being—not anymore. Not for a very long time.”
My fingertips are ice cold. I curl them on my lap. “What do you mean, ‘not anymore’? How does someone stop being human, Reece?”
“I mean, he was changed into what he is by powers in the world that are now dormant, but once wielded incredible destruction.” He watches my face closely, maybe to see how much I can grasp. “He’s one of the last remnants of a time when people lived under a very different set of rules. When certain people possessed powers that no one could comprehend now.”
“What kind of…powers?”
He sighs. “This was a bad idea.”
I turn toward him in my seat. “Look, just give it to me straight. Don’t take it down to a kindergarten level or be all evasive. That makes it worse. Just…tell me. I promise, I can deal with whatever. I just want the truth.”
“The truth…” He runs his tongue over his teeth and turns his gaze to the cloth roof of the car. “Fine. Here’s the truth. The man you saw is a being called a Beekeeper. He’s many centuries old, and he goes around with a hive of bees in his chest. Yes, I know how made up that sounds, but those bees are deadly. Their sting infects a person with a venom that causes paranoia, delusions, and violent urges. It strips away reason and decency in favor of base impulses. Get stung by one of his bees and you’ll go dangerously insane.”
Okay. Deep breath, Angie. I gave my word. I said I could deal with whatever. This is a bit more than I’d bargained for, but then again, maybe it isn’t. Some part of me knew that the truth about the man with all the faces and the bees would be something outside the realm of the normal world. I’m also aware that of the sea of knowledge on this topic, Reece has offered me only a single drop.
I take another deep breath. I can do this—talk about the impossible. “So was that guy in the car…stung?”
“Maybe,” he replies. “I don’t know. I couldn’t see very much of him.”
A shiver slides down my spine. “That’s why you freaked when that bee was on my coat.”
“Yes.” He drops his forehead against mine. Soft hair fans my skin. His fingertips brush my cheek. “Angie, I wish you hadn’t followed me today.”
I swallow with effort, through the desert in my throat. “He called you a harbinger. What is that? Are you…like him?”
“We’re not the same, but we’re both cursed. What he is—what I am—is…” He leans back and rakes long fingers through his hair. “It’s really complicated.”
“We’re veering back to evasion here,” I say in a warning tone. “What about my mom?”
“I don’t know what to say about that.” Reece’s voice drops low. “Each feature that appears on his face belonged to a person who died with Beekeeper venom in them. There’s no surviving a Beekeeper sting. You’ll kill yourself, or someone else will take you down. Did your mother go on a shooting rampage in a shopping mall? Did she ever try to kill you or anyone else?”
“No…” She died a sad death under a highway overpass after years of drug abuse.
“Then you couldn’t have seen her features on the Beekeeper. You saw someone who looked like her.”
“No. It was her. I know what I saw.” Without photographic evidence, which I’m not getting, he won’t believe me. “Whatever. Forget it.”
He rests a hand on my shoulder. “Facing a Beekeeper in true form is terrifying. Why wouldn’t you see a familiar face in all that madness?”
He makes it sound so reasonable. So excusable. “Reece, what were you doing here tonight?” I ask. “I want the truth.”
“The truth,” he says again, drawing it out as if saying it for the first time. “You won’t like it.”
“Tell me anyway.”
He stares blankly out the windshield. “I went there because I knew someone was going to die there and I—”
A rap on my window makes us both jump. A frowning police officer shines a light inside. He makes a rolling motion with his finger. Oh great.
I turn on the car to lower the window. “Good evening, officer.”
He gives me a quick survey. No clothes out of place. No stink of alcohol or glassy eyes. No heavy breathing—well, maybe a little. “What are you kids doing out here?”
Reece leans over and nods at the officer. “Just talking, sir.”
“Uh-huh.” He narrows an eye. “Windows are steamed up. You two aware this is a public parking lot?”
“Yes sir,” I say with my best smile. “We were just about to head home.”
“And where’s that?”
“Mount Franklin Estates.” Reece’s tone borders on pompous, as if declaring our neighborhood excuses us. “It’s a little after seven p.m. Have we violated any laws?”
We haven’t, and the officer knows it. He grunts something about know-it-all rich kids and backs up. “Get going, then. Do your ‘talking’ at home. And be careful,” he adds. “The drunks are out tonight.”
“Yes sir. We’re going,” I say with an earnest nod. “And thank you.”
My fingers can’t put the car in gear fast enough. I pull away with a little wave and hope he doesn’t follow us home. He doesn’t. I merge into the light town traffic, jaw clenched and hands tense around the steering wheel.
Reece’s face is turned away. All I glimpse is the illuminated line of his cheek and the curve of an eye. He stares out his window like a passenger on a bus. The policeman snapped him out of his open, sharing mood. I’m sure he thinks he came to his senses, but… “You were saying you came out to The Dredge because you knew someone was going to die?” I ask.
“Yes. My kind are drawn to death, but you already know that,” he replies coolly. “Just ask me already. Get it over with.”
His kind. That’s pretty much the answer right there. “You’re a…harbinger of death?” I ask it anyway, hardly believing I’m saying the words out loud.
He nods slowly, holding my gaze. My heart beats in the palms of my hands, the soles of my feet. My suspicions are finally confirmed. My stomach twists into knots. I would rather the first boy who makes my heart beat like this, who makes my senses come alive, be a normal, human one, but I shouldn’t be surprised. “Normal” hasn’t exactly defined much of my life.
“It’s my fault the Beekeeper noticed you,” he murmurs. “Did he have all the faces when you saw him at the bus stop?”
“I thought I was imagining it.”
“Hmm,” he says after a pause. “That’s interesting. It’s unusual for a normal human to see a Beekeeper’s true face.”
“What do they usually see?”
“They see a man so perfectly generic, so unremarkable, he’s essentially invisible.”
“Only guys?” I ask.
“I don’t know the full story on them.” He waves a hand. “They were prisoners, or something, but yes. All the Beekeepers I’ve ever seen or heard about are male.”
“Why is that Beekeeper watching me?”
“He’s watching a lot of people. Try not to worry. We are also watching you.”
There’s that “we” again. “Who’s ‘we’? The crows?”
“Yes.” No pause that time.
“Are you seriously telling me you’re a crow?” I draw my top lip between my teeth and try to make that compute. “How does that even work?”
“Like I said, it’s complicated.” He turns away from me to the dark trees flickering by. “I don’t even fully know how it works. You’d have to ask those who cursed us. Unfortunately, they’ve been dead for a thousand years.”
“A thousand years?”
He shrugs. “Give or take.”
If that last bit was supposed to blow my mind and shut me up, it works, for a little while. I switch between thinking he’s messing with me again or he’s delusional. “I can’t believe this. You’re not a one-thousand-year-old crow.”
“No way, I’m much younger.” His voice is without a trace of humor. “But the magic that made me this way is that old.”
“Oh, sure.” My voice pitches high. “Magic.”
“Hey, you asked.”
I pull the car to the shoulder just inside the entrance to our neighborhood. The car idles in park. I’m not ready to take him, or myself, home. “I have more questions.” Way more than I’d like.
“I’ve told you everything I can.” He presses long fingers into the center of his forehead. “Which is already more than I should have.”
“You can’t just drop magic crows in my lap and leave it at that.”
“I just did.” His voice takes on an edge. “Angie, I answered the questions relevant to your safety. The rest is curiosity, and I’m sorry, but I can’t indulge it. I have more than just my own selfish wants to consider.”
“I’m going to keep following you until you answer me.”
“I strongly advise against that.” Reece’s eyes narrow to glimmering slivers. “Go home. Make music. Study for the geometry test tomorrow. Be a normal teenager.” His features take on that grief-stricken look again. “This isn’t how I wanted things to go with us, Angie. I wanted…” He clips off his words with a terse head shake. “Forget it.”
“No. Don’t do that.” My voice is barely above a whisper, but he hears it.
Reece’s gaze drops to my mouth. His own lips part and his gaze darkens. He leans toward me and for one giant, breathless moment, I think he’s going to kiss me. Wait. Kissing? This had not been on the radar when I set out on this absurd mission a hour or so ago. My senses fly into high alert. He braces a hand on the dash, then lurches back. He flexes the fingers of his right hand with a wince.
“Hey, are you hurt?” I reach for his hand, but he folds them over his chest.
“No. I’m fine.” His voice is rough. His face is a mess of conflict.
“Reece—”
“No. No. I have to go.” He opens the door and gets out as if the seat is on fire. “Don’t follow me again, Angie. Death is never far behind me. I don’t want it to catch you.”
He slams the door and takes off at a run, disappearing through Mrs. Garrett’s backyard. He must be truly desperate to get away from me if he’s willing to set off her motion lights and her Rottweilers to take the direct route home.
I let my car idle at the stop sign. Someone honks and steers around me, and it barely registers. My head is a buzzing mess of unanswered questions, unnamed fears, unbelievable thoughts. Slowly, I lift my leaden foot off the brake and drive the remaining half-mile home. Nothing looks the same as it had when I left for school this morning. Even these streets, my own home, seem foreign.
I pull into my driveway. A crow swoops low over my car, wings silhouetted in the floodlight. And I wonder…
Magic.
If you had asked me a few weeks ago, I’d have said magic is impossible. Irrational. Just considering its existence in this world is insane. But I saw bees crawl out of a man’s mouth. I saw him change faces like pages of a book.
I hold my breath and watch the crow glide away. It melts into the blackness, silent as a ghost. Lonely as the night.
Dark as a boy’s eyes.