Chapter 18 - Spilling The Magic Beans

Flint and Goldie walked into a burger joint in Turner’s Mill that Flint had not eaten at yet. He didn’t want to recognize anyone. The town was small, a dozen winding miles from Shady Pines and its unexplained vampire population. Flint only knew a handful of people there, and those mostly from the political meetings that Carick’s human buddy Mr. Bunn ran while remaining ignorant as to his role in the fight against vampires.

They were still on edge, both of them, had been silent on the drive out. Flint kept thinking someone was following them, but every time he turned around he saw nothing. No birds in the air, either. It was dusk and Flint hadn’t even seen a bat. Goldie hadn’t reacted, so he knew it wasn’t a vampire. She’d seemed deep in thought the whole ride.

The waiter seated them and said he’d bring them both the special, since that was all that was on the menu, leaving them alone.

Flint took a stab at a subject. “Cora is going to want to know how you did that bubble thing. I didn’t even dent it.”

“I don’t really know how I could teach her, I mean, I don’t even know what I did.” Goldie gave Flint a tentative smile. “I can’t join your Cause, Flint. I have a job, a-”

Flint cut her off, not able to help it. “Leave your options open, Goldie, please. I know killing vampires doesn’t mean anything to you, you don’t even know why you feel like you do when one gets close.” He tried not to beg. But he didn’t know how Goldie could deny who she was like this. Time, she just needed time, like Cora said, and he could give it to her.

He tried again. “You would like living at Resperanza. Cora lives there. You two could hang out, talk about it whenever-”

Goldie cut him off, looking more anxious by the second. “Darby needs me.” She waited a beat, then blurted more like she was spilling it. “She’s got a stalker.”

“Bryce is right next door. She’s not your responsibility.”

Goldie flinched, her eyes avoiding Flint’s by seeming to bore into the tabletop between them. Her scent had gone thin and scarce, like she was scared and pulling it back for protection. “I have a brand new job. I can’t mess that up.” She seemed to be trying to convince herself, even after what had just happened.

Flint had no choice but to be harshly honest. He hadn’t tried that yet. “You’re a switch, Goldie. You’d run out on those kids for the chance to stick a vampire and not look back.”

Goldie’s head shot up and she looked right in his eyes, her tone low. “I would never do that.”

Flint shook his head. “I’m telling you, you would. You don’t have a choice about what you are.”

Goldie slammed one flat palm on the table, surprising him. “Don’t you tell me I don’t have choices. I kept that crazy green crap on lockdown for twelve years.”

When Flint could speak, his voice was measured and calm. “What happened to you?”

She pulled in on herself. “Not vampires,” she said grudgingly. “But I wish it had been.” She stared at the table again, her eyes shimmering, and he realized that she was dangerously close to tears. She spoke, and her voice was dead. “I killed my parents.”

Flint’s heart wrenched in his chest. Twelve years ago, she would have been fifteen. Could that possibly be true?

“Goldie, what are you talking about?”

One tear spilled down her cheek. She wiped the rest away. “It was during Hurricane Katrina. There’s a whole story here, you sure you want to hear it?”

Flint nodded sharply. Of course he did.

She looked haunted. Her heady scent cooled and drifted. She spoke, visibly forcing herself to do so. “I’ve never told anyone this, so… go easy, okay?”

He nodded. Of course he would.

“I was fifteen. I begged Mama and Daddy to evacuate like we were supposed to, or at least take us to Tallulah’s, but they never took any of it seriously. It had been raining for hours. Mama and Daddy started drinking, which meant they started fighting. Usually Darby and I could just ignore it but that night Daddy was on a tear, accusing Mama of all kinds of ridiculous stuff. Then he started waving his gun around.” She curled in on herself a little bit. “He said he just wanted everyone to listen.”

Darby was her sister! That explained so much, but Flint’s heart sank. He could see where this was going.

“I had to get us out of there, so we snuck out to our special spot on the roof of the apartment building, this little iron cage that might have held carrier pigeons in the past.”

“In a hurricane?”

Goldie picked at her fingernails. “It was safer than with Daddy. But when the winds picked up, we couldn’t get down.”

She clasped her hands together, wringing them. “This is where it gets… well, I guess you won’t think it’s weird. I remember holding on so tight to the wrought iron, and being so angry at my father. He was always getting drunk, always yelling, had been violent, all of it. I remember wishing that he would just… die. Him and Mama both, if she wanted him so much more than she did us.”

She stopped wringing her hands and went perfectly still. Flint wanted to comfort her but wasn’t sure how. Her voice was limp as she said, “The whole night turned green.” She looked him in the eye, then. “Just like it has every time you‘ve told me I glowed.” She lifted one hand and turned it over, looking at it hard. “I can see the glow, you know, if I try hard enough. I wasn’t glowing that night. It was just my… my vision. A tint added to the night.”

She swallowed hard. “Dark turned green and then I heard a gunshot. Then it flared greener, brighter, and I heard another. A few seconds later it just… winked off.”

Flint thought he was gaping. He hadn’t expected that.

“He shot Mama, then himself. The hurricane was still hitting hard, so we stayed with a neighbor. Then the levees broke. Mid-City flooded. Shoot, almost everywhere flooded. Everyone who’d stayed was scrambling to survive, there were no phones working, nothing. Tallulah’s driver finally borrowed a boat and he took us to stay with her, then live with her, once she found out what her son had done.”

Goldie threw Flint a twisted smile that hurt him. “Except she was wrong, wasn’t she? I killed them both.”

No. Shit. He understood her reluctance now. All of it. And he’d taken her to see Carick, without warning her. “Pumpkin, no-”

Goldie’s face fell. “That’s why I trusted you that first night. Because you called me pumpkin. That’s what my mom called me. I thought, well, I didn’t think it was a sign, but maybe I wanted it to be.”

Flint nodded. Maybe it had been. He didn’t know why he had said it. “Darby is your sister,” he said quietly.

Her eyes snapped wide. “Flint, I didn’t mean to- I’m scared that her stalker is following us. You can’t tell anyone.”

“Look,” he said, hating the fear in her eyes. “I’ve got friends on the police force in Five Hills-” But he stopped at Goldie’s shaking head.

“I don’t know who he is, but he’s delusional and dangerous. You should read the letters he sends, the things he thinks about Darby.”

“Does she have magic, too?”

Goldie’s face expressed several different emotions, all too quickly, but her scent was more subtle, more nuanced. It said she’d never even considered that her sister could be a switch, too. But it made obvious sense to Flint.

Goldie stood up abruptly, almost tipping the chair over behind her. “I want to go home. Please take me home.”

Crap, here he was, fucking it up again. And now her scent was tight, acrid, like those bright green herbs had been left on a grill to burn away to ash along with any trust he’d thought she had in him. She thought this meant he was going to tell everyone they were sisters.

And he was. Wasn’t he?