Flock Page 17

  I hid in the stand of woods behind Norse Falls High for what felt like a very long time. Reliving the chain of events since last spring, I crouched under a tree. I was frightened and sad and exhausted and, above all, ashamed. Had I anywhere to go, I’d have set out for it immediately. California crossed my mind more than once.

  What exactly did Marik mean that Safira would seek vengeance? Did he know that Brigid sought her cooperation in unleashing Ragnarök? I already had one queen after me; was a second a mere doubling, or was it an exponential increase? Would Safira truly be led into such an evil and irrevocable act? On more earthly matters: Leira was gravely ill, destined to die, were Marik to be believed. And what of his own dilemma? How much longer did he have? And how would I keep Jack away from him?

  In this state of limbo, alone and without my purse or phone, both of which I’d left at the dance, I felt disconnected from the world — all worlds. It was, finally, the memory of Leira’s helpless mewl that got me to my feet.

  With our new house in Norse Falls proper, it didn’t take me too long to make the walk-of-shame home, my sandals dangling from my heavy-as-my-heart arms and the hem of my dress frayed and covered in mud and bird guts, for all I knew. Just as I rounded the corner to our street, a familiar green truck pulled up alongside me.

  Crap.

  The door flung open, and Jack came running toward me, wrestling me into a shoulder-dislocating hug. “I was so worried. Where the hell have you been?”

  “Walking.” Feeling unworthy, I wriggled out of his hold.

  “But where did you go?”

  “I just . . . It was the birds. I freaked and had to get away from there.”

  “And Marik?”

  “What about him?”

  “You followed him.”

  “Yes, but —”

  “Why would you do that? You saw me, right?”

  “I did, but just don’t ask.”

  “Don’t ask. Why not?”

  Then it occurred to me: I needed a way to keep the two apart. And the way Marik had girls in heat was like something straight out of National Geographic. Why not me? We did spend a lot of time together; we were project partners and neighbors.

  “Because . . .” I intentionally trailed off.

  “Is there something going on?” The lines around Jack’s eyes creased. More shock. More confusion. More hurt.

  “It’s complicated,” I said. It wasn’t an affirmation or a denial, but damning all the same.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “That it’s not . . . easy to explain.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I just need some time,” I said. It was true. All of it was true, but the damage I was doing was so swift, Jack reeled as if physically injured.

  “What the hell are you saying?”

  “I need a break.”

  His face went red. Anger this time. It, the least rational of emotions, was the one I intended to exploit. He finally held up his right hand in a wait-there gesture and stepped over to his truck. He returned a moment later and pressed my purse and cell phone into my hands.

  “These are yours,” he said, and turned back to his car.

  I didn’t reply. I didn’t trust myself not to take it all back. To cave and tell him everything. Watching him drive away was horrible. He wouldn’t look at me. His eyes, hard and cold, were fixed straight ahead. When his tires squealed taking the corner, I knew it was because he couldn’t get away fast enough. I had the “break” I asked for but didn’t want.

  Coming in the back way, I found my mom at the kitchen table with the home phone and a cup of coffee in front of her.

  “Kat. Oh, my God, Kat. Where have you been?” She jumped to a stand.

  “I walked home,” I said, hanging my head.

  “But what took you so long? You’ve got everyone worried about you. Stanley, your dad, and Jack are all out driving, looking for you.”

  “I got confused. Went the wrong way. Had to double back. It was stupid, I know. But that scene at the school was just so . . . crazy . . . I don’t know. I probably don’t even make much sense.”

  My mom came forward and hugged me. “You’re all right. That’s all that matters.” She released me. “And what a thing to go through. Especially after last year’s barn fire. I swear that school should suspend all future Homecoming dances. It’s all over the news, of course. They’re saying that mass bird die-offs like that are rare, but not unheard of. But to shower down on a group of kids all dressed up. It must have been awful.”

  I lifted my shoulders in the wimpiest of shrugs.

  My mom pulled her hand to her temple. “I better let the others know. They’ll be so relieved.”

  I overheard her conversations with Stanley and my dad. They were brief but upbeat. She then held the phone out to me. “Do you want to call Jack yourself? The poor guy. When I spoke with him earlier, he was beside himself.”

  “He found me a few minutes ago on our street. I got my purse and phone back from him”— I lifted both for my mom to see —“so we’re good.” We weren’t, of course. But my mom probably figured the panic at the school was the source of my sad eyes and faltering voice.

  “Can I get you anything? You look shaken.”

  “Just tired. I’m heading up.” The stairs to the attic seemed steeper than usual. That or my legs were as heavy as my conscience.

  Moments later I stepped out of my dress and let it float down in a shimmery ring. In a camisole and my undies, I crawled under the covers, too weary to even produce tears.

  I had a hard time falling asleep. Though the forecasters hadn’t called for it, a storm blew up. I, of course, knew its source. Jack. Another thing to feel all-over awful about. Rain pelted my windows in crashing waves, and the wind battered the house, rattling the panes and yelping like something wounded. He hadn’t used his own powers here on Midgard since last Christmas’s snowstorm, but now two Saturdays in a row . . . I wondered where he was and what he was doing. Was he curled up on his bed like me? Or at the window watching his handiwork? Or, worse still, doing everything in his power to control the outburst, but failing? Just thinking of that scenario was a stake to the heart.

  Marik came to mind, too. How was this storm affecting him? His animus was already frail. Without him, an essential, the pact would be broken. Safira — and willing accomplice Brigid — would seek vengeance. Even the goddess Frigg was worried about the treachery their conspiracy would unleash. If there was an occasion for Hulda’s patience-above-all mantra, I felt it was now. There was yet one small glitch in my developing scheme.

  In pain and with frustration, I pulled my pillow over my head to muffle my sobs.

  I wake cold, alone, and on a beach. To my right are thick woods and to the left an expanse of rolling waves. Above me, the sun breaks over the treetops; it is the dawn of a new day. I sit up, taking in the rest of the scene. At the edge of the trees and sitting on a fallen log, I spy a lone figure with its back to me. The ebony hair and the shape of her outline look familiar. I stand and hurry over the sand; small shells jab at my bare feet.

  As I draw near, I shout, “Jaelle, it’s me, Kat!”

  She rocks back and forth with her arms wrapped around her knees and her white nightgown billowing in the breeze. She doesn’t turn or make any indication she hears me.

  “Jaelle, can you hear me?” I continue.

  It’s no use, I soon realize. She’s in a trancelike state.

  A bleat alerts me to something at one end of the fallen log. I jog a few steps to find the baby girl atop a bed of kelp. She stretches, gurgling, but shows no sign of distress or discomfort, but she can’t stay here. I stoop, readying to pick her up when a head pops up from the other end of the log. It’s the boy. He waves shyly and sits on the end of the log, staring. I can’t tell if he’s looking out to the water or gazing upon Jaelle. When I take a step to investigate, I’m suddenly losing purchase with the sand around me. It’s caving, sucking all of us down with it
.

  Because my life didn’t suck enough, when I awoke on Sunday I had another Stork dream to contend with. This one at least felt like a move in the right direction. Jaelle. Finally, she put in an appearance. Unfortunately, there was a hitch, a big one: there should have been at least two other potential mothers present. With only Jaelle, it felt like inadequate information. And, of course, the two separate, non-twinlike essences seemed a problem, too. And it was short. Too short, I feared.

  I made a conscious effort to ignore these anomalies, shelve them. Burrowing under the covers, I wished that it had all been a dream. Everything. Beginning with our move from California to Minnesota. Had we never come to Norse Falls, I’d be blissfully ignorant of my gift — and have a much better tan. But there’d be no Jack. Even though the thought of him made me hurt at a molecular level, I couldn’t imagine a life without him.

  I rolled over and snatched my phone off my nightstand. Penny had left me a what happened 2 U? text, but that was it. What did I expect? I’d asked Jack for a “break,” after all.

  I showered and arrived wet-headed downstairs, where I found Stanley on his laptop and my mom unloading the circa-1977 dishwasher.

  “Good morning.” My mom eyed me nervously.

  I grunted a response.

  “How do you feel? Did you sleep well?” she asked.

  I collapsed onto a chair, which I figured was reply enough.

  “We were just talking about last night,” Stanley said. His voice was chipper; he was obviously clueless as to my mom’s concern and my slump. “Though nothing’s been released to the press yet, some findings are coming in.” He lowered his computer screen. “Some of the birds were brought to Walden for a necropsy. The findings are interesting, to say the least.”

  “Why?” my mom asked.

  “Preliminary evidence suggests they suffered from a sudden plunge in body temperature, but that would have meant they were flying at altitudes they couldn’t sustain.”

  “You’re ruling out another possibility,” my smart mom said. “A cold air mass could have descended to them.”

  I could tell by the way Stanley’s forehead folded into pleats that he rejected this theory. “Anything cold enough to drop birds from the sky would have been felt on the ground. We’d have had record lows last night.”

  I looked out the window. The sky was a dingy aluminum; drops spattered the pane. Though I wondered at the origin of this particular weather system, it didn’t look particularly cold outside.

  My mom closed an upper cupboard on a tidy row of mugs. “It was an ugly mess and unfortunate; that’s a fact we can all agree on.”

  My mom looked at her watch. “Are you about ready?” she said to Stanley. “I don’t want Leira to wake up alone.”

  The phone rang, and we all turned our heads in unison.

  “Hello,” my mom said into the receiver. “We were just on our way.” She paused, listening. “We’ll be there as soon as we can. Thank you for calling.” She hung up and brought the heel of her palm to her forehead.

  “What is it?” Stanley asked, standing.

  “Leira’s fever has spiked again. They want to discuss a different antibiotic. We need to go now.”

  “I’m coming with you,” I said, pushing away from the table.

  The lobby of Pinewood General was becoming all too familiar. This fact was confirmed when the nurses didn’t ask us to sign in or check for our visitors’ badges. We could probably have used the staff elevators without turning too many heads.

  Leira’s doctor met us in the hallway, where he quickly updated us on her relapse and treatment options. Not one minute after my mom and Stanley agreed to a new round of IV-delivered antibiotics, her cell phone rang. The conversation was brief but tense.

  “That was Ofelia,” my mom said, dropping her phone back into her purse. “She’s down in the emergency room with Afi. He collapsed at the store.”

  I pressed my eyes shut at the sight of my mom wiping back tears and Stanley rubbing her shoulder.

  “You go,” he said. “Take Kat with you. I’ll stay with Leira.”

  My mom and I didn’t even speak as we made our way down to the emergency room, no directions required. I was too stunned and overwhelmed to work up the saliva necessary to form words. My mom, I could tell, was busy keeping her emotions in check. The occasional wipe of her wet cheeks confirmed this.

  We found Ofelia in the waiting room.

  “What is it?” my mom asked.

  “They think it’s his lungs,” Ofelia replied. “The doctor’s waiting to speak with you.”

  My mom hurried off after a woman in a white lab coat. I started to follow her, but Ofelia tugged on my arm.

  “A word, if I may,” she said, and looked around to make sure no one was close enough to overhear.

  I sat down next to her. “OK.”

  “How’s Leira?” she asked.

  “Not good. And now Afi.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “And on top of last night.”

  I clutched at the arms of the vinyl-padded chair. “A rough weekend.”

  “I wonder if the council should confer,” Ofelia said, tucking an AWOL wisp of hair back into her loose twist.

  “We will. Tonight.”

  “Oh,” she said. “With everything else going on, you have a bestowment, too?”

  I nodded my head. Before that moment I hadn’t decided yet just what to do about last night’s dream. With Jaelle as the only vessel and with multiple souls, the entire equation was backward. But if I’d learned anything at all in the past twenty-four hours, it was that life was unpredictable. And with everything else hanging by a frayed thread, what difference would a slightly unorthodox bestowment make? In for a penny, in for a pounding.

  My mom returned from her consultation. “His lungs have filled with fluid; it’s called a pulmonary edema and is likely due to an infection,” she said. “They’re going to admit him and administer an intravenous diuretic and antibiotics if they find an infection. He’s on oxygen, too.” My mom pulled her hair back nervously. “Can you believe we’ve got two of them on breathing machines? What are the odds of that?”

  Personally, I could believe it. Because the odds of a family with mercreature genes having lung problems had to be pretty high. Not that I’d be opening my fish mouth with any such news.

  “Thank you again, Ofelia,” my mom continued. “You’ve been such a help with my father. What did we take you away from? Did you have to close the store?”

  “Don’t worry. The new girl, Kat’s friend Jinky, was able to help out. She’s been such a godsend already.”

  Even I had to admit that Jinky was a huge help. But godsend? That had to have been a first for her.

  I spent the rest of the day migrating between Leira and Afi. Both were too sick to appreciate the bedside vigil, so later in the afternoon I took Ofelia up on her offer of a ride home. I waved her away from the curb, promising to give my sister Storks plenty of notice for our council meeting that night. I would. As if I needed Grim to show up all grinchy.

  The house felt empty. I picked up my phone about a dozen times to call Jack; he deserved to know about Leira and Afi, but I couldn’t risk him coming here to console me. Marik had been clear about Jack’s effect on him. Without knowing how close was too close, I couldn’t have them on the same street. Besides, it was best, for now, to perpetuate our “break.”

  I did phone Penny. At first she was chilly with me, asking why I took off. She didn’t ask about Marik directly, but her tone implied confusion. The conversation was quick; she was obviously going to make me work to make amends. She did, at least, update me on the bird situation. All kinds of theories were floating around, everything from a prank by Pinewood to insecticide poisoning to a high-altitude lightning strike, the day’s continued showers probably lending credence to the latter. Stanley’s cold-air-mass explanation had obviously not been released yet or had been dismissed.

  I also finally got a hold of my dad, who was su
rprisingly tight-lipped about where he’d been all day and why he had never returned my messages. I could hear him jangling keys and huffing about, and it was nice to know that he was on his way to visit Afi, allowing my mom and Stanley to focus on Leira. Say what you will about the guy — he’d made his mistakes — but he came through when you needed him. That said a lot about a person. I just wished as much could be said about me.

  Later that evening, I unlocked the back door and sat waiting in my second chair, the Robin’s chair. From the waist up, I made a concerted effort to appear calm and cool, while under the table my knees were jingling like loose change.

  Ofelia was the first to show up. The rest tumbled in behind her while I sat at my place with my hands grasping the table so as not to fall into the growing pit in my stomach.

  Grim and Hulda were the last two to arrive; both wore an air of solemnity.

  Hulda got right down to business, calling for roll, at which we were all accounted for.

  “Before we proceed,” Hulda said, rising from her chair, “let me assure my sister Storks that an account of last night’s incident has been dispatched to the World Council.”

  This was a group that took its bird-watching seriously, and, much like lifting the cover on a manhole, a rush of steam in the form of remarks and exclamations shot forth. I overheard more than one mention of Dorit, our expelled member, as well as a hushed “enemy still in our midst” response. That one, I feared, was eerily on the mark.

  “Order, please.” Hulda calmed the room with fanning hands. “Let us not panic. We have no proof of a sinister connection to the occurrence.” Her eyes raked over me as she said this, and I’m sure I went blotchy; I didn’t even color well under pressure. “Now, who has initiated tonight’s meeting?”

  “I’ve been contacted”— I began in the way we always did, but I knew that what followed would be a major divergence. I squeezed my eyes shut briefly, bracing myself —“by two separate and distinct essences. . . . I know it’s highly unusual.”