Can You Keep a Secret? (13 page)

The front door slammed again. Eddie and I were left alone. We held each other, squeezed together on the armchair. We didn’t say a word. I don’t know what he was thinking. As I pressed my cheek against his, I was trying not to think at all. But, of course, it was impossible.

The doorbell chime made us both jump.
Who could that be?

We jumped to our feet. Pushing back my hair, I trotted to the front door and pulled it open. “Roxie?” I couldn’t hide my surprise.

Her expression was grim. Her face was paler than before, as white as cake flour, and her chin was trembling. She pushed past me into the living room.

“Here,” she said. She raised the briefcase in both hands and pushed it at me. Eddie stepped up beside me, eyes wide with shock.

“Take it,” Roxie insisted. “Take it. Go ahead.” She shoved it hard into my chest. I staggered back a few steps, wrapping my arms around it.

“I don’t want it,” Roxie said, scowling at Eddie and me. “I don’t want any part of it.” Her chin trembled harder. Tears filled her eyes. “Riley gave it to me to hide. But I don’t want it. I … don’t want anything to do with it. Or you.”

“But, Roxie—” I started.

She was breathing hard, her chest heaving up and down. “Riley … he … he … the poor guy. He only wanted to protect the money for the rest of us. That’s all he wanted. He … he wasn’t trying to steal it. He—”

She couldn’t finish. Her whole body shuddered and she began to sob.

I handed the briefcase to Eddie and stuck out my arms to hug her. But Roxie spun away from me. Still sobbing, she stumbled to the door and disappeared outside.

Eddie and I stared at the front door. I turned to him. He held the briefcase awkwardly by the bottom, pressing it to his chest. I gazed at it until it became unreal … a dark brown blur.

He opened it and peeked inside. “It’s in there. It’s all in there.”

I took a deep breath. “Okay, Eddie. What do we do with it now?”

26.

With all the horror, I completely forgot that Aunt Marta was arriving. Two days after Riley’s funeral, Mom picked her up at the airport.

She had cherry red cheeks, and dark circles around both eyes, but her eyes were bright and alert and shiny. She wore her straight white hair pulled back in a bun, held together by a wide red ribbon.

She was tiny. Like a miniature person. Like an old doll. When I stepped up to hug her, I had to lean down, nearly bending myself in half. She probably weighed eighty pounds at most.

She didn’t wear “old lady” clothes. She wore a colorful flower-print skirt, pleated all around and down to her ankles, and a bright yellow peasant blouse many sizes too big for her narrow frame. A silver cross dangled down from a chain around her neck.

Her “traveling clothes,” she said. She told us her six daughters sewed everything before her flight to Shadyside.

“Six daughters!” Mom exclaimed. “I didn’t realize…”

“Seven would be bad luck,” Marta said in her dry whisper of a voice. “Seven daughters in a house is too tempting for the Evil Ones.”

Mom, Sophie, and I didn’t know what to say to that.

“Six daughters and a son could lead to sunshine and good fortune,” Marta continued, gesturing with one bony hand. “But I didn’t want to take the chance.” She winked a wrinkled eyelid at me. “I’m a practical woman. But I know better than to tempt the fates.” She giggled, as if she had made a joke.

*   *   *

Sophie and I carried her suitcase and travel bag up to the guest room. “Why is Mom so awkward around Aunt Marta?” Sophie whispered.

I shrugged. “Beats me. Maybe because Marta is so old and weird?”

Sophie grinned. “Weird? What’s weird about bringing sticks from some kind of enchanted forest to hide under her bed? Everyone does that—right?”

“Sshhh. She’ll hear you,” I whispered.

“She doesn’t have any accent,” Sophie said.

“You want her to talk like someone in a horror movie? I vant your blood.…” I whispered and walked toward her like the Frankenstein monster.”

Sophie and I laughed so hard, we couldn’t stop. When we finally calmed down, Sophie said: “I’ve never seen Mom so tense. Did you see the look on her face when she spilled a little of Marta’s tea from her cup? And Marta had to chant some kind of tea prayer over it and stir her teaspoon twelve times?”

I laughed. “Marta’s weird but she’s kind of sweet. She smells like cinnamon. Did you notice?”

Sophie nodded. “Her teeth are so white. Do you think they’re real?”

“Yuck. I don’t want to think about that,” I said. I hoisted Marta’s suitcase onto her bed. Sophie pulled the enchanted sticks or whatever they were from the travel bag and slid them under the bed.

Then we went back downstairs to join Mom and Aunt Marta for lunch. Marta sat in a chair at the head of our kitchen table. She was so short, her feet didn’t touch the floor.

Mom had her phone to her ear. She lowered it and turned to us. “That was your dad. He’ll be home from Atlanta tomorrow.” She turned to Marta. “Jason is so sorry he wasn’t here to greet you, Marta”

“He was always a day late,” Marta said, frowning. “That boy. I remember. Always a day late. I always said he’d be a day late to his funeral.”

Sophie and I exchanged glances across the table. Marta seemed serious and a little scary We didn’t know whether to laugh or not.

Mom served a tossed salad and tuna sandwiches for lunch. Aunt Marta ate hungrily, taking little chipmunk bites, her red cheeks moving as she chewed.

“Emmy? Do you remember your visit to me when you were little?” she asked. But she directed the question to Sophie not me.

“
I’m
Emmy,” I said. “Sophie was too little to remember much of our visit, but I remember a lot.”

Marta nodded, taking another sandwich half. She sighed. “This is some age we live in. You jump in an airplane and it takes you to a different world.”

“I think you’re very brave for making the trip,” Mom said.

Marta squinted at her. “Brave?”

“I mean … at your age. I mean…”

Awkward.

Marta turned back to me. “My village is still part of the Old Country, the world I grew up in. Very different. Very different. In the Old Country the real and the magical live side by side. The old ways and the new ways … we have them both.”

Sophie lifted her phone off the table. “Do you have these, Aunt Marta?”

Marta nodded her head. “Yes. But it’s not the only way we communicate. We communicate in ways you would probably think are not possible.”

Very mysterious.

The lunch continued like that. Marta was eager to tell us of the superstitions and traditions of her village. I was surprised that she didn’t ask Sophie and me more questions. She had traveled all this way, but she didn’t seem very interested in learning about us.

I guessed that maybe she was nervous, too, about being in a new place. And that she would relax and be more natural as the days went by.

After lunch, she went up to her room to unpack and take an afternoon nap. Mom seemed really relieved. “I’ll be so glad when Dad gets home tomorrow,” she said.

I studied her. “Mom, why are you so tense?”

She stared back at me, thinking hard. “I really don’t know.”

I helped her with the lunch dishes. Then I went to my room where Sophie was already doing homework, and I sprawled on my bed and started texting some friends.

That night, I had another wolf dream.

In this dream, I was chasing two white wolves through the woods. Was I a wolf, too? I couldn’t see myself. I felt as if I was running on all fours. I could hear the slap of my paws on the leafy dirt floor. And I could smell the tangy fragrance of the deep woods. Even in the dream, I could smell the fragrance of the air, and it made the dream so much more real, so real I wanted to escape it.

But I also knew that was impossible. I had to see where the dream led.

I chased the two wolves through the dark passages between the tall trees. I could hear them panting, steady huffing as they trotted side by side, bobbing their furry white heads.

And then suddenly, they spun around. They rose up on their hind legs, eyes wild, jaws opening, baring their jagged teeth.

Before I could turn away, they attacked. Leaped at me with their forepaws raised, snarling their sudden rage.

I screamed.

And woke up.

And found Great Aunt Marta sitting beside my bed. She leaned forward and brought her face close to mine. “So you have the dreams,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “I knew you would.”

27.

I shook myself awake. The fragrance of the night air in my dream lingered in my nose. I felt half in the woods, half in my bed. I tried to blink it all away.

Marta started to stand up, but I gripped her wrist and pulled her back down to my bedside. “What do you mean?” I demanded. “Aunt Marta, you have to explain.”

She stared at me with her dark eyes, gleaming in the light from my bedroom window. I had the feeling those eyes could see right into my brain. See my thoughts. See my dreams.

She gripped the silver moon pendant on my neck in her tiny hand. “The crescent moon,” she said. “I gave that to you. Do you wish on the moon, child? Has it granted any of your desires?”

“Huh? No. I mean … no.”

She set the pendant back on my skin and rubbed it three times. “I gave you the crescent moon because I knew you were the special one.”

“But, tell me about the dreams. Why did you say you knew I would have them?”

She didn’t answer. But I knew this was my only chance. My chance to learn the truth about me and why I’ve been plagued with these crazy wolf dreams.

I gripped her wrist again. “Marta,” I said, my voice still choked with sleep. “Marta, tell me. Please. Do I have these dreams because of the dog? The dog that bit me in your village when I was five?”

To my surprise, Marta gasped. Her eyes went wide. “Dog?” she said. “Is that what your mother told you? That you were bitten by a dog?”

I nodded. “Yes. She said a dog ran out of the woods and bit me. And I’ve been having these dreams.…”

I glanced over at Sophie’s bed. She was sleeping on her side, eyes closed. Was she really sleeping through this conversation? Or was she pretending to be asleep and eavesdropping on us?

“Your mother never wanted you to know the truth, Emmy,” Marta said, leaning close, her hot breath brushing my face. “She was afraid, Emmy. So she told you a lie.”

I swallowed. My throat was suddenly so dry. “A lie?”

Marta’s eyes flashed. “You were bitten by a
wolf,
Emmy.”

“Huh?” I gasped. “Not a dog?”

“And it wasn’t an ordinary wolf,” Marta said, lowering her voice to a whisper, leaning even closer so that her cheek was nearly touching mine. “It was an
immortal,
” she said. “It was—”

“Wait a minute,” I said, grabbing her bonelike wrist again. “Wait a minute. What are you saying?”

“Listen to me. I’ve traveled very far so that you will know the truth. The wolf that bit you was an immortal. A wolf creature most people no longer believe in. But it exists. It exists to all of us who live in the Old Country and know the truth of the world old and new.”

I stared at her, stared at her glowing eyes so deep in their sockets, so dark, unblinking eyes. “Marta … you mean a
werewolf?
” The words spilled from my mouth. They didn’t seem real. I didn’t even know I was saying them.

Marta nodded. “There are many names.” She slid her hand over mine. Her hand was hard and warm. Mine felt wet and cold. “I don’t blame you for being shocked, dear. You’ve never been told the truth. But don’t blame your mother.”

“I … I don’t understand,” I murmured. “What does this mean?”

Marta shut her eyes. “You are wolfen, Emmy. Listen to my words. You are wolfen.”

I stared at her face in the shadowy light. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. Her words repeated and repeated in my mind.

And in that instant—the most horrifying moment of my life—I realized that
I killed Riley.

PART FOUR

28.

After a few silent seconds, Aunt Marta left me sitting up in my bed, paralyzed by my horrifying thoughts. I heard the floorboards in the hall creak as she made her way up the stairs to the guest room. I heard her door close. I heard the wind rush against my bedroom window. I heard the fridge hum in the kitchen downstairs. I heard Sophie’s soft breathing. I heard my heart thumping in my chest.

It was as if every cell in my body had gone on alert. My brain was frozen in the horror of my thoughts, but my whole body throbbed as if an electric current was shooting through me.

I’m an animal. I killed someone. I killed Riley.

Will I kill again?

I can’t control my dreams. Is there any way to control what I do in real life?

The questions were too frightening to think about alone.

I pictured Riley’s shredded body. The glistening red meat underneath the skin that had been shredded in strips like bacon.

I did that. I became an animal and I clawed Riley to pieces.

Suddenly, I was on my feet. I lurched across the room. I grabbed Sophie by the shoulders and shook her. I didn’t mean to be so violent but I was out of my mind.

“Sophie! Sophie!” I screamed her name so loud my throat ached.

Sophie awoke with a startled cry. I felt her back muscles tighten. She whipped around, raised her head, gaped at me with her mouth hanging open. “Emmy? What’s wrong? You scared me to death.”

“Sorry. Oh. Oh no. Sorry,” I said. I took a stumbling step back. “Sophie, you have to listen to me. We have to talk.”

“Huh? It’s the middle of the night, isn’t it?” She squinted at the clock on her bedside table.

“You have to talk to me!” I cried, my voice high and trembling. I dove to the bedroom door and pushed it shut. I made sure it clicked. “Sophie, please—” I said. “I really need you now.”

Those words got through to her. Rubbing her eyes, she sat up. She kicked the bedsheet away and stood. “Can we turn on the light? Do we have to talk in the dark?”