Summer 2007 (27 page)

“Lucius,” I said the next morning. “Can a person die from
a bee sting?”

I’d come into his library in the Rookery to find him
crouched on his knees, peering at the titles of books on a lower shelf. He
looked up at my voice, then stood, moving with a dancer’s grace that always
surprises people who’ve made assumptions based on his enormous bulk. His bald
head gleamed in the sunlight streaming in through the window behind him.

“What sort of a person?” he asked. “Cousin or human?”

“What’s the difference?”

He shrugged. “Humans can die of pretty much anything.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, take tobacco. The smoke builds up tar in their
lungs and the next thing you know, they’re dead.”

“Cousins smoke. Just look at Joe, or Whiskey Jack.”

“It’s not the same for us.”

“Well, what about the Kickaha? They smoke.”

He nodded. “But so long as they keep to ceremonial use,
it doesn’t kill them. It only hurts them when they smoke for no reason at all,
rather than to respect the sacred directions.”

“And bee stings?”

“If you’re allergic–and humans can be allergic to
pretty much anything–then, yes. It can kill them. Why do you ask?”

I shrugged. “I met a boy who died of a bee sting.”

“A dead boy,” Lucius said slowly, as though waiting for
a punchline.

“I meant to say a ghost.”

“Ah. Of course.”

“He’s not very happy.”

Lucius nodded. “Ghosts rarely are.” He paused a moment,
then added, “You didn’t offer to help him, did you?”

He didn’t wait for my reply. I suppose he could already
see it in my face.

“Oh, Maida,” he said. “Humans can be hard enough to
satisfy, but ghosts are almost impossible.”

“I thought they just needed closure,” I said.

“Closure for the living and the dead can be two very
different things. Does he want revenge on the bee? Because unless it was a
cousin, it would be long dead.”

“No, he just wants to be remembered.”

Lucius gave a slow shake of his head. “You could be
bound to this promise forever.”

“I know,” I said.

But it was too late now.

Part II

After leaving the Rookery, I flew up into a
tree–not one of the old oaks on the property, but one further down the
street where I could get a little privacy as I tried to figure out what to do
next. Like most corbae, I think better on a roost or in the air. I knew just
trying to talk to Donald’s mother wouldn’t be enough. At some point, I’d still
have to, but first I thought I’d try to find out more about what exactly had
happened to her children.

That made me cheer up a little because I realized it
would be like having a case and looking into the background of it, the way a
detective would. I’d be like a private eye in one of those old movies the Aunts
liked to watch, late at night when everybody else was asleep except for Zia and
me. And probably Lucius.

I decided to start with the deaths and work my way back
from them.

There was no point in trying to find the bee. As Lucius
had said, unless it was a cousin, it would be long dead by now, and it didn’t
make sense that it would be a cousin. I could look into it, I supposed, but
first I’d try to find the driver of the car that had truck Madeline. A bee
wouldn’t even be alive after thirty years, anyway. But a human might.

* * *

Most people know there are two worlds, the one Raven
made and the otherworld, where dreams and spirits live. But there’s another
world that separates the two: the between. Thin as a veil in some places, as wide
as the widest sea in others. When you know the way, it’s easy to slip from one
to another and that’s what I do when I find myself standing in front of the
locked door of Michael Clark’s house. It’s how Zia and I always get into
places.

Slip into the between, take a step, then slip right back
into Raven’s world. It’s as though you passed right through the door, except
what you really did was take another, slightly more roundabout route.

I didn’t like it in Clark’s house when I got there that
evening. There was an air of…unpleasantness about the place. I don’t mean that
it smelled bad, though there was a faint smell of mustiness and old body odour
in the air. It was more that this was a place where not a lot of happiness had
ever lived. Because places hold onto strong emotions just the way people do.
The man who doesn’t forgive? The house he lives in doesn’t either. The house
full of happy, laughing children? You can feel its smile envelop you when you
step through the door.

Clark’s name had been in that last clipping in the old
lady’s scrapbook. When I looked it up in the telephone book, I found three
listings for Michael Clark. The first two belonged to people much too young to
be the man I was looking for, but this house…I knew as soon as I slipped inside
that I was in the right place.

The front hall was messy with a few months’ worth of
flyers and old newspapers piled up against the walls, the kitchen garbage
overflowing with take-out food containers and pizza boxes, the sink full of
dirty mugs and other dishes. But there weren’t any finished liquor bottles, or
beer cases full of empties.

I found Clark sitting on the sofa in his living room,
watching the TV with the sound off. Just as the rest of the place, this room
also a mess. Coming into it was like stepping onto a beach where the tide had
left behind a busy debris of more food containers, newspapers, magazines, dirty
clothes. A solitary, long-dead plant stood withered and dry in its pot on the
windowsill.

Clark looked up when I came in and didn’t even seem
surprised to see me. That happens almost as often as it doesn’t. Zia and I can
walk into someone’s kitchen while they’re having breakfast and all they do is
take down a couple of more bowls from the cupboard and push the cereal box over
to us. Or they’ll simply move over a little to give us room on the sofa they’re
sitting on.

In Clark’s case, he might have thought that I was
another one of those personal demons he was obviously wrestling with on a
regular basis.

I didn’t bother with any small talk.

“It’s not like they made it out to be,” the man said
when I asked him about the night his car had struck Madeline. “I didn’t try to
kill her. And I wasn’t drunk. I’d had a few beers, but I wasn’t drunk. She just
stepped out from behind a van, right in front of my car. She didn’t even look.
It was like she wanted to die.”

“I’ve heard people do that,” I said. “It seems so odd.”

“I suppose. But there are times I can understand all too
well. I lost everything because of that night. My business. My family. And that
girl lost her life.
I
took her life.”

There was more of that. A lot more.

When I realized I wasn’t learning anything here except
how to get depressed, I left him, still talking, only to himself. I looked up
at the night sky, then took wing and headed for the scene of the accident that
Michael Clark kept so fresh in his mind.

Between my ghost boy’s mother and Michael Clark, I was
beginning to see that the dead weren’t the only ones haunted by the past.

* * *

The place where Madeline had died didn’t look much
different from any other part of the inner city. It had been so long since the
accident, how could there be any sign that it had ever happened? But I thought,
if her brother’s ghost was still haunting the bedroom where he’d died, then
perhaps she hadn’t gone on yet either.

I walked along the sidewalk and down an alleyway,
calling. “Hello, hello! Hello, hello!”

I did it, over and over again, until a man wrenched open
one of the windows overlooking the alley. I looked up into his angry features,
though with the light of the window behind him, he was more just a shadow face.

“It’s three o-clock in the morning!” he yelled. “Are you
going to shut up, or do I have to come down there and shut you up?”

“You’ll have to come down,” I called back, “because I can’t
stop.”

“Why the hell not?”

“I need to find a dead girl. Have you seen her?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.”

His head disappeared back into the apartment and he
slammed the window shut. I went back to calling for Madeline until I heard
footsteps behind me. I turned, warm with success, but it was only the grumpy
man from the window. He stood in the mouth of the alley, peering down its
length to where I stood.

He was older than I’d thought when I’d seen him
earlier–late fifties, early sixties–and though he carried more
weight than he probably should, he seemed fit. If nothing else, he smelled
good, which meant he at least ate well. I hate the smell of people who only eat
fast food. All that grease from the deep-frying just seems to ooze out of their
pores.

“What’s this about a dead girl?” he asked.

I pointed to the street behind him. “She got hit by a
drunk driver just out there.”

“You’re not answering my question.”

“I just want to talk to her,” I told him. “To see how
she feels.”

“You just said she was dead. I don’t think she’s feeling
much of anything anymore.”

“Okay. How her
ghost
feels.”

He studied me for a long moment, then that thing
happened that’s always happening around Zia and me: he just took me at my word.

“I don’t remember anybody dying around here,” he said.
“At least not recently.”

“It was thirty years ago.”

“Thirty years ago…”

I could see his mind turning inward, rolling back the
years. He gave me a slow nod.

“I do remember now,” he said. “I haven’t thought about
it in a long time.” He turned from me and looked out at the street. “This was a
good neighbourhood, and it still is, but it was different back then. We didn’t
know about things so much. People drank and drove because they didn’t know any
better. A policeman might pull you over, but then if it looked like you could
drive, he’d give you a warning and tell you to be careful getting home.”

He nodded and his gaze came back to me. “I remember
seeing the guy that killed that poor girl. He didn’t seem that drunk, but he
was sure shook up bad.”

“But you didn’t see the accident itself?”

He shook his head. “We heard it–my Emily and me.
She’s gone now.”

“Where did she go?”

“I mean she’s dead. The cancer took her. Lung cancer.
See that’s another of those things. Emily never smoked, but she worked for thirty
years in a diner. It was all that secondhand smoke that killed her. But we
didn’t know about secondhand smoke back then.”

I didn’t know quite what to say, so I didn’t say
anything. I don’t think he even noticed.

“Now they’re putting hormones in our food,” he said,
“and putting God knows what kind of animal genes into our corn and tomatoes and
all. Who knows what that’ll mean for us, ten, twenty years down the road?”

“Something bad?” I tried.

“Well, it won’t be good,” he said. “It never is.” He
looked down the alley behind me. “Are you going to keep yelling for this ghost
to come talk to you?”

“I guess not. I don’t think she’s here anymore.”

“Good,” he said. “I may not work anymore, but I still
like to get my sleep.” He started to turn, then added, “Good luck with whatever
it is you’re trying to do.”

And then he did leave and walked down the street.

I watched him step into the doorway of his apartment,
listened to the door hiss shut behind him. A car went by on the street. I went
back into the alley and looked around, but I didn’t call out because I knew now
that nobody was going to hear me. Nobody dead, anyway.

I felt useless as I started back to the mouth of the
alley. This had been a stupid idea and I still had to help the dead boy, but I
didn’t know how, or where to begin. I felt like I didn’t know anything.

“What are you doing?” someone asked.

I looked up to see Zia sitting on the metal fire escape
above me.

“I’m investigating.”

“Whatever for?”

I shrugged. “It’s like I’m a detective.”

“More like you’re nosy.”

I couldn’t help but smile, because it was true. But it
wasn’t a big smile, and it didn’t last long.

“That, too,” I said.

“Can I help?”

I thought of how that could go, of how quickly we’d
dissolve into silliness and then forget what it was we were supposed to be
doing.

“I’ll be veryvery useful,” she said as though reading my
mind. “You’ll be in charge and I’ll be your girl Thursday.”

“I think it’s Girl Friday.”

“I don’t think so. Today’s Thursday.
Tomorrow
I
can be Girl Friday.”

I gave her another shrug. “It doesn’t matter. It turns
out I’m a terrible detective.”