The Blue Woods (23 page)

I stayed silent. How could I answer her? I knew she was right. I couldn't willingly choose which Clan member I wanted to die. Slowly, I sank back into my seat and pulled the blankets up.

After a few minutes, Nerina sighed. She sat down and turned away from me, staring out the window.

But I did know this: If all the elements of that spell aligned, I wouldn't hesitate one damn second to perform it. For Jonah . . . and for me.

The instant we were on the tarmac in Bangor and my cell phone had rebooted, I called a cab to take me back to Twin Willows. I couldn't stand to ride in more silence with Nerina, and I didn't want her to tell me where to go or where not to go. Because if she did, I didn't think I'd be able to restrain myself from telling
her
where to go.

I was going to see my mom, and no one could stop me.

As the cab turned onto our street, my chest squeezed and wouldn't let go. But no matter what, I wasn't going to let myself off the hook. I wasn't going to try to justify what I'd done. Maybe it was okay in the eyes of the Benandanti, but those weren't the eyes that really mattered to me right now.

I paid the cabbie and walked down the path to the front door. Before I reached it, the door flew open. “Bree!” Mom gestured wildly to me. “Get inside. They're watching the house.” The instant I was inside, Mom pulled me in tight against her. “Thank God you're okay. We hadn't heard anything since . . . since . . .” She held me a little away from her and touched my cheek. “I'm so sorry, sweetie. Your father died.”

I stared into her eyes, clear and open and loving. She didn't know. I could lie right now, make her think I had nothing to do with it . . .
no
. Redemption started today. “I know, Mom. I was there.”

“Oh, sweetie.” She pulled me deeper into the house, into the kitchen, which for once wasn't covered with remnants of her cooking experiments. “You were in Tibet? How long? When did you get back?”

“Just now. I came straight here.” I perched on one of the kitchen stools. Mom set a glass of water in front of me, but I didn't touch it. “How do you know they're watching the house?”

She grimaced. “Please. The same black town car drives by every half hour. If they think I'm not going to notice that, they're idiots.” She laid a plate of sliced apples and peanut butter next to the water. “Eat.”

“I'm not hungry.” I wrapped my arms around myself. “Do you know what happened in Tibet?”

Mom shook her head. “They haven't been very forthcoming with details.” She bit her lip, her eyes searching my face. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” I whispered, “but I think I'd better.” I swallowed. “Is Jonah here?”

Mom nodded. “Upstairs in his room. They let him come home after your dad . . .”

I hopped off the stool and headed up the stairs, Mom on my heels. I didn't even knock on Jonah's door, just pushed it open to find him lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling, headphones stuck in his ears. When he saw me, he sat up, pulled off the headphones, and opened his mouth to say something.

I held my hand up. “I need to tell you what happened in Tibet,” I said. “And then I don't want to talk about it ever again.” I looked from Mom to Jonah and walked over to the window. Sure enough, a black town car drove slowly by the house, its dark windows shielding whatever coward was inside. I jerked the curtain shut so that I wasn't visible, but I stayed by the window. I didn't turn around the whole time I was talking. I could feel the heat of their gazes on me, burning into me, crackling my skin like they were burning me in hell for the sinner I was. When I was done, I still couldn't turn around. I couldn't face them.

Silence swept the room for a long time, the only sound the soft whir of the heating system. There was a rustle, the tap of footsteps, and then I felt Mom's arms come around me from behind. “Oh, baby,” she murmured into my hair before she turned me to face her and then hugged me tight. “Come lay your head, Bree-girl.” She tried to draw me down to sit on Jonah's bed, to comfort me, but I pulled away so hard that she stumbled backward.

“No,” I said, my voice sharp. “I don't deserve it.”

“Bree.” Jonah spoke from where he sat on the bed, his legs drawn up to his chest. “You showed him a lot more mercy than I would've.”

“And that's supposed to make me feel better?” Angry tears squeezed out of the corners of my eyes, and I slapped them away. “Whatever he did, however much of an asshole he was, he was still our father, Jonah. And I killed him.
I killed him.
”

“Yes, you did.” We both looked at Mom. “You killed him, and Jonah killed him, and I killed him. All of us in this room had a part in his death.”

“Mom—”

“It's true.” She thrust her hands into her hair and pulled. “I knew something was wrong with the Guild. I knew he shouldn't have taken that job. I should've put my foot down about it, threatened to leave him . . .”

“I should've taken responsibility for Emily,” Jonah said. His green eyes—my green eyes—were bright against his pale face. “If I'd just owned up to what I'd done, he wouldn't have been in so much debt to the Guild.”

“But I was the one who actually killed him,” I yelled. Why were they being so nice? Why weren't they throwing me out of the house, telling me they never wanted to see me again? That I could deal with. This kindness . . . it made me want to stab something. “I delivered the actual death blow. Not you. Me. Me. Me.” I punched my heart hard with each syllable until Mom grabbed my arm.

“No, you didn't, Bree.” The softness in her voice struck me more than any blow I could give myself. “The Guild . . . the Malandanti . . . that
mage
. . . They did that. You saved him. In the end, you were the one who saved his soul.”

A little chink appeared in my armor, a tiny hole through which a thin beam of sunlight poked its way through. Mom hugged me again. I gave her a feeble push and then sank into her. Maybe . . . just maybe . . .
no
. Just because they forgave me didn't mean I was forgiven.

The House Call

Alessia

A chill settled over Twin Willows for the next few days, dipping below zero. It was too frigid to even walk the half-mile to school, so Jeff drove me and Jenny. We jumped out of the car and hurried indoors, unwrapping our scarves as soon as the heat blasted through us. “I thought spring was just around the corner,” Jenny complained as she plucked her gloves off. “Isn't that what that stupid groundhog said?”

I pulled my hat off my head. “That groundhog is obviously a Malandante.”

“What's a Malandante?”

We both whirled. Carly had come in behind us, her face half hidden beneath a thick woven scarf. “Uh, it's a bad word in Italian,” I said.

Carly unzipped her parka. “Really? I've never heard you use it before.”

“I just learned it.” I forced myself to shrug, even though my whole body shook. “Lidia is getting a little lazy about hiding the swears from me lately.”

“I guess it must be tough, being holed up at Jenny's house.”

“Hey, I resent that.” Jenny punched Carly lightly in the arm. “My house is a barrel of laughs, thank you very much.”

The front door to the school opened, sending in a gust of icy wind and Melissa. “Oh, my God, I am so over this cold,” she said as she joined our little circle. “Can it just be summer already?”

I tried to imagine summer, the trees green and lush, the hillside behind our farm dotted with goats again. Would we be able to live there again? Would the barn be rebuilt by then? Would the Waterfall be under Benandanti control? Would the woods be Benandanti blue again, instead of Malandanti silver? I shook my head. It was impossible to see that far ahead.

Melissa nudged me. “Alessia? Are you okay?”

I squinted at her. “What? Oh, yeah. I'm fine.”

“We should totally have a sleepover at my house this weekend,” Carly said. “What do you think?”

“Uh . . .” I exchanged glances with Jenny. “I don't know if I can.”

“Why not? You're sleeping at Jenny's anyway, so what's the big deal?”

“There's just . . . a lot going on.”

Now it was Carly and Melissa exchanging a look. I caught it and tilted my head. “What?”

“Yeah, that's kinda what we'd like to know,” Melissa said. “You two have been thick as thieves since Alessia moved in and, well, we . . .”

“We feel left out,” Carly finished for her.

“Oh, for Pete's sake,” Jenny said. “We are not thick as thieves. You're just jealous because you think it's like one happy-go-lucky sleepover. Trust me,
it's not.
”

“It's not like I asked for my house to get black mold,” I said. “Lidia is totally mortified about it.”

“Speaking of Lidia,” Carly said, and I could tell by her tone that she wasn't quite ready to let us off the hook yet, “did you know that she and Mr. Salter are a thing?”

“Carly!” Jenny rounded on her. “You're being a real bitch, you know that?”

“You two started it—”

“Oh, my God,
grow up
!”

“Stop it!” I shoved myself between them. “Look, it's not my fault we're holed up at Jenny's house. It just made sense because the Sands are Lidia's closest friends. The fact that you're jealous is idiotic,” I said, shooting a hard look first at Melissa and then at Carly. My gaze lingered on her face. “And, yes, I did know about Lidia and Mr. Salter. And to be honest, it hurts a ton and she and I aren't really speaking right now. And if you were a good friend, you'd be supporting me instead of trying to make me feel even worse.” I turned on my heel and stalked off to the office. I felt bad about leaving Jenny to deal with them, but the anger was hot inside me and I thought if I said anything else, it would be something mean that I'd regret.

Jenny met me in the hall on the way to second period. “She's being such a twat,” she said.

“Jenny! That is not a nice word.”

“Well, fine, but that's what she's being.” Jenny linked her arm through mine. “And the problem is, I feel really bad. We
do
have something going on behind their back, and we can't tell them. It
sucks.
”

“Now you know how I felt all that time before you found out about me,” I said. “The biggest thing going on in your life, and you can't even share it with your closest friends.”

Carly ignored us as she took her seat in French. Jenny huffed as she pulled her textbook out of her bag and dropped it on her desk with a loud bang. Carly flinched but didn't turn around. I sighed and took out my own book. Carly
was
being an idiot, but I couldn't blame her for feeling left out of the secret club that Jenny and I had going on.

Madam Dubois called the class to order and took attendance. When she got to the bottom of the list, she paused after Jonah's name. “Has anyone seen Monsieur Wolfe? This is his fifth straight absence.”

I could feel every eye in the classroom straining to
not
look at me. Even though we were supposed to be broken up, I was still the person closest to Jonah. I put my hand into the air. “
Oui
, Mademoiselle Jacobs?”

Screw the Malandanti. “Um . . .” They didn't want Jonah and his mom to tell the world, but I wasn't under their orders. “His dad died.”

There was a collective intake of breath. Everyone swiveled in their seats to look at me. Madam Dubois lowered her attendance book, her face pale. “What?” She was so shocked she'd forgotten to ask it in French. “How—when—did it happen?”

“Last week,” I said, squirming in my seat with so many people staring at me. I hadn't really thought this through. Of course everyone would want to know how he'd died, and I couldn't really tell them he'd been killed by a mage in Tibet. “I, uh, think it had something to do with all the stuff that's going on with the Guild.”

“They killed him?” asked Susan Turner from the front row.

“Don't be stupid,” Jason Freeman hissed from the desk behind her. “I bet he committed suicide so he wouldn't have to face prison.”

I rubbed my temples. “Um, I really don't know exactly what happened.” That wasn't a lie. I hadn't seen Bree since she and Nerina had returned from Tibet, so I only had Nerina's secondhand account. “I just know he's dead and that's why the Wolfes aren't in school.”

A low hum of murmurs echoed around the room. Carly twisted in her chair and met my eyes.
I'm sorry,
she mouthed. I nodded to show I accepted her apology and looked down at my lap. I wasn't sure if I'd done the right thing by telling the world about Mr. Wolfe, but there was no going back now.

Up at the front of the room, Madam Dubois clapped her hands. “All right, all right, everyone. Calm down. Let's move on. Mademoiselle Jacobs?”