The May Queen Murders (28 page)

my palm to silence myself.

“Are you cryin’?”

Rook’s voice was a rich heat that sank through my hair and coiled

around me. I gasped, wiped my tears, but he’d seen me wrecked

before. I twisted around to face him with my cheek against his

mattress.

“Y-you scared me tonight,” I said.

He reached for his glasses and sat up to remove the rag from his

forehead. “I’m okay.”

“If y-y-you died —”

Rook’s hands slid beneath my arms and eased me onto his bed,

in his lap, shushing me with his forefinger over my lips. I grasped

my hands around his and closed my eyes. He was
real.
The smell

of plants from his greenhouse was trapped in the room, the vapor

of chamomile and clove tea clung to his hair. His finger against my

mouth, roughness and heat and softness all merging as one. I kissed

his skin, the side of his finger, the tip. I turned over his hand and laid

223

my lips on each of his knuckles because I wanted to never regret not

kissing each part of him.

Once I finished with his hand, I swiveled around in his lap to

straddle him, my fingers treading up his arm to his shoulder. I’d seen

him naked before when we were little and swimming in Meyer’s

Pond. Once I realized that I thought him handsome, sometimes I

watched while he worked in his family’s field, shirtless and sweaty

enough to warm my face. I ran the edges of my nails across his chest,

down his abdomen to his waist, spreading my chil s to him. His

lanky muscles were defined, and yet I liked his softness.

“Shouldn’t you be home?” he asked.

“I had to come,” I said.

“Where’s everyone else?”

“Our fathers are roundin’ up men for a search, and my mama

went with yours to pick up Raven from your aunt’s.” I drew my hand

along his face, and he pressed the hard part of his jaw into my palm.

“I kept worryin’ what if you were hurt, how bad it’d be. I just buried

Heather. Please don’t make me bury you.”

His eyes focused on mine, so intensely green. Without any rain,

they might well be the greenest thing in the Glen. “I was afraid you

died in the water, Ivy. I was so damn mad at you for leaving me and

scared and sick. When you were drowning and I pulled you outta

that river, I had the feeling you didn’t wanna come out. Did you?”

“No,” I said. His lips parted in a stricken look, I rushed to finish,

“I could’ve stayed under, but you didn’t let me. Every breath I have is

because you put it in me. I’d be a fool not to know what a gift that is.”

I traced the smooth line of Rook’s col arbone and lowered my

224

mouth to kiss him there. The catch of his breath, the tickle of his

touch as he moved my hair behind my ear so he could see my face

— my mouth, the shift of his legs and scratch of the hair on his legs

rubbing against my thighs beneath my skirt. He unbuttoned the back

of my dress and slid it down my shoulders until it pooled at my waist.

I suspected he knew why I was cold now, and he used his hands

as best he could to warm me, used his mouth on mine and lower

to find some heat. I reached down to ease off his drawers while his

hand disappeared under my dress. His drawers hit the floor first,

and my dress landed on top in a crumpled heap. Every movement

with Rook was instinctual but also a lesson. If I liked it, I asked him

to do it again, and he responded in kind. I kissed from his neck to

his chest, the muscles of his stomach. Lower. I came up, his tongue

teased mine, and I opened to his mouth, ran my hands up through

his hair to grab hold as I kissed him back harder.

“You’re sure?” he asked. “If you need to wait —”

“I’m ready.” And I was. He glanced to his door, held his breath,

and I tilted my head, running my finger across his wrist. “Are you?”

“It’s just . . . You know, but yeah.” He opened a drawer on his

nightstand to retrieve a condom, and tore open the foil packet. How

Heather had giggled through the condom-over-the-banana demon-

stration in health class when the school nurse passed out condoms,

but right then, with Rook, it didn’t seem so funny.

The darkness in the room thickened, bathing us in the amber of

his oil lamp. Steadily, I moved on top of him while his hands guided

my hips. My body ached — with grief, with sex, with secrets shared

and unshared. From withholding myself from myself for too long.

225

Everything hurt. Sex with Rook, no matter how good it felt once

the initial pain faded, didn’t remove loss. I didn’t seek to fill that hol-

lowness. It was there. It was part of me now, and it would be for how-

ever long to come.

Yet giving this part of my body to Rook, him giving his to me,

didn’t feel like empty desperation. This moment with him would’ve

happened no matter the sadness and chaos. I’d thought about him

for so long, thought about kissing him, touching him. Being kissed.

Being touched. Wanting to know what it was like, and I liked it. I

watched his head on the pillow as it shifted in hope of not hitting the

headboard against the wal , of him liking the way I felt against him.

His eyes met mine, and his smile eased when he realized I was star-

ing at him. He shuddered and held me closer. Every day of my life, I’d

known this boy. He’d been my friend. He was so much more. I hadn’t

recognized the shift when it occurred, but I’d gained someone other

than Heather with whom I could be so bare.

When it was over, both of us sweating and breathing hard, we

took our time redressing, opening the window to let in the night air.

He fixed the buttons on the back of my dress and placed his mouth

on my neck before sweeping aside my hair. The sound of approach-

ing voices outside hurried our last few kisses, and then I backed away

toward his bedroom door, smiling.

“Your hair’s a mess. I like it.” He turned on his side and rolled his

fingers in a gentle wave goodbye.

I was in the kitchen with now-cold tea when Briar and Mama re-

entered the house. Mama motioned for me to come with her, and I

got up with a hushed “good night” as I passed by Briar, who held Ra-

226

ven sound asleep on her shoulder. She opened the door, ready to lock

it behind me, but she lingered, watching while I joined my mother

beside the greenhouse.

“Stay safe on the road. He could be anywhere out there.”

"

The hounds’ howls kept me awake past midnight.

When I slept, it was fitful, dreams of mouths and gentle hands,

horses’ hooves pounding the land, and throwing myself underwater,

drowning until all went gray. When my father came home, long after

the torches had burned themselves black, he met my mother in the

hal .

No one found Birch Markle.

I rubbed my eyes. Remembering, wishing. Mourning a red curl.

I went to the kitchen, still in my nightdress, and cuddled inside

Mamie’s blanket, where Wednesday wrapped her body around my

ankles. I missed sitting on the back step and waiting for Heather to

find me before school, before Rook joined us. I missed those morn-

ings of giggles as she wiped the rim of fresh milk from above her lip,

of timid smiles when Rook handed off the basket of eggs and my

heart jumped because my fingertips had skimmed his.

One deep breath, a second, a scream built inside my bel y. Tea. I

needed some tea to halt the clatter in my mind.

My hands fumbled with a pitcher of water, spilling as I poured it

into the kettle, which I set on the heat. A glass jar of herbs and flower

buds was on the counter. A piece of twine held a card to the top, and

227

Mamie’s handwriting read
Sleep-Away-Sorrow Tea. Peppermint, vale-

rian, hyssop, lavender, St. John’s wort, and others known only to me.
I

smirked. Of course, Mamie wouldn’t give away all her knowledge.

I rummaged through the drawer in search of a tea ball and no-

ticed it sitting in the sink’s basin. I moved aside the vines of Rook’s

strawberry plant. Sunrise had always been my favorite time of day. I

awakened before my parents, and there was magic in the fog cover-

ing the field. Now I liked sunrise because it meant the night terrors

left, at least for a while.

My gaze settled on the field across from my house. Some white

cloth huddled in the middle of the dirt, a bed linen yanked off the

line and carried by wind.

Bed linens didn’t have blond hair.

I rushed to the door, ready to pull it open and dash outside, but I

halted. He could still be out there. Blade in hand. Stink of death sur-

rounding him.

That body could still be alive.

I grabbed Papa’s rifle from the closet. It was loaded. Good. The

door opened without sound, not even a squeaky hinge, as I crept

outside. Scattered pieces of clover and basil lay on the ground and

withered. The garland of protection over my window was ripped

apart as if it were weeds torn from the ground. I was staggering down

the remaining stairs when I stepped on something round, cold, and

smooth. A green glass circle marked March 27. It’d broken in half

when I stepped on it.

Birch Markle had been here. At my house.

“M-M-Mama!” I shouted. “Papa!”

228

I needed to hear their frantic footfal s. I whipped my head, scan-

ning the dirt road. It was empty. The morning quietude was undis-

turbed except for the scattered herbs and the body in the field, out of

place and unreal. I picked up the halves of the glass circle. The glass

was cool and damp with dew, but it didn’t warm against me and in-

stead felt like a cold lump against my skin. A tear of grief and horror

spun through my gut until I managed to scream again.

“Mama!”

Thumps and bangs from within the house. I tried crying out

again, but my voice deteriorated into only a high-pitched whistle ev-

ery time I breathed. Mama reached the doorway first and covered

her mouth as she saw the broken garland and then the glass in my

outstretched hand.

“I-it w-was Heather’s.” I choked on the words, tears running down

my cheeks. “B-Birch was here!”

Papa came up behind Mama, still groggy with sleep, but he held

her shoulders as she wept.
“Dios mío.”

“What are you doin’ out here alone? Have you lost your mind?”

Papa demanded.

“The field,” I said. “There’s a body.”

Papa paled and slipped on his boots. He nudged me to go back

inside, yet I stayed locked in place. If I moved, I’d know for sure this

wasn’t some nightmare.

Papa took the rifle from me and eased open the gate before ap-

proaching the horse fence separating the field from the road. A

hoarse utterance caught my ear. “Oh, God.”

The heap of a white dress and bluing skin lying in the field seemed

229

like an il usion in the fog. I broke out of my stupor and went thought

the gate. My feet were dirty. So were the feet of the girl in the field.

Her hands, too. The rest of her so white like milk — until I came to

her neck. Her face was turned from mine; there was a gaping hole

where the front of her throat used to be. Had she been
fed
upon?

I crept along the body of the girl. Dried blood speckled her chin.

Her lips were the same plum shade as the emerging sunrise, while

her eyes were open, irises blue and pupils fixed.

Violet Crenshaw was dead.

230

Chapter Nineteen

We’ve always been afraid he’d be drawn back to take our

girls.

He’d take her into the woods and make her his bride.

We even wondered if we should give him one, just to make

him go away for good. But of course, we couldn’t. That’d be

murder.

I did the coward’s thing and hid inside when the Crenshaws came

with Sheriff, somber-faced and holding his hat to his heart. Dahlia

knelt beside the sheet covering her sister’s body. She clasped Violet’s

dirt-smudged fingers, her head lowered, back quaking with violent

jerks. She didn’t sob loudly, only held Violet’s hand until her parents

enfolded her, and the three of them made the long walk home.

Rook met me outside my bedroom window an hour later. He put