Between the Spark and the Burn Read online

  Sam: “Sunshine, peanut, you are unaccustomed to traversing the wider world unaccompanied. While travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, as the wise man Twain once said, I still believe you are too young to go romping about in foreign places by yourself.”

  Sunshine: “Dad, you are being very condescending.”

  Cassie: “Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room, and hermits are contented with their cells. William Wordsworth. A brilliant man.”

  Sunshine (batting her sleepy eyes): “Mom, I don’t even know where to start with that one.”

  A pause.

  Sunshine: “Two roads diverged in a wood and I, I took the road less traveled by. And that has made all the difference.”

  Sam, to Cassie: “We’ve created a monster.”

  Sunshine sealed the deal by telling them the road trip was for “personal edification about the Civil War” and they backed right down. Sunshine had never been very scholarly, but her parents were both librarians and readers and knowledge-seekers, and she knew how to hit them where it counted.

  Jack was still sulking in his room. We weren’t letting him come with. I wasn’t going to put him within a hundred miles of Brodie, or anything that sounded like it could be Brodie. Not on my life. But at the last minute he ran down the steps of Citizen Kane and threw himself into my arms in a giant bear hug.

  I was going to miss the kid, damn it.

  Luke tried to take the front seat, but Sunshine made him get in the back with her. So I got to be up with Neely. I waved good-bye to Jack and my parents and the snow-covered fountain girls and the frostbitten Citizen Kane. The wheels beneath me crunched over snow and gravel. We turned out of the driveway, and it began.

  River, I’m leaving the sea. Can you even picture me without the ocean nearby? We’re going to Virginia. Maybe you’re there right now. Maybe you’re glowing up all of Inn’s End even though you promised not to. We’ll find you in a cemetery, making a group of kids see dragons or witches or madmen, and then Neely and you will get into a fight and then me and you will get into a fight . . . But then we’ll both forgive you because we always do. You’ll make espresso and tell me some lie about how you own an island in the middle of the ocean where children run wild and live on nothing but coffee beans and I’ll half believe you and then you’ll lean over and kiss my neck and I won’t care about anything anymore.

  We listened to Billie Holiday and Skip James and Robert Johnson and Elizabeth Cotten and Mississippi John Hurt, and the white snow and brown, bony trees went on and on.

  When we started curving away from the coast, I felt it. The tug that meant I was leaving the sea behind.

  Freddie took Luke and me on a trip to Montreal when I was little. She went to visit an old friend and we were taken along to “experience some culture.” I remember feeling the tug back then too, when we started going inward . . . like the moon pulling in the tides. If you’re born near the sea, you’re bound to it for life, I guess.

  We stopped in a couple of quiet small towns to stretch our legs. We ate lunch sitting on the freshly shoveled steps of a small white church in some quaint Connecticut town. The sun was shining and it wasn’t as cold as it could have been—it was warmer away from the ocean. I’d packed a lot of food in the large wicker picnic basket. Butter and radish sandwiches, and olives, and Gouda, and dark chocolate, and apples and pears, and all sorts of things. We cut pomegranates in half and ate the tart seeds with some of the small spoons that were strapped to the lid.

  “This is fine Devil-hunting food, sis,” Luke said, and laughed. “I’ll be ready to take on any number of hoof-footed devil-boys, after this.”

  “It’s not a joke,” I said, though I kind of felt like it was. There was something so impulsive, so careless, about picking up and going after the missing Redding boys based on nothing but some story on a late-night radio show. “River could be there. It could be him. This is as good a lead as any. Better than the tabloids, because the stories came from real people, not hack journalists. And even if it’s not River, it could still be Brodie. Odds are it’s probably one of them.”

  Sunshine jerked when I said Brodie’s name, and dropped her pink-red apple in the snow.

  Brodie had made me take off my shirt and kiss him like I meant it and stand still while he slit my wrists and left me for dead. But Sunshine . . . Having your own sparked-up parents take a bat to your head, and beat you into a coma . . . that probably did something bad to a person, deep down inside.

  Sunshine must have felt pretty sure we wouldn’t find Brodie in Virginia, or she never would have come along.

  “Don’t listen to Vi,” Luke said, sliding his arm around Sunshine’s hips and picking her apple out of the snow. “She’ll believe anything.”

  I scowled at that and Neely laughed. We sat in snowy silence for a few more minutes, and then Luke pulled Sunshine to her feet. They headed to the little cemetery by the church and began to point out the cool old names on the stones as they walked by.

  I finished my pomegranate just as the bells started chiming above me. A sweet older couple walked by, all dressed up in their warm winter finery.

  I looked over at Neely, and he had a glint in his blue eyes. It wasn’t the “I’m up to no good” one that he shared with his older brother. It was a worried glint. An “I’m thinking a lot but saying little” glint.

  But when Neely opened his mouth, all he said was, “I wish I had some coffee.”

  He’d already finished off the thermos that we’d brought. I shrugged at him, and then he looked at me and smiled his Neely smile. His blond hair was blowing in the chilly breeze, as was mine. He had on a chunky brown sweater and expensive dark trousers, and was just sitting on the steps with an earth-green scarf around his neck, looking like he was posing for the cover of a magazine called Wintry Rich Boys.

  I sat there a minute longer on the steps, and that was all it took for the restless feeling to start crawling up my insides again.

  “Hey,” I shouted at Luke and Sunshine. “It’s time to go hunt some devils.”

  A local heard me as he was passing by, and raised his white eyebrows at me, but I just smiled at him until he smiled back.

  I slid my mittens on—another gift from Sunshine’s mom—and packed up the lunch. I didn’t have the heart to throw the used-up pomegranate halves away. They looked so pretty, the bright coral color against the white snow. So I left them turned upside down by the church steps.

  ≈≈≈

  It was cold. So damn cold.

  We had three tents. Luke and Sunshine were sharing one and Neely and me had the other two. We were in a tree-filled campground somewhere north of Washington Irving territory. I was surprised it was even open—we were the only people there except for a shy caretaker in a small cabin near the entrance.

  It was cold. But the stars were amazing.

  Sunshine built the fire, and it roared out its voice into the quiet black night. Sunshine and I had gone camping a few times since the summer—after Brodie she’d begun to take an interest in the natural world and she’d started teaching herself wilderness survival. There was some correlation, I supposed, between what happened to Sunshine last summer, and her need to stare Mother Nature in the face. But she never spoke about any of it, not to me, so what did I know.

  We sat on logs to keep ourselves out of the snow, and talked about little things like constellations and scary campfire stories from our childhoods. Our backs faced the dark and shivered, while our fronts faced the fire and glowed with warmth.

  I pulled out Freddie’s diary and started reading. Luke asked me what the hell it was, mainly because he was bored and probably hoped it was some torrid romance he could tease me about.

  “It’s my diary,” I told him, making sure to meet his eyes so he wouldn’t think I was lying. “Oscar Wilde said he never traveled without his because one should always
have something sensational to read.” I paused. “It’s mainly a series of sonnets and free verse about my feelings for River . . . how our first kiss felt and how much I loved it when he held me in his arms. Things like that.”

  Luke squinted his eyes and folded his mouth into an expression of pity mixed with disgust. And then he dropped the subject.

  Neely knew I was lying, but he didn’t flinch or wink or do one damn thing to give me away, bless his heart.

  I’d shown Luke Freddie’s letters last summer, after everything had quieted down. And it had kind of destroyed him for a while. I hadn’t guessed how much he’d relied on her being everything he thought she was. He marched around the house and sulked for a good week. He even put away the small portrait he’d done of Freddie three years before she died. The one he’d always kept in his bedroom.

  But at the end of the week it was back up again.

  No, I wasn’t going to tell him about the diary.

  Before we went to sleep we crawled into the car so we could listen to Stranger Than Fiction with the heat cranked. But there was nothing of interest—an update on the teenage grave robbers in California, and two boys in Alaska who said their mother was in love with the ghost of a gold rusher who haunted their house.

  “I’d rather be in California, looking for some corpse stealers,” Sunshine said, after I turned off the radio. “It would be warmer. And there would be wine. California is full of wine. Besides, grave-robbing is more interesting than dream-stealing mountain boys.”

  “Robbers or devil-boys, what difference does it make?” Luke tugged his wool coat tighter across his big, stupid pecs, and buttoned it up to the top. “It’s just lies, anyway. All we’re going to find in Inn’s End is some backward town with no plumbing where the prettiest girl is the one with all her teeth. Count on it.”

  Neely grinned. “You know, I once heard a story that kids in a town named Echo were hunting the Devil in the local cemetery.”

  “I heard that story too,” I said, staring Luke down, rubbing it in. “Turns out it wasn’t really a lie.”

  My brother’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t answer. He opened the car door and got out. The cold wind burst in and I shivered so hard I bit my tongue.

  We left the fire blazing when we went to bed, and I huddled in my sleeping bag, watching the flames dancing outside the wall of my tent because it was too damn cold to sleep. I had thick wool socks on and black tights under a wool skirt and a cardigan, plus my scarf and mittens. The sleeping bag was Sunshine’s, and it was high-tech and built for low temps, and still, I was cold to my bones. The snow underneath the tent seeped up and into me like icy fingers pushing at my skin.

  I opened my mouth and watched my breath fog in the air.

  And then the howling started.

  Wolves. Or coyotes. But probably wolves.

  They sounded close.

  There was a light on in Neely’s tent and he was sitting up when I unzipped the front flap and let myself in.

  “Hey, Violet,” he said, and laughed his low, chuckling laugh. “Was it the cold or the howling?”

  “Both,” I said back.

  “Don’t worry. Wolves don’t attack people.”

  I shrugged. “Have you ever read that part in My Antonia about Russia, and the bridal party, and the wolves? Maybe we should go sleep in the car.”

  But Neely just laughed again. He patted the sleeping bag next to him. “Climb in. I wasn’t using it anyway. Can’t sleep.”

  He didn’t have to offer twice. I slipped off my winter boots and slid into the red bag. Neely had a book beside him, unopened—a wintry book full of orphans and family secrets and misadventures and lies and epic misfortune.

  “Read to me?” I asked him.

  And he did. Neely had a great voice for reading and soon the wailing of the wild dogs outside bled into the wild winter setting of the book and suddenly I was content and sleepy and doing all right again.

  Later he offered me a sip of cognac from a flask to heat me up from the inside, and took one himself too. Then he climbed into the sleeping bag with me. Because it was big enough. And because I wasn’t going back to my tent all by myself, no way in hell.

  Neely’s breath warmed the hollow of my throat, right where the jade-green necklace met my skin, and it felt good.

  “Do you think the devil-boy story could be true?” I asked him, because suddenly I felt I had to get the question off my chest, or die trying. “Could it be Brodie up there in the mountains, doing those things? Or River?”

  I could feel Neely shrug next to me in the dark. “I don’t know. Devil-boy stealing girls’ dreams . . . could be them. Both of them. Either. Could be nothing. I guess we’ll find out.”

  I looked up straight into his face, my blue eyes on his. “So you think it could be the both of them, working together?”

  River, you wouldn’t, would you? Even if you killed the entire town of Rattlesnake Albee, even if you made my uncle slit his own throat, even if you made that kid throw himself in front of a train, you’re not evil. Not evil like Brodie. Not deep down. You hated him, just as much as we did.

  Didn’t you?

  “Yes,” Neely said, after a minute, in answer to my question.

  And then he flipped over to face the other wall of the tent, as if he didn’t want me to keep looking into his eyes.

  “Then you think River’s gone mad,” I said. Statement. Not a question. “You think he went crazy from the glow and teamed up with Brodie, just like Brodie wanted all along.”

  “Yes. No. I don’t know. He’s just been gone a long time, is all.” And Neely didn’t laugh when he said this. He didn’t shrug. He was just . . . quiet.

  I put my hand on his side, on the soft part between his ribs and his hip. He reached back, grabbed my fingers, and pulled me up next to him, tight.

  And if I wished he was River, and if he wished I didn’t wish he was River, well, neither of us said anything because he was still warm, and I was still cold, and both of us needed the comfort. Neely-warmth started warming me up, finally, finally, and we both fell asleep wrapped up together with the wolves still lullaby-ing us in the background.

  Chapter 6

  THE APPALACHIAN MOUNTAINS had an air of Echo about them, lots of trees and small towns. There was less snow, only an inch in some places, fluffy and new and unfrozen with brown grass still poking through. And we were grateful because it was steep gravel roads much of the time, and Neely’s car was a smooth black luxury thing meant for the city, not circumnavigating mysterious mountain paths on the way to hunting down a stranger-hating village plagued by a devil-boy.

  The landscape had stayed roughly the same since we turned away from the sea . . . winter, winter, winter, with barren trees and green pines and wooden fences and open fields full of crows. But we were up higher now, and the sky was bigger. Even the clouds were bigger.

  “I’d be inclined to paint this, if I had my tools,” Luke said, taking a bite of his cheese and apple sandwich.

  We’d stopped to have lunch, and were eating standing up because it was too cold to sit on the ground. Luke was facing a little clearing in the trees. There was an old brown barn in the shape of one of the Citizen’s vintage art deco clocks—square on the bottom, dome-shaped above. It stood gazing out at us as we gazed at it, the mountains rising blue in the background.

  There hadn’t been room in Neely’s car for paints and canvases. And I think my brother was missing it, the painting, like how I was already missing my distracted parents, and Jack, and my closet full of Freddie’s old clothes, and just about everything I was used to. Being away from home was an eerie thing, thick and powerful and overwhelming. It was energizing to see new places and people, your brain on fire, your heart stirred up. But it was also kind of . . . sad too.

  I’d been itching to leave Echo and now that I was on the road, I felt an itchy ne
ed to get back home again, damn it. There was no satisfying me.

  “You know what this scene needs?” Sunshine stepped in front of the barn, swung her brown hair under her blue hat, and struck a curvy, sultry pose, one palm spread open on her hip. She batted her sleepy eyes at Luke. “Me. That’s what.”

  Luke laughed. “I’ve already promised to do your portrait when we get back home. How much of my art do you plan to take over?”

  Sunshine shrugged, and then turned to me. “A nude,” she said, smiling. “I’m going to make him hang it in the Citizen’s art gallery ballroom, right next to all those naked paintings of Freddie.”

  I looked from Sunshine, to my brother, and back again. Then I tilted my head back, clenched my fists, very, very dramatic, and screamed. “Noooooooo.”

  My voice echoed off the silent mountains and came back to me, and Neely started laughing. I pointed at my brother. “If you paint our next-door neighbor in the nude, then you damn well better hide it under your bed, because if I have to look at it I’ll kill someone. Probably you.”

  “I’d love to see that,” Neely said, his arms crossed, his back leaning against his now very dirty car.

  “Sunshine’s nude painting or me killing someone?” I asked.

  “Both,” Neely said, and then he was laughing that laugh again, his eyes crinkling up with it, and the next thing I knew I was laughing along with him.

  Luke tossed an apple core over the fence, into the snow, short and quick and cocky-like. “You’re such a prude, Vi.”

  Sunshine nodded. “It’s true, Vi. It’s always been true.”

  I opened my mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. “Would a prude do what I did with River? Would she? Even after he suicided Jack’s Pa, even after all of it? Would she have let him do what he almost did?” And then I shut my mouth again, seeing the looks on their faces.

  Especially Neely’s.

  His eyes had changed. They’d been happy and amused half a second ago. And now they were hot and dark and fiery.