Between the Spark and the Burn Read online

  “It’s close,” Luke said.

  “Close to Echo,” Sunshine added, her eyes big, and dark.

  “Jack,” I said. “All I can think about is Jack. If it’s Brodie in that barn . . .”

  I turned to Neely, but he was already shaking his head. “I’m going to North Carolina. Sea god, haunted shack—I’ll get to the bottom of it. Wide-Eyed Theo’s devil-boy story proved true, in the end, and . . . and River always had a fascination with the Outer Banks, ever since we spent a summer there as kids, in a house built on stilts right into the sand.” He paused. “So. You coming with, Vi, or you going north?”

  Neely smiled like he didn’t give a damn about my answer, and then tipped his coffee cup back so he could get the last drop.

  But I caught the look in his eyes.

  And I saw it, plain as day.

  His blue eyes were twinkling, but underneath that twinkle . . . he wanted me to come with. I saw it, damn it all.

  “Yes,” I answered. Just like that. “I’ll go with you.”

  Neely grinned.

  Luke and Sunshine stared at me.

  I could feel Finch’s gaze on me too. His brown eyes looked different now that there wasn’t fear in them. He was still covered in twigs and leaves and looking like he’d been raised by wolves, but his expression was strangely . . . peaceful.

  “No,” Luke said. “No, Vi. You hunted a devil and found another redheaded orphan to bring back to the Citizen. We’re done here. We need to go home, and look into this barn boy, and make sure Jack is safe.”

  Sunshine tucked her chin into the thick cornflower-blue scarf she was wearing in great folds around her neck, and didn’t look me in the eye. “You put all of us in danger at Inn’s End, Violet, and what about Jack and your parents, alone at the Citizen? Even if the Riddle story isn’t true, Brodie could be anywhere”—her words were going fast, fast, faster—“he could be crawling through your house right now, hiding in closets, and watching, watching, just like last time. We shouldn’t have left, we shouldn’t have—”

  “Hey,” Neely said. I saw the fingers on his right hand twitch. “We all chose to go on this road trip with Violet, Sunshine. She didn’t keep anything from us. We all heard Wide-Eyed Theo’s story, whether or not we believed it. And I, for one, have no intention of running back to Echo. Not yet. My gut tells me to go to North Carolina. And I have the car. So who’s in?”

  Neely wants me to come with him, River.

  Freddie, and now me—

  We can’t seem to turn down a Redding, with or without the glow.

  “I’m in,” I said. Just like that. Again.

  “No,” Luke said. “No, you’re not, Vi.”

  “I am, Luke.” I held his damn gaze, didn’t flinch, didn’t blink. “It’s not about choosing North Carolina over Jack. It’s about not knowing where the threat is. We have no idea where Brodie and River are. You and Sunshine need to go to Riddle. And you need to stop at Citizen Kane on the way and make sure Jack is all right. But I have to go to this island.”

  Quiet. A raven flew overhead, and I watched its shadow float over the brick walkway.

  My wrists started throbbing again. I rubbed them with my thumbs. Luke and Sunshine wouldn’t look me in the eye. Finch sat on his step and was stoic and calm.

  Neely stood up finally, and stretched, his back arching toward the blue sky. “Then it’s decided. Luke and Sunshine, you’ll follow the barn boy rumor. Take the train back north, get as far as you can, and then call for a ride or hitchhike the rest.”

  Luke stood up too, and looked at the clock that hung high up on the library wall. “Fine. We don’t have time to argue. But if Brodie’s really back in Maine and something happens to Jack . . .” He paused, and his eyes met mine. “You’ll never forgive yourself, Vi.”

  I nodded. Because he was right.

  I looked up at Neely—his tall body was lean and graceful, framed by trees and white columns.

  “But I’m still going with Neely,” I said. For the third time.

  Luke gave me one last, long look, and then pulled Sunshine to her feet. They started walking back to the car.

  Neely went to get another coffee.

  Finch stayed where he was, staring off at nothing.

  “And what will you do?” I asked, sitting down beside him, so close his red hair touched my shoulder. “You can’t go back to Inn’s End. You could stay here in this town, I guess, if you wanted. It seems nice. But you can come with us too. We’re going to look for a sea god and a haunted hut in North Carolina. Long story.”

  I paused.

  “Or you can go back to the Citizen, with my brother. It’s a crumbling mansion on the sea with seven or eight guest bedrooms and you can stay as long as you like. You can help Luke keep an eye on our cousin Jack. I worry about him.”

  Finch turned his head and looked right at me, and his eyes were deep and feral and . . . wild . . . suddenly.

  Those wild eyes reminded me a bit of someone.

  River.

  Cooking me supper last summer, the heat from the pan making his hair stick to his forehead, and he’d looked over his shoulder at me, and smiled, and there was something fierce there, something hungry and held back and . . .

  Finch crossed his arms and leaned into the step behind him, and tilted his face to the sun. “I’ve never seen the sea. I’d like go with you and . . . ?”

  “Neely.”

  “With you and Neely, to North Carolina,” he said, his words soft. “And so I guess I will, if that’s all right with you.”

  And that was that.

  ≈≈≈

  There was a 10:00 A.M. train going north. The rosy-cheeked woman at the train station counter was cheerful and energetic—she offered us free coffee from a silver urn on a table near the door, and it was dark and hot and good.

  I unfolded a hundred-dollar-bill origami mouse and gave it to her in exchange for two train tickets.

  I had three River-animals left in my pocket. I’d never considered myself sentimental, but I really hated parting with the little folded creatures. They meant something. More than money.

  I held out the tickets to Luke, plus the leftover cash the ticket woman had given me. He took both, and said nothing.

  Finch was quiet in the station lobby, just eyes eyes eyes, taking in the hustle and bustle like it was the circus come to town instead of just regular people moving around in a neat red building with a dozen wooden benches and white columns out front.

  But then, I’d never been in a train station either. I kept picturing the movie Brief Encounter and wished I could order a cup of tea with sugar in the spoon.

  People were beginning to stare at Finch, at his leaves and twigs and dirt.

  “Here.” Neely handed some of his rich-boy things to Finch and the redheaded ex–Inn’s Ender went off and changed in the train station bathroom. He came out with his face washed and his hair brushed sleek and shining. He fit into the clothes well, his shoulders wide and his spine straight, even if the pants were a bit long. He looked like some trust fund kid on his way to a private prep school . . . except for the feeling of wilderness about him, of wide-open skies and long twilights and quiet and dirt-under-the-fingernails and waking-up-all-alone-every-day.

  Finch seemed older suddenly, all cleaned up. I thought he might be seventeen, not the fifteen I’d first thought. I’d have to ask him, once I knew him better.

  We moved out onto the wooden platform, and then, in a blink, the black train was pulling up and good-byes, good-byes.

  “Last chance, Violet,” Luke said. He stood on the bottom step of the train and looked down at me. Sunshine was already inside, having walked right by without a word.

  I shook my head.

  Luke sighed. “Be careful, sister.” And his face told me how much he meant it. “I was . . . a coward, back at Inn�
��s End. I’m not proud of it, Vi. But you’re making the wrong choice. You are. If a person goes looking for trouble, they’ll find it.” The train began to howl. “What if the barn boy is River?” he shouted over the noise. “What if it’s Brodie? What will we do then?”

  I didn’t answer.

  What would any of us do with either Redding boy if we found him? I hadn’t figured that out yet. Sometimes it just wasn’t worth thinking ahead. Because then you’d freeze and never end up doing anything, anything at all.

  Luke stared at me, and I stared at him, and I could see he was pissed, and sad, and a little scared still. But mainly, mainly he just seemed kind of . . . lost, all of sudden.

  “We’ve never been apart, you know,” I said, because we hadn’t. But Luke didn’t hear me over the howling. He turned and went up the steps.

  The train left, and he was gone.

  That’s when the bad feeling started. Deep in the pit of my belly. Thick and bitter and sweaty.

  Luke was right. I’d made the wrong choice.

  And I supposed I should have wondered right then if I would ever even see my brother again. But that seemed too dark a thought, even for me.

  ≈≈≈

  We left the college town behind a half hour later, though I didn’t want to. The way Inn’s End had played out didn’t make me all that eager to follow another one of Wide-Eyed Theo’s stories down the rabbit hole.

  No, that wasn’t true. I wanted to go to North Carolina. I did. . . . I just needed one more cup of coffee first.

  Finch was quiet as we wandered back through the campus. He didn’t seem to understand money very well, let alone have any of his own, so I paid for his coffee and he didn’t mind a bit. He winced each time a car went by, and I watched him stand by an overflowing garbage can for a full minute, a melancholy look on his face.

  But he watched other people closely and learned fast. The day before, he’d been a cabin-dwelling mountain boy. By the time he’d finished his whole-milk latte, he was leading the way back to the car, cutting through alleys and jaywalking across busy intersections like some true-blue city kid.

  “Finch, have you ever been to this town before?” I asked, looking at him out of the corner of my eyes. “Have you ever been anywhere?”

  “No.” He paused, and glanced around, serious and big-eyed like a deer that had taken a wrong turn and ended up in the middle of town. “The world is a lot bigger than I thought.” A truck rambled down the road in front of us. “And a lot louder.”

  “A lot bigger?” Neely repeated, and laughed. Though not in an unfriendly way. “We haven’t even left the state yet. You wait.”

  And Finch nodded, though I detected a bit of doubt in his eyes, like he wanted to believe Neely about the world being bigger but couldn’t yet, not quite.

  We got in the car and drove away.

  The truth was, I’d been back in civilization and I liked it. The grand university had sucked the Devil-hunting itch right out of me.

  I thought about me going east and Luke going north and I felt a tug. Something was going taut between us, some connection, like the one between me and the sea.

  “I’d like to hear your story,” Finch said from the backseat after we turned down a two-lane road that lazily wound around an orchard-covered hill. A few frozen apples still swung from the bare branches and I was tempted to reach out the window and try to grab one. “I haven’t talked to other people in a long time and I like listening to your voice.”

  I took off my seat belt and turned to face him. “I was just about to ask you to do the same thing.”

  “You first,” he said back, half smiling at me in that strange, contrasting way he had, gentle and wild all at once, like a caged wolf only half resigned to his fate. I guess that’s what came from growing up all alone in the forest. He had a dimple on his left cheek, a deep one. I decided right then that dimples were inherently likeable.

  I told Finch about me, and Luke, and Sunshine, and Neely and Freddie and Citizen Kane and what happened last summer and how we ended up in Inn’s End. I wasn’t used to talking so much at once, and it didn’t come easily to me, but I got better as I went along. Finch was quiet, his expression mild, and I would have thought he didn’t believe me at all, believe my tale of glow and spark and blood and fire, except his eyes never left mine.

  We went by bare, brown vineyards, their grapes stolen for wine. We went by farms, red barns and dark fences and endless trees. I told Finch about River. And about Brodie. I talked about the red hair and the knife and the cowboy and the mad mother and him cutting up Jack and him biting River and how it ended when I stabbed him in the chest as I bled to death out my wrists.

  I showed him the scars and he touched each with his right finger, softly. “I’m sorry about this,” he said, leaving his finger on my left wrist and looking me straight in the eye. “I wish I had been there. I wish I could have saved you the way you saved me in Inn’s End.”

  I shook my head. “You couldn’t have stopped Brodie.”

  “And yet you’re hunting him.” Finch’s expression still had that caged look. “What do you plan to do if you find him?”

  I could feel Neely look at me. I moved my wrist away from Finch’s hand. “If we find Brodie, then . . . then I’ll . . . I’ll stab him again. With a knife this time, not a shard of glass. And this time I’ll kill him.”

  Finch’s eyebrows went up. Just slightly. But I saw it. He doubted me.

  Of course he doubted me.

  River, what am I going to do if we find Brodie in North Carolina instead of you?

  “I’d like to see this Citizen Kane someday,” Finch said after I was quiet for a while. “I’d like to have coffee in the guesthouse and dig up old clothes in the attic.”

  “You can,” I said, trying not to sound too excited. I can’t help getting excited when anyone seems interested in the Citizen. “Once we finish up in North Carolina, you can come back with Neely and me and see it all for yourself and stay as long as you like.”

  Finch nodded, and his mouth broke into a sweet, genuine smile. He reached forward and grabbed my hands, putting his fingertips on my wrists again. “So which one are we going to find in North Carolina?” he asked, after a moment. “River, or Brodie?”

  “I don’t know.” Outside, the landscape had flattened, and lost some of its trees. “Probably neither.”

  Neely looked at me again, quick, and then turned back to the road. “River loves the Outer Banks,” he called behind him to Finch. “It was the first place he ran away to back when he was fifteen.”

  “But a sea god sounds more like Brodie.” I paused, and slipped my hands out of Finch’s grasp. “Either way, if a Redding boy is there, we’ll find him.”

  “You can only run so far on an island.” Finch sat back in his seat and put his arms behind his head.

  “Do you mean us, or them?” I asked.

  But Finch just shrugged. His eyes held mine, and . . . shifted. They lit up, and I saw curiosity shining inside them, sparkly and bright, like stars in a moonless sky.

  “I’m looking forward to the sea,” he said, and smiled again.

  ≈≈≈

  We reached the coast just as the sun started going down. I drank in the sight of the sea, breathed in the smell of it. I rolled down the window so the breeze could tangle up my hair.

  Neely parked the car on a side street in the small coastal town of Nags Dune. We got out and walked right down to the water. Neely stood by me with his legs apart, hands on hips, and looked very Mr. Adventure. But it was Finch I was watching. If he’d never seen the ocean, then I wanted to see how he took it. I couldn’t imagine being fifteen or possibly seventeen and never having been to the Great Big Blue. It was such a part of me, like my name and the color of my hair.

  Finch faced the sea with his back straight and his palms turned out. He batted his eyes
and breathed deep and I kind of felt like hugging him.

  “How old are you, Finch?” I asked.

  “Seventeen,” he answered. “I think. Not really sure.” And then he turned his face back to the water and disappeared into the experience of it again.

  I thought about what Aggie had said, about him losing his mother and then his grandmother too. I wondered how long he’d been alone.

  And then I wondered if Aggie had survived the night.

  And Pine . . . after we left her there, standing in the middle of the road . . . Did they let her keep my scarf, or did they take it away?

  Did they figure out that she helped us?

  Don’t think about it, Vi. Don’t. There was nothing you could do.

  But my heart was racing and I felt kind of sick. I forced myself to take big sea breaths, over and over.

  The ferries had stopped running for the day and the sun was sinking fast. I thought we’d have to camp on the beach. I even set my heart on it. I wanted to crawl into Neely’s tent and stop caring about everything and have the waves sing us to sleep like the wolves in the wilderness of New York.

  But then a man with rugged red cheeks and kind blue eyes and thick working-man’s fingers wandered up to us after a few minutes and asked where we were going.

  “We’re trying to find a fisherman’s shack,” Neely said, lifting his hand to his forehead to shield his eyes from the last sharp rays of the sun.

  The man laughed, and his eyes crinkled at the sides. “Well, the coast is full of those,” he said.

  “This one’s haunted.”

  He just looked at us, a smile flickering at the corners of his mouth.

  “How about an island with wild horses?” I asked.

  The seafarer nodded, like he was in familiar territory now. “Carollie, then?”

  Was there more than one island with wild horses?

  “Sure,” Neely answered, because we didn’t know any better anyway.

  Our new sea captain introduced himself as Hayden. He gave us a long look as he shook our hands, and told us it would be ten dollars a head.