Chapter Nineteen
Nineteen
“Xander Alden.” Lo repeats the name like he’s trying it out in his mouth to see how it tastes.
“You can call me Xan,” he says, and I notice the Okie twang in his voice, just slightly harsher than our Arkansas drawls. He holds out a mud-covered hand for Lo to shake, like this is some kind of business meeting. “You’re Lowan, right?”
It’s weird, these formal introductions on the bank of a flooded-out creek with a boy we thought was dead.
I stick my hand in my pocket and pull out the ID card we found in the shed. I study it for a second in the flashlight beam, rubbing the mud away with my thumb.
Xander Alden’s name is right there in black and white. I hand it to him and he stares at it for a second. “Where did you find this?” he asks me.
“Turley’s shed.”
“I saw you earlier tonight,” he explains. “When you were looking in the shed window. So after the preacher chased you off, I went in there to check things out myself. Guess I dropped my ID then.” He swallows back disgust. “When I saw that knife, I knew that was what you were looking at.”
“We saw you at the window when we came back later,” Lo says. “You were tryin’ to warn us about Turley.”
My cheeks burn remembering how I screamed when that familiar face appeared in the shed window, like I’m someone who believes in ghosts and spirits and nonsense like that.
That’s never been who I am. I know better.
“I knew the preacher was out there watching the shed,” Xander explains. “I didn’t want him catching you again. Not if he was Riley’s killer. So, when I saw him dragging you out of there, I grabbed the gun and went after him.”
“You’ve been watching our house,” I say. “Following me.” It sounds like an accusation, and I guess it is. “Why?”
“I heard you were a witch.” He’s regarding me with one raised brow and narrowed eyes. “That you know things about the dead.”
I almost snort. “I’m not a witch.”
That’s the truth, no matter how much I probably look like one, standing here wild-eyed and dripping next to this river in the dark and the rising fog.
“But you’re the one that found him.” Xander studies me for a second. “You’re the one who finds all of them.” He looks at Lo, who’s staring out at that boiling black water again. “Did that preacher murder Riley?”
“No,” Lo says. “We thought he did.”
Turns out Turley wasn’t a serial killer, he was just haunted. Same as Lo. Except what was haunting Brother Turley wasn’t worry about the murdered hikers. It was the festering guilt he’d carried inside him all these seventeen years, ever since what happened between him and Lo’s mama.
“Who did, then?”
Lo shakes his head. “We don’t have any idea who murdered your brother, or the rest of them.”
“There’s another one missing now,” Xander tells us. “Hannah Nelby.” His words are pointed, like sharp stones. “Did you know that?”
“Yeah,” I say, and I feel the blame for whatever happened to Hannah settle directly on my shoulders again. The weight of it threatens to push me deep into the mud.
“Maybe if the three of us work together we can stop it,” Xander says. “Make sure nobody else gets taken. Maybe even save that girl.”
“Hannah Nelby’s already dead and buried,” Lo tells him.
He looks frail and dizzy, like he might fall over any second. I remember that, besides almost drowning himself tonight, Lo just found out that Brother Turley was his father. That has to be a bitter pill to swallow, for a lot of reasons. I take his hand and lead him back away from the edge of the creek. If he passes out, I don’t want to have to jump in after him, and I know good and well that I would, even if it meant we both drowned.
“You don’t know that,” Xander argues. “You don’t know that for sure until your friend here finds her body.” He turns those blue eyes on me. “Right? If we don’t at least try, how many more people are going to die out here?” He looks back toward Lo. “You want that on you?”
“We had it all wrong,” Lowan says. “Every single bit of it.”
“Look,” Xander tells me. “I don’t care if you’re really magic or not. I’m just asking you guys to help me. Riley was my big brother, and nobody in this damn town gives a shit about him.” He voice has gone all thick and coarse, and I watch him chew his hurt into bite-size pieces so he can swallow it back down. “My family needs to know what happened.” He stops almost like one of us had punched him in the face. “Riley’s funeral is next week. I gotta be back in Tulsa for that. But I can come back here after. I got a tent and a campsite up the trail a ways.”
“You’re not scared?” I ask. “Stayin’ alone in the woods where your brother was murdered?”
Xander shrugs again. “If whoever came for Riley comes for me, at least right at the end I’ll know what happened to him. And that’s probably better than living the rest of my life not knowing.”
You gotta need answers real bad to say a thing like that. I know what that feels like, that kind of loss. It feels like someone crushing your bones in their fist and then boiling the dust down to make tea from your misery. When I look at Xander’s face, I see it plain, that desperate combination of grief and confusion. The anguished need to know that gnaws at you with sharp little teeth and won’t ever let you rest.
I’ve lived with a hole like that almost my entire life, but maybe I can save Xander Alden from suffering the same fate.
And maybe I can still save my best friend while I’m at it.
“Okay,” I tell Xander. “We’ll do what we can to help.”
The sun is starting to peek up over the hills. Dawn is finally coming, and I’ve never been so grateful to see daylight.
I need to get Lo somewhere dry and safe.
And we have to deal with what happened to Turley.
“Meet us this evening,” I say. “Just after dark. There’s a lean-to shelter up the trail about two miles. We can talk in private there.”
It’s also one of the places Hannah Nelby stopped off on the last day of her life, and I’m hoping to poke around there for some sign of what happened to her. I figure if we’re gonna search for answers about what happened to Riley Alden, we probably need to start with what happened more recently to Hannah.
“Okay. Thanks. I appreciate that.” The living blond boy with milky blue eyes and the Okie twang hands Lo’s mud-clogged rifle back to him. “My whole family appreciates that.” His voice sounds like an open wound. “A lot of people love Riley. He’s really—” Xander stops like someone has pulled the emergency brake on a runaway train. “Shit. He was really one-of-a-kind. He—” It’s clear he can’t figure out what to say. “He was my brother.”
“We’re gonna get to the bottom of what’s going on around here,” I promise him. “For Riley.”
And for Hannah.
For all the others.
And for Lo.
For all of us.
“What about the preacher?” Xander asks.
“Nothin’ to do about that,” Lo says. “Let him work it out with God.”
“We’ll handle it,” I tell Xan. “No sense gettin’ you involved.”
Xander thanks us again for being willing to help, then he heads back down the road toward town so he can take the Aux-Arc Trail up to his campsite.
Lo and I stand alone in the early-morning light.
“If it wasn’t Turley,” he asks me, “who was it?”
I lay my hand on his shoulder. “I don’t know, but we’re gonna find out.”
“Do you think he was lying about not putting that rose of my mama’s grave tonight?” His face wrinkles up. “He was my father, Dovie.”
“It doesn’t matter who your father was.” I move my hand from his shoulder up to his cheek. I’m brushing away mud with my thumb. “You belong to your mama. And to Granny Pearl. Those are your people.”
“He wanted to baptize me, Dovie.” He shakes his head. “I thought he was gonna—”
“I did too,” I admit. “But try not to think about that. Okay? You’re safe now.”
“But that thing,” he says, and he reaches up to take my hand in his and pull it to his chest. “That shape that chased us into the cabin. Dovie, if Turley was tellin’ the truth—if that wasn’t him after us—then who the hell was it? What the hell was it?”
“I think Turley was lying. I think it was him out there in the dark. I think he put that rose there and he’s the one who scared us.”
“But, Dovie—”
“He wanted to kill you, Lo.” The dam breaks and my words come tumbling out in a torrent. Like the water barreling between the banks of Lucifer’s Creek. “He felt guilty about what he did with your mama, and he thought he could wash that guilt away by sacrificing you. But he couldn’t go through with that, so he settled on baptizing you instead. But you still could’ve easily ended up drowned.” Lo looks like he’s going to crumble. “If he was plotting all that, it makes sense that he was the one out there in the shadows behind the cabin.”
“Granny Pearl believes in the Howler,” Lo starts. “She believes—”
“Lo.” I can’t stand the thought of hurting him tonight—or ever—but his imagination is running away with him again. “Granny Pearl believes in a lot of things, and I know you do, too, but there’s no such thing as the Howler. And there’s no such thing as ghosts. Or heaven. Or hell. Or any of it.”
He’s shaking his head.
All around us, the woods are coming to life, transformed by the bloom of daylight. Every leaf and flower and blade of grass glistens with water droplets that reflect the colors of the sky, pinks and blues and yellows and oranges that paint the hills in watercolor shades you’ve never really seen unless you’ve seen the sunrise over the Ozark Mountains.
“What happened to you?” Lo asks me. His voice is gentle and sad, like the call of the mourning dove I can hear crying out in the woods nearby. “What killed the part of you that could’ve believed in something?”
“I’ve always been this way.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t think that’s true. I used to know a little girl with eyes as blue as the sky and hair as dark as a raven. And I know she believed in magic.” His voice is hoarse from the burn of the creek water, but he smiles a little.
I don’t tell him that the little girl he remembers stopped believing because she didn’t have a choice. She put her faith in magic back then—poured her whole broken heart into secret words and spells, lucky stones, balls of wax, water collected from puddles after a summer storm, ribbons washed in rainwater and left to dry under a full moon, shiny dimes and buttons from the forgotten dresses her mama left hanging in the closet—and magic let her down.
“The only magic we get is the magic we make with each other,” I tell him. “And that’s okay. That’s enough.”
Lo slips a hand into my pocket and pulls out the holey stone Granny Pearl gave me. He fishes his out of his own pocket and holds them in his palm together.
“There were times last night that you believed, Dovie. I could see it in your eyes.”
“It was a really strange night, Lo. But nothing happened last night that changed my mind about what’s real and what isn’t. Even Granny Pearl’s smoke ritual turned out to be wrong,” I remind him. “It told you Turley was the one doing the killing, and he wasn’t.”
“No.” Lo shakes his head. “The ritual wasn’t wrong. I was wrong. I asked the wrong question. I asked if Turley was guilty, and he was. The smoke told it true. You have to—”
“I’m in love with you.” Lo stops with his mouth open and stares at me. “I’ve been in love with you since the day I was born.”
“Dovie.” He breathes my name into the bright pink dawn. “I think I’ve been in love with you since before we were born.”
My knees go a little bit weak.
“See? That’s magic. Let’s just agree on that for right now. Okay?” I fold his fingers around both stones, and he slips the tiny river rocks back into his pocket.
Lo leans toward me, and I wonder if maybe this is finally it. Is he finally going to kiss me for real?
Do I want him to?
Maybe what we have already is magic enough.
Lo’s forehead is pressed to mine, and there’s barely enough room for the morning breeze to slip between our bodies. His face is streaked with mud, and he looks like he’s been to hell and back tonight—because he has—but he’s still so heartbreakingly beautiful I can barely breathe.
He presses his lips against my forehead.
My cheekbone.
Then he pulls back and I see his eyes drop to my mouth. He’s hesitating.
“I don’t know if we should do this,” he admits. His voice is rough and deep.
We’re both breathless. Caught in the tide of each other’s eyes.
“It’s okay,” I tell him, because of course the timing is all wrong. I let go of his hand so I can take a step backward. “I didn’t mean to—”
“No. Dovie. Stop.” He’s still holding that rifle, but his free hand goes to the back of my neck, and he pulls me toward him again so that we’re closer than before. “I wanna kiss you right now. So bad.” His words in my ear make me shiver. “I’ve wanted to kiss you forever. But what if we mess things up?” he asks me. “How are we supposed to know what kind of love this is?”
He’s nuzzling my cheek with his nose and his breath is warm on my neck. I think my spine has melted. All my bones are turned to liquid.
“What if there’s one kind of love for you and me?” I whisper. “And what if that’s just plain love? What if that’s all we need to know?”
I feel him smile against my cheek.
“I like that,” he says. “Just plain love.”
The beauty of the rain-soaked dawn and the warmth of Lo’s breath on my cheek have been a reprieve from the horrors of last night, but now I’m thinking about all of it again. We still need to get back to town. We have to say what happened to Turley. My stomach turns when I think about that part of it. If the townspeople mistrusted us before, they’re really going to despise us now.
We start back down the muddy road toward the church. We’re going over what we’re going to say to people—trying to figure out a plan—and we settle on the truth. That’s all there really is. But every step toward town makes me more and more uneasy. The dread settles in my stomach like a concrete block.
When we come to the fence at the back of the graveyard, we stop and look toward the church. I half expect to see Brother Turley standing on the back steps, dripping creek water and radiating righteous vengeance.
But he isn’t there.
Because he’s dead.
“Come on,” I say. “Let’s get this over with.” I duck under the fence, but Lo doesn’t follow me. He’s staring at the stone markers. “What is it?” I ask him, but I’m afraid I know the answer.
“They’re waiting for me,” he whispers. “All of them.”