Blackthorn

Chapter Twenty-Seven

TWENTY-SEVEN

MAVEN

I spend the next day with Bea, helping her with her schoolwork. Late in the afternoon, in the middle of a trigonometry lesson, an old memory surfaces from out of nowhere.

A few days before my mother died, I came across her furiously writing something down on a piece of notepaper.

She was in the library. Dozens of open books surrounded her on the big oak desk.

It was late at night and the house was cold, the fire in the hearth having burned down to a pile of glowing embers hours earlier.

I had awakened drenched in sweat from a nightmare I no longer remember. My mouth as dry as a sun-bleached bone, I went downstairs for a glass of water. That’s when I found my mother bent over the open books, scribbling so fast on the piece of paper she didn’t notice at first when I came in.

When I asked her what she was doing, she didn’t look up as she responded, “Righting a wrong.”

She provided no further explanation. Seeing how focused she was on her work, I slipped out of the room and went back to bed.

Three days later, she was dead.

Deep in thought, I wander into the kitchen. Bea follows me, standing on tiptoe to reach the faucet. She fills a glass with water, then gulps it down.

My heart swells with so much love for her, it’s painful.

“Honey?”

“Yeah, Mom?”

“I love you. You know that, right?”

“I know.”

“I just wanted to make sure. No matter what happens, I’ll always love you. Even when you’re all grown up and I’m not here anymore, I’ll love you.”

She looks up at me, brow furrowed. “Not here anymore?”

“I meant after I pass away, someday far in the future.”

I can’t tell if her expression is confused or disturbed, but just then, Auntie E enters the kitchen. She stops short in the doorway when she sees us.

“Why aren’t you dressed?”

“Dressed for what?”

She sends a meaningful glance in Bea’s direction. “It’s All Hallows’ Eve, May. You should take Bea trick-or-treating.”

Halloween. Shit. How could I have forgotten?

“We never celebrate Halloween in the city. Mom says candy is bad for my teeth.”

I meet Auntie E’s gaze over Bea’s head and force a bright smile. “Maybe just this once we could. Would you like to?”

“Yes!” Her excitement dims. “But I don’t have a costume.”

“I’m sure we can find something for you, little dove. In fact, I’ve got just the thing. How do you feel about being a sorceress?”

“Like with a broomstick and everything?”

Amused, Auntie E laughs. “Witches don’t ride broomsticks anymore! Now they use Wi-Fi to get around. But I do have a lovely hat and cape for you, as well as a wand.”

Bea is impressed by the mention of a wand. Her mouth forms the shape of an O and her eyes go wide with excitement.

Fucking hell.

Auntie E gestures to the door that leads to the large anteroom off the kitchen. “Meet me in the crafts room, Bea. I’m a whiz with a sewing machine. We’ll have you fixed up in no time.”

Bea skips off, grinning. As soon as she’s out of earshot, I turn to Auntie E in dismay.

“We’re just going to lean right into it, huh?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You know exactly what I mean. You couldn’t have suggested an angel or a fairy instead?”

She sniffs in disdain. “Angels are nothing but servants. And fairies are mischievous fools. That child is a Blackthorn. She should be proud of her heritage.”

“The only thing our ‘heritage’ ever got us was persecution.”

Her voice gains an edge. “Oh no, love. It’s gotten us much more than that.”

I know this is a fight I can’t win, so I shake my head. “Fine. But will you please give me something to put over my head so nobody recognizes me when I take her out? A paper bag will work.”

She smiles. “I’ll cut two holes in a sheet and make you a ghost.”

“Great. Cut a mouth hole, too, so I can bring a flask with me. I’ll need it.”

Just over an hour later, Q drops us off in a neighborhood near the elementary school, where the streets are crawling with kids in costumes and parents with flashlights, their cheerful yellow beams bobbing through the dark.

Auntie E gave me a black sequined masquerade mask adorned with feathers to wear instead of a sheet.

And Bea, my poor sweet child, is in full Wicked Witch of the West regalia, complete with a pointy black hat with a black tulle train, a black long-sleeved dress with puffy shoulders and a full skirt, and green face paint.

She carries a polished wooden stick that she’s gleefully using to cast curses upon every pirate, cowboy, and Spider-Man she sees.

The Disney princesses and fairy queens she leaves alone, for reasons I don’t want to consider.

The night is clear, cold, and windless. The stars are out in full force, twinkling silently in the deep sapphire dome of the sky. We walk from door to door, Bea’s pillowcase growing heavier with candy as we go, until she complains that her feet are tired and asks when Q will be picking us up.

I glance at the sky. On the horizon, the moon is just beginning to crest over the jagged peaks of the mountains. It’s big and ghostly bright, waxing to full in less than a week.

“Not quite yet, honey, but soon. Let’s go into the school’s gym and wait there. They always do a fun haunted house you’ll like. Lots of serial murderers jumping out from behind doors.”

She brightens. “I hope they have Jeffrey Dahmer! He used to eat people.”

I really need to get her away from the TV. “I think it’s more like big guys wearing blue jumpsuits and hockey masks, that sort of thing.”

Her “Oh” is slightly disappointed.

We make our way toward the school. I smile and nod at people we pass, safe behind my feathered disguise.

Once we’re on campus, we join a small group of parents and kids entering the gymnasium.

It’s been decorated in kitschy Halloween style, with black lights, skeletons leering from behind headstones, headless ghouls hanging on the walls, and zombies shuffling around aimlessly.

A canned soundtrack of thunder and cheesy evil laughter plays on a loop through speakers overhead.

We stop inside the doors and look around. Bea wrinkles her nose. “This is for babies. Nobody over six would be scared by this.”

“But you haven’t been inside the haunted house yet.”

When I hear the voice behind us, my stomach drops. I take Bea’s hand and draw her to my side as a tall, caped Dracula strolls around and stops in front of us.

His hair is slicked off his face. His jawline could cut glass. His black tux and white tie are impeccable, as is the long black cape draped over his shoulders. The interior is lined in silk the color of fresh blood.

He’s elegant and devastatingly handsome, this prince of the night, leaning regally on a skull-topped burl-wood cane like he owns Earth and everyone on it.

I’d like to kick him right in his family jewels.

He smiles, revealing a set of pointy white canine teeth that look disturbingly genuine.

Bea says, “I remember you. You’re the man from the grocery store.”

Ronan inclines his head. “That’s right. What a good memory you have, little witch. And what a pretty costume.”

“My great-auntie made it for me. Want me to cast a spell on you?”

She brandishes the wand at him with a flourish. He holds up a hand in mock terror.

“Only if you promise to make it end at dawn. I have to be in bed before the sun is up.”

Delighted that he’s playing along, she grins. “In your coffin!”

“Exactly.”

“After you’ve murdered lots of people and left their corpses rotting in the streets!”

He chuckles. “My, what a little savage.” He lifts his pale-blue gaze to mine. “Fits right in with the rest of the family.”

I don’t know if he’s talking about my family or his. Either way, he’s right.

I smile tightly. “Hello, Ronan. I’d ask if that’s a costume you’re wearing, but I already know you’re a bloodsucker.”

We gaze at each other over Bea’s head until a buxom brunette in a Wonder Woman costume strolls over and links her arm through Ronan’s.

“Your costume’s adorable!” she says, smiling at Bea.

“Thanks. Yours is nice, too.”

Holding my gaze, Ronan winds his arm around the brunette’s waist and pulls her against his side. She stares up at him adoringly with her pretty brown doe eyes.

My heart stops. My stomach curls up into a sick little ball and starts whimpering.

Ronan says tersely, “Maven, this is Colette. Colette, Maven.”

She gazes at me, doe eyes widening in fear. Recoiling, she puts a hand to her throat.

“Maven … Blackthorn?”

My reputation precedes me. I’m ten years old all over again, mercilessly scorned, shunned, and excluded by my peers.

I wish it didn’t hurt so much. I wish I could be unaffected, indifferent, cool. But these wounds we suffer that cut deep to the bone when we’re young and unarmored remain with us forever, regardless of how much older we grow or how far we run from their origin.

We can hope we’ve healed. We can even sometimes believe it.

But one wordless look of reproach can rob us of that sweet delusion so it becomes painfully clear we never were better, we only became better at pretending we were.

I say tightly, “The very same. A word of advice? Get yourself checked for rabies. Your date’s a dog.”

I grab Bea’s hand and pull her away toward the haunted house entry on the opposite side of the auditorium, swallowing around the painful lump in my throat and fighting back tears.

Colette. Beautiful, buxom Colette.

In comparison, I’m a toadstool.

Maybe they’re exclusive. Maybe she’s been in the picture all along. Maybe he was thinking of her when we—

No. I won’t go there. It’s too awful.

Probable, but awful.

I’m such a fool. I let the con man con me when I knew better from the start.

I haven’t been this upset since Becca Campbell beat me up on the playground in fifth grade.

Or maybe the time she spat on me and made me cry in front of two dozen people at the winter carnival.

Or the time she tripped me when I was walking with my lunch tray in the cafeteria at school and a hundred kids laughed uproariously as I went flying and landed flat on my face in a plate of mashed potatoes with gravy.

From his table in the corner, Ronan watched with a smirk.

I’ve worshipped him since I was a girl, adored him with all my heart and all the dark creature parts of my soul that loved him even more because their ugliness seemed less repulsive in the reflection of his heavenly glow, and the only thing I ever got for it was heartbreak.

“Mom, you’re hurting my hand.”

I release the death grip I’ve got on Bea and apologize, hurrying toward the small group of kids and parents entering the open door marked as the entrance to the haunted house. Beyond the door, the light is swallowed by darkness from which a spooky soundtrack emanates.

We enter just in time for the darkness to hide the tears cresting my lower lids and spilling down my cheeks.

We’re in a large space draped in tattered black curtains that ripple ominously in the flickering shadows.

A fog machine fills the floor with mists that swirl around fake tombstones and grave markers.

A huge, gnarled tree reaches toward the ceiling, its twisted limbs wrapped in wisps of cobwebs.

A pathway snakes through themed rooms, separated by more black draping.

We pass Frankenstein’s lab with bubbling beakers and bloody, dismembered mannequins, and a witch’s lair with a bubbling cauldron and huge, twitching spiders lit with black lights.

Beyond that is a hall of mirrors. As I enter, I see my own image reflected back at me in fractured pieces from a dozen different angles, but I’m alone.

“Bea?”

My only answer is distant, eerie laughter that bounces off the mirrors and echoes into silence.