Chapter 13 Arthur, Before
Arthur,
Before
The hive boxes at the bottom of the hill behind the Moreau cottage looked like a mouth of crooked teeth ready to swallow the surrounding coneflowers swaying in the breeze.
After returning the eggs to the kitchen to be washed, the bee girl had led me across the yard to what looked like a workshop, chatting easily as we walked, unbothered by the trail of clover she left in her footsteps. I couldn’t get her words out of my head.
You’re like me.
“Just in here,” Eva chirped, rolling the door to the workshop open. The instant I stepped through, the smell of melting sugar drew me up short. No, not sugar. My mouth watered, the warmth of the little room folding around my body. Honey.
“We have six apiaries,” Eva said as she tied her hair at the back of her neck. “The one you saw coming in.”
The mouth of teeth.
“And five more scattered across different farms we collaborate with nearby.”
I nodded, curious despite myself. My eyes moved over the room, taking in the setup of equipment. It was rustic but very clean, with a surprising amount of light flooding down from a set of what looked like handcrafted skylights.
My inspection halted when I met the gaze of the dark-haired girl standing at the sink.
It turned out the cashier Mom had spoken to at the Honey Shoppe had been none other than Eva’s sister, Izzy. She seemed older than Eva and me by four, maybe five years.
Izzy studied me, spinning a rag inside an empty honey jar before setting the jar on a cloth. “So,” she said, “Sleeping Beauty can leave his room.”
“Yes.”
Izzy crossed her arms over her chest. “You live in a van?”
The question caught me off-guard. I nodded.
“Why?”
Eva made a little sound. “Iz.”
But her older sister clearly had no qualms about putting her suspicion on full display. She tipped her chin up, waiting for my answer.
“We travel,” I said. When the silence stretched, I cleared my throat. “A lot.”
“Travel where?”
“Around.”
This was, by far, the longest conversation we’d had in the last two weeks. Izzy’s eyebrows knit in clear irritation at my evasion. I didn’t particularly like her verbal dissection either.
“I remember your mom. It’s been a long time since she up and left this place.”
“Hey.” Eva speared her sister a warning look. “Would you back off?”
“I think we deserve to know a little more about our guest.”
I huffed. “What, you afraid I’ve got an ax on me or something?”
To my surprise, Izzy didn’t laugh. She tilted her head to one side, considering.
“Seriously, Iz?” Eva’s cheeks were aflame. She turned to me. “I’m so sorry. Izzy’s girlfriend watches too much true crime.”
“Granted,” Izzy hummed. “But my point stands. We don’t know anything about him.”
Something about Izzy Moreau’s protectiveness put me in mind of a badger all too keen to tear out throats if a predator got too close. It was strangely grounding to feel that for once I might not be the most vicious person in a room.
“Left my ax behind,” I said.
Eva coughed a laugh, and Izzy’s surprise melted into a quicksilver grin.
Jack ducked under the workshop’s too-short doorframe.
“In pairs,” he said, passing each daughter a corded knife, which they plugged into opposing outlets.
All three beekeepers sat on a pair of benches facing a wide, shallow basin, Izzy across from Eva, Jack across from an empty seat he motioned for me to take. I sat, feeling a little self-conscious.
Jack set one of the frames into a pair of clamps between us and nodded to the blade in his hand.
“We use a hot knife to cut the comb away.” He did as he described.
The layer of waxy cells protecting the honey made a delicious crackling sound against the hot serrated edge before tumbling into the bin.
The smell of warm honey and melting wax intensified.
“Leave the comb in the bin for now. When you’ve cleared a frame, set it in the extractor.” Jack leaned back to indicate the steel cylinder in the corner of the room. Then Paul Bunyan held the hot blade out to me.
I blinked. “You trust me with a knife?”
The monster winced internally.
Jack lifted a brow. “Should I not?”
“He’d prefer an ax,” Izzy deadpanned.
“What?”
I laughed nervously. “Nothing.”
“Whatever you say, Fairy Eyes.” Izzy turned to her sister. “They are, aren’t they? Vivid hazel. Damn.”
The bee girl flicked me a too-quick look. “He’s too tall for a fairy.”
I flushed, not sure whether to take that as a compliment or an insult. Then Eva smiled at me, and a seed of warmth sprouted between my ribs.
Jack passed me the knife.
Once I got the angle right, it wasn’t a difficult task, and it was strangely satisfying to watch the comb release all that hot dripping gold.
Jack was patient, explaining the process to me as we went.
The extractor would spin the bulk of the honey off the frames, he said, making it easier to bottle and seal.
A truck honked in the yard behind me. I craned my neck around just as a lanky, copper-haired boy my age leapt from the vehicle’s bed.
Recognition flickered through me first, followed by displeasure.
It was the asshole I’d bumped into at the Honey Shoppe.
He was clearly of some relation to the driver; they had the same red hair, the same steel eyes.
A tiny woman with sleek black hair cropped to her chin slipped out from the passenger side.
Jack raised a hand in greeting. Izzy popped to her feet and went to greet them, hugging the much shorter woman. They each took a bin full of greenery from the back. When Izzy led them past the workshop door, she paused. “Arthur, meet Dane and Lenny Walker, our neighbors. And this is June.”
The prim, petite woman held a comically large box of greenery. She wiggled her fingers in greeting. “Good morning,” she strained.
Jack stood. “Let me help you, Junie.”
Izzy elbowed the taller Walker brother. “This lucky bastard managed to convince my best friend to marry him. Can you believe that?”
“It took some work.” Dane chuckled good-naturedly. “Still not sure I deserve her.”
“I’m sure. You don’t.”
“Hey—”
“You are both my favorite people,” June cut in, rolling her eyes as she passed the box to Jack. “Now quit yapping and help me bring these boxes up to the house, hmm?”
Izzy met her father’s gaze. “June wanted a look at the back fields for her bouquets.”
“I’ll go with you.” Jack looked at Eva. “You finish up here with Arthur?”
I jumped at the sound of my name.
When Eva nodded, the group filtered out of the workshop. All except the younger brother I’d recognized. Lenny’s gaze shifted between Eva and me, his pupils expanding and his nostrils slightly flaring. “This looks cozy,” he said.
I bristled, his voice instantly grating, and noted that he stood a bit too close to be polite. From where he leaned against the wall, he had a full view down Eva’s shirt, and by the flush crawling up her neck, she knew.
And she shrank.
This was none of my business. This wasn’t my town, or my family, or my home. So why did it bug the hell out of me that when the bee girl spoke, she’d lost a bit of the fire I’d seen that morning?
“Lenny,” Eva said, “what are you doing here?”
“You haven’t returned my calls.”
“We’ve been busy,” she said, quieter than I’d heard her all week.
“With what?”
Eva glanced at me, but what could I say?
“Anything,” the monster urged.
“Pancakes,” I blurted out.
“Anything but that.”
Eva snorted a laugh. It was short and breathless, and she looked as caught off-guard by it as I was, but still, a warm feeling collected in my chest.
Lenny, meanwhile, was regarding me the way one looked at a bit of shit on their shoe. “I see,” he said.
When he returned his focus to Eva, her smile fell, all her mirth doused like a candle flame squeezed into a ribbon of smoke between finger and thumb. The monster’s preternatural senses attuned to a nervous uptick in her heartbeat.
Was she afraid of him?
The very thought had me glued to my spot on the bench, despite the growing awkwardness and the distinct impression that I should not be here. There was something weird about this guy. I didn’t like the way he charged the room with static, setting all my nerves on edge.
I didn’t like the way Eva paled the longer he stared at her.
The monster nudged me. “Do something.”
Talking wouldn’t help. I wasn’t good at using my words like weapons.
But I knew how it felt to be dismissed. An idea formed, and my grip tightened on the hot knife we’d been using to slice off the comb.
As nonchalantly as I could, I plucked a new frame from the top of the pile, setting it in the clamps.
The monster helped me keep my gaze calm and even, the message clear.
We have work to do, my body language said. So, kindly remove your sorry ass.
Lenny’s expression flickered with annoyance, but he tried to ignore my subtle dismissal. “So long as you’re not avoiding me.”
Beside me, Eva’s comb knife slipped into the bin below. “Course not,” she said, a little too fast. Overhead, the half dozen honeybees that had trailed after her all morning seemed to buzz a little louder. Their agitation made the hairs on the back of my neck rise.
Lenny, however, didn’t seem to notice. If anything, he looked relieved. “Of course not.” He smiled, and I immediately hated it. I wanted to shove a palmful of honeycomb right into his teeth. “Why would you?” he said with a laugh.
Eva made a sound like she meant to laugh it off too, but the little cheep that came out of her more closely resembled that of a wounded bird.
For a painful moment, the monster’s awareness of her discomfort made my heart pound harder in my chest, too.
Her bees frenzied faster as I shared in her silent anxiety, looking between her and Lenny.
He continued to lean against the wall of the workshop, mouth crooking in a confident smile. “Let’s go out tomorrow,” he said, as though I weren’t there at all.
“Oh. I-I can’t,” Eva said, stumbling over the words.
But Lenny bulldozed on. “Eight o’clock. There’s a drive-in movie down in the valley. I’ll pick you up at—Ow!” Lenny reared back, holding his wrist against his chest. His cavalier swagger bled into shock, then anger. “The hell?”
Even from here, I could see the pink already-swelling center of a bee sting.
“Oh, sorry,” Eva said in a near monotone. “One of our queens mated with a hot-blooded drone. They’ve been pretty aggressive. The next brood cycle should calm down.”
“This fucking hurts!”
I flinched back at his sudden outburst, at the sheer volume of anger. The bee girl, however, stacked her spine. “Do you have any vinegar back at the farmhouse? You’ll need to put some on that right away.”
The asshole looked between us again, eyes furious. “Vinegar?”
“Mm-hmm. Quicker the better,” Eva said.
I looked at her, struck by the sudden change in her pitch, the way her eyes wouldn’t quite meet mine.
She was lying.
“Lenny! We need you!” his older brother called from the house, just out of sight.
With a scowl, Lenny stepped back. His eyes landed on me again, and I had the impression that he was seeing me differently than he had when he’d first arrived.
“Eight o’clock,” he repeated, keeping his eyes on mine even though he’d spoken to Eva. I bristled inside but held his gaze. The monster helped steady the squall of my emotions, allowing me to simply lift a brow.
His answering scowl felt good. It stroked something wretched inside me that wanted to see him displeased. When his brother called again, Lenny strode away, hugging his wounded arm to his chest.
The instant he left, Eva’s shoulders dropped. A strand of blond had escaped her braid, obscuring her expression from view.
The monster spun around my spine. “I didn’t like that,” it said quietly.
Neither did I.
“Vinegar, huh?” I asked nonchalantly. Eva’s gaze snapped to mine. I pretended her eyes weren’t suddenly red, as though she were holding in tears. She plucked the knife from the bin, nicking a bit of gooey honeycomb off the blade before she thrust it toward me.
“Eat this,” she commanded.
And because I was glad the fire had returned to her eyes, I didn’t fight her.
I accepted the sticky mess, careful not to let our fingers brush, and cautiously brought it between my lips.
The sweet, pungent honey glazed down my throat.
I chewed until the wax shrank to a gum that made my teeth squeak.
“Really good,” I said.
The knot between Eva’s brows unknit. “Nothing like it,” she said.
I couldn’t help but think that there was nothing like her, or anyone in her family. The Moreaus weren’t supposed to be like this. Kind. Funny. They weren’t supposed to distract me from the ache in my chest.
“So, what do you think?” Eva asked, a notch too brightly, sweeping her arm out to gesture toward the workshop at large. “Better than the old sewing room?”
I huffed a laugh, surprised. “Yes.”
“Fewer mothballs, at least.”
She was quick, and funny. I couldn’t stop the hitch of my smile. “Less pink.”
The bee girl had a bright laugh. The peal of golden sound seemed to wrap around me, warm as the summer heat. Maybe that explained the sudden flush to my cheeks.
The monster rolled in my belly. “Little death-touch. You made a friend.”