When he opened eyes, Terry-Joe Gitterman stood before him.
“Hey,” Kell said guardedly. “What’s up?”
Terry-Joe nervously stuck his hands in his pockets, then pulled them back out. “Mind if I sit down?”
“Nope.”
Terry-Joe took a chair from a nearby table and straddled it, his arms across the back. “Can I ask you a question and have it just be between you and me?”
Kell frowned. “I don’t know. Is this about Bronwyn?”
Terry-Joe nodded.
“I reckon, then.”
Terry-Joe paused to muster the words. “Do you think… Is Bronwyn still hung up on my brother?”
“Dwayne?” Kell almost barked out the name. He laughed and shook his head. “Honestly, I don’t think Bronwyn would piss on him if he was on fire. It took her a while, but she finally sees him for what he is. No offense.”
“None taken; I know what he is, too.”
Kell was about to ask why Terry-Joe wanted to know, when suddenly he comprehended. Unrequited love was written in the lines of emotional anguish on the younger man’s face. Kell had seen it before, on nice boys who thought they could win Bronwyn away from her own hell-bent desires. None of them had fared well at all.
He chose his words carefully. “Terry-Joe, I should tell you, her leg may be a lot better, but Bronwyn ain’t exactly all there yet. I don’t know if you read about what happened to her—”
“Sure I did.”
“Well, you don’t come back from that in a hurry, no matter how much the music helps. Sometimes you don’t come all the way back at all.”
“She will,” Terry-Joe said with certainty. “I’ve heard her play.”
“I hope you’re right,” Kell said. “But even if she does—”
They both jumped as the front door slammed against the wall. Dwayne Gitterman strode through with a loud, high shout of arrival. He was flushed red with drink and possibly more, and nearly stumbled over someone who couldn’t step aside fast enough. He yelled, “Goddamn, you old fart, can’t you see me comin’?” and slapped the man with his cowboy hat. He looked around and spotted Terry-Joe and Kell; a slow, mean smile split his face.
“Shit,” Terry-Joe said.
“Pretty much,” Kell agreed.
26
Bronwyn was asleep. There were no nightmares in her head, no dreams of fire, or explosions, or heat. She did not taste sand or the salty tang of her own blood. No one screamed her name, or the first syllable of her name before ending in a wet gurgle.
Instead, she wandered through fields and forests, flew over lakes and mossy rocks, and harmonized with the songs that whispered in the wind. She recognized others doing the same, but kept to herself. She would dance and sing and fly with them later.
I am like them, she realized calmly, but also different. I have tasks no one else can do. She felt the calm certainty of that, even if the tasks themselves were a little vague.
Then something tapped at her window.
She opened her eyes in the darkness, instantly wide awake. The dream dissipated, along with the knowledge it held. She lay with her back to the window, facing the closed door to her room. The tapping came again, rapid and insistent.
Had Sally Olds returned? Every tale, every song said that a haint could be sent away by someone who no longer needed its presence, and Bronwyn certainly didn’t need the poor dead girl hanging around. She would decide what memories she wanted, and if they came back, it would be in their own good time, not at the behest of some supernatural nanny trying to force her into a role she had no intention of assuming.
She took a deep breath, exhaled, and rolled over, intending to confront the haint once and for all. She wished she’d remembered to return the protective blue glass to the windowsill. “Goddammit, Sally, I told you—”
She stopped. It wasn’t the haint, or at least not the haint she expected. A slender, definitely masculine shape stood silhouetted beyond the window. She could tell instantly that it wasn’t Dwayne, or either of her brothers. Bronwyn drew the covers up to her chest.
The tapping came again.
“Who is it?” she hissed.
“It’s me, Terry-Joe,” he said in a soft, urgent voice. “I have to tell you something, Bronwyn.”
She sighed. With a chuckle at the absurdity of the situation, she swung her legs off the bed and pulled on a T-shirt. “Terry-Joe, I thought we settled—”
“No, it’s not that. Something bad’s happened.”
She frowned. The intensity in his voice was not lust, she realized. It was fear. She went to the window and opened it. “What’s wrong?”
His hair was mussed, and he was out of breath with panic and anxiety. He looked off to the side, mustering his courage. “Bronwyn… Dwayne stabbed Kell.”
The words took several moments to process. “What?”
The words rushed out. “Kell was at the Pair-A-Dice. Dwayne came in and started talking trash about you. Kell took it as long as he could, then smacked him. He was winning the fight when Dwayne pulled a knife and stabbed him.”
Bronwyn couldn’t breathe. “Is he—?”
“No, he’s at the hospital over in Unicorn, they say he’ll be fine. I drove him there; he wouldn’t let me call an ambulance or the police. Said it was just something between him and my brother that they needed to settle. And he made me promise I wouldn’t call you or let anyone else call. Swore me on my word. So I drove out here as quick as I could. You probably want to get your folks out of bed and head down there, to make sure he doesn’t walk off before they finish stitching him up.”
Bronwyn’s hands tightened on the windowsill. Her nails bent painfully against the wood. Rage like she’d never felt built in her chest, crushing more air from her lungs.
“Bronwyn?” Terry-Joe asked.
She reached for her jeans, then stopped in midmotion. “Terry-Joe, how’d you get here?”
“Kell’s car. I still had the keys from driving him to the emergency room. Figured it might keep him at the hospital a while longer.”
She quickly pulled on her pants, then grabbed her tennis shoes and went to the window. She pushed him back and wriggled out. “What are you doing?” Terry-Joe gasped as she nimbly dropped to the ground. Her leg sent a little warning twinge up her spine, but held firm.
“Take me to the hospital,” she said. “I need to know what happened before my parents find out. He won’t tell them the whole truth, I know him. He’ll make it sound like it was all his fault.” She looked up at the boy, and even in the darkness he could see the rage and certainty boiling in her eyes. “Your brother’s gone too far this time, Terry-Joe. Way too far. Now let’s go.”
Terry-Joe hesitated. Bronwyn grabbed the front of his shirt. “Listen to me,” she said, softly but with earth-shaking fervor. “That’s my brother. I will go to him one way or the other, but if you don’t want to help me, then you’re singing harmony with Dwayne.”
“So ‘if you’re not with us, you’re against us,’ is that it?” he snapped back.
She released him. “Tonight, yeah, that’s it exactly.”
He sighed. “Come on, then.”
The highway was deserted between Needsville and Unicorn, except for Trooper Bob Pafford watching from his usual hiding place. It had been a good night so far: two speeding tickets for well over a hundred dollars, and the chance to slap one smart-ass teenager out of sight of the dashboard video camera. Those monitoring devices had made his job much harder, but they also meant each time he outsmarted them, the rush was that much more intense. At his age, it saved him from complacency.