And he couldn’t count on Dax doing what their mother said. Sure, Dax never listened to Cluck, not nine years ago, and not now, but he listened to their mother.
Just not this time. The Palomas coating the branches with Vaseline, Camille’s fall. These were reasons Dax must have felt justified giving some younger cousins the go-ahead to set another one of those nets. They wouldn’t have gone after the Palomas without Dax’s blessing. Dax would have told them something about how he couldn’t give permission for that, not anymore, and it was too bad he couldn’t. They would’ve known what that meant. Do it. Do it and don’t get caught, because if you get caught, I’ll deny you ever brought this to me.
How stupid did Lace have to be? Hadn’t she seen what his cousins wanted to do with the mermaid tail? If she was smart, she’d run. Not just back to her side of Almendro. Farther. He didn’t want his cousins finding out and getting at her. If they hurt her, it would just make things worse with the Palomas. The fighting would take anyone who got in the way. If Clémentine or Eugenie or her younger brothers got hurt, the guilt would dig through him, wear a hole in him.
He didn’t want Lace Paloma dead.
He just wanted her gone.
The scent of her clung to him. The smell of citrus peel. The perfume of roses growing fast as weeds, their brambles twisting around new tree roots. That perfume had seeped into him, and he felt the thorns snagging.
Dax threw the trailer door open. It banged against the siding.
“I can’t believe you did this.” Dax slammed the door shut. “Paul or Bertrand, sure. But you? I taught you better than this.”
Cluck put a few feathers down. “What?”
“You and that girl.” He shoved Cluck against the counter.
The edge hit Cluck’s lower back.
“Everyone in the house heard you arguing,” Dax said.
The pain echoed up Cluck’s spine. He should’ve been careful. If he’d wanted to have it out with Lace Paloma, he should’ve gone deeper into the woods. Now they all knew. Dax knew. Cluck had hired a Paloma. And if they let him live, it’d be no less of a miracle than if Sara-la-Kali had appeared to him. His Romani blood meant she should protect him, but he was the last Corbeau a saint would ever show herself to.
Maybe they’d throw him to the water spirits who combed their fingers through the river’s depths. Maybe they’d decide that if Sara-la-Kali didn’t save him, he deserved to die.
Dax’s face reddened even through his stage makeup. “We have what, five women here who aren’t related to you? You managed to keep your hands off four of them, so what happened with her?”
“I didn’t do anything,” Cluck said.
“What, you’re gonna lie to me now? Tell me you’re just friends?” Dax grabbed his shirt collar. “Friends don’t fight like that.”
The weeds growing in Cluck’s rib cage let him take a breath. Maybe Yvette had seen them yelling, but she might not have caught what they were saying.
This was about him and Lace arguing the way a boyfriend and a girlfriend did.
“I thought you cared about this family,” Dax said.
“I do.”
“Then why did you do it?” Dax threw him down.
Cluck hit his lip as he fell. The Formica split it open, and blood trailed to his chin, hot as honey.
He slumped against the wall, holding his temples. He could have fought back, but didn’t. It always made it worse. Fighting back turned one bruise to four.
“You think we have rules for the hell of it?” Dax asked. “This, this kind of stuff is why we don’t date anyone who works for us. Because we don’t need anyone getting into some little prise de bec when we’re trying to run a show.”
Relief settled into Cluck’s chest. Dax didn’t know anything. He wouldn’t go after Lace. He’d smack Cluck around a little more and consider his point made. Clémentine and Eugenie and this family’s children would stay as safe as they could be.
“You slept with her, didn’t you?” Dax’s voice vibrated through the trailer.
Cluck wiped at the blood on his lip. Right thumb. Around Dax, he’d gotten used to using only his right hand. “That’s what you think?”
Dax crouched down and grabbed his hand. The blood seeped into Cluck’s thumbprint.
Just stay still. It was all Cluck had to do, and it’d be over. Dax would get bored with him, and leave.
“Why her?” Dax asked. “You could have gone after some girl in town. Why did you have to go after one who works for us?”
Some girl in town. Cluck knew what that meant. In each town where they stopped, he overheard his mother and her sisters make fun of girls with silly, hopeful smiles and too-short jean skirts. “She looks like a nice one,” his aunts would say. “You could give le cygnon to her.” His mother didn’t even bother checking if he was in earshot.
It was half-joking, half-planning. One day he’d be too old not to talk to girls, and when he was, his mother, no doubt with Dax’s help, would steer him toward one who would treat him like a thing to be tamed, controlled, contained. His family wanted him with a woman who would pet him and keep him from biting anyone. A girl with a drawer full of pink lipstick and a heart for some blue-eyed local who hadn’t liked her back. She’d get as bored with Cluck as Cluck would get with her.
Lace hadn’t bored him or gotten bored.
Dax jerked Cluck’s right hand. “Why her?”
Because it was hard to make her laugh, and hard to scare her.
“Why do you hate us?” Dax asked, sadness pulling at the corners of his eyes. Pity that Cluck had been born the thing he was. Frustration that he hadn’t fixed Cluck. “Why do you hate this family?”
“I don’t,” Cluck said.
Dax held Cluck’s hand open.
Cluck tried to pull it away. “Don’t do this.”
Dax held onto it.
This couldn’t happen again. As far as Dax knew, he’d broken him like a colt, made him right-handed. What else did he want?
Where’s the net, cygnon? The question from nine years ago knocked around in Cluck’s head. The nickname Dax tried to make stick.
Nine years ago Cluck had found a net hidden under his brother’s bed, bright blue nylon. His cousins had been leaving rope nets in the lake and river for years, and the Palomas always found them. But in the water, the nylon would be invisible. A mermaid could get caught in it, and drown.
It may have been the Palomas, but it was still killing. So Cluck took it, hid it. As soon as Dax found it gone, he knew. He threw Cluck into a wall to try to get him to say where he’d put it.
What did you do with the net, cygnon?
Cluck wouldn’t tell. He wasn’t letting there be blood on his family’s hands. The next blood drawn might be Eugenie’s, or his grandfather’s, or his younger cousins’.
But Dax had caught him fidgeting with a loose button, passing it between his left fingers. What are you doing using this hand? You’re supposed to use your right, crétin.
Now Dax spread out Cluck’s right fingers. “Which one did you touch her with?”
“I didn’t,” Cluck said.
Dax pinched his third finger. “This one?”
Cluck looked away and didn’t answer.
Dax grabbed a needle and shoved it into Cluck’s right hand. Without thinking, Cluck gripped it with his thumb, index, and third finger.
His older brother was nothing if not practical. Even nine years ago, he didn’t go for the fingers Cluck needed most to help their grandfather with the costumes.
Right hand this time, because Dax thought Cluck had learned. Pépère had kept the secret, so everyone thought Cluck only held needles with his right fingers now.
Cluck didn’t fight. Fighting would just lose him use of more of his hand.