Outside, very close, I heard a laugh, high and light, halfway to a tune. I leapt out of bed and leaned out the window so fast that the sill heaved the breath out of me. The morning sun forced my eyes into a squint, but I thought I saw a smudge of darkness blink out of the corner of my vision, far below my window, gone too fast for me to say if it had really been there or not. I lifted my hands from the windowsill and looked at them; petals were stuck on my palms. Poppies, maybe.
Friggin’ sketchy faeries. I was going to smell like a bag of potpourri left in an Italian restaurant for the rest of the day. Picking petals off my skin, I knocked the rest of the blooms to the ground outside, frowning at the empty yard. I retreated back into my room and retrieved my phone from the bedside table.
James still didn’t pick up, and his voice mailbox was full, so I tried Luke’s number. It rang and rang before making a strange static sound and disconnecting.
I stared at the phone in my hand and observed how white my knuckles were, pressing out against my skin. There could be a thousand reasons why neither was picking up, but about nine hundred of them made my stomach roll unpleasantly.
Feeling distinctly unsettled, I turned to go downstairs, and found myself looking directly into a pair of enormous green eyes.
“Holy crap.”
It took me a moment to realize that the eyes were Delia’s, and that they only appeared enormous because they were so close. Of all Delia’s talents, I hadn’t thought the ability to be soundless was one of them.
Delia handed me the phone. “Phone for you.”
I tried not to look too hopeful as I took it, but she’d turned before I had time to look too pathetic and closed the door behind her. I lifted the phone to my ear. “Hello?”
I didn’t immediately recognize the voice, but the fact that it wasn’t Luke depressed me hugely. “Hello? Is this Dee?”
Then the voice clicked in my mind; it was one I hadn’t heard in a while: Peter, James’ older brother. “Peter? Yeah, it’s me. I didn’t expect you to call.”
There was a pause. “I didn’t call. Your aunt called me.”
I frowned at the closed bedroom door, wondering if I’d open it to find Delia crouched on the other side. “Okaaaay. That’s weird … how did she have your number?”
“I’m not in California. I’m at my parents.”
There was something off in the way he said it that made me realize I hadn’t been listening properly to his tone until then. “Hey. Is something wrong? When did you get in?”
“I flew in from California last night. God, Dee, you haven’t heard? Mom and Dad didn’t call you?”
Every so often, I know what someone’s going to say before they say it. This was one of those moments, and I sank down on the edge of the bed, gripping the comforter with one hand. I knew I was going to need to sit down to hear what was coming. “Heard what?”
“James—” The word was strangled. Peter paused to regroup, and when he continued, his voice was back in control. “He had an accident on the way back from his gig last night. He—uh—he hit a tree.”
I bowed my head down, one hand squeezed into a fist so tight my nails bit into my palm, and the other pressing the phone against my ear. I made myself ask, “How is he?”
“The car is totaled, Dee. The left side’s just … gone. The police, they had dogs out last night, they’re still looking for the—for James.”
I knew what he stopped himself from saying—“the body.” So it was bad, then. I felt suddenly sick at the idea of James’ car, his life, crushed beyond recognition. How many times had we parked in the very-farthest-away spot in a lot so that no one would open their car doors into his paint? All for nothing.
I swallowed. “He wasn’t in the car?”
Peter was silent a long, long minute, and then he said, voice breaking, “Dee, they think he crawled out. They think he crawled out and died somewhere. There’s blood everywhere—I saw it. God, Dee!”
My nails dug into my skin. I wanted to say something to comfort him, but it seemed false coming from someone who needed comfort themselves. “Pete—I don’t know what to say.” It felt horribly inadequate. We both loved James—I should have had something more insightful to say.
Then I thought of what I wanted to ask. “Will you help me look for him?”
Peter hesitated. “Dee—you didn’t see how much blood —I—God.”
“If he’s alive, I can’t just sit here.”
“Dee.” Peter’s voice shook, and when he spoke again, it was in simple, clipped sentences, like I was a little kid he was trying to make understand. “He’s dead. There was too much blood. They’re looking in the river now. They didn’t even tell us to keep our hopes up. He’s dead. They said he was.”
No. No, he wasn’t dead. He just wasn’t. I wouldn’t believe it until I saw his body. “Tell me where it was, then. I want to go.”
“Dee, you don’t. I wish I hadn’t gone. I can’t get it out of my head.”
“Tell me where.”
I didn’t think he was going to, but he did. I wrote it down on the back of the envelope from Thornking-Ash and hung up. Now I had to find some way to get there.
I dialed Luke’s number, letting it ring twenty times before I hung up. There was some sort of large gooey lump in the back of my throat that I kept trying to swallow; it wouldn’t go away, and only seemed to get bigger when Luke didn’t pick up. Giving up trying to swallow it, I put on some crappy jeans and my scuffed Doc Martens. I felt the need for busyness, the desire to prepare myself for the search. And all the while I got ready, I was amazed at how cold I felt inside, how calculating. I was watching the entire thing on Dee TV from a million miles away.
I went downstairs, pausing at the sound of raised voices in the living room.
“Terry, you aren’t going to cater your own mother’s wake. Let Julia or Erica do it.” Delia’s voice was condescending and loud as usual; she took her coffee black with an extra scoop of superiority.
“Like hell I won’t!” Mom’s voice was near-scream. “I’m not having my family fly in to eat soggy canapés over my mother’s coffin.”
“Our mother.”
Mom laughed, high and wild. “You’re a piece of work!”
I didn’t really want to walk in on that right now. Maybe I could just steal the car while they were fighting. Maybe Dad would take me. I edged into the kitchen and found Dad swallowing the last of a cup of coffee and stuffing his wallet into his back pocket. He looked hunted.