A Murder of Magpies by Sarah Bromley Read Free Book Online

skin to mine, and I recoiled. It wasn’t that he was gadje and touching me, but rather I wasn’t ready for such a dose of energy. We were both
     too open and sore to stop my feelers from grabbing what they found in him. I’d never
     seen such sad eyes like Ward’s. Mercury-gray with a paler ring around his pupils,
     breaking the darkness enough to assure me there was some warmth inside his cold soul
     of iron.
    Everyone had barriers to cover the doorways in their minds. Jonah and I opened them.
     By touch, even by proximity. We also had to guard our own barriers. Ward was different,
     at least for me. His barriers were curtains, moth-eaten and fragile. Full of holes
     through which I could poke my fingers, and yet even with the burst of energy, his
     head didn’t tangle me up. Maybe I could trickle in his thoughts if I tried pulling
     them, but it was nice to slip through in silence.
    “I’m such a prick,” he admitted.
    He stood close enough that his breath condensed on my cheeks. The wind wheezed, and
     he wrapped his coat over my shoulders. The leather was heavy and smelled of sweat
     and rust, his scent that whispered of things elemental.
    “I touched a nerve,” I said.
    “Sorta.”
    Like he was “sorta” an ass. I’d learned one truth: the boy couldn’t lie worth a damn.
    We kept walking, and he raised his face to the bleak October trees. “I was a jerk
     back there. Talking about Drake, there’s a reason I don’t. If he gets clean, it lasts maybe a month. It never takes.”
    “What about your mom?” I asked.
    “Taos, New Mexico, in a hippie commune.”
    “That’s different.”
    “Or she’s a fishmonger in Seattle. Maybe she’s back in jail in Arkansas.” He jumped
     for a low-hanging branch, missing it. “She used to send postcards but stopped a long
     time ago.”
    I stopped myself from touching his shoulder. Sticking my finger in a light socket
     would do less damage. But I wanted to. I wanted to put my fingers on him and take
     away the hurt, swallow it into mine. I knew the hurt of losing a mother. When I wanted
     to bolt from him before, I’d been afraid of his anger, but it wasn’t truly anger.
     It was grief. Even if he wasn’t Rom , we had this thing in common, and it was pain. Pain was something I could take. As
     my hand caught his shoulder, a tic in the corner of his lips jumped.
    I got it, and he knew it.
    The woods thinned until we reached the main road into Black Orchard. Ward led me across
     the road to a cobblestone driveway I passed daily. On each side, conifers like sentinels
     guarded the driveway, threatening to collapse and suffocate any trespassers under
     their weight.
    I ducked into Ward’s coat and stayed close behind as he guided me down the driveway
     where we came to an inhospitable gate.
    He grimaced as he wiped away a spider’s gauzy web tacked between the metal bars, and
     he wedged the gate wide enough until he could slip inside and heave it open wider.
     “The button in the car makes it appear so easy, but this thing weighs a ton.” He waved
     me forward. “After you, my lady.”
    I walked around him, stopping as I came to his bowed head. His mischievous smile stretched
     wide, and warmth crept into my cheeks; I had to glance away. A soft laugh echoed behind
     me, not the mocking sounds that chased my mother, chased Jonah and me in Montana and
     Hemlock. A gentle tease that, because I’d blushed, knew he unraveled some tight part
     of me. He was gadje and utterly frustrating.
    I wanted to hear his laugh again.
    I walked around the driveway’s curve where his house came into view. The Victorian
     restoration was deep lavender with dormer windows and spindle-trim painted magenta
     and white. Three stories high, the distance from the ground to the tallest gable was
     intimidating. A lightning rod curly-cued off a turret where a Velvet Underground poster
     covered a window, Ward’s room I guessed. Half-dead ivy devoured the house, crawled
     up from the