Long Black Curl by Alex Bledsoe Read Free Book Online

just Bo-Kate’s and Jefferson’s. She remembered the smell of the air, charged with static and magic, as the night wind came forward to take an active hand, one of the few times in their ancient history it had done so.
    She fell back on her bed and dug her fingers into the comforter, reconnecting with her present. She was where she was supposed to be. But then again, if some future self was reexperiencing this moment, would she even know it?
    â€œOh, good God,” she sighed in disgust, looking up at the ceiling fan. A strand of cobweb stretched from one unmoving blade to the wall. Leshell would have her hide if she saw that. “We may live in a trailer,” she said often, “but we don’t have to act like we live in a trailer.”
    Mandalay dug her cell phone out of her school backpack and found Bliss Overbay’s number. Bliss was her guardian, her adopted sister, her second-in-command, and the woman who came closest to understanding what it felt like to be Mandalay Harris.
    Bliss worked as a paramedic, and so should always answer her phone, but many times she’d be stuck somewhere in the hills and hollers where cell signals didn’t reach. This seemed to be one of those times, since the call went straight to voice mail.
    Mandalay said, “Hey, Bliss, it’s me. Something … Ah, never mind. I just had a thought, but it passed. Call me when you can. No hurry.”
    She hung up and thought who else she might call. She didn’t want to discuss her vision; she just wanted to reconnect with the real world in some way. Her emotions were all skewed, half drawn in by her ancestor’s fear, half the numb boredom of a girl at home by herself. She needed some immediate reality.
    She looked at the tiple, still on the bed beside her. The last verse of “Paranoid” came to her:
    You’re making me nervous
    Stop standing so close
    Do I deserve this
    Or is this a hoax
    You’re like a mystery
    That’s hard to avoid
    â€œEither you’re out to get me,” she whisper-sang, “or I’m just paranoid.”
    She had the urge to run, but the snow outside was too heavy for her usual flight into the depths of the woods. Still, she couldn’t just stay here, not with all these adult emotions surging through her twelve-year-old heart. She had to do something.
    She grabbed her coat and ran outside. The snow was ankle deep, and each step seemed twice as difficult as it normally would. She didn’t go into the forest, though; she walked down the road, then began to jog, running as much as the weather allowed. The cold air burned in her nose and lungs, and after a while the snow fell so heavily, she worried she couldn’t find her way back.
    A truck approached her, its lights on in the winter afternoon dimness. She stepped down into the ditch, crunching through the ice over the shallow water, and back up onto the bank. She held on to the fence there as the truck passed, its plume of snow and slush just missing her. If the driver saw her, he gave no sign. She didn’t recognize the vehicle.
    When it was gone, she climbed back onto the road and continued away from her home. Something called to her, with an urgency she’d never before experienced. It had to be connected to the recent vision, to that memory of Bo-Kate Wisby and Jefferson Powell being sung out of the Tufa, banished from both the community and from all music forever.
    In her haste, she hadn’t grabbed a hat, scarf, or gloves. And now one foot was soaked by icy ditch water. Her coat had a hood, but with the wind in her face, it just billowed around her head. And she wore tennis shoes, not snow boots. She was cold, and getting colder.
    Still, if anyone in Cloud County was protected, it was Mandalay Harris. And if she was being driven to do something as apparently foolish as run through a snowstorm, then there had to be a reason.

 
    4
    Bo-Kate Wisby looked out the SUV’s window at