A Murder of Magpies by Sarah Bromley

around his neck. “Is he pissed because I stayed the night?”
    “He’s Dati .” I melted the butter into the perfect crispiness of the waffles. My appetite was
     toast. “One of his cardinal rules is that you don’t turn your back on a friend in
     need.”
    Ward’s hand ran through his sleep-messy hair and touched my chin. Pinprick shocks
     stung my skin. I reached under the table to hold his hand. The few times I saw my
     grandpa Bengalo, he always claimed that gadje didn’t understand Rom . Bapo said in the old lands, gadje treated Rom badly. It was different once their clan came to Georgia. They settled. They were
     accepted, though they still wouldn’t trust gadje . That my parents were friends with Rain was an anomaly, but Dad said times had changed.
     Ward sat across from me, radiating warmth from his hand, the roughness of his scars
     against my fingers. He was gadje . He didn’t know my world, and yet I wanted him to. That meant trusting him.
    My mom’s friends, our neighbors, they betrayed us before. Mom was rash, but none of
     us hurt anybody on purpose. That didn’t mean people weren’t killed. We were different.
     If Ward found out how different we were, could I be sure he wouldn’t go Judas on me?
     
    ***
     
    The afternoon was a gloomy Sunday, over a week into November, over a week since Ward
     returned to Minnesota. The sky was quilted with clouds, and the surrounding evergreens
     were dark, pointy, dense. I sat outside on the steps, working in my scrapbook.
    Mom’s frantic as she clings to Dad on the living room floor. His arms fold around
     her as she rocks back and forth. Someone else’s blood sprayed in reddish dots on her
     forearms and neck, on her face. There’s death all over her. Death she caused.
    “Oh, God, Lorna!” Dad gathers her against him until she’s in his lap. “What’d you
     do?”
    When Mom died in the fire, all my tangible memories were lost with her—from the Snow
     White costume that she sewed for my third-grade play to the lipstick I stole from
     her vanity. A thousand snatches of her charred and lost. Six months ago, Rain sent
     some photos he found dating to when he, Mom, and Dad were in high school, a history
     of my parents’ early days through Jonah’s and my first birthday. I glued dried Spanish
     moss from a craft store to the page with a cutout of peaches from a can of pie filling.
     Two things I recalled best about Georgia. Next, I mounted one of Rain’s photos on
     the page.
    “I like that picture.” Jonah pointed to our parents’ wedding photo. They were so young,
     only nineteen. It was hard to believe they were only a few years older than I was
     now.
    “Think Dati knew about her Mind Games by that point?” I asked.
    Jonah shrugged. “I’m more curious if he knew we’d inherit her abilities.”
    Mom’s father had worked Mind Games. So did his mother, my great-grandmother. Grandpa
     Bengalo had steel-gray hair smelling of chicory hanging to his belt. Bapo had lived in Hemlock and died when I was seven. When you’re little, sometimes you
     overhear things and not know what they mean. Bapo always said he couldn’t be seen with Mom, that his clan’s baro might bring him to a kris for talking to her. Kris were for only terrible offenses. Mom said it was fuddy-duddies gassed up on cigar
     smoke and wine, casting judgment and telling people what they could and couldn’t do.
     So what had she done that’d been so bad even her own father abandoned her?
    We were alone with no clan. Because of Mom. Dad never discussed his vitsa , but Mom once let it slip after too much wine that his family disowned him. What
     had they done, and why did I feel like Jonah and I were paying for it?
    Jonah’s palm rested on my shoulder, and his voice slipped over my mind. Ward wants you to meet him at Café du Chat Noir in an hour. I told him you’d be there.
    I elbowed him. Got anything else to put on my calendar while you’re at it?
    Truth was I hadn’t seen