A Murder of Magpies by Sarah Bromley Page A

Ward since the night he stayed, though we’d talked. He’d been
     too tired to talk much, but even his voice over the phone had brought a welcome hush.
     Still, my body hummed with electricity.
    Try not to knock out the lights , Jonah wisecracked and sat beside me.
    If it happens, I’ll use your old standby: just a power surge.
    He put his arm around me. The currents coming off him were relaxed. He tucked my scrapbook
     under his arm and gathered my supplies. Sister Tremblay called.
    What’d she want? I wondered.
    Dati took the call, but I’m keeping my eye on her. We’re golden, all right? Don’t worry.
    Sister Tremblay stopped by Fire Sales twice. Each time, Dad leaned back and played
     with his glasses. Uneasiness swelled around him even if he didn’t say anything. I
     felt it. They spoke in whispers, and Dad was too good at blocking Jonah and me from
     his head.
    I touched Jonah’s arm. Mind what you say to that woman. And especially mind what you do.
    He mimicked my concerned face, the bunched forehead and penetrating stare, and snickered.
     “Vayda girl, come on. I’m not dense.”
    “No Mind Games around her. Period.”
    “If the lady of the manor insists.”
    Did he really think his Mind Games were immune from detection? I liked Black Orchard.
     I liked the conifers and isolated roads. I even liked the cold. All it took was the
     wrong person to spot him opening a door or retrieving a pencil with his mind, and
     we’d be gone.
    “By the way, I’m hooking up with Chloe while you’re away,” Jonah announced. “Give
     me a signal when you’re coming home so I can scoot her out of here.”
    “So are you two are really back together or fooling around? If you’re messing with
     her head to make her be with you…”
    “You gonna throw stones?” The sunset warmed his skin with its dying rays, but his
     eyes remained black. “I didn’t think so. I helped Chloe. That girl was so wound up
     in doing what everybody else wanted that she was miserable. Is it that hard to believe
     she’s happier forgetting about them?”
    “It’s not who Chloe is.”
    “I haven’t forced her into doing anything. She hasn’t been hurt. Actually, she has
     a damn good time with me, the way she used to. You really think what I’m doing is
     wrong?”
    I wrapped my arms around myself while Jonah descended the steps and strolled past
     the barn to the woods, heading out for a walk. The boy was trifling with something
     he shouldn’t, something twisted and, yes, wrong. All that energy he pushed onto others,
     some of it had to come back.
     
    ***
     
    As I entered Café du Chat Noir, I snuck up on the table where Ward was lost in the
     beat from his headphones, his left hand working in a sketchpad. I drummed on the table,
     and he yanked off his headphones. Before either of us spoke, his arms wound around
     me, and my body snuggled close despite the shocks bursting between us.
    “It’s good seeing you,” he said after a waitress came by to take my order.
    “I missed you, too.”
    As the waitress set down his coffee and my hot tea, Ward handed me an iPod along with
     a makeshift booklet. The tracks he’d loaded on the iPod were an indie hodgepodge,
     and ink and pencil sketches filled the booklet. My house. Me from behind in the woods
     with wind tugging at a long, black skirt. Him sitting on stairs. Stacks of Tennessee
     Williams’s work. Bernadette.
    “Magpie’s Mix,” I read aloud. “What’s this?”
    “Some songs you can’t live without,” Ward said. “I thought about calling it ‘A Flock
     of Magpies’ or something like that, but I don’t know what the name for a group of
     magpies is.”
    “It’s called a murder.” My fingers running over the booklet, I beamed. “This is incredible, gadjo .”
    He sipped his coffee. The currents from him whizzed through my hands. With his stormy
     eyes and skewed smile, he was distinctly Ward. Except for the clinks of the baristas
     washing coffee mugs and