shadows of the room moved.
“Look out!” Thomas cried, and they both jumped back before
realizing they were seeing a reflection of themselves.
Trying to calm his racing heart, Arthur stepped forward and
stared into the mirror.
“Come see this,” he whispered. Thomas stood next to him and
his brow furrowed. Another mirror was placed on the wall directly
opposite so the two reflected each other. Now that they stood
between them, it created an eternity of Thomas and Arthur in a
dark flickering tunnel. The candle leeched the color from their
faces so their features were all contrast — pale cheekbones and
lips, dark holes for eyes. After the second image repetition, the
details were hazy enough that the boys could have been each other
or no one at all.
“Looks a bit like my vision of hell,” Thomas whispered.
“At least there’s good company.” Arthur’s reflection gave a
ghost of a smile, and Thomas’s met it.
“What’s that?” Thomas leaned forward, touching a pendant
hanging from the top of the mirror. “A bug?”
Arthur grabbed Thomas’s hand, surprising the other boy into
dropping the candle, which sputtered out. The walls of books
leaned in, leering, and the old familiar breathless terror Arthur
hadn’t felt since his mother had died now twitched through his
muscles, begging him to run, run, run into the night, find a new
town, find a new life, find a new place to hide.
He had seen a necklace like that before. The green beetle fig-
ure at the end of the chain was featured in every portrait his father
collected, was scribbled in the endless, illegible notes Arthur had
flipped through as a child, was even engraved on an ancient book
his mother had used to prop up their kitchen table.
His father had been clutching a necklace just like it the last
time they’d ever seen him.
Seeing the necklace here ended all his nights trying to tell
himself that his father had been crazy, had poisoned his mother’s
mind, had merely abandoned them instead of meeting a horrible
fate. The green beetle meant that whatever dark secrets his father
had chased and been consumed by . . .
They were real.
“Arthur!” Thomas hissed.
“This is a bad place,” Arthur said. The initial shock of dread
had settled into its old home in his bones now. The necklace wasn’t
meant for him. He was never meant to see it. Unlike his father, he
wouldn’t chase any of this. If they got out now, without being
caught, then maybe he wouldn’t have to run.
A soft creaking, the step of a light foot on the floor above
them, had the same effect as a gunshot. Thomas and Arthur ran
from the room just as they heard Cora scream outside.
Thomas was through the door first and down the porch steps
in a single leap. Arthur thought he’d keep going, but without
pausing, Thomas scooped Cora up from where she had fainted to
the ground, throwing her over his shoulder and continuing his
mad race into the night.
Arthur flew like their shadow down the hill, silent companion
to Thomas’s crashing footfalls. When they reached the bottom,
Thomas kept going, never looking back.
Arthur wanted to do the same, more than anything. He
wanted to fly and keep flying, to melt into the trees and disappear.
He wanted to never have seen that beetle, the one his mother,
weeping, sometimes drew on the skin over his heart, whispering
about protection. He stopped instead, and turned back toward the
house.
There, on the second floor, a silhouette marked their retreat.
As he watched, a dark hand raised and pressed itself against the
glass.
They had been seen.
New Orleans
Mardi Gras Parade &
Aftermath
March 4, 1924
eight
F
OUR DAYS LATER, THOM HAD YET TO FIGUERE OUT WHAT HE
HAD SEEN THAT NIGHT. The excitement had taken a toll on
Charles’s fragile health, and Thom had stayed indoors to
take care of him, despite the ministrations of all the women about.
Arthur remained elusive, and Cora never wanted to talk — since
she had woken up in his arms on that long walk home, she couldn’t
so much as look at him without blushing. He had to admit he felt
oddly exposed, too. For all the girls he’d danced with and kissed
in dark corners, there was something intimate about being there
the moment Cora had awakened after so much fright.
Minnie was no help with the puzzle of what spooked Arthur
so badly. She knew as little as Charles.
Charles, of course, was not pleased with knowing so little. It
messed with the way he organized the world. He had to figure out
how things worked, trace the patterns and connections. He did
not do well with mysteries, and Thom was worried that it was too
much strain on a fevered brain.
“What about Houdini?” Charles said, lying on his stomach on
his narrow bed, arm draped over the side to trace the wood grains
in the floor.
“What about him?” Thom leaned his forehead against the
window, his mind on the woefully out-of-tune piano downstairs.
In New York they had a man, blind but with a perfect ear, who
came round to tune their piano once a month. He’d asked Mrs.
Johnson, but no one in town knew how. Maybe he could figure it
out. Without music, everything felt so real, so airless.
“You remember what Houdini did when we saw him! If he can
break out of chains, surely this Mary woman could have faked her
own death. What if she used a harness!”
Thom raised a dark eyebrow. “Did it look like she had much
room for a harness beneath what she was wearing?”
Charles blushed. “Well, but something like that.”
“And she put on the show knowing we’d be there at that
exact time?”
“I don’t know! What else makes sense?”
Thom’s fingers sighed into a sonata against the rippled glass.
“Arthur knows something. I wish he’d quit disappearing.”
“You could always follow him up the side of the house in the
middle of the night.” Charles looked smug at his brother’s sur-
prised expression. “There are benefits to being a light sleeper, and
sharing a room with your dreadful snoring. I’ve seen him, every
night this week, scaling the wall straight up.”
“Where is he going?” Thom briefly had an image of Arthur
sneaking into Cora’s room. It filled him with a flare of jealousy . . .
but certainly Cora didn’t seem the type to entertain those kinds of
affections. Especially not if Arthur were related to them, though
Thom couldn’t see any resemblance, and the story Charles had got-
ten from Minnie was entirely speculation on her part.
“He stays up on the roof, I think. Comes back down around
dawn. Our housemate is a very odd sort of fellow.”
“Indeed.”
“Your fingers are driving me insane. Go play the piano. Oh!
Better yet, go and
find me some fresh fruit. Mrs. Johnson’s pre-
serves are so sticky sweet they give me a headache. I promise to nap
like a good invalid while you’re gone, and then I promise to feel so
well we can finally get out of this blasted room.”
“Deal.” Mussing his brother’s hair as he walked by, Thom
tightened his tie and took the stairs two at a time. He passed no
one on his way out, and was soon in the middle of the main street
of the town. Overpriced stalls to tempt summer vacationers were
placed outside along the walkways. Doubtless there was a way to
buy things for less money, but he didn’t care. If he had to pay twice
what the fruit was worth, he’d do so happily both for his brother
and for being outside.
“And would you like a basket to carry everything in?” The
woman, mid-thirties but pretty in a solid, healthy way, leaned for-
ward. “It’ll look so much nicer.”
Laughing at being conned by a small-town woman, Thom
went along with it. “Well, of course. Can’t have fruit without the
basket.” Beaming triumphantly, the woman loaded the basket
with apples in the bottom and strawberries on top. The strawber-
ries looked a bit anemic — still not the best time for them — but
they’d do just fine. And he could give the basket to Mrs. Johnson
as a gift. Charles was always telling him to pay more attention to
details when it came to women.
Something in the low, cheerful hum of sidewalk noise trig-
gered an instant unease, making his stomach tighten. Looking up
sharply, Thom handed his money to the woman and tried to iden-
tify what was bothering him.
He couldn’t see anything amiss and tried to shrug the sensa-
tion away. Biting into an apple, he walked slowly along, glancing
through store windows to see if anything else might make Charles
happy. He saw some ribbons that reminded him of the ones
Minnie used to hold her hair back, and wondered if it would be
too forward to buy some for the sisters.
He felt guilty for his role in that night, and what a toll it
had taken on everyone. Some ribbons might be just the thing. . . .
As he opened the door, a jingling bell matched the tone of
voice of a woman talking. “. . . just this week. Yes, the cottage on
the bay. Very lovely. And you can deliver?”
The instinct to hide was sudden and overpowering. Thom
ducked behind shelves displaying cookware, trying to place the
voice and figure out why it affected him so.
“Of course!” the shop worker answered, his young voice
stretched and cracked by recent growth. “Anything you need. If
we don’t carry it, I’ll get it somewhere else.”
“There’s a good boy,” the woman said, and everything snapped
into place. He knew her voice. She was the woman who had scared
his father.
What was she doing here?
His father had sent them here the day after talking with her.
And for her to be here, too? The world was not such a small place
for something like this to be coincidence.
Squaring his shoulders and standing straight, Thom came
around the corner as casually as he could. He’d see who she was
without her noticing him. Looking up from a set of china, Thom
found himself facing her.
She smiled, full red lips not showing her teeth. Her hair was
dark and pinned back beneath an elegant hat. She stood nearly as
tall as him, but there was something in her bearing and the way
she held eye contact that made him feel smaller.
“Hello,” she said, amusement pulling the corners of her
mouth. “Shopping?”
“I — no, I — well, yes,” Thom stuttered.
She took an apple from his basket, tucking it into her bag.
“Pick out something nice for your brother,” she said, teeth finally
showing.
Thom watched, speechless, as she swept out of the shop
and away.
New Orleans, Dusk
March 4, 1924
nine
C
HARLES SAT NEXT TO THOM, ON THE BANKS OF A STREAM
HIDDEN BEHIND THE TOWN IN A TALL COPSE OF TREES. It
was a cold clear singing dream of a creek, and he did not
miss New York a bit. Cora and Minnie were here, they were his for
the summer, and he took that gift very seriously.
As Minnie finished her dramatic reading of The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner, Cora triumphantly pulled Charles’s straw boat-
ing hat from the large picnic basket she had packed this morning.
“Here you are! I had a feeling you’d be wanting it.”
He took it with a grateful exclamation, and Cora didn’t see the
secret sly happiness to his thanks. Thom had everything wrong.
He’d tried to tiptoe around Cora after that horribly wonderful
night with the witch, but what a girl like her required was to be
needed. In the six days since that incident, Charles had made a
game of forgetting things, or requesting things, or otherwise being
ridiculous. Cora was far more cheerful when she thought she was
being useful.
Minnie was harder than Cora, which was why Charles liked
her more. He’d think he had her figured out, only to lose her
attention to a far-off gaze or a discontented sigh.
ways to fix them. He’d been invaluable to his father last year,
before he got sick, knowing he’d take over the business and spare
Thom the agony of a trade his mind was incompatible with. Ah,
sad fates! If only Charles could find a way around this truncation
of his own future.
No matter. All machines wore out with time, and the human
body was no different. In the meantime, he’d figure out how to
spin dreamy Minnie closer to him. He was determined to have a
kiss from her before too long.
Charles lay back on the picnic blanket, crossing his hands
behind his head to stare up at the blue sky fighting through the
lacework of branches. He was quite satisfied with the elements of
this summer and how they were working together. And when he
got melancholy, the ocean was constant and endless enough to
swallow up any notions of human significance.
The only disappointment was his mystery, Arthur. Charles
had been primed for more adventure, but Arthur denied them.
Right now he slept, propped up in the concave curve of a large tree
trunk, cradled by the roots so that he looked like something out of
one of Minnie’s fairy stories.
“Does he ever do anything but nap?” Charles wondered aloud.
He had hoped Arthur would be dark and brooding like the anti-
hero of Wuthering Heights, which he was reading at Minnie’s
insistence. But other than the odd bantering joke with Minnie or
Cora, he was silent and forgettable.
Cora’s eyes clouded with worry. “I think he must be ill.”
“Or cursed!” Minnie watched Arthur, an unreadable play of
emotions flitting across her features. “We did spy on a witch, after
all. Maybe she’s stealing his life away, bit by bit, to cheat death and
sneak
back into the world!”
Cora looked up sharply, surprising Charles. She usually dis-
missed Minnie’s stories, but this one seemed to spook her.
“Or maybe he climbs on top of the roof and sits up there all
night, every night,” Thom said, raising an eyebrow (another rea-
son Charles was sure to catch a kiss before him, as smiles sang to
other lips in a way annoyed eyebrows never could).
“You’ve seen him?” Minnie glared at Thom, then at Arthur.
Secrets! A sense of triumph flooded Charles as he found the key to
Minnie. He’d go out of his way to tell her things he had never told
anyone, wrap her in confidences until she was his. Doubtless
before long he would run out of honest secrets and have to start
inventing them, but when it came to Minnie, he didn’t think she
would mind.
“He’s been up there every night since we went out. Question
is, why?”
“None of your concern,” Arthur said, startling everyone. He
hadn’t so much as twitched in an hour, and his eyes were still
closed.
Cora abandoned the basket and walked over to kneel next to
him. Her hand flitted over his forehead, not quite touching him,
then went to her skirt pocket. “Are you having trouble sleeping?”
Arthur cracked open one eye and smiled at her. “Usually.”
“Why the roof, though?” Thom asked.
“Why not?”
Minnie stood with a scowl, brushing away the leaves and dirt
clinging to her skirt. She had refused to sit on the blanket, making
tiny homes for fairies out of rocks and leaves instead. “The top of
the roof? And you haven’t invited me?”
“That’s not safe,” Cora said.
“But it’s safe for Arthur?”
“What Arthur does is his business.”
“But what I do is yours?”
“Strawberries!” Charles said, standing.
Minnie’s scowl melted in confusion. “Strawberries?”
“Do you think they’ll have any today? It’s Market Day down
by the pier, isn’t it? I’d love some strawberries.”
“Don’t be silly,” Cora answered, standing to fold the blanket
and tuck it into the basket. “Market Day is overpriced nonsense