“And until then?”
“Until then, I don’t know. Maybe Charlene will come up with something.”
“And the birdheads? What if they leave? What if themurdererleaves?”
“If anyone attempts to leave the island, they will find the ferry to be quite nonoperational,” she said quietly.
So my mother had broken the ferry and trapped us all on the island with a bird murderer. Probably not the route I would have taken, but I didn’t exactly have anything to contribute, at least not in the way of magic. I had no choicebut to wait until the moon was good again, to see what else my mother had up her sleeve, to hope it would be enough to figure out who had killed Annabella—andwhy.
That was the most frustrating part; I couldn’t begin to imagine what sort of motive they might have. And what if itwasan islander who had done it? Did that make things better or worse? Worse, undoubtedly, because that meant that someone I’d known my whole life had an evil in them that I had never even noticed. My brain cycled through islanders’ faces. I wasn’t even hungry anymore; I left the pancakes on the counter and took my coffee out to the front porch. Everything on the porch should have been soaking wet with the downpour, but the cushions were warm and dry. My mother’s doing, no doubt. And I had a feeling she’d done something to the coffee, as well, because the warmth it provided spread quickly through my body and left me with a feeling just shy of utter relaxation. I bet she’d slipped in a little valerian root, a sprinkle of chamomile, a few muttered, quiet words; just enough to calm down the birdheads who would otherwise surely be beside themselves right now.
If I’d had any bit of real magic of my own, I’d summon up whoever’d killed Annabella and...
But I didn’t.
So it was pointless to consider.
I was almost finished with the coffee when Peter showed up. I hadn’t seen him since the funeral, and there wassomething about him now, some straightness to his back, a somber way he walked. Annabella’s death was affecting all of us differently, I knew. It was like we were all strangers now.
“Hi, Peter,” I said.
“Hi, Georgie,” he said.
“She’s asleep.”
“Good. She needs her rest.” He swung a wicker end table over with one hand and sat down.
“Are you doing okay?” I asked.
“I don’t know how I’m doing,” Peter said honestly. “The whole thing...” He shook his head, wrung his hands together. “I just wish I could do something to help.”
“We’ll find whoever did this,” I assured him. “The truth will out.”
“Tell her I stopped by? I was supposed to do some work in the gardens today, but...” He motioned at the rain. “I just want her to know I’m around. If she needs me.”
“Of course.” Though I couldn’t imagine my sister ever needing Peter.
Peter left, replaced quickly by Henrietta Lee, her thick glasses askew on her face, who moved so soundlessly that I didn’t notice her until she had sat herself in the chair next to me.
“Geez, Henrietta!”
“I’m sorry, Georgina. I thought I’d get some air.”
Henrietta was a tall, thin woman, a reed of a woman.She’d celebrated her seventieth birthday last year, and Aggie had made her a cake in the shape of an airplane, for her late husband, who’d been a pilot. She was quiet, gray-haired, aloof. She generally stayed to herself, and I don’t think she needed much sleep anymore; I’d caught her in the living room at three in the morning, reading books about ornithological case studies in the near dark. Whenever I tried to turn on a light for her, she’d said there was no need: she knew the books by heart.
“Then why hold them at all?” I’d ask.
“They’re a comfort. Plus, it’d be a little weird sitting alone in the dark without a book.”
I tried to imagine Henrietta killing Annabella, but the image felt immediately wrong to me. I had seen Henrietta scoop spiders into the palm of her hand and walk them outside to the grass to live another day. I had seen Henrietta cry buckets of silent tears at the end of every summer when Annabella’s eggs refused, yet again, to hatch. There was no way on this green earth that Henrietta had anything to do with Annabella’s death. It just wasn’t possible.
“Strange weather we’re having,” she said, looking out over Bottle Hill. “It’s like the island itself is in mourning. Feels a little...” She trailed off and looked at me out of the corner of her eye.
I could fill in the blank.
Feels a little spooky.
Feels a little magicky.
