Dear Esme,
I accept this mission, and I will get back to you with intel as soon as I can.
Sincerely,
Jack
Jack didn’t particularly want to play secret agent on Esme’s behalf, but he didn’t see that he had a choice. He was, after all, emailing her while sprawled out next to her mother’s pool waiting for crows to visit him. He also didn’t want to come off as a person who was “tight” with Blair Kellermoon, but he didn’t have any control over how others perceived him.
He closed the computer and his eyes. He’d just rest for a moment. He’d been making good on his vow to work at night, and he was feeling, for the first time since he’d gotten here, like he might actually pull off this book.
And yes, he thought maybe if he closed his eyes, acted like he wasn’t paying attention, the crows would come. If Morticia and Edward were anything to go by, he was good at attracting animals with his indifference.
The catch here, though, was that hewasn’tindifferent. For some damn reason, he was preoccupied with these crows.
Well, not “for some damn reason.” He was preoccupied with them because there had been a big black bird in that vision, that flash, he’d had when Blair invited him to LA.
He’d been leaving food out every day and watching the crows eat it from inside. Every time he tried to do so from outside, they held themselves aloof. They would only eat when he retreated. He had done some research and had replaced the granola withhealthier-for-crows and cheaper-for-humans unsalted peanuts, because apparently he had become the kind of person who cared about the health of a bunch of wild birds he was trying to make friends with.
His LA-ification was coming along nicely.
Today he’d thought he’d try his luck waiting for them outside—but prone. Stretched out on a lounge chair. With his eyes closed. Because he was trying to make a bunch of wild crows believe he didn’t care about them.
It worked.
Oh my God, it worked.He heard them first, and for a long moment he stayed perfectly still, kept his eyes closed. But he was alive inside, his blood beating a path through his veins, a bubble of something he very much feared was joy—though why would he fear joy? He resolved to examine the question later—rising through his chest.
When he finally dared open his eyes, the birds went still. He couldn’t say they were looking at him, exactly, but they were aware of his presence, his attention. After a few moments in which he feared they would be able to hear, and be spooked by, his heart thudding in his chest, they resumed eating, and in less than a minute they were off, rising into the sky, a flurry of black cawing.
It was perhaps the greatest thing that had ever happened to him.
The next day when he went outside to fill the bowl, he found the metal tab from a pop can inside it. He wouldn’t have thought anything of it, would have assumed it was random litter, had Blair not told him that crows sometimes brought trinkets. He took it and filled the bowl with peanuts.
The next day, there was an earring in the bowl. It was ugly costume jewelry, a dangly tarnished silver drop hanging from a dirty pink stone, and he was utterly, unbecomingly thrilled. He picked it up and poured some peanuts in the bowl.
“What are you doing?”
Shit.“You’re home early.”
She said nothing, probably because his observation was obvious enough she had decided not to dignify it with a reply.
“To answer your question, I’m feeding the crows.” He paused. “I hope that’s OK.”
She dropped her towel. She was wearing a black one-piece bathing suit that made her legs look unreasonably long, given her short stature. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
He shook his head. “Sorry, what?”
“Why wouldn’t it be OK that you’re feeding the crows?”
“Well, eventually I’ll have to leave, and you’ll inherit a crow army.”
She shrugged. “You never know, a crow army might end up coming in handy.”
She dived into the pool without another word and started her laps, and honestly, he wished she would stop doing that.
But, of course, it was her house. Her pool.
She swam for twenty minutes. He tried to keep writing, to turn her laps into background noise. It wasn’t that she was making a racket. All he could hear was the sluicing of flesh through water and small splashes when she made her neat turns, somersaulting and pushing off the pool wall.
