The gun slipped from her fingers as she knelt and touched his face.
“Alba,” he said.
Frantic, she helped him sit up. “I’m sorry, Tadeo. My God, I didn’t know.”
She clutched his hands, which were icy cold to the touch. He coughed, blood as black as ink spilling down his chin. “You must live, Alba.”
“You also must live. Tadeo, please.”
Tadeo smiled, clutching her hand back. For a moment he was the boy with the mischievous smile she’d grown up with, who teased her and could ride the wildest of horses, and the torment of dark magic that had twisted his body and the pain of the bullets inside his chest seemed to vanish.
Then he closed his eyes and went limp. His body began to melt, slipping through her hands like hot wax. Alba tried to hold on to him but was left clutching a few black feathers and staring at a dark stain on the ground.
She wept until she could not cry any longer, all sorrow wrung out of her, leaving her drained.
1998: 10
“You look tired,” Hideosaid as soon as she stepped into his car.
Minerva snapped her seatbelt in place, opened the thermos, and sipped her coffee with a shrug. “Late-night reading.”
It was half the truth. She had been busy reading and working on the computer. But she’d also carefully carved witch marks by the windows and the doors of the house. Wood and plaster now bore the imprint of her handiwork, though the circles she’d drawn were tiny and inconspicuous. In several spots, she’d lifted a board and placed a slip of paper with the witch marks below instead of carving the wood.
In her backpack was the bird she’d skewered three days before, a talisman that now accompanied her wherever she went, although she hadn’t strayed far from the dorm. The previous afternoon she’d finally succeeded in obtaining Benjamin Hoffman’s phone number and he’d said he’d be happy to meet her in person. This meant a trip to Boston.
“Did you get in touch with health services?”
“Yep.”
She’d left a message on their voicemail, knowing they wouldn’t get back to her until September, and the message had been vague anyway. A request to speak to the counselor when they had thetime; it wasn’t urgent. But Hideo didn’t need to know those details.
“The guy you’re going to visit, he knew Beatrice Tremblay?”
“He knew her very well. They were friends since they were about our age.”
“That’s a great find, then. Your thesis should be in pretty good shape with all the info you have from Carolyn Yates and now this guy.”
“I’m getting closer to something.”
“Be careful, okay? You were kind of weird the other night.”
“It’s steam building up. It’ll be fine as long as I let it out, and I think I’ve figured out how to do that.”
He parked the car by the train depot and turned to her. “Are you sure?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Okay. But we’re going to Patricia’s place tomorrow, don’t forget. It’ll give you a chance to let out some of that steam.”
She sighed. “I’ll go with you, sure.”
“What time are you heading back into town?”
“I haven’t figured it out. Maybe I’ll walk back to campus.”
“Okay. Dinner, then? You can save me from spending the rest of the day working on my bibliography.”
“You cooking?”
