Read Online Between the Spark and the Burn by April Genevieve Tucholke - Free Book Online Page B

dress with the clock and the cake. Wooden toys, furry from dust, cluttered the high-ceiling sitting room, lying just where they’d been left. Flowered wallpaper surrounded Victorian furniture—the stiff, high-backed chairs and sofas, the fringed lampshades, the elaborately framed mirror above the fireplace.
    We explored everything the moment we got inside. Everything but the attic, which was locked, and the cellar, which was pitch-black and full of grisly, scurrying night sounds. We’d forgotten the flashlights in the car, so the search was done in icy semi-darkness, lit only with a candle Neely found in the kitchen. The master bedroom was large and neat. A satin caramel-colored nightdress hung on a hook in the bathroom, and small, feminine glass bottles and jars were still arranged tidily in front of the mirror. Everything was stiff with cold, especially the bed cover and the curtains. I ran my hand down rigid silk and dust flew.
    The nursery. Sunshine opened the door, but none of us went in. Boy things, everywhere, shoes and toys and books and a rocking horse and . . .
    . . . And all I could think about was a small crushed boy body, tangled in leaves and shadows.
    I knew what it would have looked like. I knew, more than most.
    Neely came over to me by the fire, moka pot in hand. Yes, we’d brought the little silver espresso maker with us. He set it near the flames, and soon I heard a low, hot-water sound. The familiar dark coffee smell burst through the room, sweeping away the thick smell of dust and neglect.
    We all sipped the joe for a while, sitting on our sleeping bags in front of the fire. We wouldn’t be sleeping in the beds. No way we would be sleeping in the beds. And we wanted to all be together, anyway. Maybe nothing would happen. Maybe everything would be quiet, and we would wake to warm sunshine and spend the day questioning the town about the devil-boy and then go on our merry way.
    But I doubted it. And everyone else did too, judging by the way Luke and Sunshine had forgotten to be in love with each other, and the way Sunshine jumped at every sound, and the way Neely kept getting up to stare out the big Victorian windows into the night outside, and the way Luke never let me out of sight for more than three seconds.
    Still, despite all this, I felt bustling, energized, fired up. Even if this town scared the damn hell out of me. Even if Brodie could be out there, right now, his tall, thin body weaving between dead trees, his red hair looking black in the dark, his birds flying behind him like a damn ebony cloak.
    I pulled red logs of spicy chorizo out of the basket, and we roasted them on the fire. Oil dripped into the flames and made them hum. We had more of Neely’s coffee and four crisp apples and a wedge of nutty Dutch cheese.
    For dessert Neely gathered fresh clean snow in a glass bowl from the square kitchen. He opened a jar of maple syrup he found in the cupboard, and drizzled it on top. We all ate from the same dish, using big silver spoons, the fluffy white melting away to smooth, earthy sweetness on our tongues.
    When we were done, Luke and Sunshine washed the bowl and spoons with more clean snow, since there was no running water in the house. They dried the dishes, and put them back in the kitchen, like we lived in this damn house now.
    Luke and Sunshine fell asleep in minutes, despite Luke’s earlier protest. I drifted off in front of the fire eventually, coming in and out of consciousness, small sounds waking me with a jerk, my dreams tense and twisted. And each time I awoke . . . there was Neely. Not sleeping. Pacing. Watching.
    He woke us at midnight.
    Neely had found a radio buried in a closet upstairs when we searched the house. I hadn’t been able to bring myself to touch the woman’s dresses, so small and bright and . . . unused. So it was Neely who pushed through the clothes of the dead woman, to the back, to the shelf where