Read Online The End of the Sentence by Maria Dahvana Headley, Kat Howard - Free Book Online

and it felt wrong, until I remembered that this was what people did. They touched other people. It was normal. 
    “Sorry,” I said, embarrassed. 
    “No need,” she said. “Everybody comes from something. I figure you’ve got a history like anyone, don’t you, Malcolm Mays? I have a history too.” 
    I stood in the doorway and watched her hop into a faded red pickup truck, draping one arm out the window as she drove off. She hadn’t just appeared here. Of course she hadn’t, I reminded myself. The town was real. Lischen was real, not part of this house. I rubbed my shoulder, sore where she’d touched it, and watched the dust of her departure until she was all the way gone. 
    I looked down. My letter to Chuchonnyhoof was gone too. 
    There was silence in the house after she left. No breath, no singing, no sounds of dishes in the sink being washed. Maybe the house didn’t like visitors.
    Maybe the letter had changed things. 
    I felt at peace for a moment, standing outside the house, even having heard the sad story of Olivia. The sun was out, and there was a breeze and my house was silent. Maybe I wasn’t going to live this way forever. I’d cleared the brush away from my old life, and resisted temptations. I could stay here. I felt, however insanely, however strangely, safe. 
    The sky was clear and blue. A haze of faint black smoke curled up from the scorched property, reminding me of what had been here. If I was going to clean the house of hazards, I’d need to make sure that chimney was clear.
    The October sun hit me like a wall, but the patches of violets and mint, cool and green, had grown even further, as if they’d been planted in a different season. I walked five steps before yellow grass crackled beneath my feet. Behind the house were the blackberries she’d said were there, bushes by the door, leafed now and heavy with fruit, twisting up outside the kitchen windows, though I remembered bare vines. I put a berry in my mouth. Sour and sweet at once, the thorns on the vines scratching me as I reached for the berries, heavier than they looked, laden with black juice. 
    In the eastern corner of the scorched section, I found the hole in the ground, smoke drifting up from it. The earth felt hot. I tried again to realign what I’d thought the night before, with what Lischen had just told me. Ironhide was dead. Olivia Weyland was dead too, and in sad circumstances. The forge was below me, yes, but that meant nothing. This was a family of blacksmiths. It had said it in the newspapers, even. Something else too, some trigger to my memory, and I finally remembered. The Millers. Michael Miller was the other victim of Dusha Chuchonnyhoof. 
    I went to high school with a boy from that family. They’d been going down a long time. 
    Of course she had, though. This was a tiny town. Everyone knew everyone, except me. I knew the house, but I didn’t know who the ghosts were, feeding me, bathing me, dressing me. It occurred to me that I might miss them if they were gone. Lischen’s presence had been strange, a real person joining me in my house, even as I’d gotten accustomed to the kindness of invisible people. 
    The iron scent was strong here, strong enough to cover over the carbonized dirt, to almost obscure the sour chemical tang that lingered in the air from the poison that had been made here. I cleared the soot, chunks of wood and leaves from the top of the chimney, pushed the earth away from metal that was warm to the touch. The wind picked up, moving the heat through the air, making the sweat dry sticky and salt on my skin.
    Something shone in the dirt, and I knelt, scrabbling for the shine. 
    A hand grabbed mine. 
    I reeled back from the dirt, and it came with me, bones clutching at my fingers. It caught and ripped at my skin. I could not shake it loose. 
    Not a hand. A horseshoe. Like the one Olivia had left on the anvil’s horn, but unlike as well. Clumsy, half-formed. Fingers that were more like