Thorn Jack (2 page)

As the goat trotted up the steps, onto the veranda, and vanished around a corner, Finn sized up the house, intrigued.

A boy around her age came out, looked around. He yelled something that sounded like “Daphne,” and, when he saw Finn, he tilted his head. “Hello.”

“Is Daphne a goat? She went that way.” Finn pointed.

“She chews through the leash.” The boy sat on the stairs. He wore skater jeans and a long-sleeved black shirt. Autumn red hair was tousled around a face that seemed feral and innocent.

“It smells like something's burning.” She waded toward him through the leaves.

“It always does. Fireplaces.” His tilted eyes were the color of mahogany.

“Your house is interesting.”

“Girls tell me that all the time.” He smiled with idle charm.

Oh,
Finn thought,
he's one of those.

“It's falling apart though.” He folded his hands between his knees. “The roof leaks and squirrels've gotten at the wood.”

She jumped when she heard a crash from inside. The boy shrugged. “Six brothers, and I'm not the oldest.”

“I'm sorry. I'm Finn. I live over there. I mean, we've just moved here.”

“I'm Christie. Christie Hart.” He looked mournfully back at the house. “I live here. So . . . how do you like Rose Sullivan's place?”

“It's interesting.” Finn's mouth curved. Her smiles were always an effort, but it seemed easier this time. “She was my grandmother.”

“D'you have any brothers or sisters?”

The autumn beauty of the world suddenly faded.
Not anymore.
“No.”

He sensed something. He pushed to his feet, his face serious. “I'll walk you home.”

“No. Show me the woods.” She wanted to know her surroundings, to conquer the uneasiness so many trees caused.

“There's not much to see . . . but I'll show you.”

As they ambled toward a clot of trees, Finn said, to begin a conversation, “So you have how many brothers?”

Christie talked about his brothers as if they were some outlaw clan from a Clint Eastwood western. As he led her down a trail thick with blackberry bushes, their wine-sweet smell heavy in the air, she spotted a tree hung with ribbons, tiny dolls, and bells. She pushed toward it, fascinated. “What is it?”

“It's a hawthorn, a luck tree.” He circled it. “People bring charms and hang them. It's called the Queen's tree because Queen Elizabeth—the virgin with the red hair—came here on a secret voyage when she was young and slept beneath this tree.”

“That can't be true.”

He grinned. “When she was older, she sent Francis Drake, her sea captain, to build a chapel here in her honor. The chapel's through there, but it's just a shell now.”

Finn disapproved of this mucking about with history.

“Behind that is Soldier's Gate Cemetery and the warehouse district. Anyway, kids hang stuff here to get money or a hot date or a Porsche.”

“Superstitions are useless and fairy tales are lies,” Finn remarked as she touched a silver bell on the tree; the other bells chimed as if the wind was trying to make a song. The hair on the back of her neck prickled. She thought she saw, through the trees, a light. “Is that Drake's Chapel?”

“I see you're an adventurous sort of girl.” His smile was crooked. “This way, Finn.”

She followed him through weeds to a small ruin, its door gone, its interior dark, the last of the sun reflecting from a pane of glass within. The stone floor was covered with leaves. The broken altar held, creepily enough, a pink cake with mold grown over one side, as if someone had abandoned a birthday party months ago. The air reeked of rotten wood and wet stone, a graveyard smell.

“That's not something I've seen before . . .” He leaned in the doorway but didn't step into the chapel. “Who d'you think left it?”

“Maybe it's an offering.”

“To the birthday gods?” Looking down, Christie said, “Look at all this clover. Maybe there's a four-leafed one here.” He bent toward a patch of tart-smelling greenery as Finn set one foot over the chapel's threshold.

A wave of dizziness struck her, the kind she'd only felt after stepping off a particularly petrifying roller coaster. She clutched at the door frame as the air began to buzz—

“Finn?” Christie's sharp tone ended the weird noise, which he apparently hadn't heard. He looked uneasily into the chapel. “I think we should go.”

“Okay.” She backed away with him. The sense of having breached a place of otherworldly privacy made her shiver. They turned and walked back down the path. Finn didn't look back, afraid of what she might see.

“So,” Christie said, “you going to school? And be aware that it affects your social standing here, whether you choose St. John's U. or HallowHeart.”

She wasn't sure if he was being serious or not. She guessed he wasn't. “My da's working at St. John's, so I'm going to HallowHeart because I don't want him witnessing my awkward attempts at socialization. And it had more artsy courses.”

He nodded and said, “That's where I'm going . . . you probably won't like it.”

“Um . . . why not?”

“Well, not to put you off or anything—”

“You've already put me off.”

“It's kind of cultish.”

“Cultish?”

“Like old school, and I don't just mean that in a slangy way—like everybody who goes there had ancestors who went there in colonial times or whatever.”

Finn considered this. “That seems interesting though. My mom and da went to HallowHeart and they're not Fair Hollow descendants.”

“What will your dad be teaching at St. John's?”

“Mythology and folklore.”

“Like Indiana Jones.”

“I think he taught archaeology.”

“Same thing. Where did you move from?”

“San Francisco.”

“You definitely won't like HallowHeart then.”

“Gee, way to make a girl feel enthusiastic.”

“I always tell the truth, Finn.”

FINN'S FATHER HAD ORDERED PIZZA
for dinner, and they sat on the parlor floor surrounded by boxes as they ate. Her da had turned on the stereo. Tom Petty echoed through the old house, which was nothing like their town house in the Richmond District. Gran's house was too big. Finn tried not to think of what it would be like if she was ever here alone at night.

Her father poured more iced tea into their glasses—he made the best iced tea, with lots of lemon and sugar. “Where'd you wander off to while I was setting up the TV?”

“I met one of our neighbors . . . Christie.”

“A boy?”

She rolled her eyes and said, “Don't look so concerned.”

“As long as he's not a ruffian.”

“
Ruffian,
Da? Really? Can you use
modern
language?”

“Thug, then. He's not a thug?”

“Never mind. Did you know there's a whole legend here about Queen Elizabeth and Francis Drake having come for a visit?”

“I'd forgotten that. Spooky Drake's Chapel.”

“Yeah.” She narrowed her eyes at him.

“Well, it's all bullsh—nonsense.”

“Yeah.” And she wondered if it really was.

AS HER FATHER NAPPED ON
the sofa with a local newspaper draped over his chest, Finn attacked the boxes in the dining room, her shadow fluttering over the forest-green walls as she lifted things and set them on the table. She approached another box, opened it, and withdrew a bunch of battered paperbacks. When she saw Judy Blume, Stephen King, and a few romance novels, she realized with a sinking feeling that it contained her sister's belongings—
that
packing up had been done quickly, like cleaning up after a murder.

She turned away from the box. The Tom Petty CD had ended, and the only sounds were the ticking of the grandfather clock and the tinkle of wind chimes on a neighbor's porch. Finn switched off all the lights except for the ones in the front living room and trudged up the stairs, navigating the way to her chosen space.

The tower room looked different at night, desolate and alien, scattered with boxes and the furniture from her smaller room in San Francisco. She slouched in a red plush chair and gloomily considered the mess. The Cheshire Cat clock she'd hung on the wall indicated it was past midnight, but she couldn't sleep because her heart was racing from all the iced tea she'd had.

She curled up, knees beneath her chin, arms around her legs, and gazed at the glass doors leading to the terrace. She hadn't really thought about those doors until now, with the night behind them, peering in.

W
hat did you do at school today?” Lily Rose sat beside Finn. There were roses in her hair, and she wore a black gown with ribboned sleeves. Her irises seemed too vivid, a lupine blue.

“I'm going to college now, Lily.”

“What's the name of the college?”

“I don't remember.”

“It is called HallowHeart. It's a very different sort of college. Fair Hollow is a different sort of town. And he is not a gentleman.”

Finn turned her head. “What—”

Finn woke to find her room filled with unfamiliar shadows; rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she viewed the picture on the wall opposite her bed, a Leonor Fini print of a red-haired girl peering from a garden of goblets. She thought of her mother, who'd loved the print, and a wistful desire to speak with her made her restless. She untangled herself from the sheets, moved to the terrace doors, and peered out. She wasn't used to leaves crackling past her window, flurrying over the streetlights, making shadows across the walls. The town house in San Francisco had been surrounded by city noises and electricity, a current of safety, not silence and darkness.

She opened the glass doors and stepped onto the terrace to watch clouds drift across the moon. It was mostly woods in back, and, beyond that, Christie Hart's house. Fireflies danced beneath the trees in the darkest part. As more lights swarmed—they seemed to be
big
lightning bugs—she leaned on the railing and felt her throat close up as she remembered how real her sister had been in the dream. She could never tell her father about her recent dreams of Lily Rose, because she didn't want anyone to think she was crazy or grieving unnaturally. The loss of her mom had been immediate, a sharp amputation cushioned by a child's magical thinking. Finn, ten at the time, had pictured her mother in heaven, walking among the clouds.

Lily's death had been deliberate, an ugly severing that had left scars, and Finn knew, now, that her mother's end, like Lily's, had been one of blood and pain and shattered glass, followed by an awful silence that meant a familiar voice would never be heard again.

She stood in the night and listened to the silence.

 

C
HAPTER
T
WO

It was mirk, mirk night and there was no stern light

And they waded through red blood to the knee:

For all the blood that's shed on earth

Runs through the springs of that country.

—
T
AM
L
IN

Human blood makes them matter. They have gone through rivers of it, to see, breathe, hear, taste, become.

—
F
ROM THE JOURNAL
OF
L
ILY
R
OSE

M
onday arrived too soon for Finn.

HallowHeart was only three blocks away, so she decided to walk and stall her arrival in yet another new place. Beneath her coat, her legs itched in the new tights, and the collar of the plaid dress she'd chosen rubbed against her neck. The discomfort was not a good omen.

As she rounded a corner onto Birch Street, she gripped the straps of her backpack and looked apprehensively at a massive old building veiled in Emory, its doors framed by an arch carved into leaves and faces, a stained-glass window above them. The other windows came to Gothic points, reminding her of a cathedral. Small gargoyles with the faces of people were hidden in the Emory. The hall, called Armitrage, was one in a collection of buildings that looked as though they'd been imported from old-world Europe. Students were milling around and she felt a swift panic—she wasn't sure where to go for registration because she'd misplaced the map.

The wide stair of Armitrage was scattered with more students, and as she approached she saw Christie Hart crouched on the bottom step, his dark red hair sticking out in tufts from beneath a woolen hat. He had an open book in his lap—Ovid's
Metamorphoses
—and an unlit cigarette in one hand. As she approached, she looked inquiringly at the cigarette. He said, “I don't light it.”

“It's an oral fixation.” A pretty girl in a black turtleneck, kilt, and purple Doc Martens sat down beside Christie. Her inky hair was wound into two braids, her blue eyes drowned in dark kohl.

“Finn, Sylvie. Sylvie, Finn.” Christie rose and gestured grandly toward the entrance. “Finn, welcome to our world.”

CHRISTIE, WHO HAD BEEN ON
campus before because two of his brothers had gone to HallowHeart, led Finn and Sylvie through the crowds of new and returning students. There were sign-ups for clubs, but no fraternities or sororities. Most of the new students, clutching neon-bright papers being handed out by several volunteers, were filing into the sleek glass building that Christie told them was the Arts Center. The only new building on a campus of archaic architecture, the Arts Center housed the cafeteria and the studios for the Fine Arts. Inside, the walls were covered with murals of art nouveau gods and goddesses. Most of the required classes and the ones Finn had chosen were available. Having no direction yet as to where she wanted life to take her, she'd selected fine arts as her major.

When she found Christie and Sylvie again, Christie looked disdainful and Sylvie, content. As they moved away from the bustling lines, Christie said, “Philosophy's still being taught by Grauman—my brother hated him. I missed out on Gothic Lit with Fairchild.”

“Oh. I got that.” Finn glanced apologetically at him.

“Well, at least it went to someone who'll appreciate it. And I did get Scandals in Biblical History.”

“Is that even real?” Finn peered at Christie's neon-pink sheet and frowned down at her own. “Oh, it is.”

“I passed on Interpretive Dance and went for the Mask in Theater. My weird one,” Sylvie looked down at her marked-up paper, “is the Study of Symbols in Body Art in Modern Culture.”

“Tattoos?” Christie looked at her disapprovingly. “You're studying tattoos?”

“And why do you need Intro to Women's Studies or that scandalous Bible business? Typical candy-ass honor student courses.”

“I'll have you know those classes will give me a greater understanding of the human race.” He turned to survey the campus beyond the glass walls. “Who wants to sign up for some extracurricular fun? I see someone walking around dressed like a Renaissance fair refugee—that'll be your tribe, Sylv.”

She made a face. “Hah.” She turned to Finn. “Wanna look for something we can join together? Without him?”

Finn caught her bottom lip between her teeth. “I've kinda got . . . stuff . . . to do. Maybe later.”

“You're missing out,” Christie solemnly declared, “on a myriad of delightful opportunities.”

HALLOWHEART FELT LIKE AN ODD
antique. With the exception of the Arts Center, the buildings—Origen, Laurel, Hudson, Armitrage, and McKinley—looked ancient. The two spookiest buildings, located in a grove of willow trees, were Lythewood and Shepherd Hall, the dorms. Wooden faces sprouted wooden leaves in the corners of classrooms and lecture halls. Banister railings were shaped into mermaids, and tables and chairs had the curling feet of animals. The stained-glass window above the entrance depicted a raven-haired girl holding a blood-red apple, while the post of the interior stair was a pewter goddess raising the moon. Everything seemed tarnished by age. The only concessions to the contemporary seemed to be the fluorescent lighting, the sleek Macs in the Comp Lab, and the students themselves.

Christie and Sylvie invited Finn to lunch in the courtyard between Origen and Hudson. Christie had gotten Greek food, which they shared at one of the picnic tables scattered beneath the apple trees.

Christie Hart and Sylvie Whitethorn had apparently known each other since they'd been little. They spoke to each other in a twisty, familiar way and glossed over each other's sentences. At first, Finn felt awkward, but Sylvie didn't seem bothered by her presence. So Finn learned that Christie had once deliberately broken an arm during hockey practice to get out of prom with a girl he couldn't stand anymore (“She was a monster”), and that Sylvie told everyone her mom, divorced from her dad, was a Tokyo actress who only played long-haired ghost women in horror films.

“That's not true.” Christie jabbed a plastic fork at Sylvie. “Her mom is gorgeous and only takes the parts of romantic heroines in independent films. She played a ghost lady
once
.”

Finn said, “That's kind of impressive.”

“My mom is a narcissistic jerk,” Sylvie said thoughtfully. “I don't intend to be anything like her.”

“You're a performing arts major,” Christie pointed out.

“Okay. But am I a narcissistic jerk?”

“Not to me. Finn, does she seem like a jerky narcissist?”

“Certainly not.” Finn was poking at her moussaka and trying not to smile.

“Finn's from San Francisco.” As Christie randomly tossed that into the air, Sylvie looked up, eyes wide beneath her bangs.

“Why'd you move
here
?” She seemed bewildered.

“My dad got a job at St. John's University. He teaches folklore and myth.”

“That seems more a HallowHeart kind of thing.” Christie selected an olive.

“Yeah, but St. John's is all shiny and new and hiring.” Sylvie looked at Finn. “Do you miss it? San Francisco?”

Finn didn't want to tell them why she didn't miss it, so she said, “Sometimes.”

Sylvie's gaze flicked away and she murmured, “Christie . . . ex-monster, incoming.”

A trio of girls in perfectly matched dresses and coats approached the table. The leader, golden-haired and curvy, wore a necklace of letters that spelled
A.N.G.Y.L.L
. Her voice matched her smirk. “Look. He has a
harem
of losers now.”

Christie ignored her and continued to devour his pita.

Sylvie sighed. “Oh, God, we're not in high school anymore. Get over it.”

“I wasn't speaking to you, weirdo.”

Sylvie's eyes narrowed. Finn looked at the golden girl and spoke quietly, “Hey, Angle, were you raised in a cave?”

Christie and Sylvie stared at her. Christie stopped eating.

The golden girl dragged her gaze to Finn. “My name is pronounced
Angel,
moron.”

“Misnamed,” Christie murmured.

Angyll looked at him. “Why don't you shut up? In fact, why don't you do what
her
”—she jerked a thumb at Finn—“crazy sister did and jump out of a window and die?”

A horrified silence followed. Finn rose and stepped forward. Angyll's legion stepped back. Sylvie cried, “Finn—”

Angyll fell to the ground. Finn, who had never hit anyone before, was shaking. She gazed down at her scraped knuckles while Angyll's friends screamed as if she'd been stabbed.

Sylvie slipped an arm around Finn, Christie was backup, and they were steering her away when Finn saw a black-haired woman watching them. She couldn't have been a professor, not in that sleek dress and high-heeled shoes.

But she was. “The three of you come with me, please.”

FINN SAT IN THE DEAN'S
office with Christie hunched in the other chair, his eyes wide, as if he couldn't believe what she'd done. Sylvie was pacing near the window.

“We're witnesses,” Christie said. “Don't worry.”

“I shouldn't have . . .” Finn took a deep breath. “I
hit
someone . . .”

“Yeah.” Christie's gaze was dark. “You should have. I can't think of anyone more deserving of a fist in the face.”

A silver-haired man in a black suit entered and sat behind the desk, behind a plaque that read
DEAN ROWAN CRUITHNEAR
. His voice was an intimidating baritone. “Miss Sullivan. You should understand how seriously we take physical assault.”

She couldn't speak. When Christie cleared his throat, Cruithnear didn't even look at him. “You have something to say, Mr. Hart?”

Christie said, “Angle started the fight.”

“Her name is pronounced
Angel,
as you know very well, and her parents are considering legal action against this institution.”

Finn winced. Her hand hurt as she recalled the shocked look on Angyll's face. She bit her lip and tried staring at the floor so she wouldn't cry. “I'm sorry. She said . . .”

Rowan Cruithnear spoke quietly, “I know what she said, Miss Sullivan. Professor Avaline witnessed the incident. I've convinced the Weavers to drop the charges. They know of your loss and understand why you reacted so strongly to Angyll's comment.”

Finn went cold. She knotted her hands in her lap and whispered, “How did she know?”

“We are a small school in a small town, and your family is newly arrived, Miss Sullivan. What happened to your sister . . . it would be difficult to keep it from becoming the subject of gossip. You must be strong, Miss Sullivan. Now, try to end your first day on a less violent note. HallowHeart might be old, but we are not medieval. No dueling, fisticuffs, or vengeance scenarios allowed.”

AFTER HER LAST CLASS, CHRISTIE
and Sylvie were waiting for Finn on the main building's stair. She looked at them, feeling lost, and said, “No one is talking to me.”

Christie smiled. “We are. We're rebels.”

“You probably don't want to go home yet.” Sylvie's eyes were dark with sympathy.

“No.” She dreaded what her father would say when he found out. “I don't.”

NEITHER CHRISTIE NOR SYLVIE ASKED
about Lily Rose and Finn felt a warm gratitude toward them as they trudged through the park and into a pretty woods with pale trees and leaves fluttering down like confetti.

“There are a lot of abandoned houses here.” Sylvie lifted branches out of their way. “Mansions in foreclosure or just closed up forever.”

They emerged from the trees and stepped onto a grassy hill. Below, mist swirled around a once-grand house with a bramble-choked stair and broken windows glowing in the last of the light. Rayed suns had been chiseled into the stone doorways and columns. Tangled in vines, a massive sundial and a statue of pale marble were remnants of more elegant days. There was something about the house's beauty, both menacing and melancholy, that disturbed Finn. It wasn't the wild place that Drake's Chapel had become, but it seemed as if it was under a spell, waiting. She thought she heard a faint strain of music, like a violin. “So no one lives there?”

“Not anymore. No one'll buy it. It used to be called SunStone.” Sylvie began walking backward. “A millionaire lived there in the twenties. He built the Tirnagoth Hotel. We'd take you there, but it's past the warehouse district and it's a rats' nest now.”

“Probably more of a bats' and foxes' nest,” Christie said.

“Is there a story with
that
house?” Finn glanced back at the sun mansion. Due to some trick of the light, it seemed less of a wreck than before, less
ruinous
.

“The millionaire's wife and kids got sick and died—”

“Oh. So he tried to bring them back, and they came back wrong. I've heard that story before—my dad teaches folklore. It's an urban myth. Did they come back as zombies? Or demons?”

“He was murdered.
Someone
cut out his heart.” Christie, his hair tousled with leaves, strolled beside her with his hands in his pockets. Finn, kicking at leaves, unearthed a ring of toadstools. Their earthy odor, reminding her of buried things, made her shiver.

“Fairy circle,” Sylvie said. “Stay away from those.”

“So how did this rich man try to resurrect his wife and children?” Finn resisted the urge to step into the circle of toadstools just to show Sylvie that nothing would happen.

“He made a bargain with the devil, what do you think?” Sylvie's voice became sepulchral. “But the dead don't ever come back right. How could they? After he was murdered, the hotel was left to rot.”