If These Wings Could Fly - Kyrie McCauley Page 0,89
through one of the open windows, landing on his shoulder.
I think of the Morrigan, predicting the fates of men.
“What the—” But before he can react, the crow moves, crossing to the coffee table, knocking the vase down, and it shatters against the floor. There are little blue marbles rolling everywhere. There are pennies and paper clips. The gifts left for Juniper. And in the middle of them, the keys to the truck, shining in the moonlight. Juniper must have hidden them inside. Another firework flares in the distance, and for a moment, everything is bright and clear and illuminated.
And then Joe’s claws close over the keys, and he takes off again through the open window.
Chapter Seventy-One
SOME OTHER LEIGHTON BARNES DOES NOT survive this night. In a parallel universe, it is the end of the night, and the end of the year, and the end of her. I feel the truth of it in my chest, where the wild, caged thing is still living. It’s been spared, when a bullet should have found it.
Another creature in another world wouldn’t be so lucky.
But here, tonight, this bullet doesn’t split my skin or crack the bones of my chest or nick the small, soft wall of an artery. It just skims across my ribs, so close that I feel its heat, and buries itself in the wall of this house. This house that hides his violence.
This time I watch it happen.
It’s like the sliver of broken glass in my bedroom window. The vase on the table and the frames on the wall. The plaster where he struck the walls in anger. The black crack in the wall where I pressed the heels of my feet too hard because I was scared, opening the house and revealing its dark insides. This house built by anger.
The kind of rage that pulses like a living thing and was poured into the concrete, nailed into the wooden beams that form the foundation—down deep in its guts. A house haunted by the things it refuses to let go of.
The wall is moving. A gleam of black metal as the bullet falls out. The plaster shifts, dust like an imploding cloud coming back into place. The shattered pieces come together. And it’s this—the house fixing his violence again—that makes me realize we still aren’t safe. From him or this house or its strange, dark magic.
This night isn’t over.
Chapter Seventy-Two
MOM LIFTS ME TO MY FEET and pushes me.
Why do I smell smoke?
“Leighton, go,” Mom says.
He’s still holding the gun, staring at it like he only just realized it was in his hand. His hand closes over the gleaming metal. Squeeze. Relax. Weighing it. Weighing something. Realizing he cannot run away. His keys are gone.
We have to go. But the only way to go is up. To the girls.
“Go, Leighton.”
I crawl up the stairs, hand over hand. I’m not hurt, but I’m tired. Like a hundred years just passed in the blink of an eye. Forever can exist in a moment. In the crack of a firework. The pull of a trigger.
And then I don’t just smell smoke. I see it, coming from my room, and I know it’s the lantern, and I know it’s the girls.
But how? I always hide the lighter. They don’t know where I keep it.
Mom and I fall into my room, and she locks the door behind us.
I don’t see Campbell or Juniper.
The lantern is spilled, burning. As I watch, it catches the curtains of my window, the edge of my quilt.
The book of matches that Joe left me is on my bedside table, open. Missing a few matches.
Smoke starts to fill the room, and the girls are—
I hear a muted scream. The armoire.
I run across the room and bang on it. It’s locked. I hear Campbell coughing, Juniper sobbing.
I pry at the locked doors with my fingernails. Panic swells inside of me. The girls. The flames grow into a wall of heat beside me, and I’m coughing so hard I can’t catch my breath. I scratch at the door until my fingers start to bleed. Why is it locked? My fingers slide over the keyhole, and it’s burning hot.
The keyhole.
I run to my dresser while Mom takes over prying at the armoire’s door. I grab the rusted key that Joe left. The key we thought was lost years ago, tucked into a safe place by a worried grandfather.
At the armoire, the key slides right in, and turns.