can find us here, too. We need to get back on the river and on our way to Saint Louis and Aunt Julia.”
In the flicker of the candlelight, I tried to read the faces of the others. I thought that once upon a time—not that long ago—I could have told you everything about each of them just from what I saw in their faces. But they seemed strangers to me now, their thoughts a mystery.
“Well?” I said.
“I’m staying,” Albert said. “I’m going to work for Tru.”
Mose nodded and signed, I’m staying.
Emmy said gently, as if she were afraid of hurting me, “I want to stay, too, Odie. I like Flo and Gertie.”
“Jack found me,” I said. “In a city of a million people, Jack found me, and he wasn’t even looking. The Brickmans are looking for us, looking hard.”
Albert said, “Next week, Mose and I will be going down the Mississippi on the Hellor. Maybe you and Emmy can come along. That should keep us safe for a while.”
“For a while. But the Black Witch will never give up. You know that.”
“I don’t know that. And neither do you. The Brickmans will forget about us eventually.”
“Not the Black Witch. She never forgets.”
“Okay,” Albert said. “You insisted this was a democracy. All those in favor of staying, raise your hands.”
I knew the outcome even before the others cast their votes, and when Albert snuffed out the candle, I lay fuming, unable to sleep.
I got up and left the shed and aimlessly walked the streets of the Flats, the houses dark on every side, the storefronts empty, the night air unmoving, hot and heavy. My shirt clung to the sweat on my back, which might have been from the humidity or the effort of the walk or the way everything inside me was twisted and uncertain. Something terrible was on the horizon, I could see that. Why couldn’t the others?
Then it hit me. The horrible truth I’d been unwilling to face. DiMarco’s murder. The shooting of Jack. Albert’s snakebite. The relentless pursuit by the Brickmans. This was all my doing, all my fault. This was my curse. I saw now that long before the Tornado God descended and killed Cora Frost and decimated Emmy’s world, that vengeful spirit had attached itself to me and had followed me everywhere. My mother had died. My father had been murdered. I was to blame for all the misery in my life and the lives of everyone I’d ever cared about. Only me. I saw with painful clarity that if I stayed with my brother and Mose and Emmy, I would end up destroying them, too. The realization devastated me, and I stood breathless and alone and terribly afraid.
I fell to my knees and tried to pray to the merciful God Sister Eve had urged me to embrace, prayed desperately for release from this curse, prayed for guidance. But all I felt was my own isolation and an overwhelming sense of helplessness. Gradually, however, as I knelt on the West Side Flats under the glaring moon, a dark and cold understanding settled over me. When I finally brought myself up from the dirt of that unpaved street, I knew exactly what I had to do.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
“HEY, BUCK JONES!” John Kelly jogged toward me in the dark. “Gonna help me deliver papers?” He clapped me on the back in greeting, then saw my face. “You okay?”
“I’m leaving,” I said.
“Going where?”
“Saint Louis.”
“What about the others?”
I thought about my brother and Mose and Emmy. They believed they’d found their home. They were happy. If they came with me, I knew I would somehow destroy that happiness.
“I’m going alone.”
“How’re you gonna get there?”
I considered the canoe stored at the boatworks. It was a familiar vessel, a friend in a way, but I was pretty sure I couldn’t handle it alone on a river as big and as unknown to me as the Mississippi.
“You said trains go to Saint Louis from the rail yard.”
“Sure,” John Kelly said, warming to the idea. “You can hop a freight.”
“Do you know which one?”
“Naw, but I bet if we ask around the yard, someone’ll be able to point us right.”
“We? You’re not coming.”
“No, but I ain’t gonna desert you till I know you’re off safe. We’re pals.”
“Thanks,” I said, truly grateful. “I’ve got to grab something from Gertie’s, okay?”
I slipped into the shed and went to the bunk on which Emmy slept, slid my hand under the thin mattress, where for safekeeping, I’d put both