Gutsy, page 20
“We could.” Esau scratched the back of his neck and squinted at me. “I’d want to know why.”
Amos watched the house with a guilty frown. We had all purposefully not been discussing Journey, but I thought we were on the same page, and that maybe Esau and Amos had been talking of very little else whenever I wasn’t within earshot. “He’s getting bad, huh?”
“Yeah.”
Esau growled. “We should’ve been doing something before now.”
“What?” I asked and couldn’t keep the fury out of my voice. “I haven’t been able to think of a damned thing.”
“I bet you haven’t been able to think,” Esau snarled, and guilt pinged around inside me. “You’ve been busy, right? And we should have been doing any-fucking-thing more than what we did. Oma can’t help. She’s old, Pious. And maybe if she wasn’t she’d have more gumption to come up with something, but she isn’t, and she doesn’t. Even if we laid it all bare for her, she wouldn’t have a fucking thing to say on the matter. We need someone else’s help, someone who knows more than we do.”
“Who?” I snapped. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t thought about this. “I don’t know anyone else to ask.”
Esau tossed up his hands and glared. “I don’t know. But I do know fucking him isn’t likely to fix anything.”
It didn’t happen often, but right now I wanted to punch my brother. Amos’s face was pinker than a sunburn as he stared at his shoes. The front door of the cabin opened and Journey came out onto the porch looking cute in pajama pants and a yellow sweater ten times too big for his frame. “Someone called the house phone,” he yelled. “By the name of Jacobson. They want to speak with you, Pious.”
Esau crossed his arms. “Bet they need help.”
Hanging my head, I stared at the frozen ground, the ice crystals sparkling as sunlight peeked out from behind a gray cloud overhead. “Our hands are full.”
“The community counts on us, and they want you.”
Turning on my heel, I stomped toward the house. “Where are you going?” Esau asked, following closely.
“To get my stuff together.”
“We’re going with you.”
“Why?” I asked, stopping to glare at him.
He and Amos shared a look, and my anger slid up another notch. It wasn’t fair. I’d asked them to clear out for a few days, so I’d made them even more alert to the danger Journey might pose, but I didn’t like people acting as if they couldn’t trust him—not even when maybe they shouldn’t.
“Fine.” I continued toward the house. Journey was waiting right on the other side of the door for me, and I stopped to kiss his soft lips before I headed to the kitchen and the phone out there. The conversation with Jacobson was one I’d had a hundred times before, barely more than a few words confirming he had a sick farm animal, and then I hit my room to gather my work gear, while Journey went back to the couch with a blanket, book, and Princess Brat. Once his hands were completely better, he’d need something else to do, but for now I was content to always find him waiting for me.
Amos and Esau were already in the Gladiator when I stopped by Journey’s side at the couch. I went down on my knees in front of him, and he laid his book aside, giving me a wry smile. “They’re going as well?”
“You don’t miss much.”
He shrugged. “It’s probably smart.”
Squeezing his knees, I studied his eyes. “We’ll be back soon.”
He leaned forward, and I met him halfway, sinking into his heat. We both took our time with the kiss, and he smiled as I backed off.
“Pious. . . I love you,” he whispered. He grabbed my hands, even though he winced and I thought for sure he was hurting his fingers. Every line of his body screamed tension.
“Why don’t you come along, too, so you’re not stuck here by yourself.”
Princess Brat chose that moment to trot her little self out of the kitchen to the couch and jump up. She circled twice and lay down at his side. “No, I’d be in the way.” He dragged her closer. “Bratty and I will be just fine. Maybe I’ll attempt to start dinner, yes? What do you say, girl?” She stared at him like he hung the moon and stars, and I agreed—he was pretty wonderful.
“You sure?” I couldn’t say why, but there was something off as he shifted around. Maybe he looked a little greener than he had earlier? Or maybe it was the way his body was more rigid. “I don’t mind having you.”
“No worries.”
I stood and walked to the door, and I had my hand on it before I took a deep breath, my stomach feeling strange and light and fluttery, even though I still had no idea how to help him. “Hey, Journey?”
“Mm?” He turned to look at me over the back of the couch.
“I love you, too. Call me if you think you’re going to do anything you shouldn’t.”
He ducked his head, and when he glanced up my heart almost exploded with his wide smile. I’d never seen him look quite that way. “Be careful,” he murmured.
“Yes, sir.”
The Jacobson’s farm was a typical healing, and everything more or less went the way it should. They had a sick mama goat, and I performed the healing charm twice, and Jacobson hemmed and hawed about his goat, and then, “Since you’re already here, Pious—”
Three other animals and twice as many charms later, my bad luck struck again. The mama goat decided it was time to drop her kid, and I got stuck helping with the birth because, “You have goats, Pious. You know what you’re doing.”
By the time I left a happy mama goat and her baby at the Jacobson farm it was already dark outside. I sat in the back of the Gladiator, which wasn’t that comfortable, so that Amos could sit next to Esau. They chatted in low tones about whatever struck them, and their conversation flowed much easier than anything I’d ever had with Journey. They were from the same world, the one I’d grown up in, and it showed. I sighed and glanced out the window. A sliver of moon rose and shone down, clouds boiling on either side of the silver crescent and stars glistening like cold diamonds here and there. I suspected we were getting more snow tonight.
It turned out the roads were already slick with black ice, because as the first snowflakes smacked the windshield and turned to water, Esau swore and fought the wheel, and my stomach damned near levitated out of my body as we slid into a ditch. We all jerked against our seat belts, and Esau swore a blue streak that had Amos gaping and me laughing.
“Turn off the engine,” I said, and Esau did it with one final “Fuck!” that was angry enough to singe the hair out of an old man’s ears.
“Come on,” Amos said steadily and put his hand on Esau’s shoulder. “Let’s just see what we can do, rather than being angry.” His tone was so sweet, and instead of continuing on the way he might’ve if we were alone, Esau zipped his trap and hopped out. I rolled my eyes but joined them. I nearly fell, and Amos did fall because we were so high up with the front down in the ditch and the ass-end still pointed mostly on the road. We all got to our feet and climbed to the berm, rather than taking our chances with the ditch, and when we were all standing there staring at the Gladiator with our arms crossed, Esau shook his head.
“Gonna need a winch,” Amos said sagely, even though until not that long ago his usual mode of transportation involved a horse. Esau smirked and nodded, and we got on with our life, making the phone call to Freddie, the local tow guy.
When Esau tucked his phone back in his pocket, I couldn’t help but notice he moved over until his shoulder touched Amos’s. He pointed at me. “This is more of your bad luck rubbing off on my vehicle. My truck has been the victim twice now. That ain’t fair.”
“This happens at least once per year.”
He shook his head at me, and I sighed.
It took forever for Freddie to show up because we weren’t the only ones having bad luck tonight, and it was starting to get late by the time he arrived. After he messed around and, as Amos had predicted, used the winch, it was after nine o’clock, and I just wanted Journey and to be warm. Food wouldn’t hurt none, either.
“Thanks, Freddie!” Esau called before he got back in the Gladiator. Everything turned on, and with a shrug from Esau, we continued where we’d left off. Either the vehicle would be fine or it wouldn’t, but we needed to get back to the farm.
The wind kicked up and the Gladiator rocked on the road, causing the conversation to die completely, and we were all ready to be done with traveling by the time we arrived at the farm. Esau was tense behind the wheel, and thick flakes had begun to pour from the sky like there was an angel up there with a bucket heaving it down and laughing at us.
“Oh, look. Joy’s here,” Esau said, pointing. He grinned. “I bet she brought bread. She’ll need to stay, we can’t send her back home this late. If Eduard is with her, we can’t make them share a room. Amos, do you mind bunking with me?”
I bit my tongue and stared up at the roof.
“I. . . . Yes, that would be fine.”
I could practically feel the heat from Amos’s blush in the back seat and couldn’t even see his face. “Yes, she’ll have bread,” I said, smiling. Her car was pulled up close to the house, but the breath leaked out of me as Esau parked next to it. I hadn’t been able to tell from farther back in the lane with all the snow, but there were no lights on in the cabin. The front porch light wasn’t on, either.
“Do you think the electricity is out?” Esau asked.
“Only in the house?” I quickly glanced at the barns and all the security lights were lit. “It’s possible,” I said, as my heart pounded harder.
“Not likely,” Esau muttered. “What do you think—”
“What’s on the porch?” Amos asked.
Squinting, I cursed and opened the door. I sprinted up the steps and slipped, bashing my knee on the wooden floorboards as I dropped there, beside a man. The front door banged in the wind; it was hanging open. I could already tell there was something massively wrong with this person, and the smell in the air was putrid. Amos went to run inside, but Esau grabbed him.
“Stay here,” he demanded.
“I’m fine to—”
“Don’t move.”
Amos huffed, and I would’ve laughed if I wasn’t so busy holding in a gag. The front porch light blazed on and the face of Eduard, my sister Joy’s boyfriend, came into view. He had boxes scattered around him and one had spilled. It looked like clothes, maybe he had been bringing more inside for Journey to sort through. Maybe Journey had been with him. My heart squeezed as I stared at the ruins of his middle. How had Journey done this? Eduard wasn’t a weakling; he was a strong man. He worked on a farm. I put my hand over my nose, but it did no good. His insides glistened the deep red of a freshly slaughtered cow—only this was no animal, it was a man, one I had liked well enough.
There was an enraged shout from in the house, and it occurred to me in one horrible flash that if Eduard was here— “Joy,” I said, scrambling to my feet.
Inside was a wreck. The couch was on its back, the coffee table turned over. Journey’s book was in the middle of the floor, and it looked like someone had stepped on it because the pages were wrinkled.
Joy lay sprawled on her back, and beside her was a bag of bread that had been ripped apart and half eaten.
Amos pressed a towel to her stomach.
Esau was frantically feeling around on her neck. I shook my head as he glared at me, his face running red. “I’m going to fucking kill him.”
My head spun. “Is she. . . ?”
Joy’s dark hair was spread around her like a halo, and I went down hard on my knees and crawled over to my sister. She was so pretty and pale, and still—which was wrong. She was always moving and doing things. I took her hand and it was cold, but I didn’t know if that was from whatever injuries were under the dish towel, or because the door had been hanging open.
“She has a pulse. Fuck, get a blanket, Amos,” Esau said, taking over holding pressure on Joy’s stomach.
Amos nodded and scrambled off.
“Eduard is. . . eaten,” I said with a wince. Horror washed over me. Journey had told me what had happened, but a part of me, deep down, hadn’t believed it. How could he eat a person? What kind of monster was I to have done this to him? He didn’t deserve this hell, no one did. And now Joy was hurt? And Eduard was. . . well past dead. He’d been consumed. My stomach heaved.
Amos came back with the quilt from his bed and tucked it around Joy while I took over holding the dish towel in place. Esau grabbed his phone and called an ambulance, but the roads were terrible.
“Joy,” I said, frantic. I also was worried about Journey. Had he disappeared into the night again? How the fuck would I find him this time? But I had to concentrate on my sister first. “Joy!”
Amos hopped to his feet. “No. No, that won’t solve anything.”
When I glanced up I wasn’t exactly surprised to see Esau had his gun out again, but it did make my blood run cold.
“I’m going to put an end to this shitfest,” Esau said, and he checked the gun over with a trained eye. He was a good shot.
“Amos, come here and hold this,” I said.
He nodded at me, and out of all of us, he was the one who had the least emotional investment in the situation, and I was counting on him to keep a level head. As he switched off with me, I stood and approached Esau. Grief boiled in my belly—Eduard hadn’t deserved to die, Joy didn’t deserve to get hurt, but Journey didn’t deserve the hex I’d laid on him, either.
Esau went toward the door, and I stepped in his way. He took a deep breath and raised the gun, but he never got as far as pointing it at me before he let out a wordless shout. “Get out of my way!”
“No, he couldn’t help it. I did this.”
“Well, unless shooting you will stop it, then get out of my fucking way.” There were tears in Esau’s eyes and they tumbled down his cheeks, making him look younger. “Don’t you care about your family?”
“Of course I do, but this isn’t his fault. This is my fault.”
“Fuck that!” Esau sniffed and snorted, and I winced.
He raised the gun once, and for a sliver of a second I thought maybe I’d misjudged my brother, but he lowered the barrel toward the floor again. “Maybe I’ll come back and shoot your ass, too.”
Amos stood, and I wanted to yell at him to keep putting pressure on Joy’s wound, but he carefully tugged the gun from Esau’s grip. “Journey must’ve taken Eduard and Joy by surprise. You two know what you’re dealing with. You won’t need this gun.”
“You Amish are all ‘turn the other cheek,’ ” Esau snarked, but Amos shook his head.
“You two together will be fine. I’ll keep this gun here and wait for the ambulance. If he comes back. . . .” Amos shrugged. “I’ll do what I have to do.”
I shuddered and didn’t want to think about Journey dead. I was fucking selfish. Joy was going to wake up and be devastated, but I didn’t want it to be me missing my boyfriend. I’d only just found him.
“All right. Stay safe,” Esau said. For a second, I thought he was going to do something else—he and Amos stared too long—but the moment passed, and he stomped out onto the porch to stare at Eduard’s corpse. I followed after him, not sure what else to do.
“Go find him,” Amos called out sternly from inside.
“If Joy dies, he dies,” Esau said, staring out into the blustery snow. “That’s what’s going to happen. I don’t care if it means I go to hell, I’ll put him in the ground before I go.”
“Christ,” I muttered. “This is all my fault.”
“No. From the moment I knew what was going on, it was mine, too. There’s enough blame to go around. We didn’t try hard enough, and when I saw you were getting stuck on your boyfriend instead of working to help him, I should have opened my mouth. I just. . . .” He shook his head, and I’d never seen his dark blue eyes so sad.
“What?”
“I just never realized I hadn’t seen you happy before now,” he said quietly.
My heart jerked. “I was happy. I love the farm.”
“No, you weren’t, Pious, and I was going to stick you here. I was going to go off to finish my master’s degree this semester because I can’t fucking stand how everyone wants you instead of me when they call us up, and I was going to miss out on. . . . Fuck.” He shook his head. “We’ve all been selfish.”
“Help me find him. This should be it, right? Oma said it would be in threes. He killed a third person.”
We stared at each other.
“So, this should just be a rescue mission.” He glared out at the snow. “But then, why hurt Joy if eating three was going to break the cycle of the hex?”
Uneasily, I gazed out at the farm, noticing the minutes slip by but almost feeling like I was trapped in time and none of this was real. The wind blew until it whistled across the porch and shook the trees.
I glanced over my shoulder. “That’s a damned good question. Maybe he just knocked her over or something getting to Eduard.”
He shook his head. “I think he got her first and didn’t like her. There’s a couple of chunks out of her belly and a bump on her head. When she didn’t taste good, he went for Eduard.”
“Fuck.” I rubbed a hand over my face.
“Let’s just find him.”
“Yeah,” I said, and we walked into the bitter wind. Even though the weather was bad, it wasn’t frostbite cold, and I was thankful for that. We went out into the snow, but it had been coming down so hard there was no trail to follow, so we picked a random direction and wandered.
“Oma thought this needed to play out,” I said loud enough to be heard over the wind that bit my cheeks.
“Tragedy in threes, I know.” He squinted into the snow being driven toward us and hung his head. “I can’t stand this death.” He sounded so much like my lost little brother that I gave him a hug, and he ended up holding on tight. We weren’t going to get very far doing this, and very real worry for Journey gnawed at me.
“Please, help me find him.”
“Okay. I. . . . Joy will be fine.”
“Yeah.” I hoped that was true. We scoured the property, walking for what felt like miles, but there was no sign of him, and my heart was somewhere near my toes by the time we made it back to the house. The ambulance was there, lights flashing, and I was relieved to see them loading Joy into the back.
Amos watched the house with a guilty frown. We had all purposefully not been discussing Journey, but I thought we were on the same page, and that maybe Esau and Amos had been talking of very little else whenever I wasn’t within earshot. “He’s getting bad, huh?”
“Yeah.”
Esau growled. “We should’ve been doing something before now.”
“What?” I asked and couldn’t keep the fury out of my voice. “I haven’t been able to think of a damned thing.”
“I bet you haven’t been able to think,” Esau snarled, and guilt pinged around inside me. “You’ve been busy, right? And we should have been doing any-fucking-thing more than what we did. Oma can’t help. She’s old, Pious. And maybe if she wasn’t she’d have more gumption to come up with something, but she isn’t, and she doesn’t. Even if we laid it all bare for her, she wouldn’t have a fucking thing to say on the matter. We need someone else’s help, someone who knows more than we do.”
“Who?” I snapped. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t thought about this. “I don’t know anyone else to ask.”
Esau tossed up his hands and glared. “I don’t know. But I do know fucking him isn’t likely to fix anything.”
It didn’t happen often, but right now I wanted to punch my brother. Amos’s face was pinker than a sunburn as he stared at his shoes. The front door of the cabin opened and Journey came out onto the porch looking cute in pajama pants and a yellow sweater ten times too big for his frame. “Someone called the house phone,” he yelled. “By the name of Jacobson. They want to speak with you, Pious.”
Esau crossed his arms. “Bet they need help.”
Hanging my head, I stared at the frozen ground, the ice crystals sparkling as sunlight peeked out from behind a gray cloud overhead. “Our hands are full.”
“The community counts on us, and they want you.”
Turning on my heel, I stomped toward the house. “Where are you going?” Esau asked, following closely.
“To get my stuff together.”
“We’re going with you.”
“Why?” I asked, stopping to glare at him.
He and Amos shared a look, and my anger slid up another notch. It wasn’t fair. I’d asked them to clear out for a few days, so I’d made them even more alert to the danger Journey might pose, but I didn’t like people acting as if they couldn’t trust him—not even when maybe they shouldn’t.
“Fine.” I continued toward the house. Journey was waiting right on the other side of the door for me, and I stopped to kiss his soft lips before I headed to the kitchen and the phone out there. The conversation with Jacobson was one I’d had a hundred times before, barely more than a few words confirming he had a sick farm animal, and then I hit my room to gather my work gear, while Journey went back to the couch with a blanket, book, and Princess Brat. Once his hands were completely better, he’d need something else to do, but for now I was content to always find him waiting for me.
Amos and Esau were already in the Gladiator when I stopped by Journey’s side at the couch. I went down on my knees in front of him, and he laid his book aside, giving me a wry smile. “They’re going as well?”
“You don’t miss much.”
He shrugged. “It’s probably smart.”
Squeezing his knees, I studied his eyes. “We’ll be back soon.”
He leaned forward, and I met him halfway, sinking into his heat. We both took our time with the kiss, and he smiled as I backed off.
“Pious. . . I love you,” he whispered. He grabbed my hands, even though he winced and I thought for sure he was hurting his fingers. Every line of his body screamed tension.
“Why don’t you come along, too, so you’re not stuck here by yourself.”
Princess Brat chose that moment to trot her little self out of the kitchen to the couch and jump up. She circled twice and lay down at his side. “No, I’d be in the way.” He dragged her closer. “Bratty and I will be just fine. Maybe I’ll attempt to start dinner, yes? What do you say, girl?” She stared at him like he hung the moon and stars, and I agreed—he was pretty wonderful.
“You sure?” I couldn’t say why, but there was something off as he shifted around. Maybe he looked a little greener than he had earlier? Or maybe it was the way his body was more rigid. “I don’t mind having you.”
“No worries.”
I stood and walked to the door, and I had my hand on it before I took a deep breath, my stomach feeling strange and light and fluttery, even though I still had no idea how to help him. “Hey, Journey?”
“Mm?” He turned to look at me over the back of the couch.
“I love you, too. Call me if you think you’re going to do anything you shouldn’t.”
He ducked his head, and when he glanced up my heart almost exploded with his wide smile. I’d never seen him look quite that way. “Be careful,” he murmured.
“Yes, sir.”
The Jacobson’s farm was a typical healing, and everything more or less went the way it should. They had a sick mama goat, and I performed the healing charm twice, and Jacobson hemmed and hawed about his goat, and then, “Since you’re already here, Pious—”
Three other animals and twice as many charms later, my bad luck struck again. The mama goat decided it was time to drop her kid, and I got stuck helping with the birth because, “You have goats, Pious. You know what you’re doing.”
By the time I left a happy mama goat and her baby at the Jacobson farm it was already dark outside. I sat in the back of the Gladiator, which wasn’t that comfortable, so that Amos could sit next to Esau. They chatted in low tones about whatever struck them, and their conversation flowed much easier than anything I’d ever had with Journey. They were from the same world, the one I’d grown up in, and it showed. I sighed and glanced out the window. A sliver of moon rose and shone down, clouds boiling on either side of the silver crescent and stars glistening like cold diamonds here and there. I suspected we were getting more snow tonight.
It turned out the roads were already slick with black ice, because as the first snowflakes smacked the windshield and turned to water, Esau swore and fought the wheel, and my stomach damned near levitated out of my body as we slid into a ditch. We all jerked against our seat belts, and Esau swore a blue streak that had Amos gaping and me laughing.
“Turn off the engine,” I said, and Esau did it with one final “Fuck!” that was angry enough to singe the hair out of an old man’s ears.
“Come on,” Amos said steadily and put his hand on Esau’s shoulder. “Let’s just see what we can do, rather than being angry.” His tone was so sweet, and instead of continuing on the way he might’ve if we were alone, Esau zipped his trap and hopped out. I rolled my eyes but joined them. I nearly fell, and Amos did fall because we were so high up with the front down in the ditch and the ass-end still pointed mostly on the road. We all got to our feet and climbed to the berm, rather than taking our chances with the ditch, and when we were all standing there staring at the Gladiator with our arms crossed, Esau shook his head.
“Gonna need a winch,” Amos said sagely, even though until not that long ago his usual mode of transportation involved a horse. Esau smirked and nodded, and we got on with our life, making the phone call to Freddie, the local tow guy.
When Esau tucked his phone back in his pocket, I couldn’t help but notice he moved over until his shoulder touched Amos’s. He pointed at me. “This is more of your bad luck rubbing off on my vehicle. My truck has been the victim twice now. That ain’t fair.”
“This happens at least once per year.”
He shook his head at me, and I sighed.
It took forever for Freddie to show up because we weren’t the only ones having bad luck tonight, and it was starting to get late by the time he arrived. After he messed around and, as Amos had predicted, used the winch, it was after nine o’clock, and I just wanted Journey and to be warm. Food wouldn’t hurt none, either.
“Thanks, Freddie!” Esau called before he got back in the Gladiator. Everything turned on, and with a shrug from Esau, we continued where we’d left off. Either the vehicle would be fine or it wouldn’t, but we needed to get back to the farm.
The wind kicked up and the Gladiator rocked on the road, causing the conversation to die completely, and we were all ready to be done with traveling by the time we arrived at the farm. Esau was tense behind the wheel, and thick flakes had begun to pour from the sky like there was an angel up there with a bucket heaving it down and laughing at us.
“Oh, look. Joy’s here,” Esau said, pointing. He grinned. “I bet she brought bread. She’ll need to stay, we can’t send her back home this late. If Eduard is with her, we can’t make them share a room. Amos, do you mind bunking with me?”
I bit my tongue and stared up at the roof.
“I. . . . Yes, that would be fine.”
I could practically feel the heat from Amos’s blush in the back seat and couldn’t even see his face. “Yes, she’ll have bread,” I said, smiling. Her car was pulled up close to the house, but the breath leaked out of me as Esau parked next to it. I hadn’t been able to tell from farther back in the lane with all the snow, but there were no lights on in the cabin. The front porch light wasn’t on, either.
“Do you think the electricity is out?” Esau asked.
“Only in the house?” I quickly glanced at the barns and all the security lights were lit. “It’s possible,” I said, as my heart pounded harder.
“Not likely,” Esau muttered. “What do you think—”
“What’s on the porch?” Amos asked.
Squinting, I cursed and opened the door. I sprinted up the steps and slipped, bashing my knee on the wooden floorboards as I dropped there, beside a man. The front door banged in the wind; it was hanging open. I could already tell there was something massively wrong with this person, and the smell in the air was putrid. Amos went to run inside, but Esau grabbed him.
“Stay here,” he demanded.
“I’m fine to—”
“Don’t move.”
Amos huffed, and I would’ve laughed if I wasn’t so busy holding in a gag. The front porch light blazed on and the face of Eduard, my sister Joy’s boyfriend, came into view. He had boxes scattered around him and one had spilled. It looked like clothes, maybe he had been bringing more inside for Journey to sort through. Maybe Journey had been with him. My heart squeezed as I stared at the ruins of his middle. How had Journey done this? Eduard wasn’t a weakling; he was a strong man. He worked on a farm. I put my hand over my nose, but it did no good. His insides glistened the deep red of a freshly slaughtered cow—only this was no animal, it was a man, one I had liked well enough.
There was an enraged shout from in the house, and it occurred to me in one horrible flash that if Eduard was here— “Joy,” I said, scrambling to my feet.
Inside was a wreck. The couch was on its back, the coffee table turned over. Journey’s book was in the middle of the floor, and it looked like someone had stepped on it because the pages were wrinkled.
Joy lay sprawled on her back, and beside her was a bag of bread that had been ripped apart and half eaten.
Amos pressed a towel to her stomach.
Esau was frantically feeling around on her neck. I shook my head as he glared at me, his face running red. “I’m going to fucking kill him.”
My head spun. “Is she. . . ?”
Joy’s dark hair was spread around her like a halo, and I went down hard on my knees and crawled over to my sister. She was so pretty and pale, and still—which was wrong. She was always moving and doing things. I took her hand and it was cold, but I didn’t know if that was from whatever injuries were under the dish towel, or because the door had been hanging open.
“She has a pulse. Fuck, get a blanket, Amos,” Esau said, taking over holding pressure on Joy’s stomach.
Amos nodded and scrambled off.
“Eduard is. . . eaten,” I said with a wince. Horror washed over me. Journey had told me what had happened, but a part of me, deep down, hadn’t believed it. How could he eat a person? What kind of monster was I to have done this to him? He didn’t deserve this hell, no one did. And now Joy was hurt? And Eduard was. . . well past dead. He’d been consumed. My stomach heaved.
Amos came back with the quilt from his bed and tucked it around Joy while I took over holding the dish towel in place. Esau grabbed his phone and called an ambulance, but the roads were terrible.
“Joy,” I said, frantic. I also was worried about Journey. Had he disappeared into the night again? How the fuck would I find him this time? But I had to concentrate on my sister first. “Joy!”
Amos hopped to his feet. “No. No, that won’t solve anything.”
When I glanced up I wasn’t exactly surprised to see Esau had his gun out again, but it did make my blood run cold.
“I’m going to put an end to this shitfest,” Esau said, and he checked the gun over with a trained eye. He was a good shot.
“Amos, come here and hold this,” I said.
He nodded at me, and out of all of us, he was the one who had the least emotional investment in the situation, and I was counting on him to keep a level head. As he switched off with me, I stood and approached Esau. Grief boiled in my belly—Eduard hadn’t deserved to die, Joy didn’t deserve to get hurt, but Journey didn’t deserve the hex I’d laid on him, either.
Esau went toward the door, and I stepped in his way. He took a deep breath and raised the gun, but he never got as far as pointing it at me before he let out a wordless shout. “Get out of my way!”
“No, he couldn’t help it. I did this.”
“Well, unless shooting you will stop it, then get out of my fucking way.” There were tears in Esau’s eyes and they tumbled down his cheeks, making him look younger. “Don’t you care about your family?”
“Of course I do, but this isn’t his fault. This is my fault.”
“Fuck that!” Esau sniffed and snorted, and I winced.
He raised the gun once, and for a sliver of a second I thought maybe I’d misjudged my brother, but he lowered the barrel toward the floor again. “Maybe I’ll come back and shoot your ass, too.”
Amos stood, and I wanted to yell at him to keep putting pressure on Joy’s wound, but he carefully tugged the gun from Esau’s grip. “Journey must’ve taken Eduard and Joy by surprise. You two know what you’re dealing with. You won’t need this gun.”
“You Amish are all ‘turn the other cheek,’ ” Esau snarked, but Amos shook his head.
“You two together will be fine. I’ll keep this gun here and wait for the ambulance. If he comes back. . . .” Amos shrugged. “I’ll do what I have to do.”
I shuddered and didn’t want to think about Journey dead. I was fucking selfish. Joy was going to wake up and be devastated, but I didn’t want it to be me missing my boyfriend. I’d only just found him.
“All right. Stay safe,” Esau said. For a second, I thought he was going to do something else—he and Amos stared too long—but the moment passed, and he stomped out onto the porch to stare at Eduard’s corpse. I followed after him, not sure what else to do.
“Go find him,” Amos called out sternly from inside.
“If Joy dies, he dies,” Esau said, staring out into the blustery snow. “That’s what’s going to happen. I don’t care if it means I go to hell, I’ll put him in the ground before I go.”
“Christ,” I muttered. “This is all my fault.”
“No. From the moment I knew what was going on, it was mine, too. There’s enough blame to go around. We didn’t try hard enough, and when I saw you were getting stuck on your boyfriend instead of working to help him, I should have opened my mouth. I just. . . .” He shook his head, and I’d never seen his dark blue eyes so sad.
“What?”
“I just never realized I hadn’t seen you happy before now,” he said quietly.
My heart jerked. “I was happy. I love the farm.”
“No, you weren’t, Pious, and I was going to stick you here. I was going to go off to finish my master’s degree this semester because I can’t fucking stand how everyone wants you instead of me when they call us up, and I was going to miss out on. . . . Fuck.” He shook his head. “We’ve all been selfish.”
“Help me find him. This should be it, right? Oma said it would be in threes. He killed a third person.”
We stared at each other.
“So, this should just be a rescue mission.” He glared out at the snow. “But then, why hurt Joy if eating three was going to break the cycle of the hex?”
Uneasily, I gazed out at the farm, noticing the minutes slip by but almost feeling like I was trapped in time and none of this was real. The wind blew until it whistled across the porch and shook the trees.
I glanced over my shoulder. “That’s a damned good question. Maybe he just knocked her over or something getting to Eduard.”
He shook his head. “I think he got her first and didn’t like her. There’s a couple of chunks out of her belly and a bump on her head. When she didn’t taste good, he went for Eduard.”
“Fuck.” I rubbed a hand over my face.
“Let’s just find him.”
“Yeah,” I said, and we walked into the bitter wind. Even though the weather was bad, it wasn’t frostbite cold, and I was thankful for that. We went out into the snow, but it had been coming down so hard there was no trail to follow, so we picked a random direction and wandered.
“Oma thought this needed to play out,” I said loud enough to be heard over the wind that bit my cheeks.
“Tragedy in threes, I know.” He squinted into the snow being driven toward us and hung his head. “I can’t stand this death.” He sounded so much like my lost little brother that I gave him a hug, and he ended up holding on tight. We weren’t going to get very far doing this, and very real worry for Journey gnawed at me.
“Please, help me find him.”
“Okay. I. . . . Joy will be fine.”
“Yeah.” I hoped that was true. We scoured the property, walking for what felt like miles, but there was no sign of him, and my heart was somewhere near my toes by the time we made it back to the house. The ambulance was there, lights flashing, and I was relieved to see them loading Joy into the back.
