“You’re a mess, Sophia. You need to…you know, be a normal twenty-two-year-old. Have fun and stop stressing.”
Just being in her presence was rapidly calming my nerves. My reaction in the woods had been a huge overreaction. Dead animals in the woods—really not that uncommon. Not even worth mentioning, especially not to Ivory, who would just laugh at my paranoia.
“I’m taking you out next weekend,” she said when I didn’t respond.
“I don’t know if I can. I might have work.” Truth was, the idea of going out in the city frightened me a little. At twenty-two, it seemed I had little more experience with life than I’d had as a teen.
“You’re going,” she said, matter-of-fact. “You can’t use your studies to get out of it like you did in college, and you know Jack will leave you off the schedule if you ask. Besides, it’ll be wicked cool. I’ll take you to that club I told you about.”
It was almost amusing listening to her, because only Ivory could say all that with about as much excitement as someone reading the Gettysburg Address.
“You can meet Adrian,” she said, perhaps picking up that I needed further convincing.
“The guy with the books?” I asked.
“I’m talking drinks and dancing and your mind is on books.” She shook her head, her expression somewhere between amazement and pity. “Yes, the guy with the books.”
Ivory had shown me some of Adrian’s Wiccan spellcasting books before, and they were definitely more legit than anything I’d found in stores. Maybe he would even have something that went more in-depth on the Salem witch trials. I could look into those first, before I worried about intruding on the lives of whoever lived at 793 Basker Street.
“Fine, I’ll go,” I said.
With that, Ivory took off in her little red Honda, and I headed back over to my Jeep. I fumbled around the glove compartment for some napkins to dab the blood away from my wrist. My stomach lurched at the bright red on the napkin, and every time I closed my eyes, images of dead animals played behind my eyelids. With my company gone, anxiety crept back in, and my hands got jittery again.
I started the engine and switched on the heater, hoping the heat would somehow calm my nerves. The scent of warmth filled the car long before the chill subsided, but my shaking remained.
There was a flash of green and what appeared to be an owl perched on a nearby fence. When the owl turned its head, goose bumps rushed over my skin. That owl did not have the same eyes as the squirrel I saw earlier.
It just didn’t.
Before I could speculate further, the owl flew off, its image becoming nothing more than a lingering memory.
For a long time, I sat staring at the roots of an old oak that had broken through the earth. I spotted a toppled bird nest, and, a few feet ahead, close enough to the road to be illuminated by the streetlamps, a small bird twitched its wing.
Damn it. I couldn’t leave it there.
After scanning the area until I was certain no monsters were going to pop out at me, I slipped on the winter gloves I kept in my glove compartment, crept over, and gently scooped the bird into my palms. It weighed next to nothing, but it wasn’t too young to be saved. And it was a cardinal, no less, which was odd, seeing how cardinals weren’t common in these parts.
I hurried back to my Jeep, set the bird on my passenger-side seat, and eased the door closed, though I wasn’t so gentle about getting my own ass back in the car. I might have been crazy paranoid, acting like my six-year-old afraid-of-the-dark self, but I was not about to spend one second more than necessary out there alone.
Once in my car, I headed for the nearby animal clinic. I’d be able to sleep better if the bird still had hope.
***
MY EVENINGS AFTER THAT were filled with nightmarish sleep: dreams of my ancestor, Elizabeth, and her hanging; dreams of people in town learning of the whispered voices in my head and condemning me next. Sometimes I woke in a cold sweat, chiding myself for letting my subconscious affect me so deeply.
One of these nightmares woke me early on the morning I was meant to go with Ivory to the club. I headed to the kitchen, not realizing the nightmare had been more premonition than subconscious freak-out.
I leaned against the wall beside the birdcage Paloma had given me on loan. It was a charming little thing, the feeders and iron bed painted sage and the wooden top embellished with rose and cream porcelain flowers. The vet who’d set the bird’s wing with green tape said my cardinal should be able to fly again within six weeks.
Not that I was thinking of him as mine.
“I know you won’t be here long,” I said to the bird, “but perhaps you need a name.”
The bird tilted his head and chattered softly.
I crouched to meet his gaze. “How about Red?”
He pinned his eyes on me and made a whoit, whoit, whoit sound.
“Red it is.”