Page 67 of Scythe & Sparrow
Stillness. Pause.Mourning.Time spent recovering.
“From what?” I ask. But I don’t think I want to know the answers to my questions anymore.
I stare at the three cards. Unease snakes across my spine. The longer I look at them, the more I wish they would change, or that I could see any other meaning than mayhem and destruction. But no matter how I try to spin the interpretation, there’s only a sense of dread drifting around me.
I hastily shuffle the cards back into the deck, put them in my leather pouch with the selenite, then slide the pouch into my pocket. With a long sigh that does little to calm me, I sit back in my chair and press my eyes closed. I try to find comfort in the sounds of laughter and music outside my tent, in the scents of donuts and popcorn. I close my arms over my middle and think of Fionn’s embrace, of the warmth of his presence and the calm that comes with knowing there’s someone out here in this crazy world who sees the real me and doesn’t turn away. And that’s all I want now. Some comfort and calm.
“Time to go home,” I whisper to myself.
“That’s a shame. I was hoping you were going to tell me about all the good things that lie in my future.”
My eyes snap open and land on a man looming at the entrance of my tent.
His face is painted in white, a contrast to the yellow of his teeth, his lips peeled back in a menacing grin. His eyes are fixed on me, framed by diamonds of black face paint. A red ball covers the tip of his nose, a wig of curly fuzz stuck to his bald head.
I go rigid in my seat.
“After all, I drove all night to get here just toseeyou. Get it?” Matthew Cranwell points to his face, where a glass eye covers the prosthetic that must now be in place behind it. His smilewidens. “Do you like my new look? I think the nose really adds something.”
“You’re right. You look just as much like a clown as the first time I met you,” I say, edging my foot closer to the buttons hidden by my tablecloth. “I heard your wife finally left your ugly ass. Took the kids with her too. Good for her.”
A flash of fury passes across his face, but he banks his ire behind a menacing smile. “It’s been good for me too. Lost a couple pounds. Quit the booze, just about. Got myself a new purpose, ya see. I’ve rekindled my love of hunting.” He reaches behind his back, withdrawing a blade that’s as long as the one I left in my apartment, sitting in its sheath on the nightstand. “And I’ve certainly fleshed out some very interesting details about you.”
He takes a single step closer to my table.
“The Sparrow,” he hisses.
A thousand thoughts swirl through my mind. How could he know? Howmuchdoes he know? Did someone tell him? Who did he tell? His lips curl with the knowledge that his arrow has struck its mark. No matter how hard I try to keep the fear from my face, he sees it. And helovesit.
“That’s right,” he says as he takes a single step closer to my table. “Did you know I used to be a deputy for the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office? Ten years I worked there.”
I say nothing.
“I might be a farmer now. But those skills? That training? It doesn’t disappear. I started trackin’ down all the places your little circus stopped. Does the name Vicki Robbins ring a bell?” When I don’t answer, he tips the end of his blade in my direction. “It should. They never found out where she got the poison that didn’tquite kill her husband. Shame he murdered her so quick. Maybe he would have gotten a confession from her if he hadn’t choked her to death. But you and I both know it was the Sparrow who gave it to her.”
“I wonder why someone would try to kill their husband?” I snipe as I tighten my grip on the seat of my chair until my fingers lose feeling. “Any ideas?”
Matt chuckles, a low and mirthless rumble that fills my tent with malice. “The more I started to look, the more I found a trail of untimely deaths in the small towns you passed through. At least one or two men every season. You must be responsible for, what, ten murders? Maybe twenty? Oh wait, make that twenty-one if you count Eric Donovan, isn’t that right?”
“As far as I heard, Eric Donovan’s never turned up. He might still be traveling the country, doing whatever dipshits do.”
“You don’t always need to find a body for there to be a murder,” he says around a dark and triumphant smile. We both know he has enough knowledge of a potential connection between me and Eric that there’s no protest worth making. But it’s his next words that turn my skin cold. “Dr. Kane. He must know too, right? He’s the one who did your surgery. Put you up at his house. Worked with Eric’s girlfriend. He beat the shit out of a boxer at that fight club for knocking you over, as the story goes. And he covered for you that time I dropped in for a visit at the clinic. I know you were there, listening to every word.”
“Leave Dr. Kane out of this—”
“I tried, actually. Spoke to him just last night. But he seems hell-bent on sticking with you. I know he was flying here today, I’m bettin’ to see you, isn’t that right?” Matt waggles his brows andsqueaks his red nose. “So just how much does he know, exactly? Or is it even worse than that? Has he been helping you—”
“What the fuck do you want? You think you’re here to arrest me? You were kicked off the force for being an incompetent douchebag, from what I heard. So if this is some kind of lame-ass attempt to get yourself back onto the roster, think again. It’s never going to work.”
He shakes his head. The white paint cracks and shifts and flakes on his face as his grin stretches. “Do I look like the kind of guy to pass you over to some idiot in a uniform when I can settle the score myself?”
His leather gloves creak. His fists tighten. The knife glints in the dim light. My own mask of makeup tightens on my skin as I mirror his smile. “Do I look like the kind of girl to go down without a fight?”
I hit the button for the lights and plunge us into darkness.
Matt crashes into my table. I pick up my chair and swing it in his direction. Pain spikes in my wrists and elbows with the impact. Our cries of shock and frustration are a harmony in the darkness.
I take a second swing, a return pass. The chair breaks against Matt and I hear what I hope is the knife as it flies from his hand to break the glass in the cabinet door. All I have left of the chair is the seat. And though he groans with pain and curses with rage, I know he’s not done yet.
