Odin's Murder

“What do you mean?”

“Her dreams have been getting worse. Darker, lonelier. Less flying, more bird skulls. But the last one? It was too vivid. Like a Technicolor 3D horror movie, start to finish. And it hurt.”

“But it’s just dreams, right? They don’t mean anything.”

“You don’t get it.” He toes off his sneakers, kicks them to the floor.

“So tell me.”

“You ever have nightmares?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Everyone does.”

“How much of them do you remember? A second of terror as you fall from nowhere? The old crone with the teeth; you know she’s horrid, but you’ve forgotten what her face looks like. You wake up freaking out after seeing the monster in the closet, but he’s gone by the time you eat your breakfast toast, right?

“Sure.”

“My sister doesn’t forget. Every second of every paralyzing terror, since we were old enough to dream. And she gets mine, too.”

I reach into my pocket, pull out the tiny silver pendant, pinch it between my thumb and forefinger until they’re both numb. When I put it back in my pocket, and rub my fingertips together, I can still feel it, indented in my skin.

A whirr and a bleep of his laptop powering down are the only noises in the room. Outside, a door closes on a feminine giggle.

“What about girls?” I ask, struck tactless with the thought. “Does she see you dreaming of girls?”

“Don’t ask me that, dude.” He covers his face with an elbow.

“Does she? Dream about guys? Does she sketch that, too?!”

“No!” His voice is muffled. “And I told you, I don’t fucking remember, okay?”

I try not to laugh at him, and mostly succeed, because that would suck, your own sister knowing your darkest kink, the things you won’t even let your self-conscious see awake. An image slides beneath my eyelids, a girl, all legs and lips, covered in stolen diamond jewelry, draped over her skin, her hips. I jerk my eyes open, blink twice.

“My crone has talons,” I say.

14.

Makeover

The weekend passes, slow and lazy. Julian spends most of it in the library. I bring him coffee, Faye brings him lunch, but we don’t talk to him. Ethan lets me in their room to grab up my brother’s laundry, and doesn’t look me in the eye, though I feel his stare like a bug bite on the back of my neck. I work online while our clothes are in the wash, committing picture after picture to my mental archive, each tagged with a url so I can find them again. When I finally pry my eyeballs from the screen, our clothes are dry and in a heap on top of the machine, and someone else’s towels tumble inside.

I walk back to the room, my laptop in the hamper. Faye’s towel and shower basket are gone, which gives me time to plot how to approach her. I’ve got her closet open and I’m staring at fifteen textures of brown when I stop, distracted.

Sonja’s package is back on her bed. I pick it up, shake it a little. Sounds the same. The back flap is one of those self stick kinds, easy to peel up. I test it with my thumbnail.

“Ethan gave that to me this afternoon,” Faye says, setting her shower caddy on desk. Her face is scrubbed pink.

I sit back down on Sonja’s bed. “He barely spoke to me all day.”

She rubs at her hair with a towel. When her back is turned, I plug in my curling iron.

“Well,” she says, as she flicks through the hangers of dark, drab and dull. “I think he’s handling it pretty well. Too well.”

I glance out the window, searching, and sure enough, on a low branch of a near tree, sit Faye’s crows. I wave at them, but they don’t notice me. “You mean, he hasn’t gone running to the admin, weirded out by the freaks?”

“He has a few secrets of his own, I think. And he still watches you, when you aren’t looking, all day long.”

“He’s with Danielle.”