Four and Twenty Blackbirds (Eden Moore 1)

"There ain't no stopping what's already done. "

"I've got until sundown. "

"Maybe. " He rose to his feet and faced me for the first time. He still stood with that aggressive confidence I'd seen in the visions. He stood like a man who knows something that you don't, and it's something that can make the difference between living and dying. "Maybe you do, and maybe you don't. But I do know you'll not kill me. I've lived too long to be taken by my own child. "

My fingers went numb, and then weak. The gun slid loose and clattered to the wood floor. I did not hear or feel it fall. "I'm not—I'm not yours. I'm not. "

He cocked his head and smiled without showing any teeth. "Come now. You know better than that. Say my name, girl. " A pair of drawstring pants were pulled tight around his narrow waist, and the shirt that was tucked into them was gray and threadbare with age. His feet were naked except for grime, and his once smooth skin had gone ashy and dull. I remembered, someplace in the back of my mind, the letters from this place—one to Pine Breeze. Eliza must have been here to visit, at least once or twice, though it was hard to imagine her in such a place.

"It's not possible," I breathed.

"Say my name. He's awake now. " He pointed down at the body, now quivering with fright and straining halfheartedly against the ropes. "Say it, and let him see that you were right all along. Won't that feel good, now? Won't it be right to show him he was wrong? After all he's put you through, I wonder why you aren't throwing it in his face. "

He stepped aside and I saw Malachi's face, gagged by a dirty rag, eyes bugging out of his skull as he stared up at the man who'd bound him. I looked back and forth between them, unable to move or act or think straight.

"Avery. " It barely came out. Surely I hadn't said that aloud. It could not be true. It could not. But Malachi knew, more certainly than I did. I could see it in the bulging veins at his temples and the paralyzed jerking of his hands.

"Say it so he can hear it. You say my name, and you tell him you were right. "

"Avery. " There. It was out, and loud enough to be heard. Malachi closed his buggy eyes and tears of frustration welled out from the cracks. "You can't be. That's not possible. " Even as I contradicted him, I knew it was pointless.

"And you can't be my long-lost baby, but that's so too. "

I faltered, realizing I wasn't holding the gun. I felt around for it, but didn't find it. I didn't even look down at the floor. I couldn't look anywhere at all except at him, and it didn't seem important, somehow. I'd walked in with a gun, and now it was gone. Not in my hands. Didn't matter. Nothing mattered except to see him some more, and to hear him talk. "You're wrong," I argued again, maybe just to hear him speak.

"Now, why would you fuss, when you know it's a fact? You're my child—I know it, you know it, the women know it—" and here he gestured at the door, as if he'd known all along they were there. "Even the spirit at the hospital, this boy's momma, she knew it. She smelled it on you right away. "

"Wha—what?"

"You know that place—that place where you were born. That angry old bitch knew by your smell that you must be mine, but that's not why she tried to scare you so bad. Malachi, when's your momma gonna give up and go to rest? All the folks she hates are dead. I'd send her on myself if she'd listen. "

Malachi mumbled a furiously garbled answer, but I didn't understand or care. The air inside the shack was so heavy I could feel it pressing down against my skin; I could have taken a handful of it and squeezed it into some shape. Or perhaps it was just the smell of the evil herbs churning and boiling as the night approached. The night—yes, the night was approaching. I only had until sundown.

Maybe until sundown.

Hang on, Lulu, I prayed, trying to pull my thoughts together into something coherent enough to be useful.

"What are you talking about? That thing—that thing that talked to me at Pine Breeze? You sent it there?" Just stringing the words together was almost more than I could do. What was he doing to me? Was it magic, or hypnotism, or simply a very difficult truth that pressed so heavy on my sanity? "Did you send that monster after me, to chase me off?"

"Aw, don't talk about this boy's momma that way. It ain't right, or polite. " He reached down and actually scratched Malachi's head, almost with affection. "And I didn't send her there after you, no way, no how. I raised her, that's a fact; but I only meant to ask her some questions. I only wanted to know about you—the rest of your kin—and she knew better than anyone. She seemed the one to ask, and I wasn't about to let her being dead stop me.

"I didn't know she'd take off like that, though. I didn't know she'd be so wild and strong! She just took straight off, she did, and I couldn't snatch her back no matter what I tried. So I just let her go on and get lost. I didn't know she'd go back to that hospital, and I sure didn't know that nutty old woman would still be hunting after your momma. "

"You must be . . . you must be twenty . . . or thirty years . . . older than Eliza. " My next question was so huge I could only ask it in one word. "How?" Even at his advanced age, Avery was half a head taller than me and I sensed no weakness about him. Except for his appearance, there was nothing in his demeanor, posture, or attitude to suggest he was any older than I was.

"Twenty-seven years older, at my best count. I was around your age or thereabouts when she came along. So I'm old. What does that mean against forever? Against what's going to happen tonight?Eliza's old too, but she's old 'cause I let her be. An' if she wants to cooperate some more, she can live to be older still. "

I looked quickly at the woodburning stove. Several pots bubbled with different colored brews. "Her medicine," I said, and, glancing a bit to the left, I added, "And that damned book," almost wanting to laugh at all the effort we'd wasted searching three states off the mark.

"She wouldn't have lasted this long without me—without my formula. It ain't perfect, as you can see by my old bones and her bent little body, but it's been working well enough. Tonight, when John comes back, he'll show me how to fix it. And once it's fixed . . . " He waved one long hand and let my imagination fill in the rest.

"How many people need to die for you to live forever?" Malachi was looking pointedly back and forth between me and something on the floor. Trying to tell me something. What? Oh yes. Beside me. The gun. He was trying to remind me that I had a gun, but I couldn't hang on to the thought without concentrating, and it was hard to concentrate when Avery was talking.

"You won't stop me," he said, and with each word my confused focus wavered, then came together enough to remember the firearm again.

From the corner of my eye I saw it there, about two feet south of my right hand. Squat, grab, fire. How fast could I do it? Better be quick. The little ray of light that had fallen in through the curtains was fading and my aunt was dying.

"Like hell I won't. "