Chapter Thirteen

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

"What in the hell do these crazy riddles have to do with anything?" Davis shoves himself out from under Miss Belinda Jones's jacked-up bumper with a smooth roll on the mechanic dolly. Grease smears across his forehead. Black stains his rough-hewn fingers. He stretches open his palm toward the rubber mallet. I hand it to him.

"I don't exactly know yet. But they have to mean something."

"Why's that?"

"Well—"

"Oh, hey," he interrupts. "I almost forgot. Wyatt called here looking for you." His tone drops a bit. "He said Violet wants you to bring Adaire's car to the Watering Hole tonight. She's got a buyer."

"Awesome," I grumble, as I'll now be without a reliable set of wheels since I still don't have enough cash to fix my car. Davis slides himself back under.

Harvey's Metal Boneyard is a giant corrugated shed stuffed full of rusty parts, stacks of old tires, and a hoard of outdated equipment. The Yancey's junkyard garage used to be the main place you could get car parts before they opened the auto store over in Mercer. Pick what you needed from the lot, and Mr. Harvey would work his magic. After Davis's father passed, he resigned himself to the fact that as the third generation Yancey, he would have to take over the family business. But Adaire, to Mrs. Yancey's approval, convinced Davis he was too smart to spend his life as a grease monkey in a dying junkyard business, not with his love for science and medicine. Next to the greasy tools and soda cooler against the wall are Davis's EMT-training books. During the day, he works on cars and in night school, he learns how to work on bodies. I'm pretty sure his final exams are coming soon. Something I don't want to think about.

Hanging on the wall between the screwdrivers and wrenches is Blue's old collar. Adaire and I had no idea that the dog we saved that day would find a home for many years with her future sweetheart. That dog was a good boy, once he got used to you.

As my eyes scan the room, they settle on a package, unopened, beneath Davis's textbooks. I slide the books slightly to the side. The package doesn't say who it's from, but I don't need to know because I recognize Adaire's handwriting. A sweet pink ribbon ties the bundle up tight. Davis's greasy fingerprints patter all over the outside of it, probably from the many times he's picked it up, ready to open it, only to change his mind. Maybe he should save it for his birthday next year, a belated present.

The old diner bar stool creaks when I sit on it. I hold a cold Orange Crush bottle against my throbbing cheek and tell him the rest of my Gabby adventure.

Davis rolls out from underneath the car and pins me with a scrutinizing look. "Gabby said she got the glass droplet from a dead deer. What's that got to do with Adaire?" His voice edges with anger. There's a thin line of patience he's holding on to. If I tug too hard, that line will snap.

"Well," I say, in a more tender tone, "it's been in our family for years. Where else would Gabby have got it from?" I hold up the blue stopper to the light. "Droplet of rain, Adaire called it in her note. Gabby called it that, too."

"You're not making any sense," he growls.

"Gabby wasn't making any sense," I say, more to myself, then I snap the lid off with the bottle opener and take a long, refreshing chug.

Out front, a crow lands on a rusty oil barrel and stares directly into the garage. I sit taller, unsure if it's Rook or just an ordinary crow. It pecks around on top of the barrel like it's trying to get at something.

Davis gives the bird an uninterested glance before he rolls back under the car. He bangs out a few muffled thuds with the rubber mallet.

"And I don't understand this ‘recipe' she was talking about, either," I say when he stops pounding. "Maybe it just means to see something again. As in we've seen it before, now we get to see it again."

The crow stays put. Eyes locked on mine. Then it caws twice as if calling to me. I pop off my stool to see what it's getting at—

A loud clank drops from underneath the car, causing me to jump.

"Got it!" Davis rolls out, holding up the prized piece, a bar with red plastic fringe dangling on the end. He watches the startled crow fly off. His eyes pan back to me with heavy concern.

"What's that?" I pretend like I didn't even notice the crow and saunter back over to Davis.

"Handlebar to a pogo stick." He tosses it in the trash barrel with the remaining stick, now a red pretzel knot. "Miss Belinda ran over her granddaughter's toy."

"And it jacked up her car that bad?" The twisted bend of the front bumper a gnarled grin.

"Yep." Davis scrubs his hands with a bar of Lava soap. "She'll need a new one. Bent the tire rod, too. I'll have to order one of those as well." He leans back against the sink, drying his hands on a red rag that's nothing short of filthy.

"New bumper," I say more to myself as a thought occurs to me. Not an hour ago I lay on the Sugar Hill's driveway, face-to-face with Stone's car. Not a scratch anywhere on it. "Hey. If Stone's car hit a bicycle, wouldn't his bumper be jacked up? Like this?" I say to Davis. Before he can answer, I add, "Now that I come to think about it, I don't remember seeing any damage to his car when I put the witching jar behind his tire. A little strange, don't you think?"

"He probably had it repaired." Davis shrugs.

"And why has Lorelei been driving it around? Where's her car?"

Davis gives me a confused look. "Who knows. Maybe she sold it. And maybe you're misremembering about Stone's car; we had a lot on our minds that day at court. It's nothing. Just let it go."

Except I can't let it go.

"But that doesn't make sense—why would she sell a perfectly good car? Why would Stone's even be drivable after the accident? I didn't even get to the part about the necklace!" I'm about to tell him about the scales of justice and the ribbon necklace Lorelei had with that symbol—

"What are you doing?" Davis sharply cuts me off before I can finish my thought. "Why is any of this important?"

"It's important because... Well, I'm not sure, but I think maybe—" Then I stop when I see the grimace on Davis's face. "What?"

He glances down and away, like it pains him to have this talk, but it's got to be done. I can feel the color wash from my face.

He glances back up with a seriousness that ages him. "I talked to Raelean," he says, as if this is supposed to mean something.

"And?" I smart my hand on my hip, not really in the mood to be lectured.

"She said at the farmhouse you were...you were talking to a crow." He picks up one of his tools and polishes it clean with the same red rag.

Oh, so this is where he's going. I clinch my jaw and hold back an annoyed swear. "I told her I was reading something out loud."

"That's what you told her." He spears me with a look, one that says he doubts my story.

"All little kids have imaginary friends." I wield a stern glare right back at him.

"At ten, maybe. At twenty-four?" He raises a brow.

Damn Adaire for telling Davis about Rook. I mean, I never said she couldn't, but it isn't anyone's business. I brought a dead boy back to some version of life, and it cursed him with the duty of a Soul Walker. I think it bothered Adaire he only returned when death visited me. Like my relationship with him was wrong somehow. That doesn't change the fact he and I are bound, symbiotic, my gift and his duty. As though either of us really had a choice in the matter.

"We both know what this is really about," Davis says. I don't like his condescending tone. "You gotta stop clinging to her. It's not a healthy way to grieve."

"Oh, so you're the expert on grieving now? Not all of us can continue on with life like nothing ever happened."

Davis points an angry finger at me. "That is not what I'm doing."

Crackled voices push through the ambulance authority's scanner, something Davis keeps in case extra hands are needed. He pauses long enough to hear it's not a medical emergency, then he turns back to me.

I pull my lighter and a small joint from my empty box of playing cards I keep them in. "What's your point?"

"My point is you're different. This...this..." He waves a hand up and down at my brown-and-orange-striped shirt. "You're wearing her clothes, for God's sake."

It's Adaire's shirt, one she made from a vintage serape tablecloth she found at a garage sale.

"You've picked up her bad habits, too." He raises a brow at the stubby joint I'm poised to light.

"She smoked when her visions came on too strong. It's helping me—" to numb myself is what I want to say "—to get over her."

"There's no getting over her. Don't you get that? We just have to make it through. And not like this."

"Like what? It's a little weed, no big deal."

"It's not just the weed. Jesus, Weatherly, you're going through men faster than Miss Belinda goes through new bumpers. Jimmy Smoot. Rodney Wheeler. Ricky Scarborough." He ticks them off on his fingers.

"Oh, so you're my daddy now?" I light the blunt.

"Never. I'm your friend. And I'm worried. In the last month and a half, you seem adrift." His words hammer out a chunk of that wall that's been holding me up. "You're not thinking clearly. Listen to what you're saying. You're over here talking about a mentally unstable woman and a dead deer and rain as if any of it matters."

"It does!"

"But it doesn't." Davis says this as if that's the final word. "The court deemed it was an accident. Stone is dead. Why can't you let sleeping dogs lie? Leave that family alone before you stir up more trouble. They've suffered, too, you know."

I know he's right, but it doesn't stop the niggling feeling that there's something more. If this isn't about Adaire dying, what else was she trying to tell me?

"You're making this about something that isn't even in your control," he says.

"What do you mean?"

"Adaire's visions were vague, something she always had to interpret. But you want justice for her so bad you're reading into them, inventing some mystery that's taking you on a wild-goose chase, when maybe the truth is simply it was a horrible accident."

"It wasn't an accident!" I rupture. "It was my fault. Mine!" I jab a finger into my chest. "If I wouldn't have borrowed her car that day, she wouldn't have been riding that stupid yellow ten-speed." I stop abruptly as my voice catches in my throat. I haven't said it out loud yet, but as soon as the words left my mouth, it hit me—it was all my fault. She was on that bike because of me—and worse, I wasn't there to save her.

"Weatherly, it wasn't your fault. She let you borrow her car, and I know Adaire, she'd do it again no matter the reason. She'd have done anything for you." His voice is lower, softer now, as he tries to reassure me.

"Maybe. But I wasn't there to save her, either. Of all the times I would have been glad to have this god-awful gift. The one time I would have actually wanted to have that power, I wasn't even there."

"You can't save them all. Trust me, I know." He jerks his head in the direction of the ambulance scanner and I realize, at least logically, that he's right.

But I'm still sad and so, so angry. Why did she have to go off on her bike? That's when I'm struck with another thought. "And what was she out doing, anyway? Did you ask yourself that? She didn't have to work at the diner until that night and Aunt V was going to drop her off. I was supposed to pick her up after her shift. There was no reason for her to be on that bike."

"This is exactly what I'm talking about," Davis says, flailing his hands. "Just because you don't know why she was out riding her bike, doesn't mean she was doing something mysterious. Maybe she went to get food. Maybe she needed cigarettes. Maybe she was just riding her bike! Sometimes, the most obvious answer is the right one."

"This isn't some bullshit in my mind." I whir a hand next to my head. "It can't be." I toss my soda bottle into the trash, and I snatch my keys off the desk. "And it's up to me to fix it," I say.

"Jesus, Weatherly, where the hell are you going now? What do you think you're going to do?" Davis asks as I spin on my heels and head to the car.

"First, I'm going to drop off Adaire's car to Aunt Violet." The car door yelps a wretched scream when I rip it open. As I turn the key, the engine sputters and guzzles from being startled awake.

With one hand on the wheel, I look Davis dead in the eye. "Then I'm going to find justice. She holds the truth." I hold up the bottle stopper, as if all the answers are in that tiny piece of glass.

His frown turns to pity as he steps away from the car.

"I'm not wrong," I say to him as he shakes his head and walks away. "I'm not wrong!" I yell at his back, but he doesn't want to hear it.