When Devils Sing(38)
“Can you help me?” Motivated by her wet tears and aching heart, Neera asked, “Can you make them love me? I don’t want to make my family sad anymore.”
The creature was quiet for several heartbeats. “I cannot.”
Heaviness returned to Neera’s chest as tears threatened to pour down her face once more. She whimpered, “Why not?”
“One day,” the creature began as he moved forward, inching slowly like freshly spilled ink. The tip of his long beak, covered in moss and dried leaves, nearly touched her nose. “You will desire something greater than love. It will be more powerful than anything you can imagine. I will be here to will it, but only that.”
Despite the sudden closeness of the creature, Neera was still unafraid. Curiosity threatened to eclipse her sadness. “You promise you’ll be here to help me?”
“Yes.”
Neera looked around, eyes struggling to discern the woods in the dark. “Do you live here? In the trees?”
“Yes.” Branches cracked and snapped all around her. “And no.”
Neera felt saddened by that. “How will I see you again?”
“You may call on me when the time comes,” the creature said. “But only if you are willing to pay the cost of your desire.”
Neera nodded slowly, too young to fully understand the weight of the creature’s words. “I don’t know your name?”
The creature was silent for a long time, as if he weren’t used to being asked about himself. “I am nameless,” he said finally.
Neera scrunched her nose. The creature looked like the black birds perched outside her window every morning. The ones that sometimes left buttons on her doorstep. “I can call you Crow?”
His black, bottomless eyes blinked slowly. “As you wish.”
Compelled by a force beyond her, she said, “My name’s Neera.”
“Neera.” Crow repeated her name as if the wind itself spoke it. “May we meet again.”
Without another word, the creature stepped backward, into the bramble and the pines. His eyes stayed on Neera as he backed away, but then she blinked and Crow was gone, absorbed by the leaves and the earth and the night.
Sound returned. Frogs croaked and crickets hummed all around her. Lightning bugs dotted the night in sudden yellow bursts. The cicadas pulsed and whined to the rapid beat of her heart.
Later, Neera emerged from the woods to find all the adults frantic and scared. Even her uncle Ajay had been called to join the search party. She’d been missing for three hours. It had felt like minutes. It had felt like days.
As Kiran fussed over her—alternating between hugging her too tight and scolding Neera for scaring her—Neera could only ask one question. “Mommy, do they love me?”
Her mom hesitated, then pulled her in for another hug. With Kiran’s cheek pressed against her own, Neera could feel her begin to cry. She did not answer the question. Ajay looked on from beside them, resting a weary hand on her mom’s shoulder and another on Neera’s back.
A bird cawed overhead. Neera tilted her head up and up and up, watching a crow disappear into the summer night.
CHAPTER 14ISAIAH
Isaiah sat on the living room floor of his grandparents’ house, surrounded by puzzle pieces. The puzzle, an oversaturated ocean scene, was his little cousin’s idea. But Keisha sat beside him, more interested in the contents of her summer homework than helping him create a sunset.
It was early evening, the house abuzz with laughter, clattering pans, and the sweet smell of cornbread. Papa Charles and Uncle Marcus fumbled around in the kitchen, while Grandma Bee and Aunt Tamera were happy to sit at the dining room table, sipping sweet tea and watching their husbands whip up dinner. The local news station played on the living room flat-screen, a dull background noise for the night.
It was all, apparently, too much for Keisha, who gathered her study materials in her arms and excused herself to go upstairs.
Frustrated with the puzzle’s slow progress, and Keisha’s indifference to it, Isaiah pulled out his phone.
Without really thinking, he then found himself in a new message thread with Neera. He’d typed up a text to her earlier in the day, yet he hadn’t the courage to send it. To ask her to breakfast felt like another complication to his already weighted summer. Was he ready to entertain a friendship with her again?
“Oh, that poor boy,” Grandma Bee said from the dining room.
Isaiah looked up at the TV. Drone footage played of Lake Clearwater, with a BREAKING banner flashing across the bottom of the screen. He stood up, crossing the room to better hear the news report.
“Carrion teenager Dawson Sumter has been presumed dead this afternoon. Police found the deceased’s car on the north side of Lake Clearwater, parked on the banks of a secluded fishing location.” An aerial camera panned over the gated side of the lake, hovering over a heavily wooded inlet. “The teen’s shoes were left at the scene, along with several empty bottles of alcohol. A witness has since stepped forward, claiming to have seen Dawson Sumter swimming in the water the night he was reported missing. Recovery of the body will not be possible, due to the treacherous layout of the lake, posing a safety risk to the county’s Search and Rescue team.
“We have Samantha Calhoun with us to discuss her eyewitness account of the events leading up to Dawson’s death,” the news anchor announced. “Samantha, you were with Dawson Sumter the night he drowned, is that correct?”