“C-r-r-uck!”
I look up. Dozens of ravens fly in a circle around the roof of Grandmère’s house. The birds swoop and soar, their eerie cries echoing through the night.
Next to me, Demetri stands motionless, his gaze locked on the sky. “Dark angels,” he murmurs.
“What does that mean?” For a moment, I wonder if he’s charmed the birds, summoning them with his power just to mess with me. But his eyes are wide and more horrified than they were when that strange fog arrived.
Grandmère hurries back over to us. She fiddles with her pearl necklace before raking a hand through the strands of her silver bob, perfecting her hair. “Don’t be worried, little bird,” she says when she catches me watching the sky. She gives me a bright, reassuring smile. “It’s nearly time.”
“Time for what?” The last time I saw a raven, a man died.
My grandmother wraps her slender arms across our backs, scooting us along. “It’s time to talk about the Tethered Gambit… But first, Grandmère has a little surprise. Hurry inside, children!”
CHAPTER FOURMalcolm DavenportPHILADELPHIA, 2024
I brace myself as we tumble through time, my sister’s hand locked in mine. Colors swirl around us, dripping like slick grease. I fight the pull and look over my shoulder in time to see the fiery door slam shut and vanish as we escape the past. My grandmother’s words are a commanding drum beating through me: “Always be sure to clean up after yourselves. Never leave the door open behind you.” Bursts of starlight flash.
The air smells like cinnamon and candied yams. The wind whips Jayla’s fingers away. I snap my head in her direction. Her blue dress and brown body flip and roll in the starlight until she steadies, floats. Jayla’s hair flies, and her arms spread wide as she flutters through the sky. She’s silent, her expression almost drunk.
My body folds forward, and a chill climbs up my spine. My mouth opens wide, but no sound falls out. Instead, air rushes in, flooding my lungs till my eyes water and my chest feel like it’s gonna lock up.
My vision is scarred black-and-white. Time blinks forward. I squint hard, trying not to miss any of it. Beneath us, the blurry bones of old buildings crumble down, and new ones climb up in their place. The sun rises andsets. Seasons pass. But life, even at this speed, is beautiful. God was just showing off when he made a world like this.
Things slow as we get closer to where we’re headed. Steam crawls on the ground, and red streetlights glow, making the city look like it’s bathed in glitter. The breeze blows us toward row homes that stand in the distance. They’re small at first, like houses on a game board. We fly over Lanier Park, the playground at Twenty-Ninth and Tasker Streets. A puddle on the asphalt below shines under the streetlight like black ice. As we fly, the rain starts again, and drops turn to steamy coils as they sizzle on my sister’s skin. The world gets gray as ash, then it’s bathed in a holy gold gleam.
We are definitely back in Philadelphia, and the new baseball field tells me we got the year right. It’s 2024. We soar around a corner, our bodies flinging wildly as color slowly bleeds back into the world below. And finally, we near our house. A brick two-story with white trim and black shutters. It looks middle-class, nice, and sensible. It’s little at first, then it grows, gets so big and close that I can see a bushy brown squirrel run across the asphalt shingles of our roof.
My arms and legs are spread wide as a starfish, and I’m tossed downward. My sister is bent nearly on all fours, her spine arched. Another door of gold-purple flame appears below us, about three feet above our yard. The door flings open, spitting us out and tossing us onto the grass in front of our house. I hit the lawn with a burst of pain. We roll across the small square of grass and dirt. I push myself to my feet while Jayla catches her breath.
Jayla picks leaves out of her hair. I laugh at how many are tangled up in her coils. She dusts herself off. “Ugh!” she yells, standing on wobbly feet. “That’s it. Fate ought to be ashamed, ripping a dress that makes me look cute.”
I spot the tear at the bottom of her gown. “Why are you blaming God for your clothes?” I guide her up the cement stairs to our town house.
She smirks. “I ain’t hollering about God. I’m sure that girl’s too busy running the world to worry about my dress. Isaidfate. Fate’s so messed up, it must be a man.”
I chuckle and pause on the porch. “You know, if you would have wornmore layers tonight, I might not have had to argue with that dude for disrespecting you.”
“Yessuh, massah,” she says, mocking me. “No wonder you’re single. Ladies stan a king who doesn’t slut-shame.”
“I don’t. You look great. There’s just a lot of jerks in the joint sometimes, so I worry. Sometimes it feels like the world is a mess our broom isn’t big enough for. But tonight feels good. Feels like we saved folks.”
She grins. “See, you need me.” She turns the doorknob, and we enter the foyer.
No sooner do we get inside than the light flicks on. Our brother Charles comes out of the study. He sets some papers on a table next to the cypress cuckoo clock in the hallway and glares at us.
“It’s 2:08AM, Malcolm Davenport,” Charles says. “Where or when on God’s green earth have you been?”
I don’t say anything. Jayla stands beside me, but she’s quiet too.
“I asked a question.” The lines in his forehead seem deeper under his dreadlocks. I smirk at his blue button-up shirt and matching pants. Since Dad died, my older brother acts like he’s everybody’s father, but those shoes are way too big for his feet. He might be older, but he can’t fill that hole left behind in our family.
“I can’t even finish charting the new route for the show because I got to worry about you neglecting your training,” Charles whines. “Now you want to run off alone, too?”
“Isn’t Jayla next to me?” I reply.
“Don’t give me that crap,” he says. “She went after you. Where’d you go?”
“1904.” I walk toward the stairs, a new wave of exhaustion hitting me.
