Nadine gripped her wineglass like it was a dagger she intended to use. Catching herself, she set it down hastily with a delicate flexing of fingers, spilling a few drops on the table.
“We should start planning a funeral,” Ben added. “She’s not coming back.”
Nadine’s hand hovered over her spoon. She didn’t pick it up. “What?”
“Yes.” Odessa sighed. “I think you’re probably right. And we may as well do it while we have Nadine here. Just so we have the closure.”
Cal had seen an entire spectrum of emotions on Nadine’s all-too-expressive face, but he had never seen her lookfurious. Frightened, desperate, dazed, and annoyed, yes, but not filled with bottomless rage. Because there was no making that set to her jaw, or the sudden narrowing of her eyes as she tossed down her spoon and breathed in harshly, causing the buttons on her too-small bodice to strain with the extra effort.
“Nadine,” Odessa said. “Are you all right? You look upset.”
“You’vebarelylooked for her.” The words were vicious, shrill, delivered in a higher octave than her usual speaking voice. She startled at her own volume and there was a brief awkward pause before she rallied herself with a vicious little shake. “At least do a fucking search first before you decide she’sdead!”
Her eyes swept the table, hot and accusing, and ultimately landed on him. Cal watched her draw herself up, wondering if she were going to give him a dressing down, too.
Instead, she deflated.
“As I said before, where do you propose I start?” Ben had been drinking liberally in favor of his meal, which sat largely untouched to his right, though he rebuffed any attempts to clear it. “I already told you how difficult it would be to search in these woods. It’s beenweeks, Nadine. If she is alive—” he gave her a cruel, heartless smile “—she isn’t coming back.”
Her eyes glittered with unshed tears. In the light of the chandelier, they seemed infused with fire.Don’t say it, he urged silently, but she disregarded him. “And whose fault would that be? Why don’t you try searching beneath the hellebore in the garden? Isn’t that where Caledon Cullraven buriedhismissing wife?”
The silence was deafening. Odessa’s mouth had dropped open, but there was a twitch at the edges that threatened to morph into a smile or a sneer.
Never mind that he was running on four hours of sleep most nights, trying to spare her. And then she had the gall to show up here, like this, and say things likethatwhile his fucking sister sat there and cheered her along to the finish line of her own mortal coil.
“Nadine,” he snarled. “What the fuck?”
“No.” Ben smiled. “This is the most honest she’s been since coming here. Your little sparrow is showing her true colors at last.”
“He’s got you there, Baby Cal,” Odessa said.
Cal looked hard at his brother. But Ben was looking at Nadine.
“Why do you all keep calling me that?” she demanded, without losing any of her former anger.
“Because that’s what he thinks you are, darling,” his brother mocked. “A frightened, flapping little bird. Asparrow.”
A sparrow.
Cal looked at the empty bottle of rum in his hand before turning tired eyes on the dead sparrow under its pitted dome of glass.My sweet Evangeline, he thought.But so bitter in victory.
There were too many dead sparrows.
It had been several days since that ill-fated dinner and Cal felt compelled to leave the house once more. The closeness of the festival pulled at him: anticipation chased by unfamiliar dread. Because if he could not claim what he felled, what was even the point of hunting?
Rael agreed to meet him at the Blue Bar. It had been an age since Cal had gone himself. As he walked through the doors, there was a beat of silence perfected in which all conversation abruptly ceased. Ignoring the stares and suspicious glances, he walked up to the bar and ordered a double.
Christian poured it for him unsmilingly. “Been a while since you stepped foot in this place.”
“Yet somehow my name never grows tarnished.” Cal slid his money across the counter. “I won’t trouble you long.”
The bartender scoffed when Cal shrugged off the change. “I wish your sister felt the same.”
“Odessa?” he asked, taken by surprise.
“She’s a regular.” The choice of word was deliberate, couched in meaning. “Can’t rightly tell her to stay away, though.”
As the man grew restless under his steady gaze, Cal was hit by a sudden suspicion. “No,” he said at last. “Not unless you wanted her to take that as a challenge.”
