As the Hannigan brothers went to climb into their shiny red Tucker, and Pax Keates opened the driver’s-side door of the hearse, an Oldsmobile 88 rolled down the street toward them. It reminded Malcolm of something out of a gangster movie.Even the color—not quite black, not quite gray, maybe a little bit blue—looked as if it had been filmed in black and white. The Olds aimed straight at him and Violet.
“Malcolm?” she said, not yet as alarmed as she ought to be.
“Get in the car.” He yanked open the door and nudged her. The three of them would have to share the front seat.
He watched the Olds, thinking it would speed up. The curve of the windshield threw the sunshine back at him, and he couldn’t see who was at the steering wheel. Not until the last minute, when the car turned and stopped, blocking the road in front of the hearse and the Hannigans’ car.
The man behind the wheel no longer wore the raven mask, but with his goatee and the widow’s peak in his black hair, he still looked like a bird. He smiled when he climbed out of his car, unfolding like a straight razor.
He dangled the keys to the Olds by his fingers. “I’d trade you this car, but considering I stole it, I don’t think it’d do you much good.”
Malcolm flexed the fingers of his right hand, angry with himself for stashing the Browning in his valise. With Keates and the Hannigans around and no sign of the raven, carrying the gun had felt unnecessary and overly dramatic. The kind of thing that seems a perfect idea in the middle of the night but is swept aside by the wisdom of daylight.
“Damn it.”
At least he and Violet weren’t alone. The Hannigan brothers emerged from their candy-apple baby and spread out, making sure to keep the raven between them. Joe Hannigan reached behind his back, not drawing whatever weapon he’d stowed there but wanting to make sure the raven knew they had more than fists.
On the other hand, he’d been in plenty of scrapes that hadn’t required weapons in the past. He slammed the hearse’s door shut, leaving Violet inside, and moved around the front end, putting the raven in a triangle.
Pax didn’t bother getting out of the hearse. Instead, he started the engine and rolled down his window.
“Make it quick,” the undertaker said. “You’ve got a train to catch.”
The raven strode toward the car. Joe Hannigan moved fast for a man his size, grabbed the raven in a choke hold. Malcolm stormed ahead, fists balled, ready to lay into this man who had intruded on his mourning.
The other Hannigan pulled out a sap, a little leather item filled with sand, perfect for knocking a bastard unconscious and leaving him with an ugly bump on the head. He strode toward his brother and the raven. It happened in the space between heartbeats. The raven, taller than Joe, reached back and grabbed a fistful of the big Irishman’s orange hair, and smashed his skull back into Joe’s nose. It loosened the choke hold enough for him to twist in Joe’s grip, then smash his palm into his already broken and bleeding nose. Joe roared in pain and wheeled away, shouting his brother’s name.
Which was how Malcolm found out the second Hannigan’s name was Alfie.
Alfie Hannigan did not mess around. He dropped the sap, drew a gun, and pulled the trigger. Whatever he’d aimed at, what the bullet hit was the raven’s left leg, just above the knee. In the hearse, Violet cried out in shock as the raven toppled to the pavement. But it was clear the man wasn’t going to stay there. Already he began to rise.
Joe Hannigan spat a gob of his own blood. His nose had been broken in the past, but it looked ruined now, crushed and spread across his face. The man had murder in his eyes.
Alfie aimed the gun at the raven’s head. “That first bullet was to show you I’m willing,” he said. “If there’s a second, it’ll be the last one.”
The raven stopped moving. His eyes narrowed.
Malcolm stared at these three—the two big Irish soldiers and the man who’d watched his house overnight, waiting for hismother to die. His mother, who’d hired the Hannigan brothers, apparently knowing something like this might happen. His family had never been what anyone would consider normal, but the past few hours, the task he’d been given, the plans Maggie had made… this was more than even he had been prepared for.
“What the fuck is going on?” he shouted, throwing up his hands.
Alfie and Joe ignored him.
“Malcolm,” Pax Keates said from behind the wheel of the car, “get in right now or you’ll miss your train. And you can’t afford to miss your train.”
With a final glance at the frozen tableau of the three men in the street, Malcolm rushed around the hearse and slid in beside Violet. She had no tears in her eyes, which surprised him—he knew she was tough, but it turned out she was even tougher.
Paxson backed the hearse up, then climbed it over the curb and drove across the shaggy grass to get around the raven’s Oldsmobile. In seconds, they were back on the road and leaving behind the home where he’d grown up, and where Violet had married Elias, and where Maggie Wise had died. In the back of the hearse, the crate shifted as if Maggie herself were taking a last look at her home.
From behind them came a gunshot, echoing through Pax’s open car window. The cold air swirled in, stinging, startling.
Malcolm and Violet twisted around to look back at the men in the street.
“They’re fighting,” Violet said.
Fighting. Which meant either Alfie Hannigan’s second bullet had missed or the raven was still upright in spite of it.
Malcolm glanced at the undertaker. “Step on it, Pax. I’ve got a lot of questions that I don’t think I want answers to.”
