Black Wings Read online

  “I think we just…don’t go anywhere,” Marian said.

  Briella frowned harder, but then the deep groove between her eyebrows eased. She shook her head. “No. We go somewhere. We can’t just end. There has to be something else.”

  “So, you believe in God—”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” Briella interrupted with that casual wave of her hand and the condescending tone Marian hated. “God sounds like something people made up to keep each other from doing bad things.”

  Just like Santa, Marian thought.

  Briella continued, “I don’t think I believe in God, but I’m sure something happens to us when we die.”

  “Like what?” Marian asked and held her breath, unsure she wanted an answer.

  She didn’t have to worry, because Briella didn’t have one. The girl shrugged and went back to her notebook, scribbling again. “I don’t know yet.”

  “Briella…” Marian waited for her daughter to look up. “How did Onyx find us today at the pond?”

  Briella’s scribbling went still. Her eyes narrowed, but only for a second before she smiled. “Oh, he always knows where I am.”

  “How?”

  “He’s my friend.” Briella scowled. “He’d be a pet if you let me keep him in the house.”

  “We’ve gone over this. It’s wild. It should be free.” Marian paused, remembering an earlier conversation. “You wouldn’t like it if someone locked you up and put you away in a cage, would you?”

  The girl looked horrified, then sly. “No! But…he wouldn’t have to be in a cage. He could just live in my room with me and fly in and out of the window whenever he wants.”

  Something in the way the girl said this raised Marian’s suspicions. “You don’t let it in your room, do you? After I specifically told you it has to stay outside?”

  “No, Mama.”

  It was a lie. Briella might be the closest thing to a genius that Marian had ever met, but she hadn’t yet learned to hide her tells. The way she shifted her gaze and pursed her lips told Marian everything she needed to know. Wearily, she rubbed the spot between her eyes. “Briella…”

  “Am I allergic to anything?”

  The abrupt change of topic had Marian pursing her lips, an echo of her daughter’s expression. “No. I don’t think so. Why?”

  “It must suck for kids who are. Like Toby. He’s pretty dumb, though, isn’t he?” Briella had bent back to the notebook, her tone casual.

  “I’m sure it does, and that’s not nice to say, Briella.”

  Briella looked up at her. “Some things that aren’t nice are true.”

  Marian couldn’t argue with that. She had also noticed how easily Briella had moved the conversation away from that damned raven. She let it go, making a note to check the locks on Briella’s windows.

  “Mama, would you bring back Gramma if you could?”

  Marian’s breath hitched. “Yes, Bean. I would.”

  Briella nodded as though she’d been expecting Marian’s answer. She closed the notebook with a snap. “I’d bring her back if I could, too.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Dean had never been the sort of man to say, “I told you so,” but Marian had to admit after only a month and a half of Briella attending Parkhaven, he would’ve had the right to. All of Marian’s fears that Briella wasn’t going to fit in, that she wouldn’t like the new school, that somehow there would still be problems – all of them were assuaged each day when Briella came home from school nearly incandescent with stories of the day and how much she loved her classes and teachers.

  This afternoon she’d brought home a small container of metal chips and a circuit board. For the past hour or so she’d been bent over it, explaining to Dean how she’d taken it apart from a bunch of old computers the school allowed students to cannibalize to create their projects. Marian stayed back to watch, ostensibly making dinner but really just giving the two of them time together without her around. It was the first time she could ever recall Briella actively seeking interaction with Dean. She even leaned against him affectionately while she pointed out all the different plans she had for the circuit board. Dean’s eyes met Marian’s over the top of Briella’s head as the girl pulled out her notebook to show him the scribbles of code she was working on.

  “So, you’re going to build yourself a new computer system?” Dean asked.

  Briella frowned and pushed away from him to put her hands on her hips. “Nooooooo. I just told you, I’m studying computer programs to see how they compare to brains.”

  “Ah.” Dean shrugged and chuckled. “How do they compare to brains?”

  Marian had braced for a snotty reply from Briella, but she didn’t go there. She flipped the pages of her notebook again to explain. The tiniest swell of jealousy swirled through Marian. The girl had been deliberately hiding her notebook from her mother, but now she was more than happy to share it with Dean. And that was a good thing, Marian reminded herself. She wanted them to bond this way.

  “Well, brains just work. Unless they don’t. You know, if your brain doesn’t work right, you’re sick. Brains use, like, electricity, but it comes from chemicals and stuff, and computers also run with electricity. The thing is,” Briella said matter-of-factly, “you can’t just plug electricity into a brain to get it to work again. You can do that a little bit with a heart if it’s not beating, but it doesn’t work with brains. If you try to fix a broken brain with a computer program, you can’t just stick it in there, like with a needle and an electric current. You’ll fry the brain.”

  “Ouch,” Marian said.

  Briella frowned. “Brains don’t feel things, Mom.”

  “Still, frying it doesn’t sound any good. The only thing we should be frying is fries, right?” Marian laughed at her own joke, but uneasily, because Briella looked so darn serious.

  “It’s called pithing,” Briella continued seriously. “You do it on frogs.”

  Both Marian and Dean were silent, exchanging looks. Marian had dissected a frog in high school, a million years ago, set up in pairs in biology class. She could vaguely remember the smell. All those frogs had already been dead.

  “Not the electric part, usually. But with a needle. It doesn’t hurt them,” Briella assured them.

  Marian managed to say, “I’d think that killing something with a needle in its brain would hurt it, Briella.”

  “But it doesn’t,” Briella insisted as she closed her notebook and clutched it to her chest. “That’s why they do it that way.”

  Dean gestured at the notebook. “Is that what you’ve been working on at school?”

  “No. They don’t allow us to experiment on animals at school. Only plants.”

  “So…how do you know this?” Marian asked reluctantly, already sure she’d know the answer.

  Briella looked surprised and then, absurdly innocent. “Research.”

  “It sounds like gruesome research.”

  Briella shrugged. “It’s science.”

  “Well, I don’t have much appetite after that, but it’s almost time for dinner. Go put your stuff away and get washed up.” Marian waited until Briella had gathered her things and skipped out of the kitchen before she said to Dean, “It’s science.”

  “I didn’t understand ninety per cent of it,” Dean said.

  Marian dug into the backpack Briella had left slung over the back of the chair, but there wasn’t much in there. She was used to Southside sending home dozens of papers every week. Parkhaven had a parent portal she was supposed to be logging in to. She looked at Dean with a frown.

  “I guess I need to check the parent portal to see if there’s something in there about the science classes? I know I went to school a long time ago, but I remember needing my parents to sign a form saying it was okay for me to dissect the frog, and that was in tenth grade bio.”