The City of Crows Bethany Lovejoy (color ebook reader .TXT) 📖

with every ounce of my being I trusted that my mother was doing what was right.

She withdrew a thin, polished wand made out of sandalwood; its surface still unmarred by time. I knew it intimately, she still used it. “Close your eyes,” she said, her voice making it clear that this wasn’t a request. Obediently, my eyes shut, my feet betraying me by shuffling closer. The soft, sanded tip of her wand rested against my head, and all air seemed to leave my body. “This is for you, Lyra,” she whispered.

Blinding pain soon followed, the heavy sigh of a woman and the smoke of a cigarette trailing not far behind it. All thoughts of the man disappeared.

Wake up, my mind continued to scream, not needing consciousness to do so. Don’t slip, wake up. Leo. Leo is gone. A jerk, my body came back to reality. Eyes shot open and lungs inhaled a heavy breath. My hand balled in the sheet beside me, as if confirming to me that it was capable of motion now. Still, the heaviness resided over me, my mouth terribly dry as if sawdust had been poured into it.

Leo.

My eyes shot to the side of me, finding the space on the bed empty. I looked in the other direction, finding the nightstand empty. Darting up, I felt my pockets; no phone.

“Leo?” My voice carried, echoing off the walls of his apartment. Something, anything, that was all I needed. Just a sign that Leo was still there. I was rewarded with none, no response, nothing.

Groggily, I swung my feet over the side of the bed, nearly collapsing from the dizziness caused by whatever he’d slipped me. Standing was a task that was both monumental and necessary. I struggled to my feet, gripping onto the nightstand beside me to keep me upright. Part of me wanted to call again, another part of me knew better. I stumbled my way past his room divider, gripping every object I could between the bedroom and couch.

It was very evident that I was awake far earlier than intended, especially since the clock only read an hour later, and the night continued to beat on outside the apartment. Perhaps if I’d waited longer, it would not have hit me as hard.

“This isn’t funny, Leo,” I groaned, slowly sinking to my knees as I attempted to reach for the door. How many times had I told him he was human, and yet he decided to do this? Foolish.

I made it to the kitchen counter and I saw it, the object that was supposedly going to force some form of forgiveness out of me, the charcoal sketch of a blonde woman, her full cheeks and tilted nose being far too familiar to me. Lyra, the title read, followed by his signature. I slammed my hand onto the sketch, tossing it haphazardly to the ground. As if a simple picture could quell my rage.

And then, like it was taunting me, the noise began.

A soft series of caws from the ledge of the living room windows, a crow peering in. I stared at it, foot smashing the disregarded sketch as I shuffled closer. The crow stopped, its curious head tilted to the side as all humor seemed to immediately leave it, its nose pecking against the glass.

In and out, in and out; I had to remind myself to breathe. But the sheer gall of it, the way that it seemed to try to communicate—

I leaned forward, air filling my lungs when rationality could not fill my brain. Furious, I snatched the picture up from under my foot, clutching my fist as I released what I’d been holding back; an enraged scream.

23

The Crow

I’m not proud of how I got to the roof, muttered spells and a wand rendering the lock in a doorknob useless via close proximity and the power behind my words, but I rationalized to myself that it was a necessary evil. As was pulling on Leo’s forest green sweater, the same one I’d first seen him in, a necessary precaution against the breeze and nothing else, definitely nothing else. His sweet, familiar smell filled my nostrils again, willing my feet forward, willing me onto the cement of the roof. He’d be back soon; I would get him back soon. But until then, this was enough. This had to be enough.

The wind ripped across the roof, far rougher than it ever was on the street level. It was unforgiving, the way that it tore across, chilling me to the bone and nearly knocking me off my feet. Leo lived in one of the tallest buildings in New Haven, a building that seemed to reach endlessly towards the sky. Once on top of it, the height was quite daunting. Down below, lights shone and ant-like people went about their business, the gleam from office buildings creating a heavy haze. This was not the place to dangle your feet over the edge, nor one to watch the city flow by. This was a place dangerously near the stars, a place where the clouds seemed only just out of reach.

And yet the crows… They flew so high that they went far past the boundaries of imagination. Crows showed up wherever I went, black bodies and beady eyes watching from every corner, balancing on powerlines, dodging the paws of my transformed roommate. The Devil’s familiars, humans used to call some Corvidae that, the nearly ever-present creatures living at the edge of our societies, eating scraps and left-over crops when they could, killing field mice and feasting on carion when the opportunity arose. It seemed only fitting, didn’t it? That the person I knew to be so desperate to eat up the scraps of whatever society would throw him had his own ties to the creatures.

There he sat; clad in a white shirt and black wool pants, his suspenders creating wrinkles at his shoulders; the owner’s dirty blond hair ruffling in the breeze. His eyes trained on the