The Weight of Blood by Laura McHugh

Author:Laura McHugh
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9520-6
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group - Random House
Published: 2014-03-10T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

Jamie

Jamie knew the guy in the white van, the one Lucy had seen at Doris Stoddard’s—though even if he hadn’t, he would have lied and said he did, made up a story, anything to keep her with him, alone and in arm’s reach. She’d found Jamie at his fishing spot on the river, and he knew in order to do that, she first would have had to hunt down Gage in whatever hole he was crashing and convince him to give her directions. It was good that she’d gone to some trouble. It meant the information was valuable. Through his years of dealing and bartering, Jamie had developed a knack for knowing how far somebody would go to get something. He could stare right through a person’s eyes to the scale that seesawed in the brain, weighing wants and needs, balancing desire against guilt and pride. Lucy had agreed to his terms without argument. He couldn’t believe his luck, that by virtue of the very life he led, he had something she needed. People needed him all the time in various sharp-edged ways, but not people like Lucy. Lucy would never stumble over him in some dark corner, press her tits in his face, and beg to blow him for meth.

He’d gotten close to her at the bonfire, as close as he’d ever been, near enough to taste her breath. He’d mentioned Cheri partly to get her attention, but also because he’d been spooked—the memory of it choked him, the rasp of Cheri’s breath as she splashed by, looking right past him without seeing, as though he were the ghost—and he wanted to share it with Lucy, that feeling of not knowing whether he was real or the world around him was real or if anything was real. He knew Lucy would believe him, that she would somehow understand, because he imagined her privy to that spectral world, the realm of unknowable things that existed beyond an invisible sieve, and maybe if he tried hard enough, he could break apart into tiny pieces and sift through to the other side.

Lucy had pounced on his story, questioning, prodding, taking it seriously, like he’d known she would. But he hadn’t been prepared for her anger. He hadn’t thought to help Cheri as she fled down the river. If anything, he would have asked her for help, asked how to get where ghosts go on earth, how to stay and watch and haunt without anyone knowing he was there. He hadn’t expected Lucy to get so caught up in Cheri that he wouldn’t have the chance to tell her the other, more important story: that he’d met Lucy’s mother at Ralls’ grocery when he was twelve, and she’d cast a spell on him, held him in thrall all these empty years until Lucy emerged from the void.

Back then, Jamie was the runt of the Petree clan, the scrawniest of all the boys. That was before he got into his present line of

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