She looked utterly terrified, scrambling up as Mrs. Strickham ran forward, gripped her by the neck, and lifted her into the air. Foxes snarled from every side.
“Stop!” cried Caw.
“Mom!” said Lydia.
Selina’s face was going red as she choked.
“Tell me why I shouldn’t let my foxes tear your throat out,” hissed Lydia’s mother.
Caw grabbed Mrs. Strickham’s arm and squeezed firmly. “Don’t,” he said. He saw that her knuckles were white, and Selina’s eyes were bulging. “She . . . she might be useful to us.”
Mrs. Strickham held on for a moment longer, then let go. Selina sank to the ground again, rubbing her neck and coughing.
“I didn’t mean . . . I didn’t understand . . . ,” she said.
Caw looked at her with contempt. “Being in my house?” he said. “That was all a trick, wasn’t it?”
She looked up at him through tear-streaked eyes.
“I wanted to help you!” he snapped. “You betrayed me!”
“That’s because her mother is the fly talker,” said Crumb. “She’s worthless. Rotten to the core.”
“What are you talking about?” said Selina. “My mom’s just in charge of the police.”
“Don’t play the fool with us,” said Mrs. Strickham.
Selina threw a desperate glance at Caw. “My mom told me there was a gang committing robberies in Blackstone. She said they moved around and they were impossible to catch. I just wanted to help.”
Crumb rolled his eyes. “She’s lying. You expect us to believe that you’ve lived with the Mother of Flies your whole life, but you didn’t know?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “My mom’s normal. She can’t talk to flies.”
“Oh, please!” said Crumb, his face twisted. He waved a hand, and the pigeons fell on Selina again. She kicked and screamed as they hoisted her back into the air.
“Let me go!” she demanded. “Why would I lie?”
Crumb lifted his arm, and the pigeons carried Selina higher and higher.
“What are you doing?” said Caw nervously.
Crumb didn’t take his eyes off Selina as he shouted over her cries. “You never met the eagle feral, did you? He fought on the side of the Spinning Man in the Dark Summer. We were all terrified of him. His birds would swoop in from nowhere and snatch up their victims. His thing was to drop his enemies from a great height. Horrible way to die.”
“Just do it then!” Selina shouted back at him. “If you want to think I’m that person, then I can’t stop you. But I won’t beg.”
He’s gone loco! said Screech.
“Crumb, no!” shouted Caw. “What if she’s telling the truth?”
“I’ll take that risk,” said Crumb. He stepped forward, mouth set in a snarl and arms outstretched as the pigeons lifted Selina through the hole in the roof and out of sight. Caw saw Lydia’s eyes were wide.
Quickly he summoned his crows. Glum, Screech, and Shimmer flapped up. Others, more distant, just gray shapes in his mind, stirred as well. Caw knew they’d never arrive in time.
Crumb’s fierce expression didn’t waver. Then, as if he was scrunching paper into a ball, he clenched both fists and dropped his arms to his sides. A few seconds later the pigeons flew back in through the hole without Selina. Caw stared, openmouthed. Lydia let out a small wail of horror.
“What have you done with her?” said Mrs. Strickham.
Crumb looked at each of them in turn, his eyes cold. “Don’t worry—they put her in the bell tower. The stairs collapsed long ago. She’s stuck there until we decide what to do with her.”
Lydia breathed out a long sigh. “You were just bluffing!”
Crumb brushed his hands together. “I know. I deserve an Oscar, right?”
Caw frowned. “What’s an Oscar?”
“Never mind,” said Crumb. “The point is, until I know we can trust her, she’s staying up there.”
I wouldn’t bank on that, thought Caw, remembering how agile Selina had been on their rooftop escapade. “Do you think the Mother of Flies will do a deal?” he asked. “Her daughter in exchange for the ferals?”
“I don’t trust either of them,” said Mrs. Strickham. “I say we try to free the ferals ourselves.”
“With Dad’s help?” asked Lydia.
Mrs. Strickham nodded and started to dial. “I’ve kept this secret for twenty years. This isn’t going to be easy.”
“You can say that again,” muttered Crumb.
Caw was glad to be outside the church in the fresh air. He sat on a rusting metal bench, tossing cookie crumbs to a gathering of Crumb’s pigeons.
Daft birds, aren’t they? said Glum, perched behind him.
Barely a brain cell between them, said Shimmer, from the arm of the bench.
Are those cookies? said Screech from his shoulder. You’ve got a hungry wounded warrior here.
Caw fed Screech from his hand. He kept looking toward the church door, hoping Lydia would come out. Mrs. Strickham’s phone call had taken a long time, and afterward, she had wanted to be alone with Lydia, to talk things through. Caw felt he needed to explain again, to make Lydia understand why he hadn’t shared the truth from the start. Because Felix Quaker told him to keep it safe? Because of something his mother had said in a dream?
He wished he’d never laid eyes on the stone. And if he hadn’t gone to his house that night, he wouldn’t have. He’d brought this all on himself, and those closest to him were suffering too—all because he couldn’t let the past lie.
And because the past wouldn’t leave him alone.
Everyone was blaming him, but it wasn’t all his fault. He hadn’t asked for this life; to be abandoned, to be brought up eating worms in a nest, almost freezing to death every winter. He hadn’t asked to carry the blood of the crow line or to guard a stupid stone!
He didn’t want the burden. Or the honor. Or whatever it was supposed to be.
Hey, if you’re just going to crush those things . . . , said Screech.
Caw looked down and realized his fists were clenched around the packet of cookies.
“Sorry,” he said. He stood up quickly, sprinkling the remains in front of the bench. More pigeons flocked down.
Looks like our friend is making a break for it, said Glum.
Caw glanced up and saw that Selina had swung her legs through the open section of the bell tower. She clung to the crumbling masonry.
And I thought pigeons were stupid, said Shimmer.
“I’d better stop her,” said Caw. He took a deep breath and called his birds to him.
Two minutes later, he hung in the grip of a murder of crows, hovering in the air beside Selina.
“Go back inside,” he said. “You’ll get yourself killed.”
“What do you care?” she said. Her foot slipped a little, but she managed to cling on. A firm breeze ruffled her clothes. For a moment, Caw wasn’t sure he did care.
“If you fall, Crumb will make me clean up the mess,” he said.
Selina looked at him with her brow creased.
“It was a joke,” he said. “Please, go back in. I want to talk to you.”
Selina’s foot slipped, dislodging a tile that rattled down the roof. Without a word, she scrambled back over the parapet and into the bell tower. Caw’s crows set him down on the ledge and took flight with a fluttering of wings. All but his three faithful birds. The bell had disappeared long ago, and all that remained were a few frayed sections of rope hanging from some sort of metal scaffold.
Selina sat against the wall inside, elbows on her knees and head bowed.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s talk.”
I don’t trust her one bit, said Shimmer.
Makes two of us, added Screech.
She’ll try to trick you, said Glum.
Caw wished Milky were with him. He’d know exactly what to make of Selina Davenport. He waved the others off with his hand. “Give me a minute alone, will you?”
The three crows leaped from the tower and glided toward the ground.
Selina laughed harshly. “You have no idea how weird that looks,” she said. “I mean—there’s a woman who talks to ducks by the canal. Is she a feral too?”
Caw shrugged. “Maybe. She might just be crazy, though.”
Selina face twisted, and for a moment, he thought she was going to cry. But she didn’t.
“You have every reason to hate me,” she said.
“I know.”
“I mean, I’d want to throw me off the church roof, if I were you.”
Caw sat down opposite her. The wall of the tower shielded them from the wind.
“Let me ask you a question,” he said. “Did you really not know your mom was a feral?”
Selina looked directly at him. “Cross my heart,” she said.
Caw studied her face, looking for any twitch—any signal or clue that she might be lying. But what was the point? She’d lied before, constantly, and he hadn’t sensed even the slightest untruth. If this was all a facade—if she was still just bluffing—he had no way of knowing.
Then he remembered—Mr. Strickham didn’t know about his wife, and they were married. Maybe the Davenport family was just the same.
“But . . .” Selina paused. “I guess I knew she wasn’t totally normal. We’re not exactly close, you know? Not like my friends and their parents. I’ve always wished she’d spend more time with me, but she works crazy long hours—these last few years I’ve seen more of the cleaner than her.”
Another thought occurred to Caw. If she was working for her mother still, did she know about the stone? He chose his next words carefully.
“Do you have any idea what she wants?” he asked.
Selina shook her head. “All she said was that you were dangerous, and that she needed some help because the police were drawing blanks. My job was to make friends with you. She sent me to your house weeks ago and told me to report in if you showed up. She wanted me to find out where you lived now.” Selina sighed. “I really wanted to help her. But she wouldn’t trust me to do anything else.”
“You mean you offered?”
Selina’s cheeks went crimson. “It was before I met you. I didn’t know what you were like. But I could see straightaway you weren’t a criminal. God, you didn’t even want to steal a box of cookies! In the end I didn’t tell her. I wanted to find out more about you first. I don’t know how those horrible people found us on the boat, and I don’t know how she knew we’d be at the zoo.”
Caw let her words sink in, testing her claims against his memory. Could she really be just a pawn in her mother’s game?
“Her flies must have been watching you,” he said. “Watching us. Those people in the zoo were innocent. You saw them—children and old people, mostly.”
“I know that,” Selina said. “But I had no idea the police would show up.” Her eyes flashed with the old defiance. “You guys took me there, remember. That fox lady wouldn’t even let me out of her sight. If I’d tried to leave—”
Crumb’s voice interrupted them. “Don’t let her hear you calling her that,” he said. The pigeon feral appeared silhouetted against the sky above them, held aloft by pigeons. “Come on, if we’re going to break into Blackstone Prison, we need to make a plan.”
“What about me?” said Selina.
“You, my girl, are coming too,” said Crumb, with a grim smile.