The May Queen Murders by Sarah Jude

in the art room at school. You draw real y wel .”
    “No . . .” I swallowed back an embarrassed groan. He’d seen my
    drawings, not just the ones I’d drawn in front of him that he knew
    about, but now the others from when I was alone, daydreaming,
    wishing. So many of him. The only person I allowed to see them was
    Heather. If Rook had seen all of them, there was no denying how I
    felt about him.
    “Don’t get like that,” he said and prevented my hands from cover-
    ing my face. “I have drawings of you, too.”
    “You do?” I asked.
    “They ain’t good, not like yours.”
    Who knew how long we could’ve gone on, too afraid to grab the
    other’s attention? When all that time I hoped Rook noticed me, he
    had. Now that he pressed kisses along my jaw, I didn’t want him to
    stop.
    “Please don’t go,” I whispered. “Promise me you won’t leave the
    Glen. Heather’s already leaving me behind.”
    Rook pulled back. “What do you mean? She’s always with you.”
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    “Not anymore. She’s running off all hours of the night. I lie to
    cover her secrets. She’s hiding things.”
    “Like what?”
    I told Rook everything. How she’d been in the stable with some-
    body she wouldn’t identify. How she quit walking to school with me.
    How I’d seen her smoking weed with Milo. Rook listened as I con-
    fessed everything I knew, everything that frightened me.
    Heather had grown tired of me.
    Heather wouldn’t heed the warnings.
    “I’m scared,” I said, and I realized I was shaking. The wind wasn’t
    so cold that I should’ve been trembling. “If I don’t do something,
    she —”
    “You can’t do anything,” Rook interrupted. “Heather has her own
    life.”
    “And if she gets herself hurt? Or worse?”
    “I . . .” His attention went to the steep embankment.
    I twisted around to see a flicker of red. A few rocks clicked to-
    gether while rolling to the river. I jerked my hands off Rook and
    scrambled to my feet, cursing under my breath.
    She’d been here. She’d seen me with him, heard everything I’d said,
    her secrets. I charged up to the fields in time to see her running.
    A dash of curls.
    A ruffle of a skirt.
    A drop disappearing into the bloody hand of sunset.
    Heather.
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    Chapter Seven
    The Markle girl, the sister, it’s hard to think of what she
    must’ve gone through.
    No one set about courtin’ her even though she was the
    right age.
    No one wanted that devil she had for a brother as their
    kin.
    Whimsy ran at a full gallop, matching my frenzy. I had to explain
    what Heather had heard, why I was with Rook, and I prayed she’d
    believe me, because the threads holding us were already so tenuous.
    How simple would it be for one to snap? Then others would break,
    and we’d no longer be tied together.
    It wasn’t that I wanted everything to stay the same.
    I wanted a change too. A life where I was noticed.
    She’d jumped ahead without me. I’d never meant to hold her back,
    and she must’ve felt like I had tied a string around her dragonfly and
    never let her fly farther than her tether.
    Find the red. Find Heather.
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    Whimsy clomped across the earth. I had left Rook behind, telling
    him to go home, that I’d find him later. I gripped the leather reins
    and crossed the despairing lands. Spring in the Ozarks should’ve
    been vibrant, but there was no life in the fields. The trees greened
    while the fields remained the bare dirt of freshly dug graves, scare-
    crows standing by as mourners.
    I was leading Whimsy along the winding curve of the river close
    to Promise Bridge when I saw a splash of color bolting through Pot-
    ter’s Field. Since I couldn’t take the horse across the bridge, I dis-
    mounted, trusting my mare to graze.
    “Stay, Whimsy,” I murmured as I unclipped her reins. “Please
    stay.”
    Her ears pricked, dark eyes wide. Maybe she understood. As hard
    as it was to leave her when other animals had been killed, I had to
    believe she would be safe.
    I