I closed the door to the boy’s room and left the apartment.
The night air felt cool and fresh on my skin and the sporadic sound of traffic was welcome after the unhappy stillness of the apartment. I looked up at its dark windows, then changed my shape. Crow wings took me back to the Rookery on Stanton Street.
I think Raven likes us better when we visit him on our own. The way we explode with foolishness whenever Zia and I are together wears him down—you can see the exasperation in his eyes. He’s so serious, that it’s fun to get him going. But I also like meeting with him one-on-one. The best thing is he never asks where Zia is. He treats us as individuals.
“Lucius,” I said the next morning. “Can a person die from a bee sting?”
I’d come into his library in the Rookery to find him crouched on his knees, peering at the titles of books on a lower shelf. He looked up at my voice, then stood, moving with a dancer’s grace that always surprises people who’ve made assumptions based on his enormous bulk. His bald head gleamed in the sunlight streaming in through the window behind him.
“What sort of a person?” he asked. “Cousin or human?”
“What’s the difference?”
He shrugged. “Humans can die of pretty much anything.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, take tobacco. The smoke builds up tar in their lungs and the next thing you know, they’re dead.”
“Cousins smoke. Just look at Joe, or Whiskey Jack.”
“It’s not the same for us.”
“Well, what about the Kickaha? They smoke.”
He nodded. “But so long as they keep to ceremonial use, it doesn’t kill them. It only hurts them when they smoke for no reason at all, rather than to respect the sacred directions.”
“And bee stings?”
“If you’re allergic—and humans can be allergic to pretty much anything—then, yes. It can kill them. Why do you ask?”
I shrugged. “I met a boy who died of a bee sting.”
“A dead boy,” Lucius said slowly, as though waiting for a punchline.
“I meant to say a ghost.”
“Ah. Of course.”
“He’s not very happy.”
Lucius nodded. “Ghosts rarely are.” He paused a moment, then added, “You didn’t offer to help him, did you?”
He didn’t wait for my reply. I suppose he could already see it in my face.
“Oh, Maida,” he said. “Humans can be hard enough to satisfy, but ghosts are almost impossible.”
“I thought they just needed closure,” I said.
“Closure for the living and the dead can be two very different things. Does he want revenge on the bee? Because unless it was a cousin, it would be long dead.”
“No, he just wants to be remembered.”
Lucius gave a slow shake of his head. “You could be bound to this promise forever.”
/> “I know,” I said.
But it was too late now.