Ravens by George Dawes Green Page B

show any emotion.
    Then Shaw said, “I need your help. Will you help me?”
    There had been some kind of palace coup in the club. Shaw had been deposed. Romeo said he’d help in any way he could, and
     he accompanied Shaw to Hollow Park and they hid in the forsythia bushes waiting for the ringleader of the mutineers to come
     by. Shaw was perfectly still and patient. He didn’t move for hours. Romeo was freezing. Once he tried to whisper something,
     but Shaw just raised his hand. They waited. Finally when it was nearly dark, the ringleader came by, and Shaw made a sign
     to Romeo and leaped out and started fighting the guy. Calling, “Romeo, help me!” But Romeo was scared, and he couldn’t move.
    But then the guy got Shaw into a headlock and Shaw howled with pain — and something changed in Romeo then. He just lit into
     the kid, his fists whirling: he was ferocious; he was a cyclone. It felt like he had left his body: that he was watching himself
     from afar. And then Shaw was holding the guy so Romeo could keep hitting him and kicking him, and the guy was bleeding and
     begging for mercy but Romeo wouldn’t stop till Shaw dragged him off.
    “Jesus!” said Shaw. “What’re you, fuckin insane?”
    But Shaw was laughing as he said this. He told the poor kid, “OK, kneel and beg my forgiveness or my guy will kill you right
     here.”
    The kid did what he was told. That was the end of the coup. Shaw got his power back. The gang came under his sway again.
    And Romeo was granted full membership in the club. This time the rites were for real. In the presence of all the members—including
     the poor bruised-up mutineer —Romeo incised a D into his own chest. The club’s secret name was The Devourers, Shaw told him,
     reminding him that he’d be killed if he ever revealed that fact. After the cutting, Romeo’s chest streamed with blood, and
     he had to rub gunpowder into the wound, which burned like a branding iron. The pain was annihilating, but still — this was
     far and away the best hour of his life.
    Patsy was overwhelmed.
    Her daughter was still out with that fiend.
The Real Housewives of Orange County
was on TV, a lot of squawking she couldn’t follow. Her husband was at the little fake ‘empire’ desk in the corner, studying
     Scripture, studying so hard that drops of sweat were falling from his brow onto the Holy Book. Meanwhile Jase kept up that
     blaze of vengeance on his Micro, shriek after shriek, and when Patsy couldn’t bear any of this for another moment she got
     up and went back to the bedroom and shut the door, and climbed into bed with her laptop.
    For a while she tried to play internet
Tetris.
But she couldn’t follow that either.
    Outside it was getting dark, quick. Thunderstorm coming. Where was Tara? Why weren’t they back yet? My little girl.
    With that demon, my little girl!
    If she could just find some way to get her mind off all this.
    She went to Google. Into the oblong box she typed:
    mansions
    She thought a moment. Then she added
    malibu
    It was wrong to be doing this, she knew. Here they all were in peril of their lives — not just she and Mitch and the kids,
     but her brother Shelby too, and her mother-in-law, and others: who knew which of her family and friends that monster had singled
     out? And Tara was out with one of them right that minute! What was the matter with her, that at a time like this she could
     be thinking of California real estate?
    But these
were
lovely cottages. And this browsing was only to help her endure the terror. Letting her think about the good times to come.
     When all of this would be over. With property values in the toilet there were bound to be genuine bargains out there. She
     could swoop in like a bird of prey and snatch a jewel.
    She skated lightly through the listings.
    What she found though, was dismaying. Everything was so unbelievably expensive.
    For example, here was a nice 5-bedroom with a 2-cargarage and “beach access just steps