CHAPTER 26
Beau
“I amnevergoing camping again.”
Noelle’s declaration was met with a chorus of agreement from everyone as we packed up our stuff in a hurry—even Holden, who was still insistent that we’d imagined the whole thing. He was already coming up with excuses for why we’d all flown into a blind panic last night and had somehow sprintedten fucking milesaway from the campsite.
The rest of us knew the truth—we’d gone out on the night of the new moon, and we’d met a creature none of us were prepared for.
Which was why, as Noelle said, we were never going camping again.
“You know, I don’t even know if I can do an episode on this,” Shane muttered, shaking his head. “Like…at what point am I responsible for getting people killed? What if somebody who doesn’t have a ghost cat watching them tries their luck at tracking down the Glo?—”
Flora shot him a look.
“…the Glorious Antler Man?” Shane finished.
She seemed satisfied with that.
We’d all woken up just after dawn, Flora already preparing breakfast, Pickles standing on Holden’s chest like she’d conquered him by waiting for him to fall asleep. After a quick meal of grits and coffee, Flora had taken us out to her truck—parked on a road I didn’t even know existed—and we piled into the back. I wrapped my arm around Noelle and curled her into my chest as the wind whipped past us, Milo closing his eyes and inhaling the fresh autumn air.
Back at the campsite, it all looked untouched. Our tents were still there, coolers still packed, fire pit still half-full of ash. You never would’ve guessed we’d run screaming from this place like it was hell itself. If anything, it looked peaceful.
Too peaceful.
Noelle shivered beside me. I didn’t think it was from the cold.
We broke the campsite down in a hurry, grabbing what we needed and tossing it into trunks without a lot of talk. Flora didn’t linger. She walked the perimeter while we worked, eyes fixed on the tree line, every so often humming under her breath.
She’d brought her shotgun with her and never put it down.
I didn’t love that.
“Did she drive us ten miles out just to drop us here again?” Shane muttered. “How did we even end up this far out?”
“I told you,” Flora said, not turning around. “It’s not that the woods pulled you in. It’s that they let you back out.”
“Cool. Love that. Thanks,” Shane said.
“You know you sound fucking nuts, right?” Holden asked.
Flora huffed as if she couldn’t care less about his opinions. “I’m not the one who was screaming half-dressed in the woods last night.”
Holden flushed and muttered something under his breath, pretending to adjust the straps on his backpack.
Flora didn’t press the point. She just kept watching the trees like she was waiting for them to blink.
I finished rolling up our sleeping bags and stowed them in the back of my truck. Whit and Delilah were working in tandem, folding chairs and kicking dirt over the fire pit. Shane was busy looking at the trail cams we’d hastily collected—all of which had gone mysteriously dead. Noelle stayed close to me, one hand resting on Milo’s head.
I zipped the last bag and straightened, stretching the tension out of my shoulders.
“So…” I said, coming closer to Noelle. “Do you think the whole ring thing was just a symptom of being lost in the magical woods?”
She gave me a flat look. “You want to joke about this now?”
“Not joking,” I said. “Just trying to gauge whether you still want it.”
Her hand tensed slightly on Milo’s head. “I didn’t put the ring on by accident, Beau.”
