“Since the road is blocked, I assume we’re staying for a while, so I unpacked my trunk and took the liberty of getting our notes ready for another meeting to discuss what we found yesterday sincesomebodyderailed those plans.” As she took a sip of tea, Gwen finally raised her gaze and nearly dropped her cup. “What happened? You two look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Lucien Stills delivered a note to Oliver from their cousin, Willard Jarngren. Take a look,” Felipe replied as Oliver handed over the note.
Gwen pushed up her glasses and raised a brow at the envelope. “What’s with all the wax?”
“He’s paranoid.”
“Apparently.” Gwen read the note twice before turning to Oliver with a thoughtful frown. “Ol, do you think he’s the one who pushed you?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see who did it. It felt like a branch hit me. Did you see anyone in the cemetery after it happened?”
“No, but I was a little distracted at the time.” Handing the card back to Oliver, Gwen asked Felipe, “What do you think we should do about this? Should we go?”
Running a hand over his cheeks, Felipe sighed and leaned against the table. “I don’t know. I need to speak to Mr. Allen before I decide.He seemed keen to get us out of town, but I’m not sure what the Jarngrens could do with Oliver as an adult.”
“Yeah, Oliver, thankfully, you aren’t exactly cooperative on a good day,” Gwen murmured into her drink.
Oliver narrowed his eyes at her but said nothing. “Isn’t it a good sign that the invitation is for all of us? If he meant to shove me into the woods again, it would be far easier to do so without witnesses.”
“Or he wants to kill us all in one shot. We still don’t know if the other investigators walked into the woods willingly.”
“And he obviously hasn’t told Lucien Stills that he knows you’re related to them.” When Oliver gave him a queer look, Felipe added, “The man has no poker face. He didn’t approach you with any more familiarity than he did before. The fact that the whole envelope was basically encased in wax to keep someone else from opening it makes me think Willard Jarngren is planning to keep this information to himself at least.”
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“I’m not sure. Either he pushed you in, or he knows who did. I know we were outside before, but I think you need to lay low for the rest of the day, Oliver. At least until I speak to Mr. Allen.”
Sinking into the chair beside Gwen, Oliver nodded glumly. “So much for the soda.”
“We’ll be stuck here for at least a few more days if the road doesn’t open. We can get it then,” Felipe said, giving his lover’s shoulders a squeeze. “Gwen, is there more tea?”
“Yeah, it’s on the stove with a cozy over it. Unfortunately, there’s no breakfast, but there are some rolls on the counter. I think they were intended to be part of breakfast.”
“Can you please grab one for me, Felipe?” Oliver asked as he turned his attention to Gwen’s papers.
Nodding, Felipe slipped into the kitchen. Argos jumped up from the rug near the back door when he came in and stood half a step behind him, breathing heavily on his leg until Felipe gave him a scratch behind the ears. Felipe would have fed him, but he wasn’t sure if Mr.Allen had done so before he left. Pastel and Kuchen had snookered him into giving them second breakfasts more times than he would care to admit. Ignoring Argos’s pitiful stares, Felipe piled several of the round, glossy rolls onto a plate. While they smelled good, they wouldn’t do much to take away the cramping pain in his gut. Cheese or butter would at least add something that could take the edge off. Felipe opened the cabinets looking for the butter crock when his gaze snagged on the larder.
Standing with his hand on the knob, he hesitated. The smell of salted meat wafted through the door, pulling an agonizing growl from his stomach. Guilt warred with need as he opened the cabinet and stared at the hunk of half-eaten ham wrapped in cheesecloth sitting forlornly on the shelf beside the butter. Felipe swallowed the saliva pooling in his mouth. He shouldn’t take it. It was someone else’s, but knowing it was there and that it could soothe the pain inflaming every nerve and calm his shaking hands wasn’t something he could ignore. Heneededto be well enough to protect Oliver and Gwen, and meat was the only thing that could make it better for a time. Before he could stop himself, Felipe unwrapped the ham and took a bite. Suppressing a moan at the salty, smoky meat, Felipe shut his eyes. When they got back to Manhattan, he was going to eat his weight in rare steaks, but for now, this would do. He sank his teeth into the flesh and gave into the bliss of it. By the time he came up for air, his fingers and lips were slick with meat juice and most of the ham was gone. Leaning back against the door, Felipe had never been so glad that the only witness to his desperate feasting was a dog. Argos stared up at him hopefully, his tail thumping on the floor.
“I could still blame this on you, you know,” Felipe said with a mouthful, tossing the dog a hunk of ham and half a roll before cleaning the rest of the meat off the bone with his teeth. “Don’t tell Oliver or your father.”
As he swallowed the last strip of salty meat, the stabbing in his gut eased, and the pounding headache behind his eyes fizzled to a twinge. For a long moment, Felipe merely stared at the place where the hamhad been. He couldn’t keep doing this. The majority of his life had been spent beingtheperson who could keep going when no one else could. He had taken pride in his ability to stay awake, to keep going, to not feel, but he couldn’t do that anymore, not without paying a price. Felipe tossed the bone into the rubbish heap and washed the evidence of his crime from his face and hands. He knew he should be upset. The Felipe Galvan he had been raised to be would have been devastated, but when he reached for those emotions, he felt nothing. At least, he could still stave off his emotions. Eventually, they would crash over him like a tidal wave, but if he felt nothing until they got back home, that was all right with him. He had a job to do.
Fishing a handful of money from his pocket, Felipe counted out more than enough to pay for the missing ham and left it in its place. Quickly grabbing the crock of butter, the teapot, and two cups, Felipe returned to the dining room as if nothing had happened to find Gwen and Oliver pouring over the graveyard map with their heads together. Felipe tried not to let his relief show when Oliver sniffed the air as he leaned down to put the rolls on the table but said nothing.
“Did you give the dog ham?” Oliver asked offhandedly.
“Just a little. He looked hungry.” It wasn’t exactly a lie, and Oliver nodded without looking up from the page. Felipe filled, drained, and refilled his teacup to wash away the salt coating his mouth. “Find anything interesting?”
“Gwen was showing me the graves of the other reanimated dead. I was only able to see these two yesterday before all hell broke loose.”
“What’s different about them?”
Waving Felipe closer, Gwen pointed to the graves. “So these people are now in the church. See how they’re all in generally the same area? Well, I was curious about theotherreanimated dead, the ones Mr. Allen said never got past the cemetery gates. According to Mr. Allen’s notes in the cemetery ledger, they couldn’t identify all the bodies of the first reanimated people. Some were just bones, but there were a few that were recognizable enough. Those they could identify were all buried in this area,” Gwen said, pointing to a swathe of graves at thefar edge of the cemetery schematic. “Do you notice anything?”
“They’ve been swallowed by the Dysterwood.”
“Exactly. We couldn’t see them at all when Oliver and I were there yesterday. Sarah Lindstrom’s grave is nearly in the woods, and so is Ekland’s. The other three look to be very close to the tree line as well. I don’t know exactly when this map was drawn, probably by Mr. Allen’s father, but it’s either incredibly inaccurate or the Dysterwood is encroaching on the town.”
