Love you. You let me love you.She feels like she’s going to be sick, right here on his shoes. Cyrus Talbot’s voice plays on a loop through her head.This is how he hunts.
“Were you ever going to Turn me?” Her voice wobbles, unsteady. “Or was that a lie, too?”
A muscle ticks in his jaw. “I told you what you wanted to hear.”
Oliver Lysander is a creature of the Gravewood, plying her with promises he never meant to keep. He’s never been anything but what he is. It was never a secret. It was always right in front of her face. And she ignored it at every turn.
“What about the cure?” The question comes out brittle. Small. “What about my mom?”
“What doyouthink?” he asks, and this is all the answer she needs.
She needs space. She needs air. She needs to be anywhere but here, a thousand miles away from the only thing that mattered, staring up at the devil who lured her from her doorstep. She feels as lost as any missing person, consumed by the forest. Devoured by its dark.
She fumbles out into the hall, tripping down the stairs and into the living room, where the fire has burned itself down to nothing. Asher launches to his feet the moment he sees her.
“Hey.” He ducks into her line of sight, swallowing up her exit. “Are you okay? What happened?”
“Was it all a lie?” The question punches out of her, wild and hoarse.
He scowls, confused. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t play dumb,” she snaps, shoving at his chest. When he doesn’t budge, she shoves him again, pushing at the wall of him until he yields a step beneath her trembling hands. “You fed me this big, tragic story about everything you went through. For me. Forus. Was it a lie? Did you make it up?”
His gaze lifts to to the stairs. Lys stands against the railing, cold as a serpent.
“You fucking brat,” he bites out. “What did you say to her?”
If Lys responds, she doesn’t hear it. She pushes past Asher and whips open the door, slamming it shut behind her just as Poppy calls her name. She’s enveloped in a chilly quiet, the cold seeping into her socks. Propelled by her anger, she stalks down the stairs and out into the dark, hurrying along the overgrown pavers before anyone can follow.
It’s stopped raining, at least. The night is black as pitch, the gaps between the treetops sugared in starlight. Her flashlight bounces off the trunks of the trees, disappearing into the infinite spaces between. She walks without aim, pressing forward at a clip. She doesn’t stop until there’s a stitch in her side. Until the tears begin to fall.
She’s standing just outside an old turkey barn, the roof caved in. Matted doveweed froths out from the open door in a leafy spew. Collecting her senses, she casts the flashlight across her surroundings. Darkness leers back at her from every direction, no discernible landmarks in sight. She’s lost and unarmed, the cold sinking into her bones, and all she’s managed to do in storming out of the cabin is prove, once again, how helpless she is.
“So stupid,” she hisses.
She wanders several aimless yards in the dark before frustration wins out. Loosing a wordless shriek, she kicks at the ground. Her big toe hits a rock and she shrieks again, toppling onto her backside as the stone goes skittering between the trees. Knees bent, she buries her head in her hands. Her heart pounds hard enough to hurt.
“I want to go home,” she cries into the dark.
But home isn’t there anymore. What she wants is her mother in the garden, culling weeds. Her father in the workshop, sanding wood. Hemlock belly up in a sunspot and the windows thrown wide, everything quiet and peaceful and still.
She’d resented it then. She’d begged the woods to take her.
And the Gravewood delivered.
She doesn’t know how long she sits there before the stone comes skittering back. It rolls across the wet press of leaves, coming to an impossible stop between her heels. For several seconds, she stares down at it, confused. Slowly, her confusion gives way to fear.
She’s not alone. She lurches to her feet, dragging the flashlight along the contorted faces of the trees. There, pinned in the broad yellow beam, is the woman from the gas station. She regards Shea through a too-keen stare, her head tipped to one side.
“You shouldn’t cry over him. He’s an awful boy.”
Shea knows this game by now. She understands the rules. “I’ll scream.”
“There’s no need to do that,” says the woman, drawing nearer. “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m here with a message.”
Suspicion swarms into her chest. “A message from who?”
“From Paris Keeling, of course.” The woman’s teeth are fanged sharp, ivory glinting in the moonlight.
