Poppy drops the mess of fabric into her lap. “You don’t have to lie.”
•••
Later, when the sun hangs in the sky’s midpoint, Shea removes her hearing aids and slinks outside to gather juniper berries off the trees. The lowest-hanging fruit has been gnawed away by deer, and so she climbs up onto the porch railing, clutching a woven basket she found in the kitchen.
It’s sticky work, but the silence is comfortable. Familiar, like slipping into better-fitting skin. In the quiet, everything else sharpens. The kiss of sun on her skin and the thick smell of pine. The rustle in the air as a bird takes flight. The world breathes out as she breathes in, letting her mind play through memories like a click reel—her mother in the yard, gathering dark blue juniper berries into her apron. Her mother on the porch, laying her yield out to dry in the hot summer sun. Her mother in the kitchen, bare feet on the floor and mortar in hand, pestle blue with pulp.
Shea’s not sure if it’s one single afternoon, or several of them overlapping. They’ve all blended one into the other, separating her life out into Before Calhoun Parker Left and After. These days, the clearest memories she has of her mother are this—Ivy clawing at the walls. Ivy lunging up the stairs. Ivy digging into offal like a wolf.
Ivy, her mind lost to the Gravewood.
Lost, like Camellia.
Like Shea.
“I’m not lost,” she says to a nearby waxwing. The bird startles and takes flight, dropping a berry as it goes. She watches it disappear into the nearby trees, feeling unspeakably lonely. Nearby, the branches sway, dark and inviting. She thinks maybe it doesn’t matter that she can’t hear their entreaties. Her head is already full of Lys. She feels drawn to him, always. Wound tight with thoughts of him, restless in a way that makes her want to crawl out of her own skin and set it on fire.
Anything to burn him out of her bones.
I feel it, too.
Basket in hand, she heads back around to the front of the house. Asher is still outside on the porch. He’s whittling a bit of wood, his knife throwing slivers of light with each pass. She slows to a stop a few feet away, watching the bark curl off in ribbons. Sensing her presence, he casts her a fleeting glance and continues without a word.
“Will you teach me how to use that?”
He pries a plug loose from his ear. “What?”
“I want to learn how to fight with a stake.”
“That’s what I thought you said. And it’s a bad idea.”
“I’ve been attacked twice already. Shouldn’t I know how to defend myself?”
His gaze slides to the trees. Frowning at whatever he hears clicking through the branches, he rummages through his rucksack and pulls out a small, hand-cranked radio. Winding it up, he turns the dial. An orange light flicks on, and the little clearing is flooded in static.
“What if something happens and you’re not there to step in?” she asks, the moment his attention is back on her.
“Lysander will be there.”
“And what if itisLys?”
He pins her in a searching gaze. Looking, again, for signs of a feed. For evidence of fever, of malaise, of a bite, fresh and red.
“Teach me,” she repeats.
He flips the stake, inspecting its whittled tip. “The first thing they tell you in training is that if you’re close enough to use this, you’re already dead.”
“Then what are you doing sharpening it?”
“I’m feeling pretty close,” he says, with a glance back at the house.
There’s no sign of life in any of the windows. No snap of a curtain. No shuttering of blinds. Lys’s presence lingers anyway, as palpable as if he’s standing right there with them. With a sigh, Asher holsters the stake and rises to his feet.
“Yeah, okay. I’ll teach you. But not with this.”
Five minutes later, he’s assembled a firing range of sorts—setting a collection of floral vases atop a split-rail fence. Shea stands where he’s indicated and clutches his pistol crossbow, her eyes squinted shut against the sunbeams that stripe vertically between the trees.
“It’s easier to hold on to than I thought it would be,” she says as he jogs to meet her. The radio is clipped to his bandolier, emitting static. “Have you killed anyone with it?”
