“Ifeelterrible. How about you help me out and open up a vein?”
The ensuing silence thickens with the dark, deepening to a gulf as the stars blink awake. A screech owl trills, emerging from a nearby roost to hunt. Asher unzips his jacket and Shea realizes he means to go through with it—to offer himself up as her proxy. Her stomach sinks to the dirt.
“Asher—”
“It’s fine,” says Asher, cuffing the sleeves of his flannel. If Lys is surprised, he doesn’t show it. “Go ahead. I meant what I said.”
“You think you’re stronger than her?” goads Lys. “You think you wouldn’t start to crave it, after a while?”
Asher’s throat bobs in a swallow. “Better me than her.”
Lys’s smile is slow. It doesn’t touch his eyes. “What a fucking hero.”
There’s a commotion behind them—the sound of running feet. They turn in time to see Poppy skid into the open front door. She looks out of breath, Kit cradled in her arms. “I was up in the attic looking for Kit. He likes to wedge himself into the eaves when he naps—any small space, really, I think it’s the burrowing instinct—”
“Get there faster,” says Lys.
“I saw a light out the window.” It comes out all as one word. She expunges a heavy breath and adds, “I think there’s someone in the woods.”
Asher tugs his sleeve back into place. “Rangers.”
Far off in the distance, a gun fires. A dozen starlings take, screaming, to the sky.
“They’re hunting something,” says Asher. He and Lys share a meaningful glance.
“We should have left five minutes ago,” says Lys. “Let’s move. And keep quiet.”
•••
They next stop just before the dawn, the shadows of the Catskill High Peaks emerging like giants against the lightening sky. Lys leads them off the highway and into the trees, down a little dirt road ravaged by rainwater. At the end of the road is a battered old A-frame wedged deep in a grove of towering hemlock. It’s loud, the murmuring forest stifled by the roar of a nearby waterfall.
“How much farther?” asks Asher after he’s conducted a sweep of the cabin.
“Another night of riding.” Lys pokes through the kitchen cabinets, taking out the coffee mugs one by one for inspection. “Maybe less, if we make good time.”
Asher watches him, hanging up his jacket by the door. “Tell me more about this guy in Pennsylvania.”
“He’s human,” says Lys, “if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Do you trust him?”
“You asked me that already.” Lys lets the cabinet fall shut with a slam.
“I’m asking you again.”
There’s a beat before Lys answers. “Keeling is after me. The watch is after you. We need someone neutral.”
“And is he?” Asher asks. “Neutral?”
The twitch in Lysander’s eye is nearly imperceptible. “Let’s just say, the only thing he cares about is himself.”
•••
The day passes much the same as the previous one. There’s a woodstove in the living room and Asher builds a fire, stoking it until it floods the cabin with heat. Shea lies curled on the couch, listening to the thundering falls and watching the sun drag across the floor in rectangles of gold. Poppy knits. Asher whittles. Lys stays shut away in the cabin’s windowless loft. A nighttime creature, burrowed in the eaves with Kit.
She wakes when he stirs. With her hearing aids off, it’s more of a feeling than anything. The groan of a door. The creak of a floorboard. She sits up just in time to see him descending the ladder staircase, a skeleton finger held to his lips. Poppy is asleep beside her, the knotted scarf trailing onto the floor. Asher dozes by the fire, a stake in hand. Neither of them wakes. Not when Lys slips outside.
Not when she follows.
