“It’s not a question.” She snatches the map off the table. “We’ll handle it as it comes. We’ve handled everything else Keeling’s thrown at us so far.”
He rubs at his eye, looking exhausted. “Barely.”
“I don’t care. I’m not losing another person.”
Camellia’s name throbs in the quiet. Shea thinks of her face in the forest, bitten away by Rot, her bones showing through. Already a ghost.Did you forget me? Are you even looking? This is your fault. Yours.Her throat tightens. She casts a quick glance toward Poppy and finds her peering back, her smile wobbly. Somehow, the acceptance in her eyes is so much worse than the false sense of hope she’s been carrying around for weeks.
We’ll find her, Shea wants to promise.We’ll do whatever it takes.
But she doesn’t know if it’s true, and so she says nothing at all.
They’re on the road within the hour, sticking to the mountain roads. The rain doesn’t let up. It gets heavier, bringing with it a wall of fog that turns the mountain pass to soup. They make camp at dusk, stopping for the night at an old fieldstone church buried in boxwood. A soaring Gothic bell tower sits like a spindle against the sky, its turrets glazed in sleet.
“This’ll work,” says Asher, folding himself over the wheel in his efforts to peer out the windshield. “I don’t like the idea of spending another night on the road, and it doesn’t look like anyone’s been here in years.”
Even so, they canvass the chapel in pairs, searching from top to bottom for signs of squatters. When there’s nothing to be found, they congregate in the sanctuary. Battered by the rain, moonlight falls in through the stained glass in colorful caustics. They build a fire on the carpeted altar, burning strips of paper in an offering bowl filled with sand. Once it’s grown to a heat-giving blaze, they gather around it, their backs against the pews, sharing the last of the scones between them.
“You’re a Scorpio,” notes Lys, his arms draped over bent knees. “What a coincidence.”
His tone makes Shea feel defensive, though she can’t say why. “What makes it a coincidence?”
“Nothing.” His eyes glimmer blackly in the firelight. “Just interesting timing.”
Her belly full, Shea closes her eyes and listens to the patter of rain against the windows. She used to drive herself crazy, wondering if anyone else heard the rain the way she did—if she was missing out on something beautiful, mistaking her own stilted perception for loveliness. Now, if she holds herself very still, she can almost pretend she’s back home, sitting by the fire with her parents, warm and dry while a storm rages outside. She wouldn’t resent it, not ever again.
“Do you remember your thirteenth birthday?” asks Poppy suddenly. “Your mom had Ellie and me over for cake, but there was that snowstorm and we got trapped at your house.”
“I remember,” says Shea, glad to have something else to talk about. “Thorley had to walk a mile through the blizzard to get Ellie. He was so mad.”
“I didn’t come for Ellie,” says Asher.
The fire pops, flinging embers skyward. The memory is a cloudy dandelion, seedlings knocked loose. Shea and Poppy had spent that snowy afternoon reenacting scenes fromA Midsummer Night’s Dream, Camellia directing the entire production with relish. Shea had been cast as lovesick Hermia and draped in spare bedsheets, a chaplet of dried mistletoe set atop her head. At Camellia’s instruction, she’d gone to fetch a jar for the love potion. She’d drawn up short at the sight of Asher in the foyer.
“Your mom let me in,” he’d said. “I think she’s getting me a slice of cake.”
“Oh. That’s good. She made way too much, as usual.” Her face had gone hot. She felt supremely ridiculous, wrapped in sheets, a Christmas garland slipping into her eyes. Down the hall, she could hear Camellia and Poppy giggling. “You can stay, if you want.”
“That’s okay. The snow’s supposed to get pretty bad. My mom wants Ellie home before then.” He pawed at the back of his neck, looking nervous. “I, uh—made you something.”
Her chest warmed. “You did?”
“Yeah, it’s here somewhere, hold on.” He drew a sleek, silver ring from his pocket and dropped it into her outstretched hands. “It’s nothing special—just an old spoon.”
“I love it,” she whispered. “Thank you.”
His cheeks dimpled in a smile. “Happy birthday, Parker.”
Now, she folds her fingers over the ring, feeling it clink softly against her grandmother’s cross. She can feel Lys’s eyes glued to her hand. Next to her, Asher pokes wordlessly at the fire, coaxing it higher.
“I think I’ll try and sleep a little,” says Poppy, covering a yawn. “The three of you were too busy snuggling last night to relieve me at the watch.”
“Poppy,” hisses Shea.
“Well, it’s true.” She stands, gathering Kit in her arms. “Happy birthday, Shea. Next year, you, me, and Ellie will celebrate somewhere a little less damp.”
It comes out empty. A hollow platitude.
Shea’s heart feels as though it’s been nailed to the wall.
