Arthur tightened his grip. “You,” he said, disbelieving. His voice cracked. “How are you here?”
I belong to this wood. Now get out.
“I don’t understand,” Eva said.
I said GET OUT!A root snaked up from the soil and slitheredtoward her. Eva yelped and jumped back, landing too hard on her sprain. She let out a cry as a shock of pain shot up her leg.
Arthur ripped the root from the ground. It shriveled at his touch, slumping into a deadweight on the soil. Eva’s gaze snapped back to the figure, expecting her to be affected.
But the figure didn’t so much as flinch.I am the spirit of this wood, devil. Your tricks can’t unmake me.
“I’m no devil,” Arthur growled, sounding suddenly like a different person entirely. When Eva tugged on his arm, Arthur shucked her off.
This isn’t what he wants.
“You don’t know what Arthur wants,” he snapped. “You know only the surface of a sea, but he is my entire ocean.”
My son is—
“Not yours,” Arthur spat. “Not anymore.”
My son?Eva’s heart beat faster as the words rolled through her mind. “Arthur?” she asked as she looked between him and the rustling creature. “Who is she?”
The instant the question dropped off her tongue, Eva knew. There was only one person who made Arthur feel the way he looked now. Small. Broken.
Eva sucked in a tight breath.
Lottie.
He broke his promise to me. He promised to scatter my ashes and tell the bees I was gone.The sound of the spirit’s sorrow hurt, reaching into Eva’s very skull.
Eva had met Charlotte Connoway only once, when she’d dropped Arthur off on their doorstep. That day was still so clear in her mind. Eva could still see Arthur exactly as he’d been when he’dthrown open the door to her greenhouse and shoved a box of tools into her hands, when he’d told her he wasno one.
She’d made that moment a flashbulb memory, all the other details fading into the background. Over time, Charlotte had become less and less a real person to her, and more the memory of an obstacle. She was a thorn. She was an irritant.
She was a ghost.
“We were going to scatter your ashes,” Eva said quickly, fear budding inside her as she pulled on Arthur’s hand, tugging him back. But where could they go? “We were just… interrupted.”
Lottie Connoway’s spirit turned her strange, arborous face to the sky with a crackle of branches. She let out a wail.
The suffering didn’t seem to move Arthur, his expression cold. “Why do you care?” he snarled. “Just let the boy go. Be done with this world.” He was vicious with her, more than Eva had ever seen. At that moment, he hardly felt like her Arthur at all.
The leaves around the spirit’s mouth curled back into a grimace.I need the bees.The echo of her voice swirled around Eva on the breeze, knitting into her hair and reaching deep into her chest.
There was pain in that reply, but an ugly part of Eva didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t want to see a softer side to the woman who’d so deeply neglected her best friend. Even when Eva and Arthur weren’t speaking, resentment had fueled Eva’s bitterness toward Lottie.
But bitterness, like fuel, burned out.
“Enough.” Arthur turned, pressing the honeycomb to his chest so the viscous golden liquid seeped into his shirt. “Come on, Eva.”
A feather of doubt touched the back of her mind.
He never called herEva.
The figure called after them, as though she could see Eva’s thoughts laid bare.Don’t be fooled into seeing a man, beekeeper!Her voice sounded more inhuman in her agitation.He is something worse.
“Don’t listen to her,” Arthur snapped. Eva leaned against him for support as he led her away. She looked back, expecting the spirit to follow them, but the trees were already twisting back into place.
