“He was in so much pain, after what… what happened,” Arthur said quietly, a pang in his voice. “When he didn’t think I waslooking, he pried open the vent above your fridge and took out a jar of honey. He ate it, and…”
“Yes?” Eva asked, breathless.
Arthur swallowed. “It was miraculous. Like he’d taken medicine.”
Her mind swam with this new information. Sometimes they had return customers who came raving into the Shoppe, claiming their honey had cured them of some ailment or another that no medicine had ever touched. It was lovely, really. Eva thought it was all that bottled summertime stuff Dad was always going on about. The power of sun and soil and belief.
But what if it was real?
A tightness corded itself around her chest and squeezed.What does it mean, if it is?
“We need to get into that vent,” Eva said, forgetting herself for a moment. There was nowebetween them, and besides, the cottage was the first place the sheriff and his deputies would look.
Arthur’s van was there, though, parked in the cottage’s driveway after he and Dad had returned from getting the tire patched that morning. He needed that van to get away from here.
“Okay.” To her surprise, Arthur nodded, his attention shifting to the other cobwebbed end of the alley, where the forest had crept in, vines curling up and over the corners of the building in a shallow layer of emerald ivy.
Eva blinked.Did I do that?
“We’ll have to be fast,” Arthur said, meeting her gaze. “Can you run?”
Chapter 13
Arthur,
Before
The hive boxes at the bottom of the hill behind the Moreau cottage looked like a mouth of crooked teeth ready to swallow the surrounding coneflowers swaying in the breeze.
After returning the eggs to the kitchen to be washed, the bee girl had led me across the yard to what looked like a workshop, chatting easily as we walked, unbothered by the trail of clover she left in her footsteps. I couldn’t get her words out of my head.
You’re like me.
“Just in here,” Eva chirped, rolling the door to the workshop open. The instant I stepped through, the smell of melting sugar drew me up short.No, not sugar.My mouth watered, the warmth of the little room folding around my body.Honey.
“We have six apiaries,” Eva said as she tied her hair at the back of her neck. “The one you saw coming in.”
The mouth of teeth.
“And five more scattered across different farms we collaborate with nearby.”
I nodded, curious despite myself. My eyes moved over the room,taking in the setup of equipment. It was rustic but very clean, with a surprising amount of light flooding down from a set of what looked like handcrafted skylights.
My inspection halted when I met the gaze of the dark-haired girl standing at the sink.
It turned out the cashier Mom had spoken to at the Honey Shoppe had been none other than Eva’s sister, Izzy. She seemed older than Eva and me by four, maybe five years.
Izzy studied me, spinning a rag inside an empty honey jar before setting the jar on a cloth. “So,” she said, “Sleeping Beautycanleave his room.”
“Yes.”
Izzy crossed her arms over her chest. “You live in a van?”
The question caught me off-guard. I nodded.
“Why?”
Eva made a little sound. “Iz.”
