“So, what do you think?” Eva asked, a notch too brightly, sweeping her arm out to gesture toward the workshop at large. “Better than the old sewing room?”
I huffed a laugh, surprised. “Yes.”
“Fewer mothballs, at least.”
She was quick, and funny. I couldn’t stop the hitch of my smile. “Less pink.”
The bee girl had a bright laugh. The peal of golden sound seemed to wrap around me, warm as the summer heat. Maybe that explained the sudden flush to my cheeks.
The monster rolled in my belly.“Little death-touch. You made a friend.”
Chapter 14
Arthur
We dashed into the trees, the blare of the jail’s alarm slowly fading behind us. A heavy blanket of clouds had obscured the moon and any stars, making the air feel heavy and thick, charged with the promise of an oncoming storm.
“Hurry!”The monster’s urgency pushed me faster into the belly of the Walkers’ orchard. It was a hell of a gamble to use their land as a shortcut, but we didn’t have much of a choice. Soon, the cottage came into view. We hopped the low-lying fence and all but slammed into the porch rail, doubling over to catch our breath.
“Just show me the vent and you can go,” Eva panted. “Follow the farm roads down to the valley. Dane won’t expect you to know that route.”
I watched her swipe a curl off her forehead, a strange feeling in my chest. Eva had asked me to stay many times; she’d never asked me to run.
There were no vehicles in the driveway, save my Volkswagen, sporting a newly patched tire. We hurried to the kitchen door and slipped inside. The sight stopped me in my tracks. Moss carpeted the floor and walls. A textured stripe of oyster mushroomscrawled up the cabinets. Rose vines and greenbrier littered the floor, and everything smelled fecund and floral.
“What happened here?” I asked.
“I happened,” Eva said.
The monster could sense only one other heartbeat in the house. I didn’t know where Izzy had gone off to, but she wasn’t at home.
Eva still wore the overalls she’d had on earlier today, the intricate floral designs embroidered on the pockets now marred by strange dark flecks. I flashed to the last time I had stood in this room, my mind filling with the cracking sound Jack’s branch had made when the monster snapped it in two. The way a red-green, almost resinous substance had dribbled from the broken end, smelling of sap and iron.
Did she know she wore her father’s blood?
My camera sat on the counter, a starburst of cracks obscuring my favorite lens. Anger sliced through my gut as I remembered Lenny slamming my camera into the cabinets, remembered the crunch of it under my foot.
Purple envelopes littered the table, the same shade as the one Eva had shoved in my face at the jail cell. My heart gave a lurch.
Mom’s letters.
“So?” Eva asked expectantly.
I picked a path through the mess, carefully dragging a chair to the fridge. At first tug, the vent didn’t budge. “We need something to pry it open,” I grunted.
Eva disappeared down the hall. My eyes followed her, stalling on the open doorway to Jack’s bedroom. I could see the uneven rise and fall of the sleeping man’s chest. Without his leaves, the branches twisting out of him appeared more like the fingers of some eldritch monster.
I shuddered. When Eva returned, I accepted the offered flathead screwdriver, wedging it behind the vent. The metal screeched as I pried it away, and I reached in, hand fumbling.
“Anything?”
I frowned, lifting onto my toes. Jack was taller than me by a lot, but not even he could have reached much farther. Dust caked a slick grime onto my fingertips as I searched the hollow.
But the vent was empty.
I drew back. “It’s gone.”
“What?” Eva tugged my sleeve and scrambled to replace me on the chair.
