“Depends on the wind,” I murmur. “And if we get more lightning.”
He nods grimly. “We’ll be ready.”
I want to believe him. I do believe him.
But I can’t shake the feeling curling low in my gut, the same one I had the night before Luke died.
The same feeling that comes before everything changes.
CHAPTER NINE
Abilene
Monday
The morning feels wrong the second I step outside.
Notstormwrong, like last night.
Not the sharp crackle of lightning and the throat-tightening anticipation of thunder.
This is quieter.
Heavier.
It smells scorched.
My boots crunch over the gravel path that leads to the apiary, dew dried up before it even had a chance to soften the earth. The sky is a dull, hazy gray instead of its usual clear blue, as if someone smudged charcoal across the horizon.
The bees feel it too. Of course they do.
I can hear them before I see them: an agitated, uneven hum instead of the usual contented morning buzz. That’s the first alarm bell.
When I round the corner of the house, and the hives come into view, they’re already up and flying—too many of them, too early. Everything around the apiary is a puffing cloud, workers zigzagging in strange, wide arcs instead of their neat flight lines.
My chest tightens.
“Hey, hey…” I murmur, lowering my voice into the slow, soothing hum Grandma Mabel used to use. “Easy, girls. I’m here.”
It doesn’t settle them.
Which tells me… whatever’s wrong started before I stepped outside.
I set the smoker and my hive tools on the little wooden crate beside Hive Three and pause. Any beekeeper knows: you don’t open a hive untilyouare calm, or they’ll mirror your nerves right back.
So I inhale slowly.
Exhale slowly.
“Okay,” I whisper. “Let’s see what’s going on.”
I don’t bother with the full veil. Just my hat, gloves, and the light scarf around my neck to keep bees from sneaking inside my collar.
My girls don’t sting without reason. And today, their panic isn’t about me.
It’s about something bigger.
Hotter.
