“Of course, but—” She puts her hand on my arm, and the touch of her palm is warm against my skin. “But I don’t know what we’ll do when we find him. His foster family is looking for him. We can’t just—kidnap him.”
Fear flares in my chest again. “Doesn’t matter,” I say. “I won’t let him die.”
Chloe’s eyes go wide, just a little. I can still sense her confusing combination of emotions—her panic is strongest right now, but her confusion is still there. An undercurrent of warmth, which I think is directed at me. I also get the sense she’s in physical pain.
“Are you hurt?” I fold up the map, shove it in my jacket. “You aren’t bleeding.”
“I’m fine. The snow soaked through my shoes. I’ll just need to change my socks before we go.”
Of course. Well, I don’t want to make it worse, so I scoop her up in my arms again. She holds onto me, her heart fluttering rapidly. “This isn’t necessary,” she murmurs.
I can’t say anything, not with my hands full. But it is necessary. I don’t want her to hurt. I don’t want either of them to hurt. And that’s why I lope through the woods as quickly as I can, our breaths puffing out into the air. She told me she took Oliver’s boat here, an idea that makes my heart twinge strangely. A sign, I think.
I row us across the lake, my muscles aching against the howling wind. When we make landfall at her pier, the reality of the situation slams through me?—
I’m leaving my territory for the first time in fifty years.Reallyleaving it, not just crossing Hanging Lake. Going out into the wide world.
The thought makes my chest squeeze up in that way it does.Fear,I think, as I wait in Chloe’s living room while she changes out her wet socks. This is not something I do. Always, my territory remains in my line of sight, where I can sense interlopers. I don’t stray.
But I’m straying now. For Oliver. For Chloe, too.
She rushes into the living room, her worry announcing her presence as much as her footsteps. “Are you ready?” she asks breathlessly.
I nod.
“It’s gonna be hard to drive,” she says, leading me into the garage. “With the snow and all. But I’ve done it before, up north.”
“I understand.” I don’t tell her it won’t matter much, not when we get close enough to make our way on foot.
Chloe’s car was conveniently tucked away in her garage during the storm. It’s strange, settling into her passenger seat, breathing in the sudden and overwhelming scent of her that permeates the fabric of the car’s interior. Just being in a car is strange; another experience I haven’t had for fifty years.
She backs out slowly, tires crunch on the slush that the snow has become in the bright, lemony sunlight. I can sense her fear, as sweet and musky as ever, as we creep down the silent, snow-covered roads. I don’t know if it’s from driving or if it’s because of Oliver. Or both.
“I hope he’s okay,” she whispers. “I wish he had just texted me.”
I put my hand on her knee, and she glances over at me, just for a second. “Sorry,” she breathes. “I’ve got to keep my eyes on the road.”
We creep our way through the woods, and I try not to think too much about the widening gap between myself and my territory. It helps, though, that Chloe is in the car with me. She’s like an anchor, like a piece of my territory that I can hold close.
When we pull out of the winding side road and onto the highway proper, I fumble with the buttons on the car door until the window rolls down, letting in a blast of cold air. Chloe yelps and shoots a fearful glance over at me.
“What are you doing?”
“Scent,” I tell her, then point at the road through the front windshield. She looks back where she needs to, her fingers right on the steering wheel. The highway is just as bad as the side roads were, covered in a slushy mix of ice and snow that crunches beneath the weight of her car. But there’s no one else out, and the wind blasting in through the window carries a wild blend of scents. Too many, I think with a faint surge of panic. Too many, and too unfamiliar. I’m used to my peninsula, where I know the tapestry of trees and animals and the lake itself. Out here, the wild is drenched in humanity, and it makes my blood spark in my veins.
Still, I force myself to concentrate, to sift through it all. I don’t know if I’ll remember Oliver’s scent, not the way I remembered Chloe’s. But there are other things I can look for: Fear. Hunger. Pain. Confusion. Those are the scents my kind are designed to pick out anyway, the scents that lead us to our prey.
The car passes by a green sign:Rockingstead 5 miles.Chloe makes a soft hum in the back of her throat.
“Do you want me to keep going into town?” she asks. “Do you think he would have gotten this far?”
I tap her knee until she looks over at me. “Pull over,” I sigh, and I feel her relief at the words, even if she doesn’t say anything. She slides into a stop on the edge of the highway, the thick, snow-covered woods towering around us.
“Do you—feel him?” she asks, worry tightening her voice.
I shake my head and pull out the old map, folded so that I can see this patch of highway. Fifty years ago, Rockingstead was surrounded by woods, and it seems it still is. I breathe in the air again, desperate to catch onto something useful.
And then, just for a second, I do—a glimmer of childish terror, as bright as the north star. And although I didn’t think I would, I do remember the last time I sensed it.
