"Alone," Oleander said. "With whatever Dominic sends to keep me in place."
"Not alone," Rowan said. He looked at Oleander and the hardness in his face cracked just enough to show what was underneath. "Liliana. Call your sister. Have her on the phone the entire time. A voice from outside the fog. Something real to hold onto."
Oleander's jaw tightened. I could see him calculating the cost of it. Sitting in this apartment while the three people he loved walked into the woods to fight something none of us fully understood. Trusting us to come back. Trusting himself to survive the waiting.
"And if it doesn't work?" Oleander asked. "If you destroy the structure and the door stays open? If the anchor is permanent?"
Nobody answered. The question sat in the middle of the table next to the notebook, heavy and unanswerable.
"Then we figure out the next thing," Julian said. "But we don't figure it out by standing in this kitchen staring at a book."
"He's right," Rowan said. He straightened up, and some of the color returned to his face. The protector was coming back online, the man who stood in doorways because someone had to. "We go tomorrow. First light. Before the fog gets thick."
I picked up my camera from the counter. I turned it over in my hands, feeling the weight of it. Then I raised it and took one photo of the notebook open on the table, the doorway drawingvisible, the four coffee mugs arranged around it like compass points.
"Is there a setting on that thing for impending doom?" Oleander asked.
"Only in black and white," I said. "Makes the apocalypse look more aesthetic."
Nobody laughed, but Oleander's mouth twitched. It was enough.
Rowan closed the notebook, the leather cover making a soft sound against the wood. He looked at each of us in turn, his grey eyes steady. "We stay," he said. "We fight. And we come back."
It was the only prayer we had left.
twenty-nine
OLEANDER
I didn't stop until the pavement shifted into something else. The road that had brought me to Hollow Vale was a straight shot of asphalt, but standing at the edge of the town limits, it felt more like a warning. The fog was a white, sightless wall that swallowed everything twenty feet ahead, turning the world into a series of ghosts.
Leaving should have been simple. I had a car. I had keys. I had enough gas to get three towns over before I had to think about where I was going. The others had a plan. They were going into the woods at first light to find the structure Dominic built and destroy it. My job was to stay in town, stay on the phone with Liliana, and trust them to come back.
But my feet felt like they were made of stone, and the road out looked like something I could disappear into and never have to face any of it again. I looked back toward the town, toward the Victorian silhouettes and the spiraling decay, and then I looked at the phone in my hand.
I hit Liliana's name before I could talk myself out of it. She answered before the first ring finished.
"Oleander?"
"Hi, Lili," I said. My voice came out smaller than I expected. I leaned against the cold metal of my car. "I'm at the edge of town. I'm looking at the road out."
"Are you on it, or are you just looking at it?"
"Just looking."
"Tell me," she said. It wasn't a request. "Tell me everything. No more 'it's fine.' I want the version you aren't telling yourself."
I closed my eyes. I told her everything I hadn't said in our last calls, all of it, in one ugly rush, until there was nothing left to hide behind.
When I finally stopped, the only sound was the distant caw of a crow somewhere in the fog. My throat was raw.
"I told you years ago that something was wrong with him," she said. Her voice was flat, devoid of the comfort I thought I wanted. "And you looked me in the eye and said I was overreacting. You did the looking-away thing while he was alive, you did it when he died, and you're doing it now. So what are you going to do differently?"
She paused. "Because looking away didn't save Dominic. It just gave him room to finish what he started. And now three men who actually seem to give a damn about you are walking into the woods tomorrow because of what your silence let him build."
The first sob hit me without warning.I dropped the phone into the dirt and slumped against the side of the car, my face in my hands. I cried for the first time since the funeral. I cried for theman I'd married who didn't exist, for the man who did exist and had used my love as a battery. I cried for Rowan and Julian and Theo, who had looked at my wreckage and decided it was worth living in.
The fog pressed closer, drawn to the salt and the heat of it. I stayed there for a long time, my knees in the dirt, the road behind me forgotten. Liliana's voice was still coming faintly from the phone on the ground, a tiny, persistent murmur of my name. I reached down and picked it up, wiping my face with a sleeve that was already damp with mist.
