He explained it to me the next morning, his voice serious.
I haven’t taken it off since.
The trail runs off the property through the trees, then onto a service road cutting behind the back of the estate. Derek lopes ahead of me, head down, nose lifting into the air every few yards, his pace dialed just slow enough that I can stay with him. My shoulder shrieks every time my boots hit the dirt. I don’t slow. The cold scrapes my lungs raw, and I keep my eyes on the pale blur of Derek’s back, since losing him now means losing Ethan.
Twenty minutes in, we break from the trees, and the ground opens into a clearing. Derek slows, and I follow the line of his gaze to what’s set back at the far edge of it.
It was a house once. A grand one. I can read that much even in ruin, even in the dark, the long, blackened spine of stone where a wall used to run, the empty sockets of windows, a chimney standing alone with nothing left around it. The fire that took it was a long time ago. Weeds have grown up waist-high through the charred beams, and ivy has climbed what little still stands. Behind the main shell, two smaller outbuildings sag against each other, roofless, their doorways gaping black.
Derek stops at the clearing’s edge. Something in his shoulders has gone still.
“What is this place?”
“The old Wolfe house.” His voice drops. “The first one. Grayson’s great-grandparents built it before any of us were born. It burned long before he and Gabriel came along.” He lifts his face into the air and breathes in once, slowly. “He’s here. But thetrail snarls the moment it hits the stone. Too much old smoke baked into it.”
I sweep the ruin with my eyes. Three structures, as near as I can count, the gutted main house and the two outbuildings huddled behind it, every one of them black-mouthed and silent.
“We split it,” Derek says, already moving. “You take the outbuildings on the right. I’ll clear the main house and the far shed. We’ll cover the whole place in a third of the time.”
“No. We stay together.”
“He might be hurt, Miranda. There’s no faster way.” His eyes hold mine. “You find him, you scream. I’ll hear you anywhere on this ground.” A beat. “Gabriel and I practically lived out here as boys. I know every wall still standing.”
My pulse pounds in my ears. He’s right. I hate that he’s right. “Fine.” I nod.
He dips his chin once,then he’s gone, his outline melting around the side of the main house. I take the right. The doorway is a black gap with no door left in it. Inside, the air’s thick with old char and damp ash, the floor gritty with fallen masonry underfoot. I work through it as quietly as I can, my good hand skimming the soot-stained wall to keep myself oriented. The first room’s empty. The second gives me nothing either, just a collapsed beam and a puddle that catches what little light leaks in through the broken roof.
I push through a gap in the back wall onto a strip of weeds, an outbuilding I couldn’t see from the clearing. Light leaks out from under its door, and my breath catches.
I cross the gap at a half run, drop into a crouch beside the door, and listen. Two voices reach me through it. One is sharp and impatient, a stranger’s. The other comes small and slurred, fighting to wake.
“Mama.”
The word knocks the air clean out of me. I ease the door open with my shoulder. It’s a converted storage room, bare concrete, a single bulb swinging off a chain. Ethan’s slumped against the back wall in his pajamas, eyes half open and unfocused, his small body limp on the floor, his lips working around a sound he can’t quite find the strength for.
Vanessa stands over him.
She’s in jeans and a leather jacket, her pale hair scraped back into a hard ponytail, none of the magazine polish from the arena left on her. Her eyes are the cold, pale gray I remember. I’ve seen the set of her face exactly once before, the half-second before she swung her claws into my arm.
She looks up. Shock flares across her face, then drains into a thin smile. “You.”
“Step away from him.”
“How did you even find me?”
“Get away from him, Vanessa. Now.”
She tilts her head. “And what’ll you do, little nurse? You came alone. I can smell it on you.”
She can’t smell that. Derek’s across the ruin. She’s bluffing.
“What the hell is wrong with you?!” I hiss. “What did you do to him?”
Her smile stretches. “I knocked him around a little. He refused to behave. He’ll be fine.”
“He’s a kid!” I snap, terrified at the way Ethan’s head is lolling. “Get out of my way!”
I try to push past her, and she throws me to the wall. My back hits on impact, and I try not to groan.
