Page 23

They took a step back and disappeared.

“Whoa,” Sloane whispered, awe lacing through her voice.

I forced my gaze away from the empty space the Votarist had been, letting my arm drop from her waist.

We stood in a small clearing, the muddy ground partially covered with strewn leaves that were bloodred. The trees around us rose for what seemed like forever, taller than our high-rise apartment in Arizona. Of all things, they looked like the sequoias in California. Their trunks were wider than my arm span, nearly all of their branches at least fifty feet above the ground with the same red leaves growing from them. Smaller pine trees scattered among them, similar enough Sloane could probably name whether they were firs or spruces. Some bushes were scattered around the space, situated nearly perfectly with where the sun broke through the forest’s canopy, though their own branches were bare.

“It’s like the Redwood Forest,” Sloane said, turning in a circle. The sun caught on her hair as she did, the odd pink cast of it bringing out some of the red undertones of her last round of highlights in the salon.

I slowly turned with her, trying to dispel the apprehension twisting my stomach. I couldn’t shake the feeling that we weren’t supposed to be here. By the time my circle ended, Sloane was already moving into the clearing, gently running her hand on one of the bare branches of the nearest bush.

Despite the giant trees having leaves, the forest wasn’t very active, like it was slumbering. In fact, the entire forest felt… sad. Could a forest be sad? I’d read of places like this, where the area held onto the memory of events that had transpired. Even hundreds of years later, people could still feel the ominous nature of the place.

What could have been so catastrophic that it left this ancient forest so inhospitable?

My steps were more unsure than Sloane’s as I closed the distance between us. I didn’t want to be more than an arm’s length from her in a place that felt like this.

“I wonder why they haven’t dropped all of their leaves when it’s clearly winter.” Sloane frowned, turning her face toward the sky again, her eyes catching on the canopy of leaves. “Or maybe they’ve already grown back? There are a lot of leaves on the ground.”

She knelt down and moved one of the bush’s branches. I resisted the urge to swat her hand away.

“Oh, there’s new buds,” she said. She laughed in disbelief, then looked back at all of the trees surrounding us. “This place is fascinating.”

“Yeah, that’s definitely what I would call it,” I muttered, grimacing.

She frowned, her eyebrows bunching close together over her eyes. “You don’t like it?”

“No,” I said, short and scared and angry. Her frown deepened. “It feels like the way people describe touring gallows and prisons.”

“Oh.” She closed her eyes. “Yeah, I can feel that, too. I was distracted by the trees.”

Her cheeks pinkened as she shrugged. When she opened her eyes, they caught on something in the trees behind me.

“What is that?” Her voice rose in pitch, quivering, as she pointed to something over my shoulder.

Swallowing the growing urge to run, I twisted so I could see where she was indicating. Slowly lumbering toward us were two bright yellow eyes only a foot or so shorter than us. My heart clogged my throat, my pulse echoing in my ears. Sloane grabbed my hand and laced our fingers together. The eyes drew closer, stepping out of the shadows of the tree. It was… a bird. It stood nearly to my shoulder, its legs long and its feet taloned. Its body was covered in dark gray feathers, and its beak was the length of my forearm and as wide as my hand. It tilted its head as it took another step.

Then there was the sound of gunshots.

Sloane dropped to the ground, pulling me with her, her eyes wide in terror. The bird flapped its wings, taking flight above us, startled by our sudden movement. It landed on the other side of the clearing, near where we’d been with the Votarist. It fluffed its wings, and then the sound came again, nearly identical as before.

“Oh my god, that’s its beak,” I breathed. “It sounds like a freaking gun going off, but it’s just its beak. Holy crap.”

There was a long bit of silence, and then Sloane gave an astonished little chuckle.

“They have shoebill storks here?” she asked.

I groaned. “No electricity, no running water, but there’s freaking storks? This place is so weird.”

Sloane laughed again and got to her feet, brushing leaves off the skirt of her dress. I mirrored her actions, turning one of the leaves in my hand. It wasn’t dried out or crunchy. It folded in my palm without any visible damage to it at all.

Dropping it, I said again, “This place is so weird.”

Sloane looped her arm with mine.

“Do you think we should stay here or…”

She gestured toward the forest around us.