Quiet Ones (Hellbent #3)

Prologue

Quinn

Nine Years Ago

“We don’t have to find you, you know?” he calls out.

I step from one rafter to the other, and then kneel down and peek through the slits in the ceiling beneath me.

My niece and nephews are below, searching the great room of the main lodge of our family’s summer camp.

At only ten—a couple of years younger than me—I don’t think they know that the ceiling above them is false, the rafters I stand on hidden away up here by the previous owners decades ago to conserve heat.

I’m so close to them and they can’t even see me.

“If we turn off the lights,” Kade goes on. “You’ll come to us!”

I drew the short straw, so I have to hide. If they find me, then I’m the one who has to steal the keys to the ATVs for a no-parents’ midnight ride this weekend.

I really don’t want to steal anything. I’m not good at breaking rules.

“Quinnnn…” Hawke sings in a calm tone, and I watch him look from left to right like a cyborg scanning for heat signatures. “I know you can hear me, and I don’t have to shout. Where are you?

I smile. Hawke is actually only a year younger than me, and I don’t usually stump him.

I never really felt like the oldest out of the kids.

I’m still wondering where I fit. My older brothers are their parents, and since the age gap between my brothers and me is more than twenty years, they act more like my parents too.

Their kids grew up more like my cousins, but not in the same way that they’re cousins with each other.

I never understood why it felt different, but I just knew that someday it would be.

Maybe I liked that I’d be treated more like an aunt to them when we grew up.

Or maybe I didn’t. All I knew was that something separated them and me, and it was more pronounced when we were all together like this, because that’s when I noticed the couples.

How everyone broke into a natural pair. Dylan and Hunter. Kade and Hawke.

The babies, A.J. and James, would also grow up together.

They didn’t exclude me. But none of them gravitated to me like they did to each other.

Even the adults were all in pairs.

“Quinn!” Dylan yells, searching underneath lunch tables, dressed in her Chucks and hoodie.

Kade’s twin, Hunter, follows her. Always within reach of each other. “Quinnie!” he calls.

“Quinnie-bean!” I hear Kade tease from farther away.

I hate those names. I should tell them, but everyone teases each other in this family, and I don’t want to make it awkward.

Hawke stalks slowly, out of view, and I plant my hands on the rafter under me, pushing myself up. I leap from one beam to another, following their voices in the faint light streaming up from below.

It’s a little dark up here, but it was the only hiding place I suspected they didn’t know about.

They trail through the lodge, and I don’t peer down to see which rooms they search. The kitchen, the pantry, the offices…

Taking out my compass, I flip the lid, finding north. I turn to where the needle points, knowing the lake is ahead of me—out of the lodge, across the lawn, and to the beach. Then I pivot to the left, knowing the way out is that way.

“We’re coming for you, Quinn!” Hunter threatens.

Followed by Kade, “I just hope we find you before sheee does.”

She…

I glance over one shoulder, then the other, looking above me and all around.

Undergrove.

That’s what they call her. The spirit who lives on the tiny island in the middle of the lake. A summer camp urban legend. I scan the far recesses of the dark corners, the walls of the attic disappearing into a black void. She could be there.

But I shake it off and kneel back down. He’s just trying to scare me out of hiding. I don’t believe in ghosts.

And I don’t know why I’m even playing hide-and-seek.

I don’t want to steal the ATVs for a secret ride in the woods, either.

One of the many other things about me that made it feel like I never really fit in with my family.

They all love to drive things. Especially the adults.

Cars, motorcycles, drones, boats, side-by-sides…

Lowering myself, I peer through a small hole in the ceiling.

They all love speed, and they’re all in pairs.

My brothers and their wives…

My parents…

“Can I help you?” I hear my mom through the peephole.

I watch her pick up the other end of a table, helping my brother’s mom—my dad’s first wife—clear the room.

The whole family is gathered this weekend to help my brother Jax and his wife, Juliet, clear and clean the lodge and cabins for renovations that’ll happen over the fall and winter, before next summer’s campers arrive.

Madeline, my dad’s ex, tenses. “No, I’ve got it.”

“It’s okay.” My mom walks backward, leading the table out of the room.

But Madeline drops her end, snapping, “Katherine, please.”

I narrow my eyes. Madoc’s mom has always been nice to me. Why is she being mean?

My mom freezes, her expression timid. She looks like Jared, a little. And like me when I don’t know what to say. We all have the same eyes. Brown, like chocolate, is what everyone says.

My blonde hair is my dad’s, though.

I curl my fingers into a wooden beam. I don’t like Madoc’s mom talking to mine like that. Madeline didn’t yell, but she sounded like my brothers when they’re scolding their kids.

My dad appears in my view. Dust covers his khakis, and there are green paint marks on his white T-shirt. He doesn’t say anything to his first wife, cupping my mother’s face, instead, and looking at her softly. His fingers thread through the wisps of long dark hair that’ve escaped her messy bun.

I lean down more, watching carefully. I’m not supposed to know why my dad’s first wife doesn’t get along with my mom, but I do.

My mother pulls back from my father. “I’ll see what they’re doing in the kitchen,” she tells him, trembling.

My mom leaves the small room—once a little old library, I think—and my dad turns to his first wife. “It’s been years—decades,” he points out. “How long are you going to make her pay?”

“I’m not trying to hurt her,” Madeline tells him. “But we’ll never be okay.”

My mom was my dad’s mistress. For a very long time, I think.

Madoc’s mom, while kind to me, doesn’t visit much. She lives in New Orleans with her husband, and Madoc and his family go there to visit most of the time. They even took me once.

My dad lowers his voice. “It’s me you should be mad at.”

“I am.”

My father steps closer. “She was young.”

“And then she wasn’t,” Madeline replies quickly.

There’s a five- or six-year age difference between my parents. He was in his twenties and already married with a kid. My mom was a teenager with a baby of her own. It’s weird to me that someone hates them, but I love that my dad only worries about someone hating my mother. It hurts him to see.

Madeline sighs. “I’m not going to get into this with you.” She squares her shoulders. “You’re married, you’ve been married for fifteen years, and I know you’re happy. So am I,” she tells him before dropping her voice to almost a whisper. “But I can still feel it, you know?”

I tilt my ear to the peephole.

“Being forgotten,” she goes on. “The nights I was alone, knowing where you were, and wondering what the hell was wrong with me that you kept running to her.” Her tone grows harder.

“And it doesn’t change the pain that your daughter is beautiful and kind and Madoc adores her, but she’s going to get you at your best when he got you at your worst,” she growls, a sob thickening her voice.

I want to defend my dad. And my mom. They’re good parents and good grandparents and they don’t do anything wrong.

“All that pain because you couldn’t stop fucking her,” Madoc’s mom says.

I wince.

She continues, “You don’t get to demand that I forget simply because you perceive that an acceptable amount of time has passed.”

My dad drops his eyes and part of me understands the sadness on his face. I guess I’d be mad if I were her and it were my husband.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

“Would you have done anything differently?”

He doesn’t say anything at first. Maybe he’ll say he shouldn’t have married Madeline in the first place. I mean, if he didn’t love her, then…

But instead, he says, “I would’ve…left you sooner.”

I flit my eyes to Madoc’s mom, and it’s brief, but I see it. The flinch.

He would’ve still married her.

To get Madoc.

I can’t help but wonder what their wedding day was like. Celebration and laughter and dancing. Does it hurt her how much she hates him now? Could that happen to my brothers and their wives? Could it happen to me someday?

She leaves the room, and my father barely has time to run his fingers through his hair before Jared’s wife Tate walks in. “Can I help?” she chirps.

He flexes his jaw, struggling to find his words. After a moment, he exhales and forces a smile. “Thanks.”

They pick up the table and move it out of the room.

I watch them disappear from view and inhale though my nose as if pushing everything I just heard down into my stomach. Hiding it away. Keeping it to myself.

I don’t know why. Maybe because no one talks to me about the past. They don’t want me to know things.

Maybe it just feels good to know more than the other kids. Everyone acts like I don’t have a clue because I’m quieter than they are.

Or maybe it’s just fun to see and listen to what people say when they’re not around children.

“Just give us a clue!” Kade bellows, pounding walls.

“A bird chirp,” Hunter adds from the distance.

“Or a knock!” Dylan offers.

I grin to myself.

But then I hear the booming voice that knots my stomach. “Quinn?!”

My oldest brother Jared. There’s no reason to be scared of him, but I am, because I can never seem to stand up to him. It’s like my brain leaves my body, and I forget English.

“How long have you guys been seeking?” he asks them.

“A while,” Hunter gripes.

“But I’m not forfeiting!” Kade immediately yells loud enough for me to hear.