Chapter Twenty-Three
Twenty-Three
I’m stuck for a second, trying to work out why Daddy would have one of Hannah’s pins shoved in the back of his desk drawer. She must have stopped in the gallery while she and Candy were in town. Maybe Daddy helped her with something or gave them some advice, and she gave him the little angel pin as a thank-you. Just like she did Lo and me.
I take the black marker and creep back to the front porch. When I ease the screen door closed, Lo and Xan turn to look in my direction. “Got it,” I say, and I hand Lo the things he needs to make magic.
He unscrews the little jar and gives us each a bay leaf. “Think about what we’re tryin’ to do together,” Lo tells Xan and me. “Then come up with one word that sums up what you want. We’ll write our words on the bay leaves and set ’em on fire. The smoke releases our intentions.”
“Cool,” Xan says. I know he probably thinks this is crazy, but I appreciate him going along with it. I don’t put any stock in Lo’s spells and ceremonies, but if he draws some kind of personal strength from it, that’s good enough for me.
“It’s a manifesting ceremony,” Lo explains. “And it’s powerful.”
“Did Granny Pearl teach you this?” I ask him, but Lo shakes his head.
“Bay leaves aren’t part of the Ozarks tradition, but their use in magic goes all the way back to ancient Greece and the Oracle at Delphi.”
Lo lays his bay leaf on the front porch and leans down with the black marker in his hand. Xan and I both watch as he writes the word Peace in his familiar curling script. “Peace for everyone,” he tells us. “For the victims who’ve been killed, and for the hikers who will come to these hills after this is all over.” He looks at Xan. “For Riley, and for you and your family.” Lo turns to find my eyes. We hold each other hostage for a few seconds before he adds in a low, breathy whisper, “For you and me, Dovie.”
Lo hands the marker to Xan, and he hesitates for a few seconds. I see him thinking really seriously about his word, then he pushes his blond hair aside and leans down to write Justice.
“You have to speak it out loud,” Lo tells him. “Send it out to the universe with your words, and then with the smoke.”
“Justice for Riley,” Xan says simply. His voice resonates with loss, and it makes me ache. “For all of them.”
Then it’s my turn. I already know my word, so I lean down to print Truth in block letters. “I want to know the truth about what’s happening here, no matter how ugly it is.” When I look up, Xan is watching me.
“Truth. That’s a good word.” He nods. “Riley would like that.”
With the moon hanging in the sky as a witness and a choir of cicadas singing in the dark, something about this moment feels sacred. I figure it’s more divine and closer to what people say God is supposed to be than any church service I ever attended as a kid. I may not believe in religion or magic, but concepts like peace, justice, and truth have solid weight. They’re ideas I can get behind.
“Okay,” Lo says. He takes a match from the box I gave him and strikes it with one graceful movement. The three of us put our marked leaves in a pile on the cement step and Lo touches them with the match. I hear them sizzle and pop a little as they start to glow, then Lo bends lower to blow on the tiny ember. He breathes it into life with his own inner flame. This is baptism by fire.
Maybe it’s the redemption Turley wanted for him.
For all of us.
Xan and Lo and I watch the little wisps of smoke rise into the dark. The smell has a pungent bite to it, but it’s soothing, too. I inhale it into my lungs and let it out again.
It’s over in a few seconds, and we look around our tiny circle. Nobody seems sure what to do next, and we’re all worn down to the bone. Xan yawns and Lo is rubbing at his eyes.
“I gotta help my daddy with somethin’ in the morning,” I tell them. “But let’s meet up here tomorrow evening to go over everything we know. Maybe if we lay it all out together, dates and locations and all of it, something will click.”
I can tell Xan likes the idea of having an actual plan. As he leaves the yard, he turns back to give us a wave, and in the pale moonshine, he’s the ghost of his dead brother again.
When he’s gone, I hear Lo let out a long breath. “You okay?” I ask him.
“I am for tonight, I think.” He picks up the box of matches and strikes another one into flame. There’s a scratch and a whoosh and then a sizzle as we watch it burn together. He’s punch-me-in-the-gut beautiful with that orange glow reflected in his brown eyes and those cherry-wood waves falling across his forehead.
“Daddy wants you to help us hang Ira’s new stained glass piece tomorrow, if you’re up for that. We can get you on the way up the mountain.” I look away from his face, out toward the moon and the trees. “Or you could stay here tonight, if you want.”
“I guess I could stay,” he tells me. “If that’s all right.” His voice sounds like water over river stones. Rippling and melodic. The sound of it could lull me to sleep.
“Might as well,” I say, and I see one corner of his lip twitch like he’s trying not to smile. My stomach flip-flops.
Lo’s spent the night with me a zillion nights. I don’t know why I suddenly feel so weird about it now.
“I’m gonna go take a shower, if that’s okay,” he says, and I nod.
“You know where the towels are. I’ll meet you upstairs when you’re finished.”
Lo gets up and sneaks into the house, and I start to gather up the matches and the bay leaves and the marker.
“Hey, Dovie?”
I look up and Xan is back. He’s moving up the stone path to the front porch, and he has this expression on his face like there’s something he wants to tell me.
“Hey,” I say. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” he says, and he comes to sit beside me on the top step. “I just remembered something important. Something one of Riley’s buddies mentioned to me back in May. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but maybe there’s something to it.”
“Okay.”
“This friend, Dustin, saw somebody strange on the trail just before Riley went missing. The guy was acting really odd. Kind of freaked them all out. Dustin said he mentioned it to the sheriff at the time, but he didn’t seem too interested.” Xan rolls his eyes. “Go figure.”
“Did Riley’s friend say what this mystery guy looked like?” This could be our first actual clue.
“He didn’t get a real close look at him,” Xan says. “The guy was moving through the woods, off-trail, keeping his head down. Had a big, bushy beard, salt-and-pepper gray, and hair that matched. That’s all Dustin could really tell me. Might be something worth looking into, though.”
My brain stalls and sputters the way our old truck does when I start it up. Riley’s friend must’ve been mistaken. There’s only one person that matches that description in Lucifer’s Creek.
“Dovie?” Xan says. He’s studying me, and I feel exposed. “Can I tell you something, Dovie who is not a witch?” I nod, even though I’m not paying any attention. He pauses for a second. “I think you’re really beautiful.”
“What?” I think at first I misheard him, but his cheeks are bright pink and he’s looking down at his cowboy boots like he kind of wishes he could snatch the words back.
Xan looks up at me and cocks his head to one side. “You’re a dark-haired, blue-eyed mountain wildflower, Dovie Warner.” He scoots a little closer to me on the step and a tiny tingle spreads up my spine and out along my shoulder blades. “I’ve never met anyone like you.”
“You mean there aren’t any girls in Tulsa who go around digging up skeletons?” I’m aiming for light and teasing, but it comes out more biting and sarcastic than I mean it to. I’m not good at flirting, if that’s even what this is supposed to be. I have absolutely zero experience.
And zero desire.
Xan laughs anyway. It’s an easy sound, and it moves through the muggy night like a cool breeze. I’m suddenly glad that I was the one who made him laugh in the middle of all his misery. If I can’t help him solve the riddle of Riley’s death, at least I will have given him that.
He looks at me for a long second, then he leans in slow and closes his eyes. I realize what’s about to happen just before I feel his lips on mine, soft and gentle and very warm and alive. I’m so surprised and it’s over so fast that I don’t even know for sure if I kissed him back or if I just sat there.
“Night, Dovie,” Xan says, and he pushes himself up off the step. “I’ll see you tomorrow evening.”
“Okay,” I say. Then I add, “The sheriff will be camped out on the front porch. So sneak around back.” Xan nods and starts down the path toward Mud Street, and I feel myself start to smile.
When he vanishes into the dark, I get up and head inside. I push the front door closed, and I think about locking it. But then I decide there’s no point. If whatever is out there in the dark wants me, a flimsy lock won’t make a bit of difference.
I hear the water still running in the shower, so I tiptoe back into the living room and ease open Daddy’s desk drawer again, then I reach inside and find that little gold angel. I’m thinking about how Daddy and I ran smack into each other on the trail tonight, both of us out wandering in the dark.
And about how he’s been gone so many nights lately.
How he came home the other morning—the morning after Hannah Nelby vanished—all torn up from brambles. Holes in his clothes and deep scratches all up and down his arms.
There has to be an explanation for those things, and for the tiny gold trail angel in my hand.
And for what Xan said about the mysterious man with the bushy salt-and-pepper beard who was seen near the trail the day Riley vanished.
I close my palm around the angel and make my way up the stairs as silently as I can. When I get to my room, I pin that third angel to the curtain with the other two.
A complete holy trinity.
One angel for me.
One for Lo.
One for the blue-eyed brothers from Tulsa.
It’s just after one o’clock in the morning, but I don’t care. I have something I have to do. I kneel down and dig through my trash can until I find the business card that Hannah gave me with the angel pin. Both her and Candy’s names are printed on the back, along with their phone numbers, email addresses, and social media accounts.
I take the card and slip back downstairs. The water is still running in the shower. Granny Pearl and Lo have a rigged-up cold-water shower at the cabin, so whenever he showers here, Lo tends to take his time enjoying it. I hear Daddy snoring behind his closed bedroom door, and the light is out in Nana’s room.
I go into the kitchen and take the phone, stretching the cord tight to sit down in the corner. There’s no cell service up way out here in the middle of nowhere, so we all still talk on the phone like it’s the eighties.
I pick up the receiver and dial the number on the trail angel card. Candy’s probably asleep, and I don’t even know what I’m going to say. I’ve just about convinced myself to hang up when someone answers.
“Hello?”
“Hi,” I say. “Is this Candy? My name’s Dove Warner. I’m calling from Lucifer’s Creek, and I’m so sorry for waking you up.”
“Did they find her?” The voice on the other end of the phone is equal parts panicked and hopeful. “Did they find Hannah?”
“No. I’m sorry. I just—I was hoping I could ask you a question.”
She pauses. “Who is this again?”
“My name’s Dove. We met on the Aux-Arc Trail that day. Right before the storm. My friend and I told you about the hiking shelter.”
“We gave you a trail angel card.”
“Yeah,” I say. “That’s how I got your phone number.”
Candy is quiet for a second. “They’re never going to find her, are they?” Her breath hitches, and I hate myself for waking her up and putting her through this.
“There are people up here looking. We’re not going to give up,” I promise. “We’ll find her.”
Or what’s left of her.
Candy sniffles hard. “What’s your question?”
“Did you see anyone that day? Besides my friend and me? Was there anyone else out on the trail? Or off in the woods, maybe? Anybody you noticed?”
“Yeah,” Candy says. “I already told the sheriff this, but there was one guy. That evening, when the sun was going down, we noticed him off in the trees. He was just kind of standing there looking at us. Creeped us out.” She stops. “I wish we’d gone back to town before the rain started.” She lets out a heavy breath. “No. Actually I wish we’d never gone up into those mountains at all.”
“Did you get a look at him? The guy in the woods. Can you describe him to me?”
“Yeah,” Candy says. “I can tell you exactly what he looked like because we actually met him earlier. It was the guy from the stained glass shop.”