17. Callum
Callum
Air rushes into my lungs so fast my throat burns, the invisible grip on my chest snapping like a dry branch.
Gravity takes over and I hit the ground hard. My knees slam into the frozen mud, sending a jolt straight up my legs, and my hands instinctively shoot out to catch myself in a tangle of decaying oak leaves. Cold water seeps straight through the knees of my jeans in seconds.
I’m still on my hands and knees, dragging in a ragged breath, when the air around my neck turns ice-cold.
Before I can push myself up, Genevieve is right there, her dress floating inches above the forest floor. She kneels in the muck—or pretends to—and cold fingers wrap around my jaw, tilting my chin up with an unexpected tug.
Up close, the scary edge to her that was there earlier is gone. Her eyes are glassy, her lashes fluttering with each confused blink. She looks the same way I feel right now: utterly stunned.
“You…” she leans in closer, her thumb brushing the side of my neck. “Are you…a McKinley?”
My brain is completely fried. I’m a guy who likes physical evidence, and right now, I have a century-old ghost holding my face. I can’t get my mouth to form a proper word, so I nod instead.
A buzzing blur cuts through the grey mist between us. Twyla hovers about three inches from my nose, her iridescent wings beating furiously as she zips back and forth.
“Well, shit,” the pixie mutters, crossing her arms over her chest as she squints at my nose, then at Genevieve’s face. “I see it. It’s in the nose. You’ve both got that same crooked bridge on it. Definitely related.”
Genevieve blinks, her head turning slowly toward the tiny girl in the air. “Who are you?”
“Twyla,” she says with a small tilt of her chin. “Twyla Jinxheart.”
Genevieve turns, her hands leaving my chin. Slowly, almost reverently, she reaches one pale hand up toward the pixie. There’s no anger in her movement, just a gentle curiosity.
Twyla takes one look at those glowing fingers and dips out, diving straight through the air to land squarely in the middle of my hair, tangling her little hands in my curls. “I’m with him,” she adds, her high voice sounding much less tough from behind my left ear.
I wince, ducking my head a fraction. “She’s a bit protective,” I rasp. “Takes a while to warm up to people.”
Genevieve doesn’t look away from me. Her hand lingers in the air before drifting back to her side. “I knew I felt a draw toward you,” she whispers, her gaze sweeping over my forehead, my eyes, my mustache, the stubble on my jaw. “The moment you walked into these woods. I thought it was a trick.”
“Maybe that’s why the town let you in,” Freddie says from a few feet away.
I turn my head toward her. She’s leaning heavily against the trunk of a moss-covered tree, looking pale and completely run-down, her green jacket smudged with black dirt. Her voice is soft, but her eyes are locked onto mine.
“What?” I ask, my throat still tight.
“Amberhollow,” Freddie says, crossing her arms tightly over her chest to stop her hands from shaking.
“The town doesn’t just let anybody in, especially not a mortal detective from bumfuck nowhere, Callum.
Amberhollow’s magic had to decide to let you through first, and it must’ve recognized magic somewhere in your bloodline. Through Genevieve.”
“Hold up,” I say, planting my boots into the mud and forcing myself up to my feet. My knees pop, but I need to be standing. “Hold on a second.”
I wipe my muddy palms down the sides of my pants, shaking my head. “No offense, Genevieve,” I say, waving a hand vaguely in the ghost’s direction, “but I’ve never heard of either you or Francis my whole life. I just find it…a little hard to believe. Maybe too coincidental.”
Winifred raises an eyebrow at me. “Do you know your family tree all the way back a hundred and fifty years?”
I open my mouth to give her an immediate yes, because I’m a grown man and I like to have my facts straight, but I don’t know.
I know my family’s idea of a summer holiday was dragging my siblings and me up to Stonehaven to stay with my dad’s sister, Aunt Rhona.
I remember her cramped flat above a bakery, the salt air off the harbour cutting through the drafty windows, and the way my dad and his brothers used to sit around her kitchen table talking about the good old days.
The McKinleys didn’t keep photo albums or pass down stories.
If we asked about who came before my granddad, Aunt Rhona would just hand us a sleeve of biscuits and tell us to turn up the tele.
A strange sensation washes over me. It’s an uncomfortable feeling for a guy who makes his living by putting all the pieces together.
I like clean lines and a suspect with a clear motive, a paper trail that I can follow.
Standing in the middle of this freezing timberland, listening to a ghost tell me I have her ex-lover’s face, feels like trying to build a house on wet sand.
It makes me feel exposed, like someone reached into my past and moved everything that I thought I knew around while I wasn’t looking.
I drag a hand down my face. “That’s…” I clear my throat, looking at the mud on my boots. “A fair point. I don’t know who my great-great-grandfather or grandmother were.”
Winifred pulls her coat tighter around herself as she steps toward Genevieve. “Did you see Sabine out here?” she asks. “An older witch, dark grey cloak, riding boots. She disappeared, along with two other people months ago. Do you know where they went?”
Genevieve doesn’t answer right away. She tilts her head, her wedding veil shifting in the air, and stares straight through Winifred.
“Please,” Winifred adds, taking another half-step. “I know you can feel what’s happening out here. You’re too close to the edge of the Wood not to notice the tear in the Veil.”
Genevieve’s dark eyes narrow, that edge returning to her face in an instant. I can feel the cold starting to bite through my clothes, but I force my shoulders to relax and take a breath.
“Please,” I say, keeping my voice as gentle as I can.
Genevieve’s eyes snap to mine. The hard line of her mouth softens so fast that I almost miss it.
“People are disappearing,” I tell her, holding her gaze even though every survival instinct I have is screaming at me to get my ass out of this fucking forest. “And more are going to follow if we don’t figure out what’s going on. If you saw anything—anything at all—we could really use the help.”
Genevieve glides over toward Winifred, her hem floating above golden leaves. “I’ll tell you what I know,” she says. “Consider it payment, for the thirty seconds of his hand in mine, and for bringing Callum so I could see his face.”
She stops, her dark eyes blazing with a look that says she means business. “After this, my debt to you is squared away.”
Winifred nods once, swallowing hard. “Thank you.”
Genevieve lets out a breath, folding her arms over her chest. “This tear in the Veil isn’t new. It started over a century ago, right by the old stone well where Francis and I were supposed to meet. But it was just a tiny rip back then.”
She looks toward the trees down the ridge. “Every fifty years, like clockwork, that rip gets wider. But it’s…different now. It’s the first time there’s been any real consequences because of it.”
“And Sabine?” I ask, taking an instinctive step closer to Winifred. “You saw her?”
“I did,” Genevieve says. “An elder witch with a leather journal. She came straight for the well a few nights ago. I watched her stand at the edge, measuring the air, looking for a blind spot where the magic folds over.”
“And then what? Where did she go?” Winifred asks, her fingers twitching against her pockets. “Did the tear throw her out into the mortal world or something?”
Genevieve shakes her head. “No.”
“Then where is she?” I ask impatiently.
“She stepped right through,” Genevieve whispers, her eyes locking onto mine. “Into the Veil itself.”
Winifred lets out a quiet gasp, her eyes searching the Wood, like she can’t believe that’s possible.
“Into the Veil?” I ask, rubbing the back of my neck. “How? Isn’t it, like, a wall?”
“It’a not a wall, Callum,” Genevieve says softly. “It’s a pocket of trapped time and empty space. And right now, the seam has split wide enough to swallow someone whole. Multiple people, actually.”
“Where do they go?” Winifred’s words break on the last syllable, her arms wrapping tight across her stomach. “And how do they get out?”
The ghost tilts her head, her pale hair shifting in a breeze. “I don’t know, little witch. The Veil takes what it takes.”
I clear my throat, shifting my weight in the cold, wet soil. My hands are numb inside my pockets, but my head is spinning. “Hypothetically…if someone wanted to leave? To go back outside to the mortal world, back to their normal life before all this, how would they do that?”
Genevieve’s stare lingers on me, her form dimming against the dark bark of the trees behind her. “It would be a hard task. Especially now, with the border so heavily guarded.”
She lifts one hand toward Winifred. “A Resonant’s magic could push through the weight of it. She could balance the frequency. If she anchored the rift from this side, she could draw a path through the pocket. She could push you straight back to the world you came from.”
Something blooms fiercely in my chest—hope, messy and uninvited.
I can go home. I can get back to my life.
I can sit at my gran’s table while she lets her tea get cold, drag Isla into a headlock until she yells at me to get lost, and sit down at my desk with a fresh stack of files and a life that actually makes some sense. I can get back to looking for Rory.
So why does the thought make my stomach drop into a pit?
I wanted my old life back more than anything when I crossed into Amberhollow.
But standing here, staring at this wretched forest, I realize I don’t know if I actually want the silence I left behind.
I don’t know if I actually want the gray, predictable routine I spent years convincing myself was enough.
I think about this last week. I think about standing outside of the record shop watching Winifred spin around with a vinyl in her hand, completely unbothered by the world.
I think about holding onto her waist on a broomstick, her laughter bright on the wind, and sitting on her couch past midnight just talking while eating Taki’s and pickle-flavored Oreos (which were delicious, by the way, but I’ll never admit it to her).
Bringing her a coffee. Making her laugh.
Before her, I was surviving—checking off days on a calendar, doing the work, and calling it living.
Winifred didn’t just teach me how to fit into her world—she taught me how to actually be alive in mine. And I don’t just want a week of that. I want months. I want weeks. I want more of every loud, troublesome, technicolor piece of her. I’m so damn sick of living in black and white.
“So…” I clear my throat as I look back at Genevieve. “It’s possible?”
“It will not be easy,” Genevieve answers softly. “But yes. It is possible.”
I turn my head to look at Winifred, who offers me a tight smile, one that most people give when they’re trying to be brave. But her sad silver eyes give her away, unable to lie the way her mouth can.
Genevieve’s attention drifts past us, snagging on the shadows knitting themselves between the old firs and oaks. “You should leave,” she says, and there’s an urgency beneath the calm of her voice. “The Wood hasn’t been safe since the Veil began to come apart.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Jett mutters, taking quick steps back toward the path we came in on.
“Amen,” Twyla chirps from somewhere near my ear.
Winifred steps up beside me, her shoulder lightly brushing mine as she looks at the ghost. “Thank you, Genevieve. For everything.”
“Yes,” I add, meeting the ghost’s eyes. “Thank you.”
Genevieve drifts closer, the space between us thinning to almost nothing, and lifts her hand to my cheek. There’s no true touch—no warmth, no pressure—only a pinpoint cold that blooms against my skin like frost creeping across glass
“Stay safe, Callum.” Her voice is barely more than the wind moving through leaves, but the smile that follows it is real, small and aching and lovely.
Looking at her now, without the rage contorting her features, she’s beautiful. A century ago, before the woods became her only home, she must have been something else entirely.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and the words come out rougher than I mean them to, scraped raw on the way up. “For what Francis did. For leaving you out here all this time.”
Her smile falters, tipping into something bruised and hopeful, but her hand stays where it is. “I have to believe he’s still out here,” she whispers. “Somewhere. That he didn’t just…leave me.”
Somewhere deep in the trees, something groans, and a branch snaps like a gunshot through the quiet.
I glance toward the sound, then back to her. “Will you be alright out here? Alone?”
Genevieve laughs, and it’s a strange thing, more air than sound. “That’s the one mercy of being dead, Callum. Nothing can kill me twice.”
I let out a breath that’s almost a laugh. “Fair enough. Goodbye then….grandma?”
Her eyes sparkle, a tiny spark of life surfacing in her hollow face. She gives me a subtle, knowing wink. “That’s great-great-great-grandma to you, boy.”
Then she’s gone, folding back into the grey mist before I can blink.
“Alright, let’s move.” Jett’s already ducking under a low-hanging pine branch, not waiting for anyone’s permission.
We push through the underbrush together, tracking the faded blaze marks scratched into bark by hands long gone. Five minutes on, the Wood’s grip on us finally loosens. The canopy splits open above us, and we stumble through the last line of trees into a clearing washed in sunlight.
The contrast is wild. Behind us, the woods look like a bruised, stormy twilight. In front of us, the town of Amberhollow sits under a crisp blue sky, the air sharp with mountain cold.
Jett drops onto a flat rock. “I am never going back in there. Ever.”
Winifred laughs and shakes her head. She tugs her coat straight, then knocks her elbow into my ribs. “Well. Looks like you get to go home, loverboy.”
I glance down at her, mouth tugging sideways. “You sound a little too happy about that, Fred.”
She shrugs, looking off toward the main street with a tiny smirk playing on her lips. “I like having you around. A little.”
“A little?” I repeat, eyebrow raised. “That’s all I get after taking a ghost to the face for you?”
“When you let me braid your mustache,” she says, turning her head to give me a sweet, completely insincere smile, “I’ll like having you around a whole lot more.”
I bark out a laugh, shaking my head as we start down the trail toward the road. “Like hell that’s happening.”