Chapter Fourteen Shea
Shea doesn’t speak to either Lys or Asher the following night.
Not even when they stop to refuel, the wind tunneling beneath the sagging steel-frame awning.
At Lys’s direction, they pull off the main road just before dawn.
The early-morning sun burgeons on the horizon by the time they find what Lys is looking for—an old bed-and-breakfast, forgotten in the trees.
“They’re not very chatty,” notes Poppy, picking snarls out of her scarf. She’s sitting cross-legged on a lumpy old love seat, her green turtleneck and appliqué overalls at odds with the puce-colored cushions. “Do we think they’ll ignore each other all the way to the Flatwood?”
“Hopefully,” says Shea, who has been drafted into untangling a hank of yarn. Thus far, her efforts have proven futile. “How did you tangle this so badly?”
“It wasn’t me, it was Kit. He keeps batting at them.” Poppy pokes despondently at the scarf with the tip of a needle. It’s a few minutes more before she speaks. “I heard the argument. Yesterday, I mean. At the motel.”
Shea feigns nonchalance. “Did you?”
“It isn’t like the three of you were very quiet. Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really, no.”
“You can, if you want. I’ll keep my opinions to myself.”
“Don’t bother, I’m sure I can guess.”
Poppy hums. “You might be surprised.”
Shea glances across the room and finds Poppy laser focused on a knot, dissecting each individual strand with surgical precision.
When Poppy doesn’t offer up anything further, Shea sags back against the couch.
The cushions are upholstered in dizzying floral.
Everything in Nutmeg Nook is floral. The wallpaper.
The glassware. The pillows. Even the artwork.
It gives the house a charming sort of ugliness.
Outside the window—framed in hideous floral drapes—Shea can just make out Asher’s profile set against the sun. She tosses down the yarn and sits up in a stretch, her patience frayed.
“I quit.”
“Maybe I will, too.” Poppy holds up the scarf between them, peering glumly at Shea through the misshapen holes. “This is turning out to be the ugliest thing anyone has ever made.”
“It’s not that bad.”
Poppy drops the mess of fabric into her lap. “You don’t have to lie.”
···
Later, when the sun hangs in the sky’s midpoint, Shea removes her hearing aids and slinks outside to gather juniper berries off the trees. The lowest-hanging fruit has been gnawed away by deer, and so she climbs up onto the porch railing, clutching a woven basket she found in the kitchen.
It’s sticky work, but the silence is comfortable.
Familiar, like slipping into better-fitting skin.
In the quiet, everything else sharpens. The kiss of sun on her skin and the thick smell of pine.
The rustle in the air as a bird takes flight.
The world breathes out as she breathes in, letting her mind play through memories like a click reel—her mother in the yard, gathering dark blue juniper berries into her apron.
Her mother on the porch, laying her yield out to dry in the hot summer sun.
Her mother in the kitchen, bare feet on the floor and mortar in hand, pestle blue with pulp.
Shea’s not sure if it’s one single afternoon, or several of them overlapping.
They’ve all blended one into the other, separating her life out into Before Calhoun Parker Left and After.
These days, the clearest memories she has of her mother are this—Ivy clawing at the walls.
Ivy lunging up the stairs. Ivy digging into offal like a wolf.
Ivy, her mind lost to the Gravewood.
Lost, like Camellia.
Like Shea.
“I’m not lost,” she says to a nearby waxwing.
The bird startles and takes flight, dropping a berry as it goes.
She watches it disappear into the nearby trees, feeling unspeakably lonely.
Nearby, the branches sway, dark and inviting.
She thinks maybe it doesn’t matter that she can’t hear their entreaties.
Her head is already full of Lys. She feels drawn to him, always.
Wound tight with thoughts of him, restless in a way that makes her want to crawl out of her own skin and set it on fire.
Anything to burn him out of her bones.
I feel it, too.
Basket in hand, she heads back around to the front of the house.
Asher is still outside on the porch. He’s whittling a bit of wood, his knife throwing slivers of light with each pass.
She slows to a stop a few feet away, watching the bark curl off in ribbons.
Sensing her presence, he casts her a fleeting glance and continues without a word.
“Will you teach me how to use that?”
He pries a plug loose from his ear. “What?”
“I want to learn how to fight with a stake.”
“That’s what I thought you said. And it’s a bad idea.”
“I’ve been attacked twice already. Shouldn’t I know how to defend myself?”
His gaze slides to the trees. Frowning at whatever he hears clicking through the branches, he rummages through his rucksack and pulls out a small, hand-cranked radio. Winding it up, he turns the dial. An orange light flicks on, and the little clearing is flooded in static.
“What if something happens and you’re not there to step in?” she asks, the moment his attention is back on her.
“Lysander will be there.”
“And what if it is Lys?”
He pins her in a searching gaze. Looking, again, for signs of a feed. For evidence of fever, of malaise, of a bite, fresh and red.
“Teach me,” she repeats.
He flips the stake, inspecting its whittled tip. “The first thing they tell you in training is that if you’re close enough to use this, you’re already dead.”
“Then what are you doing sharpening it?”
“I’m feeling pretty close,” he says, with a glance back at the house.
There’s no sign of life in any of the windows. No snap of a curtain. No shuttering of blinds. Lys’s presence lingers anyway, as palpable as if he’s standing right there with them. With a sigh, Asher holsters the stake and rises to his feet.
“Yeah, okay. I’ll teach you. But not with this.”
Five minutes later, he’s assembled a firing range of sorts—setting a collection of floral vases atop a split-rail fence. Shea stands where he’s indicated and clutches his pistol crossbow, her eyes squinted shut against the sunbeams that stripe vertically between the trees.
“It’s easier to hold on to than I thought it would be,” she says as he jogs to meet her. The radio is clipped to his bandolier, emitting static. “Have you killed anyone with it?”
“It’s definitely the lighter of my arsenal,” he says, avoiding her question. “Sorry, this isn’t the best spot, the sun’s in the way. Can you see anything?”
She squeezes one eye shut. “Sort of.”
“Here.” He tugs off his cap, flattening down a cowlick as he plops it onto her head. It’s too big, and the brim slips into her eyes, but it does the trick. The worst of the glare extinguishes, leaving the glade a flat, hazy gold. “Better?”
“Uh, yeah.” She lifts her chin. Her cheeks burn. “Thanks.”
“It’s all right.” He keeps his distance, looking uneasy. “You’ll, uh, want to stand with your feet shoulder-width apart. Point your left foot where you plan to aim.”
She follows his instructions, lifting the pistol the way she’d seen him do. “Like this?”
“Sort of.” He palms his chin, considering her. “Can I make some adjustments?”
“Please.”
He hesitates and then steps closer, folding his hand over hers.
Her fingers curl against the foregrip as he guides her higher.
Even this—this unbearable proximity, this sunlit scene—is familiar.
She’s twelve years old again, sighting a stag down the barrel of his father’s rifle, his voice at her ear: Don’t tell Ellie.
She’ll tell my dad, and he’ll tell your mom.
And then she’ll kill you and plant you in her garden.
His laugh had been loud. The stag, hearing him, took off like a shot. Exactly.
“Look through the scope,” he says now, coaxing her into position. His free hand skims her hip, angling her until her spine lines up against his chest. She can feel the heat coming off him, like he’s swallowed the sun. His cheek grazes hers as he asks, “Do you see the first vase?”
The radio static thrums through her. “Yeah.”
“Okay, good.” He clears his throat and steps back. “Fire when ready.”
She swallows a breath and pulls the trigger. With a ping, the wooden bolt goes wide, arcing past the vase and lodging itself neatly in a nearby patch of hobblebush. There’s a moment of silence. Asher stands with his hands in his jacket pockets, a muscle working in his jaw.
“That was—”
“ Don’t laugh,” she orders, rounding the unloaded crossbow on him.
He puts his hands up in surrender. “I would never.”
“That was horrible. I didn’t even come close.”
“It’s okay,” he says. “I missed my first time, too.”
She glowers at him. “No, you didn’t.”
“You’re right, I didn’t.” He peers out at her from beneath the shade of his palm, and she can see him biting back a smile. “Come on. We’ll go again.”
It takes four more tries for her to get anywhere close to a target. On the fifth, she manages to explode a vase into pieces. It wasn’t the one she was aiming for, but she takes the win. She turns, elated, unable to hold back a grin.
“I did it!”
“You killed it dead,” agrees Asher. “Think you can do that again?”
“Let’s hope.”
She notches the wooden bolt, feeling it click firmly into place. Her arms ache. There’s a crick in her neck. All around them, dusk begins to settle, color bleeding out of everything. She sights the next vase, her finger on the trigger.
A flicker of movement draws her concentration too late. The whistle of her projectile is cut short just as Lys snatches the stake out of midair. It hovers, point sharp, an inch from his chest. Unfazed, he tosses the stake to the ground. His cheeks are sunken, his eyes bruised.
“Am I interrupting?”
“You are,” says Asher. “You look terrible, by the way.”
“I feel terrible. How about you help me out and open up a vein?”