Chapter Twenty-Five Shea
Leaving is easy.
It’s the rest she miscalculated. Shea picks her way along the dunes, sweating already, her boots squishing in the sun-dried sand of a little inlet. Pink patches of muhly grass tickle her bare legs as she goes. The sky stretches on and on and on without end.
She’s lost. And not a little bit lost, either—hopelessly.
She ripped the map from the atlas before she left, following the route Asher marked in pen.
She looks it over now, using her thumb and forefinger to try to measure out distance.
It’s futile. The road ahead is wide and flat and empty. Behind her is more of the same.
She walks a little faster. Poppy did something to her hair to make it feel like satin. It sits tucked behind her ears in a severe slash of gold. Her cross heats against her skin, Asher’s spoon and Lys’s gear clinking with each step. She should have chucked them both into the sea.
Beneath the dress, she wears a wooden stake strapped to her thigh. Not a stunted bolt or a narrow palisade, but one with heft. White ash, whittled sharp.
At this point, she’d be better off falling on it herself.
There’s no sign of life in any direction.
She’s hyperaware of the time, her eyes on the sun.
Already, it’s tipping out of the sky’s midpoint.
Any moment, Asher might wander out to the RV and find her gone.
If he and Lys come after her now, she’ll be outpaced within the hour.
She can’t think of anything more humiliating.
She walks a little faster, wicking sweat from her brow, and checks the map again.
There’s a good possibility that she’s grossly misjudged the distance.
She’s gone another mile or so when she notices the car following her. She sees it along her periphery—a black jeep, windows tinted. It slows to a crawl without passing, tailing her at a snail’s pace that raises the hair on the back of her neck.
She keeps going, waiting for it to move on.
It doesn’t. Instead, it pulls up beside her.
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the window roll down.
A quick glance shows her the profile of a boy.
He looks to be about her age, fair skin freckled by the sun, the wind ruffling a head of chestnut curls.
His eyes are shaded behind a pair of dark sunglasses, but his grin is wide and bright and disarming.
“Need a ride?”
“No.” She walks a little faster.
He matches her pace, the engine humming. “Where are you headed?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“You’re right,” he admits, grinning still. “But you’re deep in Keeling territory, and it’s not too often you see a girl walking alone out here. At least not in the middle of the day. Are you going to the revel?”
She falters a step and then continues on. “That’s also none of your business.”
“That’s a yes, then.” He hits the brakes, sliding to a halt. “Just so you know—you’re going the wrong direction.”
She frowns down at the torn bit of road atlas. “That can’t be right.”
“Tragically true.” He hooks his elbow out the window, keeping one hand on the wheel. Waiting as she turns the map this way, then that, grumbling all the while.
With a curse, she crushes the map into a ball. “I don’t know how to read this.”
“Let me give you a ride. Look, I’ve got— Hold on.” He reaches into his glove compartment and comes up with a little black canister. “I’ve got pepper spray. If I do anything that makes you uncomfortable, you can zzzt ”—he mimes spraying it—“spray it right in my eyes.”
She looks at the road one more time. It veers out of sight up ahead, heat snapping against the asphalt. Her shoulders burn. Her feet ache. She’s getting nowhere, fast.
“Fine,” she says. “But only because I’m desperate.”
He smiles as she rounds the front of the car, leaning across the passenger seat to push open the door.
It’s cool in the cabin. A fabricated chill envelops her the moment she climbs inside.
The seats are leather, buttery and new. Everything in Little Hill is secondhand, rusted and reupholstered, and the newness of the interior strikes her momentarily numb.
“I’m Max,” says the boy, when she’s seated. “Hansen.”
She reaches for her seat belt. “I’d say thanks for the ride, but I’m reserving that until you deliver me there alive.”
“No thanks needed.” Max glances over the top of his sunglasses. “I’d settle for a name, though.”
Unease worms its way into her. She looks out the window, clinging to the pepper spray like it’s a lifeline.
“Or,” says Max, drawing it out, “we can sit here in friendly silence.”
“Friendly silence, please.”
“You got it.”
They drive like that for a while, the wind ruffling in the windows as they cruise along the coast. When she finally garners the courage to glance his way, it’s to see him eyeing her arms. Lys’s half-moon bites constellate her bare skin, marking her from the base of her palms to the insides of her elbows.
She draws her wrists in close, crossing her arms over her chest.
“I know, I know,” he says, eyes back on the road. “None of my business.”
The sunlit world slips past and past. To their left is the sea, oily and dark. The tide is out, and several algae-bitten yachts lie on their sides in the sucking mud. The beachfront is lined in a strip of mega-hotels, concrete gone discolored with mold.
It’s full dusk by the time Max drops her off.
He parks before a sprawling Southern mansion, pulling up behind a line of cars.
The building’s front is gridded in windows, every last pane painted black.
Several sleek roman columns hold up a half-circle balcony, over which spills vibrant red caladium.
Towering palm trees girdled in yellow fairy lights line the paver-clad roadway.
Everything is soft and lovely and welcoming—glittering gold and draped in splendor.
It’s nothing at all like Lys’s ice-clad kingdom in the north.
“Are you coming?” she asks Max, halfway out of the car.
“Er, no.” His eyes dart from the building and back to her. He seems suddenly apprehensive. “I’m not on the guest list. I was just in the area.”
Wariness builds into a blister. “Doing what?”
“That’s a good question.” He drums a thumb on the wheel. “Really good. Let’s just say I was protecting an investment of mine.”
“Is that a polite way of saying it’s none of my business?”
His smile is faint. “Something like that, yeah.”
“Perfect.” She shuts the door, bending down to address him through the open window. “Thanks for the ride. For what it’s worth, I’m really grateful you didn’t try to kill me.”
He tugs his sunglasses down his nose. His eyes are a rich, warm brown. “Is that a regular occurrence for you?”
“You have no idea.”
“I might have some,” she thinks she hears him say.
“What?”
“No, nothing. You, uh—look really nice in that dress, by the way. I’m glad you wore it.”
She straightens in surprise just as he puts the car in reverse. By the time she’s gathered her sense enough to ask him what he means, he’s gone, backing out into the lot and taking off down the road. She watches his jeep until it’s out of sight, certain she’d heard him incorrectly.
Overhead, the sky is the exact color of a bruise.
Bracing herself, she turns to go in and stops.
Someone is standing beneath the overhang. A boy, or perhaps a man. He’s tall and tapered, dressed in a gray vest and pleated slacks, the white sleeves of his shirt cuffed at the elbows. His hair, so black it looks almost blue, has been combed back from his face, revealing pale, angular features.
“You look lost,” he says, coming closer.
She clears her throat. “Do I?”
“Very much so.” He looks older up close. There’s the slightest bit of silver at his temples. “Paris Keeling’s parties are famously invite-only.”
“I was invited. Paris asked me here himself.”
He angles his head to the side, searching her face. “Did he?”
“Yes.”
“Interesting.”
Somewhere inside, music is playing. It thuds in her feet. Hums in her core. All she can hear is the rush of the ocean. The man is still studying her, an achingly familiar look of introspection in his eyes.
“You’re awfully pretty,” he notes. “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me your name.”
“It’s Shea,” she says. “Parker.”
The man’s smile is startling—a razor-sharp smirk that sets off warning bells in her head.
“You’re absolutely right. I did ask for you.”
It takes her brain a moment to catch up.
Her mind does a frantic cartwheel, doing whatever it can to integrate all that she knows about the infamous Paris Keeling with this man in front of her.
All this time, she’d been picturing him as a boy Lys’s age, or close to it.
Eighteen years old and ruthless. The kind of monster who would use the life of a girl as collateral in a game.
This man is none of those things. Not at first glance. He’s unsettlingly lovely, his smile alluring. His eyes are a cool, clear blue. They glimmer, sapphiric, as he offers his arm.
“Would you like to accompany me inside?” asks Paris Keeling.
She’s come all this way. The plan hasn’t changed, just because he’s different from how she expected him to be. She slips her fingers in the crook of his elbow and lets him lead her up the steps and into the building.
Mercy Ridge is all cut timber and stacked stone—a building meant for weathering trouble.
Immediately, Shea can see that the Keeling mansion is the lodge’s opposite in every way.
The moment they cross the threshold, she’s greeted by the sight of an open ballroom, sprawling in scope and equally resplendent.