Chapter 18 Chloe
CHLOE
It’s been a week since I’ve heard from Theo. Or from Oliver, for that matter. I thought he would show up at my house after his chores that day he intercepted me on the peninsula, but he never did. There’s been no sign of him since then, either. I’m not sure if I should be worried or not.
Theo, I have fewer expectations for. He might be a Hunter, but he’s still a man, and men have always been a source of disappointment. That doesn’t stop me from waking up in the middle of the night, hoping that it was his footsteps that woke me. Never is.
“You’re fucking lucky,” Penelope told me after three days of silence from him. “All he wanted to do was fuck you.”
I scowled down at her face on the laptop. It was just me and her on the Zoom call. Abi’s been distracted by something. An investigation, she said in her text, which apparently didn’t warrant more explanation.
“You don’t have to say it like that,” I snapped, because I certainly don’t feel lucky. I feel rejected. I couldn’t tell Penelope that, though.
“Whatever,” she said. “Hopefully, he’ll stay away. Otherwise, I’m coming down there.”
I’m not talking to Penelope or Abi tonight, though. The sun’s just starting to set, and I’m watching TV, although my attention really isn’t focused on it. I keep thinking about Theo. Replaying the last time I saw him until my body feels hot and distracted.
That’s when I hear tapping on my back window.
I sit up, my heart leaping in my chest, even though I doubt it’s Theo. I already know he doesn’t knock.
The tapping continues, soft and insistent. When I push back the curtain, Oliver’s standing on my porch, wearing his blue-and-green dinosaur backpack and, more unusually, carrying a sleeping bag tucked under his arm. Worry blooms in my chest.
“Oliver?” I sign at him through the glass. “Is everything okay?”
He nods and signs, “Can I come inside?”
I push open the door. Oliver promptly marches into my living room, sets down his sleeping bag, and digs through his backpack. I watch him, frowning. I’m fine with him being here, I really am. I just don’t understand what’s going on. Or why he has a sleeping bag.
He pulls something out of his backpack. I think at first it’s one of his drawings, but when he hands it to me, I see it’s a yellowed envelope with my name written across the front in big, block letters.
Not a child’s hand, although Oliver is such a good artist, I imagine his penmanship is probably pretty good.
“What’s this?” I ask, looking up at him. He smiles deviously at me, his eyes glittering a little. “Is it going to explain why you have your sleeping bag?”
“Open it!”
I do. The envelope’s paper feels old, as does the stationery inside, which is festooned with a swirling, feminine flower print. There’s not much written on it, although it’s in the same blocky hand as my name.
Chloe,
I have invited Oliver to camp in my territory tonight. I would like you to do the same.
-Theo Shorn
I jerk my gaze up at Oliver, and he bursts into a huge, gleaming smile. “Will you come?” he signs furiously, hands flying. “Please! Theo says we can build a fire and he says if you have marshmallows you can bring them but he’ll cook breakfast for us. Please, please, please!”
I blink, my brain struggling to parse the onslaught. Oliver keeps signing please over and over.
“Why is there a letter?” I ask.
Oliver sighs dramatically. “He wanted me to ask you but I said what if you didn’t believe me and so I told him to write you an invitation and so he did.”
It takes me another two seconds to register everything Oliver has just signed to me. As I’m staring at him, he says, “Go get your stuff!”
“Your mom is okay with this?” I ask.
Oliver goes still, hands hanging in midair. Then he says, “She doesn’t care.”
She doesn’t know, I think suddenly, although I’m not sure how Oliver managed to sneak out of his house with his backpack and his sleeping bag.
“Please, please, please!” Oliver sighs.
I bite my bottom lip. I know the responsible adult thing to do would be to march Oliver back over to his house and tell his parents about this impromptu camping trip.
But I think about the few interactions I’ve had with them.
The distant shouting I heard the other day, after I brought Oliver home from the peninsula. How dejected he seemed.
He’s not dejected now. Now, he’s bouncing up and down on his heels, beaming at me with excitement. He’s also still signing the word please.
“Stop,” I say. “You’re going to wear your fingers out.”
Oliver rolls his eyes and keeps signing.
I sigh. “When did Theo ask you about this?”
“This afternoon,” Oliver says. “Please, Chloe? Theo really wants you to come, too! He said I could only spend the night if you were there!”
It’s a trap, says a voice in my head that sounds suspiciously like Penelope. But I don’t actually believe it. I—
Want to see Theo again.
I can feel my will wearing down, if for no other reason than Oliver’s big, earnest eyes would break my heart if I told him no.
“Fine. I’ll go.”
I tell myself that I’m only agreeing to this because of Oliver. I don’t think that’s the whole reason, even though I’m trying to deny my foolish excitement at seeing a man who isn’t even human.
Oliver jumps up in the air. “Hurry!” he signs. “Get everything you need. Do you have marshmallows?”
I smile at him. I actually do, an impulse buy from the day I moved in. I haven’t even cracked the bag open yet. “Why don’t you check the cupboard while I pack my things?”
Oliver scurries off into the kitchen, and I take a deep breath. My body brims with electricity. Is this a bad idea? Absolutely.
Am I going to do it anyway? Also, absolutely.
I switch off the TV and head into my room to pack, the sound of Oliver ransacking my kitchen following behind me. I throw a few things in my own backpack: fresh clothes, a hairbrush, a change of clothes.
When I slide my phone into the bag, I think about Penelope telling me to get a gun. A knife will have to do.
When I come back into the living room, Oliver has gathered a pile of snacks in addition to the marshmallows, seemingly at random—a handful of granola bars, a bag of oranges, and three cans of Coke. “Your snacks are as lame as what we have at home,” he tells me.
“Hey, you don’t have Cokes or marshmallows.
” I slip into the kitchen with my backpack, drag open my cutlery drawer, and extract my big butcher’s knife.
Oliver’s still in the living room, not paying any attention to me.
It doesn’t take long for me to wrap it in a towel and add it to my things. Just to be on the safe side.
“Are you ready?” I rejoin him in the living room, shouldering my backpack. Oliver found a grocery bag from the stash I keep beneath the sink and managed to pack up all my lame snacks that way.
“Yes!” he signs. “I’m so excited. Theo was worried you would say no, but I told him I’d make sure you didn’t.”
My heart clenches at that. “He wanted me to say yes?” I ask as we file out of the living room and onto my back porch. I glance over at the Jenkins house. It’s shut up for the night, the living room window dark. Seems early for that, so I crane my neck, looking for his parents’ Range Rover.
Gone.
Something like sadness washes over me. Maybe Oliver didn’t have to sneak out at all. Maybe they just left him alone.
I don’t ask. Oliver’s already halfway down the pier anyway, and in the falling light, I can make out his boat bobbing in the water.
“I can row,” I tell him. “It’s getting dark.”
He just shrugs at that, seemingly unbothered.
Or maybe he’s just excited about this prospective camping trip.
I watch as he carefully arranges his backpack and sleeping bag and the bag of snacks in the back of the boat.
Then he holds out his hands for my backpack.
I give it to him. It feels like he knows exactly what to do.
Still, I think it’s better for me to row; the boat is definitely heavier than what he’s used to. I push off into the dark lake, my thoughts churning around.
“I didn’t see your parents’ car in the drive,” I say when we’re about halfway across. Night’s falling fast; I can just barely make out the peninsula, and that’s only because of the thin, orangey-pink line of sunlight limning across the trees.
“My brother had a game,” Oliver signs. I have to squint to see his hand movements in the dark.
“And you didn’t want to go?”
Oliver doesn’t answer, just stares out at the lake. His early excitement seems to have dampened a bit, and I don’t want to pry. I’m going to have to come up with a story, I realize. Something to explain why I stole their son away for the night. Something that doesn’t involve an undead killer.
I let the boat run aground on the shore with a thump. The trees crowd up close, dark and foreboding, and I hear Penelope’s voice again. He’s dangerous. You can’t trust him.
“Do you have a flashlight?” I turn toward Oliver, but he’s already catapulting himself off the boat, landing in the waves with a splash. He waves his arms around wildly, then turns to me and signs, “Shout at him that we’re here.”
“Um, okay.” I swallow and stand up, the boat rocking beneath the waves. “We’re here!” I call out, the wind swallowing up my voice. It makes me think of the night Theo first kissed me, how I called out to him from my patio.
This time, though, I get a response. A few yards down the shore, there’s a soft rustle in the underbrush. A second later, Theo steps out, looking very much like the monster in a ghost story. Big and dark and foreboding. Wreathed in shadow.
Oliver doesn’t care, though. He takes off running down the beach and then, somewhat to my surprise, flings his arms around Theo’s waist. It seems to surprise Theo, too.
Even in the gloomy dusklight, I can see him startle a little, and he lifts his arms awkwardly, like he doesn’t know where to put them. Then he pats Theo softly on the back.
I shoulder my backpack and grab what I can of Oliver’s supplies, then carefully step out of the boat.
A light blinks off down the beach; Theo, it seems, has a lantern, and it casts a small yellow circle around him and Oliver.
He lifts a single hand in greeting, the other still pressed on Oliver’s back, since Oliver’s still squeezing his hips like he doesn’t want to let go.
God, I hope this isn’t a huge fucking mistake.