Chapter 1 #3
A sudden ringtone startles us all. My ringtone. I ignore it, but Leo’s eyes dart to my suitcase where I stashed my phone. His jaw tenses. We both know who’s trying to call me.
To drown out the chimes, I nearly shout, “But you think the weapon’s there? On or in this hill?”
“Yes,” he grinds out, still eyeing my suitcase.
“Why?”
The ringing stops, and Leo exhales. “Because why else would a hill be notorious among the locals?”
Confused, I ask, “So the locals knew about the weapon?”
“No, but they would’ve known about all the strange phenomena the weapon could’ve caused.”
The last gulp of my coffee goes down all wrong. I’m so overwhelmed, I’m shutting down. “Strange phenomena?” I wheeze. Leo’s brow dips. Damn him, he knows I’m freaking out. “But Rime said the weapon isn’t dangerous.”
Leo glares at the guy sitting next to him.
Rime glares back. “I meant that it wouldn’t detonate or anything. She was acting like it was going to blow up right underneath her.”
Leo scrubs a hand down his face and gently explains to me, “It’s imbued with fae magic. Powerful, unnatural magic. It would give off tons of energy.”
I shift nervously in my chair. “What kind of phenomena are we talking about here?”
“Nature out of balance, odd mutations, diseases, barren patches—”
“Yeah, but that sort of stuff happens all the time. Everywhere. It’s called climate change.
” Humans don’t need evil faerie magic to destroy the natural world.
We’ve taken care of that all on our own.
And thanks to Liv, my personal environmental scientist-in-residence, I’ve seen some of the most disturbing examples of the harm we’ve done.
Two semesters ago, she showed me a picture of a ten-legged frog, and now the image is permanently imprinted on my brain.
Rime points out, “But centuries ago it didn’t happen all the time.”
Light dawns. In Browne’s time, if people saw frogs with legs growing out of their heads, they would’ve thought the ten plagues of Egypt had come to North Carolina. “And when it did, the people would attribute it to something supernatural.” Correctly, I might add.
Leo half smiles. “Ghosts, demons, spirits.”
“Or God’s wrath,” I say. If the fae aren’t aware of how big a role religion plays in the human psyche, especially in this country, then they need to be.
“Indeed.”
Topaz snorts and rolls her eyes, conveying loud and clear her views on Subworld religion.
I ask the guys, “So that’s why you think Browne’s Hill earned its name? Because it was haunted?” I put air quotes around the last word.
They both nod.
“But you can’t figure out which hill it is?”
“Correct,” says Leo. “Not surprisingly, no historian has ever recorded these supernatural phenomena.”
And no townsperson, even if he or she were literate, would want to go on record as having ‘seen things.’ That sort of admission was liable to get you locked away. Or burned at the stake.
“This is where you come in,” Rime tells me. “You and Avery and Aaron.”
Because we’re the people who ‘see things.’ We hear warnings, harness emotions, have visions. We could sense disruptions in nature that no scientist or historian could find empirical evidence of.
Supernatural problems require supernatural solutions.
“Have you found any suspicious natural phenomena?” I ask, “I mean, Brownhill has an environmental science department. Have you checked there?”
“Yeah.” Leo sighs. “And Robin and I found so many, we couldn’t make out any discernible pattern.”
Of course. It’s the twenty-first century. An area without abnormalities in nature would be the abnormality.
“So you haven’t been able to narrow down the candidates at all?” I peer out the glass door. “Any of those hills could be Browne’s?”
“We think it’s most likely close to the river.”
Gee, that helps.
I ask, “Do you think Brier’s team knows about Browne’s hill?”
“Probably not yet.” Leo twists to retrieve his phone from the lamp table. “Although they’ve made a lot more progress than I expected, considering they’ve only been searching for two months.”
I get to my feet, too restless and overwhelmed to sit anymore. To listen anymore.
Leo glances up from his phone. “I’ll take you home.”
Uh, no. “I’ll take the bus.” I may have to wait out in the cold for twenty minutes for the next one to arrive, but it’s better than being alone in a car with Leo the Hawthorn. I’ve about had my fill this morning of his thick eyelashes, big brain, and broad shoulders.
He ignores me, typing as he stands. “Do you think you could come back later today?”
“What? Why?”
“So we can all get together and go over our next steps. I’m texting Avery and Aaron.”
“Um—” I rub my eyes again, involuntarily, like a sleepy three-year-old.
“Go home and take a nap,” he says kindly. “And come back when you’re… refreshed.”
“Um, okay, I guess.” I hoist my suitcase. “But don’t worry about driving me home. I can take the bus.”
He grabs his jacket off the back of a dining-room chair. “It’s no problem.”
I grit my teeth and stifle my sigh. There’s no point in arguing. I’ll see him tonight and probably tomorrow, and the day after that and the day after that and… well, ad infinitum, until we find this macguffin.