Chapter 48
INTO THE WOODS
Not until I’m home in my bedroom with the door locked behind me do I draw up my sleeve.
The lacerations on my arm have left behind a scar, and right now, that scar is glittering in the dark, snaking across my skin in two curved lines. One loops toward my wrist, the other toward my elbow.
“Pisces,” I whisper, running my thumb over the glowing pattern. By now, I’ve committed all eighty-eight constellations to memory, and here is one of them.
Just like Lainey’s.
Just like Griffin’s.
I press my finger against my wrist.
The air starts to crackle and hum.
Fear leaps into my throat.
I pull my finger away and all returns to normal.
Except for my heartbeat.
That continues to pound as I stand in the center of my room, processing the implications. The plant, which gave me visions and opened rifts, attacked me, and in so doing, it marked me. Now it appears the mark can do the same thing as the plant.
I could go to the Water Garden right now and open a rift.
I know it as sure as anything.
But then what?
How am I supposed to free them on my own?
And what about my mom and Simon?
Where were they?
He needs two more.
And me.
My churning thoughts have tangled into a giant knot. I don’t know how to undo it. I don’t know how to make sense of what’s going on. I take out the pearl from the bottom drawer of my desk and set it in the moonlight, like maybe it might explain some things.
Nothing happens.
So I bring it to bed and cup it beneath my chin.
I fall asleep thinking about the pond, the prisoners, the clock, the hunger.
He needs two more.
And me.
Where is my mother?
And if Ivy Winslow is alive, who is buried in her grave?
I stand at the water’s edge. A pack of hounds crouch low to the ground, their fangs bared, their hackles raised, their eyes on the sky as a shrieking, writhing squall of winged creatures circles overhead. With a piercing screech, four break away from the flock and descend into a dive.
Fangs and talons collide.
There’s snapping and snarling, clawing and thrashing.
A sharp yelp.
A terrible roar.
And a bright throb of light from the pond as seven glowing orbs ignite. They surge with brightness as a man—no, a monster—throws out his hands and expels the light from his fingers.
Light stolen from the orbs.
Stolen from the prisoners.
The winged creatures are blasted into oblivion, into dust, into nothing.
I turn away from the horror—those frozen faces, the vines crawling inside their chests—and find myself facing the pavilion at the edge of the tree line. Only instead of a bench, there is a tomb. Suspended above it hangs a cage made of bone, and inside, a golden orb of light pulses.
It’s not the only one.
There are three more trapped in crystal vials, set inside niches carved into the pavilion wall. Only these are not orbs. These are filaments of light flickering erratically.
I draw nearer, mesmerized by the way they twist and turn, strands of glowing gossamer trying to escape.
Something scuffles at my feet.
Beneath the tomb, a creature with lavender fur burrows inside a nest made of thorns. It stares out from it with eyes like full moons. And inside the tomb, a woman with long auburn hair lays as still as death, perfectly preserved like Snow White waiting for her prince.
A sharp clap tears me awake.
I bolt upright in bed.
Sunlight streams through my window and spills onto the floor, where the pearl has fallen, pulsing like the filaments of golden light.
My mother, in a tomb.
The creature, in Vorat’s lair.
My mind spins, scrambling for an explanation. A way to preserve the assumption under which I have been operating.
My mom is alive.
She sent me that creature.
She sent me those visions.
She was communicating with me from beyond the veil.
But now?
How could she have sent anything from inside a tomb?
I scramble out of bed and grasp the pearl, begging it to tell me what it knows.
To show me the truth. But all I can think about are tricks and deceit.
The creature lives in Vorat’s lair. So did he send it, then?
Did he plant those visions, did he spin a story about my mom and Simon, all to lure me in?
Suddenly, it feels so obvious. Of course he did.
My mother hasn’t been imprisoned for the past five years.
She wouldn’t have survived it. Simon certainly couldn’t have survived for thirty.
I squeeze the pearl harder.
The Hollow Walker consumes souls.
He is a twisted creature as old as the hills, bent on satisfying the basest of cravings—his own insatiable hunger. He doesn’t devise plans, especially not elaborate ones.
But then, what is this?
I think about Lainey and her glowing eyes.
A dead body in Ivy Winslow’s Halloween costume.
The prisoners around the pond.
The clock on the plinth.
The tomb and the vials and a constellation branded into my wrist.
I brush my finger along the glittering dots.
Vorat needs two more.
And me.
But why?
What does he want with us?
My phone vibrates, a loud rattle against my nightstand.
Twig’s number lights up the screen.
I answer in a voice that is shaky and weak.
“Selah?” Twig says, a note of panic in his own.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, my stomach flooding with nausea.
“It’s Kate.” There’s a breath. A pause. A single pounding heartbeat. “She’s missing.”
I crash through the woods.
I push aside branches.
I hurdle fallen limbs.
My breath, clouding.
My heart, racing.
Kate didn’t show up for rehearsals for Into the Woods this morning.
Neither did Harrison. Both of them, leads.
Neither flaky. Neither irresponsible. They wouldn’t forget.
They wouldn’t ditch. If something had come up, they would have notified the director.
Knowing this, Harper, who has the part of Little Red Riding Hood, texted Twig. And the ball of panic began to roll.
I take the path around the Water Garden, cold air nipping at my face, urgency biting at my heels, Twig’s voice in my ear.
“You’re almost there,” he says, tracking my location from his bedroom as I close in on the spot Kate’s phone last registered.
Here, on the grounds.
In the woods.
Near the Water Garden.
According to Harrison’s parents, his phone is showing the exact same spot.
This is what we know: Harrison picked up Kate at the Calloways earlier this morning. They stopped at Hollowed Grounds Cafe and got coffees from the barista. Two others happened to be getting coffees at the same time.
Lainey Sikes and Griffin Tate.
I round a bend in the trail and come to a skidding halt, my shoes sliding in the snow.
“Selah?” Twig says. “Did you stop?”
I stare straight ahead, where a rift hovers in the cold.