50. Hatching a Plan
HATCHING A PLAN
Twig sits on the edge of the sectional with his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped, his head bowed. Naomi sits beside him, her palm resting gently on his shoulder while I pace back and forth.
We are holding our proverbial breath, listening to the conversation upstairs while we wait for Harper and Jude to arrive.
Jake’s partner wants to know more about Lainey Sikes and Griffin Tate, the last people to speak with Harrison and Kate before their phones pinged in the woods, then fell off the radar completely.
“They had some sort of falling out,” Mrs. Calloway says.
“I think it had something to do with the way Lainey left town on the night of Halloween. Their friendship hasn’t been the same since she returned.
Usually Kate opens up to me about things like this, but she really didn’t want to talk about it. ”
There’s a beat of silence.
All that can be heard is the creak of Mrs. Calloway’s restless footsteps.
Finally she asks, “You don’t think Lainey has anything to do with this, do you?”
“We’re just trying to get a sense of the situation, ma’am,” the officer replies.
I don’t know if I believe him.
By now, isn’t Lainey at least a person of interest?
She was one of the first girls to go missing.
But then she returned—the only one to do so.
She also witnessed the presumed death of Brady Keller and Caleb Briggs, whose bodies have yet to be found.
And now this. Lainey is in the story once again.
One of the last people to speak with Harrison and Kate.
But even if authorities are starting to grow suspicious, so what?
They’ll never believe the truth.
“I don’t understand.” Twig shoves his fingers under his glasses and rubs his eyes.
“They didn’t leave Hollowed Grounds together.
The barista saw them get into separate cars.
Kate wouldn’t have followed them into the woods.
She wouldn’t have followed them anywhere.
She knew to stay away from Lainey and Griffin. ”
“Maybe she was coerced,” Naomi says, her hand still on Twig’s shoulder. “Or compelled. Manipulated in some way. Isn’t that what Rafe did to Lainey? Maybe they did something similar to Kate and Harrison.”
The doorbell rings.
Harper joins us.
Shortly after, Jude arrives.
By then, two news vans have parked outside.
“It’s like they smell blood in the water,” he says, taking a seat on the end of the sectional.
I stop pacing. “We can’t sit on this anymore. It’s time for us to move. We need to get Kate out of there. We need to save all of them.”
Harper looks stricken. “How?”
“I found a rift. It’s right by the Water Garden.”
“Which we’re forbidden to go near,” Naomi says. “Not to mention, it’ll be crawling with the police and the FBI.”
“We could go under the cover of darkness,” Twig suggests. “And if the police haven’t left by then, we could cause some sort of diversion.”
Naomi frowns.
So does Jude.
“We have more than one way to get in.” I lift the sleeve of my hoodie, turn on my phone’s flashlight, and shine it on the inside of my wrist. Twig, Naomi, and Harper see nothing.
But Jude?
He stands from the sofa, takes my arm in his hands, and runs his thumb along the pattern of glowing dots. He looks up at me then, so close my breath catches.
“Pisces.”
With a nod, I take a step back. “It can open a rift just like Lainey’s.” I pull my sleeve down. “You were right,” I tell him. “Those visions I had? They weren’t from my mom.”
He never trusted them. He always suspected the creature was sent by an adversary. Jude was wrong about the adversary being Rafe, but he was spot on about the malevolent intent. I tell them about the creature in Vorat’s lair, its nest under my mother’s tomb.
“It was Vorat,” I say. “He’s been trying to lure me in this whole time. And now, I have a way to get to him.”
I brace myself for the next logical question—why would Vorat try to lure me, specifically? Jude isn’t going to like the answer. But Naomi goes in a different, slightly exasperated direction.
“Okay, great.” She claps her hands against her knees. “We have a way in. But isn’t Vorat basically the Godfather of the Overlay, with a pack of hounds and a web of souls to draw power from?”
“It’s like a war zone,” I mutter, more to myself than anyone else.
Rafe said as much. I think about the vision I had last night in a dream, before I was distracted by the tomb and the creature.
Those terrifying monster birds were circling.
Four of them attacked. “Right now, Vorat is the strongest. But he has enemies. Lots of them. They want to take him out, but they can’t because he’s too powerful. ”
“Then what chance do we possibly have?” Naomi asks.
“A good one,” I say, clarity settling into place. “His enemies aren’t tactical. They’re just relying on instinct.”
I look at Twig.
I can tell he’s following my train of thought.
“He’s Godfather of the Overlay because of his hounds, because of the souls he’s drawing power from.”
“So if we cut off his power source,” Twig says.
“And kill his hounds,” I add.
“He’d no longer have the upper hand,” Twig finishes.
The two of us look at one another—partners in crime, pursuers of the supernatural, ready to take on an entire world of it. Meanwhile, Harper releases a high-pitched, slightly hysterical laugh.
“The question is, how do we cut off his power source?” I resume my pacing, picturing them around the pond—Emma, Sienna, Brady, Caleb, Lola, Ivy, and Juniper.
All of them ensnared in vines. Delicate, blood-red vines.
The same kind that wrapped around my finger and lacerated my skin. “They recoil in the presence of fire.”
“What does?” Naomi asks.
“The plant that gave me this.” I show them my arm again, the lacerations nobody can see but Jude. “Mistress Bramble called it veil root. It’s the same thing that has hold of the hostages.”
I rub my chest, remembering the way it slithered inside my veins and grabbed my heart. But then Mistress Bramble lit it on fire and the plant recoiled.
I come to a sudden stop. “We need blowtorches.”
Naomi scoffs. “We don’t have blowtorches.”
“My dad does,” Twig says. “He has them in his shop.”
“Okay.” Naomi draws out the word as though trying to inject some reason into a very unreasonable conversation. “And then what? Vorat isn’t going to stand aside and let us use them on his prisoners.”
“Of course not. We’ll have to lure him away.”
“How are we supposed to do that?” Naomi asks.
Here it is.
We’ve reached the puzzle piece I have yet to share.
I glance at Jude, who’s been watching the conversation unfold with a look of measured restraint.
“We’ll give him what he wants,” I say.
Harper wrings her hands. “Do you know what that is?”
“Yesterday, right before I collapsed, when I saw Ivy alive in the Water Garden, I wasn’t myself.
I was him. I was Vorat. I could hear his thoughts, and a couple of them were pretty loud.
He needed two more, which he has now. But he also needed—” I swallow, refusing to meet Jude’s eye, knowing if I do, I’ll lose my nerve. “Me.”
The room goes very still.
“It’s why he sent the creature to cough up that seed. He wanted to give me a reason to come. And he wanted to give me a way in.” I rub my wrist. “If I open a rift somewhere else on the estate and he finds out I’m there, he’ll come after me.”
“No,” Jude says.
“It’s the only thing that will work,” I tell him.
“Then I’ll come with you.”
“You can’t.” Rafe called the Overlay an immune system. Together, Jude and I are a threat. “We can’t go in the same doorway. The Overlay won’t let us. The second we step near a rift, it’ll close.”
“You’re not going in by yourself.”
“I don’t plan to. It’s a pretty disorienting place. I’ll need someone who knows his way around.”
Jude starts shaking his head before I can finish. “No way.”
“But you just said it yourself. I can’t go in alone, and you have to admit, he’s been pretty good at keeping me alive lately.”
He stands from the couch. He shoves his hands into his hair, then pulls them forward and drags them down his face.
The room crackles with silent tension.
Naomi breaks it first.
“So, just to recap,” she says. “You’re going to open a doorway, go through it with Rafe, and lure Vorat away from his prisoners.
Meanwhile, we’ll create some sort of diversion that will drive the police and the feds away from the spot where we’ve been strictly forbidden to go, and we’ll enter another dimension, through a doorway we can’t even see—”
“Jude will guide you,” I say.
“And then what—we spontaneously combust and reappear inside his lair?” She looks from me to Twig. “That’s what happened to Lainey and Ivy, right? On Halloween night? You said they combusted.”
Harper looks horrified.
But a spark has caught fire in Twig’s eye. “They teleported.”
I nod encouragingly. “They defied the laws of physics.”
“I happen to like the laws of physics,” Naomi says.
“Same here,” Twig replies, “but you have to admit, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity.”
Harper releases another high-pitched laugh.
Naomi’s mouth has gone thin and tight. “All right. We teleport into his lair and we free the prisoners with blowtorches.”
I nod, hope and adrenaline coursing through my veins.
Because finally, after all this time, we not only have a way in, we have a plan that could actually work.
“You’ll free them with fire. Hopefully they’ll regain consciousness, but if they don’t, you’ll just have to carry them out.
Rafe and I will douse the hedge maze in gasoline. ”
How do you kill a Hollow Walker?
It’s the question I asked Mistress Bramble.
I find with most things, fire does the trick.
“If we can get him to go inside, we’ll light it on fire and you’ll have all the time in the world to get the hostages to safety. If that doesn’t work, then I’ll distract him for as long as possible before he takes me.”
Jude closes his eyes. “Selah.”
“He isn’t going to kill me, Jude. Whatever his plans are, I’m an integral part of them.
” I look from him to the others. Harper is scared.
Naomi, exasperated. Twig? Completely on board.
“Plan A, Rafe and I get rid of him in the hedge maze. Plan B, I surrender. He brings me to the Water Garden, but by then, his prisoners will be gone. He won’t be able to draw any power from them. ”
“And his hounds?” Naomi asks.
“Jude will shoot them.” I speak the idea before it can fully register in my head, but as soon as it’s out, the beauty of it is undeniable. “You’re a perfect shot with a bow and arrow.”
Something hard settles over his expression.
And I almost feel sorry for the hounds.
The dots on my forearm tingle, as though waiting to do what they were always meant to do—open a rift and deliver me to Vorat.
My mind races.
We need Rafe.
We need blowtorches and weapons.
We need to figure out how to navigate around the police and the FBI.
But all of that is logistics.
I can feel the trembling tightness of Mrs. Calloway’s hug.
I can see the painfully thin frame of Mrs. Winslow as she collapsed on top of that casket.
I won’t let anything happen to Kate.
And I will bring Ivy back from the grave.
I look around—from Naomi to Harper to Twig to Jude—my jaw set, my resolve solidified. This is going to work. It has to work. “We need to go tonight.”