Chapter Eighteen
“I’ll drive you home, kiddo.” He snuffed his pipe in the nearby ashtray and then rose.
I got to my feet, trying not to acknowledge the pounding exhaustion through me. “You don’t have to do that.”
But what was my alternative? Walking home in the late afternoon heat? The thought made me wince.
“Piper, it’s much too hot for a walk.” He was already reaching into his pocket for his keys.
I didn’t argue.
“How did you know I walked?”
“I didn’t hear a car drive up.” He gave me a knowing grin.
Together, we walked out of the house and climbed into his truck. I said nothing as I buckled my seatbelt and we were away, leaving the house I grew up in behind. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever go back. Why would I? There was truly nothing there for me.
As we drove to the other side of town, I saw Hickory Hollow with new eyes. Though the town hadn’t changed, I had.
Alice was my mother. Alice was a witch.
It was a hard thing to accept. The gaping hole of loss I felt when I learned of her death was bigger now. More substantial. More meaningful. I hadn’t lost the aunt who loved me best. I lost the mother I’d never known and always wanted.
Ahead, the pavement shimmered with the heat of the day and something else. I squinted, wishing I had my sunglasses to block out the glare.
But it wasn’t burning afternoon Texas glare.
It was something more.
A faint golden shimmer traced the length of the blacktop road—not sunlight. Not mirage. It moved wrong, like a seam catching the light when you turn fabric.
A feeling coiled tight and bright in my chest. It buzzed beneath my skin, humming there like it always belonged there. And suddenly I understood.
Magic.
Not around me.
In me.
Like it was claiming me. Like the truth had unlocked something in me that had been dormant for years. Telling me this was the way of things now. Like it had… awakened.
I inhaled a soft breath.
“You all right?” my father asked.
“Yes, I’m…” I faltered, clutching my hands in my lap. “Yes.”
I thought of my life in Hickory Hollow before leaving for college, before leaving for Manhattan.
Aside from Alice, the one steady constant—the one person who loved me unconditionally—was my father, George Wakefield.
He was steady. Calm. A giant among men who soothed me when Gladys made me feel small and inconsequential.
He was the one person who taught me how to be a decent human.
“Dad?” My voice was quiet in the confines of the cab.
He gave me a sideways questioning glance. “Yes?”
“Thanks.”
He blinked, his gaze firmly planted on the road ahead. “For what?”
“For raising me.”
“You’re welcome.” His voice cracked only a little as he said it. But I saw his reaction. I saw how he gripped the steering wheel tighter as though it was a defense against the emotion.
He pulled into my driveway and came to a halt.
There, parked in my driveway, was Owen’s blue pickup.
The second George stopped and put the truck in park, Owen was already climbing out, rounding the hood with long, purposeful strides. Worry etched his face until his gaze locked on me. Then his shoulders loosened. Relief softened something tight in his eyes.
George didn’t cut the engine. He sat there, hands on the wheel, studying Owen through the windshield.
“I’d ask what his intentions are with you,” George said mildly, “but I think I already know.”
Despite everything weighing on my chest, a laugh slipped free.
“I think I do, too.”
George nodded once, as if confirming something to himself.
“He waited,” he said. “Didn’t barge in. Just stayed close.”
I swallowed.
“He’s a good man,” my father went on quietly. “The kind who shows up when things get hard. Your mother would’ve liked him.”
That did it. My throat tightened. Such a simple thing for him to say, but it cracked me wide open.
Your mother. Not Gladys. Alice.
And Alice did like him. She’d written it in her letter. Be nice to Owen. I think he’s always liked you.
I cleared my throat, forcing away the sudden prick of tears. “Thanks for the ride.”
I unlatched my seatbelt, opened the truck door and started to slide out.
“And Piper?”
I paused, looking back at him.
“Come see me, huh?” he said, eyes fixed on the windshield. “Don’t make me wonder how you’re doing.”
My chest tightened. “I won’t,” I promised.
Then I was out of the truck, closing the door and stepping aside. He put it in reverse and backed out of the driveway with a slow, familiar ease. Then he was disappearing down the dusty country road.
I stood there for a moment, my heart a riot in my chest.
He might not be my biological father, but he would always be my dad.
Slowly, I turned to face Owen.
He leaned against the cab of his pickup, thumbs hooked in the front pockets of his jeans, waiting.
Maybe it was the shock of the day, but for the first time, I saw him clearly.
Someone who had never left this town when I ran. I remembered his face from our high school days, remembered the boy—but this wasn’t him anymore. This was the man who stayed.
The sleeves of his white shirt were rolled to his elbows, revealing a golden expanse of sun-warmed skin. His jeans were faded. His boots scuffed and well-loved.
We stared at each other across the stretch of dirt driveway between us, the moment stretching thin and taut—
—and then my feet moved before my brain realized I’d given them permission.
Before I even reached him, he opened his arms.
I went into them without hesitation. Because going to him didn’t feel like falling apart. It felt like relief.
He wrapped me in his strength, tucking me close, my forehead fitting easily beneath his chin.
He held me there, saying nothing for a long, quiet moment.
And that was all right by me.
It was like he understood I needed a bit of space to get the truth from my parents. He didn’t question me. Didn’t need to.
“I’m sorry I yelled at you,” I murmured against his chest.
“It’s all right.”
“Did you know?” Because if he did, I wasn’t sure I could handle that bit of truth right now.
His arms tightened around me. “No.”
There was weight in that one word—and with it, relief flooding me. I closed my eyes for a moment, listening to the faint beat of his heart and the cicadas humming overhead.
Then they stopped.
Not slowly. Not naturally.
Like someone had reached down and pinched the sound out of the air.
The breeze shifted around us—humid Gulf air to something thinner, sharper. Wrong.
Owen stiffened, still holding me tight, as his body went rigid. I tried to remain perfectly still as a shudder skipped down my spine.
“You feel that?” he asked, his voice a rumble beneath my ear.
“What… is it?” My voice was a whisper against him.
I shifted in his arms to turn and look back toward the road. He never let me go, keeping me close, as we both peered toward the street.
The shimmer was back.
A faint, gold-threaded distortion crawled along the blacktop like a seam being pulled open—quiet, deliberate—sliding toward the driveway.
My skin prickled. The magic in my chest answered it, humming in recognition, like it had been waiting for this exact frequency.
And then I knew—knew with the same sick certainty I’d felt in the woods.
The crossing was calling.
Not the tree itself.
The thing behind it.
Listening.
Reaching.
“Piper,” Owen said, sharper now, and I felt the shift in him—the druid in his blood waking to the threat. “We need to go. Now.”
My pulse hammered. “The tree,” I whispered. “It’s getting worse.”
He nodded once. “Yeah.”
I pulled back enough to look up at him, panic rising fast. “Voss said it’s loud. If it’s loud enough to follow me home—”
“Then we don’t give it time to get comfortable,” Owen cut in. Determination hardened his mouth. “We go shut it down.”
“How?” I asked.
“I have an idea. Something we can use.”
He didn’t wait for me to ask more questions.
“I’ll drive. Get in the truck.”
His keys were already in his hand as he rounded the front while I slid into the passenger seat, my body a bundle of nerves.
I didn’t know what waited for me in the woods.
But I knew one thing with terrifying clarity.
Whatever was in those woods, it had my town in its sights. I wasn’t running anymore. Not from Hickory Hollow. Not from what I was.