by SM Reine
She tried to look like their approach surprised her, and also like she hadn’t just launched herself over an eight foot fence with her super-strong thigh muscles. “Hello, there,” Summer said, flipping her thick hair over her shoulder in an extra-casual gesture. “I was just…leaning.” Leaning? Brilliant, Gresham.
The men exchanged looks. They both wore gray suits, like they should have been in an office talking about quarterly reports or yelling at vendors over the phone. One was red-haired; one was brunette. They were otherwise indistinguishable from each other. If you’ve seen one yes man in a two thousand dollar suit, you’ve seen them all, and Summer had already run into these two anyway. They had been with the hot guy outside the bathroom.
“What’s your name?” asked the brunette.
“Summer,” she said. “Summer Gresham.”
The first man leaned over to the second to whisper, “It’s definitely the one he wanted.” Summer probably wasn’t meant to hear it, and a normal person wouldn’t have. But she wasn’t exactly normal.
“Can I help you guys with something?” she asked.
The redhead stepped forward and shoved a manila envelope into her hands.
“You’re the new intern at Adamson Industries,” he said. “Congratulations.”
two
The instructions in the envelope were simple: Arrive at a certain address on Saturday morning at eight o’clock. Dress professionally. Do not bring a cell phone.
Summer stared at the last instruction for a long time.
Mr. Adamson was just paranoid about corporate espionage…right? It wasn’t like he was some creepy eccentric that planned to kidnap her or anything. Rich guys didn’t need to kidnap girls when they could just buy them.
Or, if he looked like Mr. Adamson, he could just glance at a girl and have her devoted to him for the rest of her life.
Summer was stretched out on a blanket to enjoy the unseasonable warmth, and she rolled over onto her stomach so that her back could get sunlight, too. Her skin was naturally a light shade of brown, so she didn’t need the tan; she just liked to be outside with the sun, the breeze, and the squirrels in the trees.
Sir Lumpy agreed, and was happy to take up half of her blanket with his massive feline body. At Summer’s motion, he stood, stretched, and rubbed his nose on her chin. He was drooling again—now that he was eighteen years old, he was always drooling—and his affection left her skin feeling slimy.
Her kitty was the only animal that wasn’t terrified of her, so Summer let him drool on her all that he wanted. She suspected that he just didn’t realize he should be afraid of her, like all of the wild animals in the area. His frowning mouth, wrinkled nose, and buggy eyes supported her theory that there might be something off about her cat, and his habit of running face-first into closed doors and occasionally licking walls didn’t help. The only reason that he hadn’t been eaten by something while wandering around the forest was that no predatory animal dared come within ten kilometers of the Gresham cottage.
Abram had said that Sir Lumpy was dumb and ugly. Once. Summer had put him in a chokehold until he took it back. As far as she was concerned, Sir Lumpy was lord and master of the forest, her noble white knight, and the only friend Summer had that didn’t share blood with her.
She scratched her cat under the collar. “You wouldn’t let creepy Mr. Adamson abduct me, would you?”
He responded by walking in front of her face and tickling her nose with his tail. He must have been chasing sexy lady cats through the bushes again because his fur was filled with burrs. Summer picked out several before he strutted out of arm’s reach.
“You should give up,” she told him as he flopped onto his side again, spreading his black belly fluff across her blanket. “Those girls aren’t good enough for you anyway.”
Sir Lumpy responded by vigorously washing his arm with a black-spotted tongue.
Propped up on her elbows, Summer flipped through the internship packet one more time. The first page had the instructions. Pages two through six were a history of Adamson Industries and their investments into education. The last ten pages were a detailed questionnaire that demanded far too much information of Summer, including a family medical history.
“What kind of internship is this supposed to be, exactly?” she asked Sir Lumpy, who had found her pen and was chewing on the cap.
No way was she going to give Adamson Industries her mother’s identification serial number. Summer didn’t even have a mother.
“Did you say something?” Abram asked, ambling out of the house with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He had traded out the suit for a tank top and shorts.
Summer wrinkled her nose at him as he selected a nearby tree and dropped the bag beside it. “Have you ever seen Mr. Adamson? Do you know what he looks like?”
Abram lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “He’s a recluse. I was surprised to hear he planned to show up for the interviews that didn’t even fucking happen.”
A sense of guilt crept over her. She flipped the packet over to conceal the Adamson Industries stationary. “But he’s young, right? Late twenties?”
“I don’t think so. He’s been CEO at least forty years.”
So maybe the guy in Hanlon Hall wasn’t Mr. Adamson after all. But then why would Summer have been singled out for the position? It seemed like he had recognized her, even though she was certain that they had never met before. She couldn’t have forgotten a face like that.
Abram grabbed a sturdy branch and began performing chin-ups with his feet hooked into the straps of the duffel bag, which was weighed down with something heavy. Probably cinder blocks again.
“What—are—you—reading?” he asked, punctuating each word with another flex of his arms to lift his head over the branch. Sir Lumpy decided he was much too dignified to be in the presence of such grunting and strutted his way toward the cottage.
She slid the papers back into the unmarked envelope. “Nothing. Just some stuff for my algorithms class.”
He grunted in acknowledgment, and Summer watched him exercise for a couple of minutes before the sight of his exertion became too tiring. Sir Lumpy was right. It was hard to relax properly when someone else was working so hard.
Summer grabbed her sunglasses, blanket, and the envelope, and followed her cat to the front door.
The Greshams lived in an ivy-covered cottage fifteen kilometers north of Marut University. It had been built from the ground up by Uncle Scott before he died, and his mark was still on everything: the horseshoe over the door, the greenhouse that Summer dutifully maintained around back, the bay window with a pentacle inset. Uncle Scott had been a witch, so he had breathed love and magic into the cottage, and it felt like the walls glowed with inner light. Summer had always thought that it looked like something out of a fairytale.
Grandma Gwyneth was gardening in the flower beds by the path, but at Summer’s approach, she sat up and pushed a loose gray hair off of her forehead. Her gloves and knees were covered in damp soil. “Got a second?” Gran asked.
“Sure.” Summer opened the front door long enough to let Sir Lumpy inside, since he was much too dignified to use the cat door, and then joined her grandma again. “What’s up?”
“Smell this.” Gran pushed a flowerpot into her hands. Three tiny green shoots protruded from the surface.
Summer sniffed. “Tomato plant.”
“And this other one?”
“Cabbage. The third one is summer squash.”
“Thanks, babe,” Gran said. “I brought these out to start hardening them off, but I forgot to label the pots when I planted the seeds. I must be going senile.”
Summer had to laugh at that. Gran was about as likely to go senile in the next decade as Abram. She looked exactly the same now as she did in Summer’s baby photos, and her mind hadn’t aged a day, either. Gran described herself as “permanently old,” but Summer preferred to think of her as timeless.
Regardless of what she wanted to call it, G
ran was immortal. A fairytale grandmother for the fairytale cottage.
As she leaned over the flowerbeds, her thick gray braids swung over her shoulders and tickled the dirt. Summer pulled them over her back and knotted them loosely. There was an early spring blossom sticking out of the grass nearby, so Summer plucked it and put it in the center of the knot.
Gran had been working long and hard, but instead of smelling like sweat, as most people would have, she gave off the faint odor of homemade chamomile soap. The only other smell came from her necklace: a silver-coated animal skull with agate eyes that was haloed with the smell of mausoleums and graves.
There was nothing else in the world that smelled like Gran. The magic that kept her frozen in time was special.
But she wasn’t the first person that Summer had been around that day who smelled special.
“What would you say if I told you that I ran into a man that didn’t smell human?” Summer asked, curling her bare toes in the grass.
“I would tell you that it’s not possible for someone who isn’t human to be here. There’s only three people like us left in the whole world, and they live in this cottage. That’s what I would tell you.” But Gran looked worried. “What did he smell like?”
“Forest fires. Sunshine. Ash.”
“Any chance you were confused?”
Summer remembered the way the world had vanished at his touch, and her cheeks heated. “Maybe a little. I was…distracted.”
“Hmm.” Gran went back to digging. “It’s worth investigating. If someone—or something—is here that’s not human, we need to be real careful.” Her voice took on a hard edge. “And if worse comes to worse, we might need to do something about it.”
“Like what?”
Gran removed her gloves and reached out to stroke Summer’s curls. When her grandma touched her like that, it always made her feel like a little girl again, tiny and safe and warm.
The next words to come from her mouth were matter-of-fact, and not nearly as comforting. “Like getting rid of him.”
Gwyn waited until Summer and Abram fell asleep, Sir Lumpy gave up yowling, and the weight of night silenced the crickets. It wasn’t hard to stay awake; she hadn’t slept in over twenty years, and she was used to spending her evenings in pensive silence.
But she wasn’t planning on spending this night meditating, as she usually did. She put on boots, wrapped herself in a jacket, and borrowed Abram’s keys.
She drove with the windows rolled down, unaccompanied except for the breeze and starlight. The headlights barely seemed to cut through the gloom.
Nights were always so much darker here than they had been back home. There was no moon to light her way, and what passed for civilization was sparse; long weeks of exploration had yielded nothing more than a dozen towns, each the size of Hazel Cove—hardly large enough to create light pollution.
Gwyn headed north, deeper into darkness and away from the town. Within a few miles, pavement turned to packed dirt, and then the bushes grew too thick to keep driving. She parked.
It was a long hike into the hills. Cerulean hints of false dawn traced the horizon by the time Gwyn found a slope covered in creepers and mint, both of which she had planted to help her find her way.
She followed the line of herbs, and found that the tunnel waited for her, just as it always had. Gwyn had allowed bushes to grow over the entrance, but not too thick; she pruned them twice a year to keep the path clear. But not a soul besides Gwyn had passed through since Scott had died.
Pushing through the branches, she slid down the tunnel. Gwyn kept a hand on the wall until her eyes adjusted enough to make out shapes in the darkness. She had left Scott’s chalk message, just in case, but time had faded it to an illegible blur.
The back wall of the cave was the same way it had been for two decades: covered in petroglyphs, smooth, and unbroken.
Still no door.
Gwyn closed her eyes and tried to imagine everything that she had left behind. It was more than just her ranch, the moon, and everyone she knew. Her niece, Rylie—the mother of Summer and Abram—had been in a bad situation when Gwyn carried the twins to safety.
She could only imagine one reason that Rylie hadn’t immediately followed. It was a likelihood that Gwyn had desperately struggled not to think about.
Twenty years.
“Where are you?” she asked, pressing her hand against the cool stone where a door should have been.
She wasn’t disappointed by the responding silence anymore, although it had cut deep for the first few years. Watching Summer and Abram learn and grow was an experience that she would never regret—and she hoped that she could do the same for their children someday, and the children of their children.
But Rylie should have been there to see Summer and Abram grow. Not Gwyn.
It was always heartbreaking to see that empty wall, but tonight, it also left Gwyn with a new layer of mystery. Summer’s sense of smell was perfect. She knew a storm was brewing a week before the first raindrop fell. If she said that she had smelled someone that wasn’t human, then something had happened—something bad.
Nothing should have been able to follow Gwyn to this side of the wall.
Worry weighed heavily on her as she returned to the surface, twice as confused as she had been when she went under.
Dawn broke over hills. As always, the sun rose in the north.
three
Summer rested her head on Gran’s knee, hugged her calf, and watched the sleet fall outside the window. It was a stormy day, and Uncle Scott had said that she couldn’t play outside until the sky cleared, leaving her bored and restless—a dangerous combination for a six year old.
“Do I have a daddy?” Summer asked as she began unlacing Gran’s shoe. They sat in front of the stifling heat of the living room woodstove, which was the only source of warmth in the house.
“Everyone has a daddy,” her grandma replied, licking her finger and turning a page in her paperback. “And a mama, too.”
“Even Abram?”
“He has the same ones you do. Why do you ask?”
“We found a nest yesterday,” Summer said, tugging the lace free of the holes in Gran’s right shoe. “We followed the mommy bird back to the tree. There were three eggs and another bird watching. Mommy, daddy, babies.”
“You better put that string back before I whip you with it,” Gran said. Summer knew she didn’t mean it, so she kept tugging. “You don’t think you came from an egg, do you?”
Summer rolled her eyes. “No, Granny. We’re mammals.”
“Right, sorry. I almost forgot.”
“Mammals suckle their young,” Summer said, yanking the lacing free and turning her attention to the other shoe. “Was I suckled?”
“Only once.” Gran shook her foot free.
“Why?”
Gran sighed and set down her book to give Summer her full attention. “Your mama wasn’t around when you were still little enough to want it. You know, if you’re bored, I can find something for you to do.”
That was the worst threat possible. Gran did mean that one. Summer gave up trying to get her other shoe and stood, twisting the shoelace around her first finger. “So where are they?”
Gran cupped her cheek in a hand. “They’re busy saving the world, but they love you very much, and they’ll be here just as soon as they can. All right? Do you want a cookie?”
Even at six years old, Summer knew an attempted redirection when she heard one. But Gran hadn’t looked sad until Summer started talking, and now she looked like she might cry. If a cookie would make Gran happy, then she would have a cookie.
She wrapped her arms around Gran’s neck, silently requesting to be picked up, even though Uncle Scott said that she was much too big to be carried now.
“Yes, please.”
The sound of sleet on the window faded, replaced by the rumble of thunder. The living room dimmed.
Summer woke up. Her eyelids peeled open, and a furr
y nose jammed into hers. Sir Lumpy chirped.
So it hadn’t been thunder. Just a purring puma.
“What time is it?” she whispered.
He licked her cheek. Summer grimaced, pushed him away, and wiped the skin dry. It was damper than she expected—she had been crying in her sleep.
The clock said it was almost midnight, so her alarm was due to go off in five minutes. Sir Lumpy’s timing was perfect.
Summer slipped out of bed and bent over her desk, which was backed by a huge poster of an island resort. Her head was filled with the cottony confusion of sleep, and she had to blink at her monitor for a few seconds before she could actually read anything.
She had used her bedroom computer to look up the address Adamson Industries’s men had given her before dozing off, and she wanted to double check the location before leaving. It wasn’t far from Marut University—about five kilometers down the coast of Lake Ast, and well within running distance.
Almost a week had passed since her strange encounter in Hanlon Hall, and Summer had been debating whether or not she should take the internship the entire time. The problem had kept her up every night, long after Sir Lumpy was finished with his midnight yowling ritual.
Her sense of decency said that she should refuse the offer. Even if the circumstances hadn’t been so weird, it felt like a betrayal to Abram. She hadn’t even told him about the offer yet. On the other hand, Gran said that it was worth investigating, and Summer would have investigated herself off a tall bridge if her grandma told her to do it.
Summer sighed as she wiggled out of her shorts and kicked them onto the bed. If she was going to be honest with herself, the urge to put on her nicest skirt, abandon her cell phone, and show up at the door of Adamson Industries had nothing to do with Gran’s suggestion, and everything to do with Mr. Adamson’s deep, endless eyes.
Whether it was her brain making decisions, or a slightly less rational part of her body, Summer wasn’t going to walk into that building without knowing what she was getting into.
