Terrence’s brows drew down. “Lake Norman State Park.”
I froze, fork halfway to my mouth, noodles dangling into my bowl. Only then did I notice the patch on his uniform, the one that said North Carolina State Parks. “W-where?” I stuttered.
“Lake Norman. You know where that is right?”
Lake Norman was virtually my back yard. I shuddered. How the hell had I managed the trip from Oneida Lake to Lake Norman with no memory of it? “What day is it?”
“It’s Sunday. Are you sure you’re okay? Maybe you need to get X-rays. A CAT scan or something.”
I assured him I was fine. Actually, I was far from okay, but it was nothing a doctor could fix.
“We got a report of fireworks near the boat dock,” Terrence said. “You don’t know anything about that, do you? It’s why I was out on patrol that late. A local called in and said they saw bright lights, a roman candle or something.”
I choked on a noodle and coughed until my air passage cleared. “Nope. No idea.”
Again, Terrence frowned and huffed a sound of disbelief.
My stomach growled, insisting I needed to eat for at least a week straight before it would be satisfied. I shrugged at Terrence’s skeptical stare and shoved another wad of noodles into my mouth. It was a duel, a showdown at the Lake Norman ranger station. Terrence was armed with obstinate rectitude, and I carried a bowl filled with two packets of Maruchan, lime chili shrimp flavor. This standoff could last a while.
Terrence narrowed his eyes and watched me swallow and then stuff another knot of ramen between my lips. Take a hint, dude. I’m not going to talk. He must have understood because he sucked in a deep breath, exhaled, and pushed away from the table. “Sabrina, if you’re not going to tell me anything else, then I guess we need to get you home. You don’t have a car parked around here somewhere, do you?”
I held up a finger, finished chewing, swallowed, and then said, “I don’t think so.”
“Is there someone you can call?”
I blanched at the thought of calling my mom and dad. How was I supposed to explain this? I never called them after Thorin returned my cell phone to me at the Aerie. I was too busy having prophetic dreams, running for my life, and apparently, turning into shooting stars. “What’s today’s date?” I asked.
Terrence looked at his watch. “It’s after midnight, so, it’s technically the first.”
“The first? The first of…?”
Terrence’s brow wrinkled as he likely considered my mental stability again. “November.”
My jaw fell open. It had been the end of August when I first went to Alaska. It was almost October when I left the Aerie heading for Lake Oneida with Skyla and the Valkyries. That meant I spent a month in my state as something other.
Mom and Dad—oh, God, they must think I’m dead. They must be out of their minds by now. How am I supposed to explain this to them? Maybe Thorin had continued to cover for my absence, but after this much time, what could he say that my parents would possibly believe? Most likely, Thorin and the others thought I was dead, too.
“It’s Halloween,” Terrence said, oblivious to my astonishment. “We don’t get trick-or-treaters out here, unless we count you.” His eyes sparkled, and he bit his lip against a smile. “Don’t know if you’re a treat or a trick, yet, though.”
I laughed and tried to shake off my sudden lightheadedness. “I don’t feel like any sort of treat, and if it’s a trick, then I think the joke is on me.”
“You didn’t tell me who I could call to come get you.”
Besides my parents and a couple of cousins, I had only a few other friends, but none were the sort I wanted to call in for a rescue under these circumstances.
Terrence’s brows arched. “Wow, I didn’t think that would be such a hard question. Don’t you have a boyfriend or something?”
I shook my head and grimaced. “No boyfriend. Anyone else I could call would be… well, it would be weird having to explain this.”
“Do you live somewhere nearby?”
“Yes. Just a few miles down the road.”
He chewed his lip for a moment, but then he said, “Look, my shift is over in a couple more hours. If you don’t mind hanging out, I’ll give you a lift. You can sack out in our break room. We have a cot.”
“Really? You wouldn’t mind? It would save a lot of awkward questions.”
Terrence shook his head as he stood to clear my dishes. “Sabrina, I think you’re hiding something. But whatever it is, I don’t think it poses any real threat. Besides, if I take you home, I’ll know where to find you if I need to ask you any more questions, right?”
“Right,” I said, smiling. Drop me off at my house, sure, but don’t expect to find me there tomorrow.
Chapter Thirty-nine
It might have been a stupid risk, letting Ranger Holt take me all the way to my house, but he had balked when I suggested he drop me off at the entrance to my neighborhood. “How far you gonna get without any shoes?” he said, pointing to my bare toes. I didn’t argue because his delivering me to my house had been part of the deal for agreeing to drive me home in the first place, and I knew he could make things hard for me if he wanted to.
Terrence pulled his truck into the empty driveway of my parents’ house an hour or so after sunup. The absence of their cars meant they were already at the bakery, gearing up for another day of business. Still half asleep, my body cried for my old familiar bed. No rest for the wicked, though. On the drive from Lake Norman to my house, I had formed a rudimentary plan. It started and ended with me packing my things, grabbing some food, cash, and other necessities, and making a quick getaway.
If I were Helen, I would keep eyes on this place around the clock. But without money and wheels, I didn’t know what else to do. Make it quick, Mundy. It wasn’t my voice in my head, but Skyla’s. My heart cramped again at the thought of her. Had Nate and the wolves finished her off like they had Inyoni and Kalani?
I paused. Not the wolves. Just Skoll. Hati was dead. Thorin had asked me what I would do if he brought me Hati on a silver platter, and I had told him I wasn’t sure. Now I knew the answer: I’d char him to bits.
“Thanks for the ride, Terrence,” I said and bailed out of the truck.
“It’s no problem,” he said, smiling. “Happy to do it. Protect and serve, you know. It’s my job.”
I smiled, closed the truck door, and ambled down the driveway to the side entrance of my house. Only guests used the front door. My parents kept a spare key hidden in the porch light fixture. I snagged it and unlocked the deadbolt without looking back at the park ranger. Run, you mere mortal, you man of flesh and bone.
Run while you still can.
I giggled at my morbidity, stepped through the doorway, and closed the door behind me. I waited until I was certain the ranger had left before I moved into the house. The interior was dark and silent. Mom’s potpourri, something cinnamon and woodsy, filled the air, a connotation of fall and Thanksgiving, which was a few weeks away. I imagined the menu at the bakery—pumpkin, pecan, and Dutch apple pies with crumbly crusts.
On a regular day, Mom and Dad would be rolling dough, measuring sugar, and sprinkling spices in preparation for the holidays. But were they there now, going about their normal routine? The house had a closed-up feeling about it, like it had sat empty for a while. Maybe they weren’t at the bakery. Maybe they had gone looking for me.
My stomach grumbled again. Ramen noodles only went so far in a body that hadn’t eaten in a month. I went to the fridge, intending to raid it, but found nothing more than a collection of condiments and several shriveling stalks of celery. Another indication that my parents might have gone somewhere farther away than the bakery—Mom never left the fridge that empty. I found crackers and peanut butter in the pantry, though, so I sat down at the kitchen table and gobbled what was left of a jar of double-crunch Peter Pan.
With my appetite appeased, I washed peanut butter and cracker crumbs from my hands and
face. Then I climbed the stairs up to my bedroom. I was on a mission: get in, get my stuff, and get out in a hurry. I went to my closet to search out my luggage. Then I remembered my suitcases were gone, destroyed weeks ago by the wolves when they had vandalized Mani’s apartment. No worry, I had a random assortment of tote bags and duffels collected from food service trade shows and conferences I had attended over the years.
I pulled out one bearing the logo of a dairy product manufacturer and stuffed it full of socks, underwear, leggings, jeans, yoga pants, and pajamas. Another tote bag strained at the seams, trying to contain T-shirts, sweaters, and hoodies. I left behind anything resembling fashion in favor of boring utility and nothing easy to identify, nothing to linger in anyone’s memory. I zipped up another duffel full of sneakers, boots, and a comfy pair of flip-flops for balmy weather or for avoiding the kind of foot fungus that liked to cling to tiles in hotel bathrooms.
I toted my bags downstairs and piled them by the front door. Then I called a cab to pick me up and take me to the closest bus station.
While waiting for the taxi, I hurried down the hall to my parents’ room and fell to my knees beside their bed. I rifled under the dust ruffle until my fingers brushed over a hard surface. After latching onto the handle, I dragged out a fireproof lockbox. In this box my parents stored important documents: birth certificates, car titles, passports. They also kept a fat wad of $100 dollar bills rolled up in a rubber band.
I studied the roll and guessed it totaled around $3,000 dollars. Emergency money, they called it. If this wasn’t an emergency, then I didn’t know what was.
Did I suffer a pang of guilt about stealing from my parents? Sure, somewhere deep down my old, parent-pleasing self cringed. But wolves snacked on good girls, and today I was wearing my pragmatist panties. Practical people suffered moral quandaries only at appropriate times. This was not one of those times.
I intended to be a practical person, at least for as long as it took to find Skyla, kill Skoll, and save the world. I considered writing my parents a note, but at this point I thought it was better for everyone’s safety if they assumed I was missing or dead. Cold logic, heartless even, but I had convinced myself I didn’t care so long as it kept everyone alive.
After I returned the lockbox to its place under the bed, I ducked into my parents’ office and logged onto our computer. I needed to know what had happened, if Skyla had survived the fight at Lake Oneida. I searched her name and found references to her all over the Thorin Adventure Outfitters website, but nothing in the news other than some minor mention of her in a small paper in New York. “Local Soldier Returns from Deployment,” stated the caption below a picture of Skyla in uniform, disembarking from a military airplane among a group of soldiers. A crowd surrounded her, smiling and waving tiny American flags. I was right. She did look awesome in uniform.
I searched for news about violence or fires or bodies found at Oneida Lake, but the Internet was silent. I didn’t know if the lack of information was a good thing or not. Maybe if Nate and Skoll killed Skyla, Helen had covered it up. Was she powerful enough to do that? Or maybe Skyla had survived and there was nothing for the news to report. The not-knowing hurt. It cramped in my chest like a knife gouging my heart. As much as I wanted to sit at the desk in my parents’ office feeling sorry for Skyla and myself, the voice in my head urged me back into action. I logged off the computer and turned out the desk lamp.
I had saved a visit to the pantry for last, and I filled a reusable shopping bag with another jar of peanut butter, crackers, a bag of chips, and a box of my dad’s beloved Slim Jims. Some people might turn up their noses, but a desperate girl is neither picky nor choosy. Okay, and I sort of harbored a secret addiction to Slim Jims. Blame my brother. He hooked me and then enabled my habit until I turned into a Slim-Jim junkie.
I was tossing several bottles of water into the bag when the taxi arrived. The driver honked, and I gathered up all my things. I pushed open the door but stopped and looked back. My mother stood at the stove, stirring a pot of spaghetti sauce. Dad sat at the kitchen table, sipping iced tea and cussing at the bills he still paid with paper checks.
I couldn’t call them ghosts because my parents were still alive, or they were the last time I checked. I had lost a month, so I supposed anything was possible. But the house was standing and still full of all their things, food in the pantry and dirty clothes in the laundry room. Pictures of me and Mani hung on the living-room walls, a documentary of progress through childhood and adolescence.
I shook off the chill creeping up my neck, and the shades disappeared. No, not ghosts, just powerful memories, my subconscious assembling stumbling blocks in my path. If you want to keep them safe, I told myself, then you have to stay invisible. Considering the conditions of my disappearance from Oneida Lake, I had to believe no one knew where I was, or even if I was.
I couldn’t run forever—didn’t want to run forever. What’s the value of that kind of life? But the solution to the Helen Locke problem was not in my house; it was not in a place where my presence would jeopardize my family and everything I loved and had dedicated my life to for the past twenty-five years. The answer was somewhere out there, on the road.
I would never find it if I didn’t start looking.
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Acknowledgments
Praise God from whom all blessings flow. All glory and honor to Him.
Thanks to Mom and Dad for establishing a home that fostered creativity and ingenuity and for being the role models who showed me how to set goals, work hard, and achieve them.
To Sammy, Dustin, Popsey, and Josh: thanks for being the kind of family who supports me in chasing my dreams. My heart and my cup runneth over.
To Charlie Moody and Jean Hobbs: thanks for being my earliest cheerleaders, beta readers, and all around great friends. And for introducing me to Mac, Barrons, Kate, Curran, Harry, and all the rest.
For being the best support group a writer could ask for, I send a big WOOT! to my Nebs: Jennifer Albert-Sajovic, Belinda Draper, Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali, Zorah Quynh, Elizabeth Boyette Neering, Rachael K Jones, and Sunil Patel, to whom I now owe a metaphor. The next round of waffles is on me.
Thanks to Lynn McNamee for giving me this opportunity and to all the RAP authors, who are an amazingly supportive community. Thanks to Erica Lucke Dean for mentorship; Mary Fan for Twitter conversations, advice, and book trailers; Jaime Leigh for being my first RAP BFF; and Stephen Kozeniewski for laughter and linguistical assistance—you’re blartyasheck.
Mountains of gratitude go to my amazing editors: Suzanne Warr, who saw what I was really trying to do and helped me do it and made a much better book as a result, and Laura Koons, who put on the polish and made it shine.
About the Author
Karissa Laurel always dabbled in writing, but she also wanted to be a chef when she grew up. So she did. After years of working nights, weekends, and holidays, she burnt out and said, “Now what do I do?” She tried a bunch of other things, the most steady of those being a paralegal for state government, but nothing makes her as happy as writing. She has published several short stories and reads “slush” for a couple of short-story markets.
Karissa lives in North Carolina with her kid, her husband, the occasional in-law, and a very hairy husky. She loves to read and has a sweet tooth for speculative fiction. Sometimes her husband convinces her to put down the books and take the motorcycles out for a spin. When it snows, you’ll find her on the slopes.
Karissa also paints and draws and harbors a grand delusion that she might finish a graphic novel someday.
Thank you for reading books on Archive.
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