She shivered in the shade. She wanted to get out of there. “Forget it. Let’s go,” she said. “We should probably go to the lake.”
“Wait,” he said. He knelt and looked at the ground, frowned. He pointed. “What does that look like to you?”
“It better not be gross,” she said, gingerly kneeling next to him. A pattern was pressed into the needles and sand, more a suggestion than anything. He got up and stepped around it, then put his foot next to it. His sandal made a distinct tread pattern, one that was identifiably shoelike. The other pattern was broader, less defined. Smudged—or an Aeritan boot, handmade and ill-fitting? Back in the camp, Kate could have been killed for her fine riding boots alone, if someone was crazy enough to go against Marthen’s protection of her.
“Okay, I see your point,” she said, getting to her feet and dusting off her knees. “But I don’t know, Colar. It seems awfully—unconvincing.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But it’s a start.” They looked around a bit more, but it was clear that there was very little to see.
The intersection was really far from where the gordath had been anyway. How had Marthen gotten all the way over here—presumably on foot—without raising attention?
Had she really seen him, or was it time for a shrink after all?
She thought back to her glimpse of the man in the shadows and shuddered at the way his eyes had met hers. Colar nudged her.
“What?” he said.
“Just thinking—you know.”
She didn’t have to say more. They both had ghosts. Sometimes she saw the way his hands whitened when he held his fork and knife or a pencil when he was doing math home-work. Maybe a therapist wouldn’t be a bad idea for either of us, she thought. Except how could we tell them anything?
He nodded and looked around some more, scanning the parking lot, the traffic, and the few people on foot. “Someone had to have seen him. He would have stood out.”
She laughed a bit sourly. “Maybe we should put up a wanted poster.”
“What?”
“A poster that has a picture of people with their names, the crime they committed, and the reward money. The police put them up. You’ll see them around sometimes.”
She could see him filing away the information, and his interest sparked an idea. She added, “You know, we could check the police station, see if somebody else did see him and called about him.” The police would make it known that he wasn’t welcome here. Kate felt a twinge of shame but at the same time was thankful for her safe little town. “Like you said, he’d stand out,” she explained. “I think he’d frighten people, even without them knowing, well—”
“That they should be frightened,” they finished together. He gave her a quick grin. “I think even Captain Artor was frightened of the general.”
Kate laughed. The irascible scout captain spent most of the campaign laid up with a broken leg, but his temper was the worse for all that. The captain had never frightened her though, despite his cursing and bluster. Her laugh trailed off. The general had struck fear to the marrow of her bones. She knew he was obsessed with her, and also knew he hated himself for it. He hated me and wanted me, and the flogging was only the beginning. If Marthen had gotten what he wanted, she doubted she would have survived with her mental health and her spirit intact.
She turned to Colar and smiled gamely. “Let’s go to the police then, and see if they know anything.”
“What is this, a scavenger hunt?” the officer at the front desk said. “Look, kids, I don’t have time for this.”
The police station was calm and quiet, very little activity. Somewhere a radio blared in ten-code in the back, and someone else answered.
“We just wanted to know if you got a suspicious person report in the last couple of weeks,” Kate said.
“The log isn’t available right now. Beat it.”
“What’s going on?”
It was the lieutenant, the detective who had talked to Kate at great length about her abduction last winter. He still wore the same careful suit and had the same quiet, piercing manner as before. His eyes took in Colar, obviously well and healthy, a far cry from the wounded boy who had been in the hospital for weeks.
Kate bit her lip. She had forgotten about this guy. He had investigated her and Lynn’s disappearance, and he was not happy with the loose ends their reappearance had left him with.
“Hi, Lieutenant. They want to look at the log.”
“Anything in particular?” Spencer asked.
“Yes, sir.” That was Colar. He looked straight back at Spencer, giving him look for look. Even in his shorts and sandals, even as a seventeen-year-old kid, he was bigger than the spare lieutenant. Not by much, but with a hint that his growth was yet to come. Still, his manner held nothing but respect and politeness.
“We thought we saw a suspicious guy in the neighborhood, but we weren’t sure. So we wanted to check and see if anyone else had called it in,” Kate said. She added, “Sir.” From her it was much less convincing, and she flushed.
Spencer looked surprised. “Most people call nine-one-one for that, and we check and see if there have been similar calls,” he pointed out. “Did you call?”
“Umm, no. But we didn’t want to, well, call a report in on a neighbor.”
He nodded. “That’s usually what it is. Someone walking a dog. Or raccoons in the garbage. We get lots of raccoon calls. Next time just call it in. People are understanding.” He was about to turn away.
A part of her knew it was better to let him go. Making a report could bring up all kinds of questions. She could just imagine her parents’ anger and frustration at the renewal of the press, the inquiries. The police had to be satisfied with the official story, that she had run away and gotten mixed up with a dangerous cult, the same cult that had raised Colar. If she tried to say anything else, no one would believe her.
But if she didn’t report it, who knew where Marthen would end up next? Or who he could hurt on his way to me. She would have to be very careful.
“Well, can we make a report now?” Kate said. She could see Colar looking at her now, out of the corner of her eye. Trust me, she thought at him.
The lieutenant turned back. The front desk officer looked between them. Lieutenant Spencer gestured to the officer.
“Go ahead.”
Kate took a deep breath. Now she wasn’t sure exactly how to describe him. She had to be very careful. There was so much Spencer couldn’t know about the events of last fall.
“I saw him last Saturday evening near the convenience store,” she began. “He’s, well, he’s about in his forties. Long black hair, about to his shoulders. His clothes were kind of old-fashioned . . .” She trailed off. The front desk officer hadn’t even begun to type anything in at the computer in front of him.
“Was he doing anything?” Spencer asked in his dry voice. “Did you see him commit a crime?”
“No . . . not right then.”
“Hmm. Being old and wearing old-fashioned clothes isn’t enough.”
She knew what she would have to say, and she knew how she had to say it. Kate pushed down her revulsion and took a breath. She twirled her hair, and when she spoke, her voice was a little lighter.
“It was, like, the way he looked. Like he didn’t belong here?” She bit her lip and looked away. The desk officer looked a little more alert. He looked up at Spencer, his hands poised. Even Spencer hesitated for a moment.
“He was staring at her,” offered Colar. “He kept on looking at her, like he wanted to—well, you know. We were worried that he was going to follow us.”
Oh, good one, she thought.
Spencer raised an eyebrow. “Why didn’t you call right away?”
“Because, well—he hadn’t actually done anything. Like you said. Only, the more we thought about it, the weirder it all got?” Kate put in. This was getting easier.
“Did you tell your parents?”
“No,” Kate said, her voice small. The fr
ont desk officer made a disparaging noise that meant, Stupid kids. “We weren’t sure what to do. We didn’t want them to worry.”
“Have you seen him since?”
She shook her head. Spencer glanced at the other officer.
“All right. You’ve made a report. We’ll keep an eye out for him.”
She felt an explosion of relief that it was over. She couldn’t trust her voice to betray her.
“Thanks,” Colar said, and they hurried out into the cool summer air, both taking a deep breath when the doors closed behind them. They didn’t speak until they got into the Jeep and pulled out of the driveway and down the road.
Kate let out her breath, letting her hands on the wheel steady her. “Well, what do you think? Was that worth it?” The wind whipped her hair around and the words out of her mouth.
Colar considered. “If he believed us. Do you think he did?”
She thought about Spencer. “I think we made him curious. I just hope it’s about the mysterious stranger and not about us.”
“He’s a hound,” Colar said.
“What?!” Kate was half-shocked, half-laughing.
“He’s on the scent. I could see it, the way he looked at us. I think we put him on the track behind us, not just Marthen.”
It hadn’t been an insult then but rather an observation, an Aeritan one. “Well, what’s he going to find if he follows us? That we went through this portal thing last year? We could swear to all that in court, and he wouldn’t believe it.”
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned from your mother and father, that would be a worse problem than if he did.”
She winced, but she couldn’t deny the truth of it. She slowed at a stop sign and checked for traffic, tapping the brakes and then accelerating.
“So we can’t give him anything to be suspicious of about us,” she said. “We have to be as normal as we can so he focuses on finding Marthen.”
“Easy enough then.”
Even with the wind taking their words away, she could hear his bitterness. Sometimes it was hard to remember that Colar was ever anyone except for Cole Mossland, teenage boy, lacrosse player, honor student. He played his new role so well. But how it must chafe to be Cole Mossland and not Colar, heir to the House of Terrick. She bit her lip.
“Colar—”
“Forget it.” He kept his face turned away from her. “Let’s be normal. We should go to the lake.”
The lake would have kids their age, kids they knew like Maddy and some other friends. The lake would be normal. She kept her voice light.
“Sounds good. Hold on.” She slowed, looked in the rearview mirror, and swung the Jeep into a tight U-turn in the middle of the road. A car coming in the opposite direction honked at them, but she stepped on the gas, and the Jeep burst forward. Colar grabbed the roll bar.
“I hate the way you drive!” he yelled into the wind.
“Can’t hear you!” she hollered back. The only thing better than riding was driving. Then police lights in the mirror caught her eye, and she felt an instant of panic. Oh shit. If she got a ticket, her parents would kill her. Panicky, she slowed and pulled over. She glanced over at Colar and felt a measure of guilt. So much for staying away from the cops.
Instead of pulling in behind her, the cruiser screamed on by, for brief seconds the siren unbearable, and then the sound twisted in the distance. Colar and Kate stared at each other, and she started to laugh with a mix of relief and guilt.
“It wasn’t us,” she said. Colar just shook his head.
“You got lucky,” he said, but he grinned, too. “Don’t press it.”
“Yeah, I think you’re right.” Last winter she had pressed her luck, all right. With Colar coming up with a distraction, she had stolen Mark Ballard’s old jeep out from under him from his supply camp in a daring daylight raid. Turned out the jeep held a cache of weapons and tech that General Marthen put to good use in the final battle.
Her stock had risen immensely, until the general had found out she kissed Colar and had ordered her beaten in front of the entire camp.
And now he was here looking for her.
Her good humor faded. Kate swallowed against her fear. She put the car in gear and rolled back on the road, accelerating sedately. They arrived at the lake parking lot a few minutes later. The beach was small, and the water was usually filled with little kids and their moms, as well as the usual crowd of teens at their own section of the beach. Not this time, though.
The patrol car had been joined by a couple of cruisers as well as an ambulance. Kate and Colar stared at the scene as she pulled over to the side. A sickening premonition seized her. She caught sight of Maddy at the same time that the girl saw them. Maddy ran over to them awkwardly, a towel wrapped around her as if she needed it for comfort, not just to cover her bikini.
“Oh my God, Kate!” she said. Horror had wiped the girl’s face of color beneath her tan. “They said they were looking for you.”
Five
The last remnants of faded crime scene tape fluttered in the breeze around the little house at the end of Daw Road. Lynn sat in her car across the street and looked at it. She didn’t want to get out. She didn’t want to go near the house. It sat in two places, here and in Aeritan, in both forests in the heart of Gordath Wood. Behind the house, three ancient pignut trees loomed into the sky. You could see those trees from the road. They were the center of the Wood.
She steeled herself and got out of the car, closing the door gently. There was no one else down this far. The road turned to dirt here, the old, decrepit house isolated. She had read in the local papers that the town and the state were wrangling over which had jurisdiction over the house, now that it had been used as a center for poaching and running guns. Garson had slithered out of that one, too, claiming that he hadn’t known what his former bartender had been up to.
Lynn took a deep breath and walked up. The concrete porch was weathered and crumbled, and the iron railing had rusted. There was a condemned notice on the front door. She halted at the bottom of the crumbling porch and decided to go around the back.
The backyard was overgrown, seedlings encroaching on the cultivated space. The police had cleared the backyard of the skulls and barrels as evidence, and the only thing left was a ragged rope swinging from a tree. There was a boarded up window at the base of the cellar. She held her breath and tried to concentrate. She felt nothing, no nausea. The earth didn’t shake. The house was empty and dead, the crowding forest silent and without menace. If she went back into the Wood, she could wake it up. After all, Lady Sarita had not been a guardian, and she had managed to walk through the worlds.
But she had been seeking escape, Lynn argued with herself. She had been seeking relief from a terrible marriage and—Lynn thought—a deep loneliness.
And what are you seeking? The thought came unbidden, and she warned herself: Be careful. If she let herself think of Joe or Crae, she could end up walking between worlds, too. She breathed lightly, trying to whisk her thoughts away, and walked a few steps deeper toward the woods. She wouldn’t go as far as the pignut trees, she told herself. She would stop before she got too close. She just wanted to see—she just wanted to make sure—there was no opening between the worlds.
Last year, at night, she had been on the trails less than a quarter of a mile away from here, when the gordath reached out and snared her. Now she was at the epicenter.
The grasses reached up to her knees and, mindful of ticks, she was thankful for her jeans. The trees pressed in on her, the thin saplings on the outskirts giving way to the giant trees, the hickories and the tulip trees, that stretched straight and true into the sky. There was no trail here, and she halted inside the coolness of the woods. The air was thick with underbrush, and she let her eyes find a route through the woods. The ground was covered with brown, decaying leaves and the scent of the soil was rich and vital; she breathed it in deeply. Outcroppings of rock jutted up in the woods. She could hear water trickling, even t
hough the small streams should be dry this time of year. That’s the stream where I found Arrim! she thought. It’s right through there. Lynn took a step forward before she halted herself by main force. She could not go into the woods.
Leaves rustled overhead, and she looked up through the greenwood. A squirrel leaped from a branch and then scampered down the trunk of a tree to scold her.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m going,” she said.
Other than the squirrel, the forest was in a deep afternoon sleep. Even the cicadas had stopped singing in her presence. There was no gordath here. Nothing. The woods were just that—woods. She had a sense that she could walk through the whole forest, deadheading straight through to Pennington Stables if she wanted to, and she’d arrive safe and sound.
That was the only thing that would prove the gordath wasn’t open. The problem was, what if she was wrong? What if it was trying to manipulate her into going in? What about the red horse?
“Of course, statistically speaking, horses are more likely to get dumped off,” she said out loud. The squirrel stopped for a moment as if amazed at her ability to talk, and then resumed its chattering. “It’s not quite so often that a hole opens up between worlds and one walks through. So I will go as far as those three trees, and then I will walk back. And that will prove—something.”
Lynn took one glance back at the house. She barely stood outside the border of its backyard. The three trees hulked about twenty-five feet into the Wood. She could see their trunks. Lynn took a deep breath and walked, counting off her paces.
When she stood beneath the trees, she touched one as if she were a kid playing tag and the tree was home. It was cool and rough to her fingers. Overhead the wind soughed, and she could hear the sound of distant traffic from the highway. She turned around to look back at the house. It was the same as before, small, falling apart, the paint on the siding flaking, which she could see even from this distance.
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