I slip into the kitchen, where I rustle around in a junk drawer for a flashlight. I flick it on and off a few times to be certain it works, then whistle sharply for Luxe. The dog bounds into the kitchen and looks up at me eagerly.
“We,” I say quietly, “are going on an adventure.”
The first step from the front door is the hardest. Then the next, to the front of the porch. Down a step, another step, another step. There are no witches, there are no witches, I mentally chant. I step gingerly across the lawn; Ansel just cut the grass, and my sandals flick the clippings up against the back of my legs. I ignore the itching it causes—I have to keep moving forward because if I stop, I know I’ll run back to the safety of Ansel, the safety of the chocolatier, of Sophia.
The forest seems to begin with two large oak trees; their branches arch overhead like cathedral doors. I hold my breath as I step through them. My feet crunch against the ground as soft grass is replaced with fallen leaves.
And then I’m in.
Luxe bounds forward, nose to the ground and tail in the air, as I shine the flashlight through the trees. I duck under low-hanging branches and the limbs of saplings. The chocolatier’s lights grow smaller, broken apart by trees until they’re scarcely any different from the fireflies that blink on and off around my head.
It’s cooler in here, under the canopy of leaves, though the heat of the day seems to rise from the damp ground below. Luxe trots back toward me with a pinecone in his mouth, and my nerves calm. There is nothing in this forest—nothing but the fireflies, Luxe, and me. Maybe a squirrel, I think as I hear something clatter around the trees ahead. Raccoons, possums. The other half of me is not here, nor is the thing that took her.
It is safe.
I take a right turn, with newfound confidence in my ability to decide where to go. I hear the trickling of a creek ahead and use it as my guide—I’ll go to it and then return to the chocolatier. Mosquitoes ignore the repellent and nip at my arms and ankles, and I struggle to pull my hair off my neck. The noise of the creek grows louder, until it manages to overtake the sounds of the trees, the insects, and the crunching of leaves under my feet and Luxe’s.
I finally reach the creek. Moonlight pours down into the little crevice that the water carves through the forest. It’s serene, beautiful; I carefully lower myself to sit on a patch of mossy ground beside it. The moss is like fabric against my bare legs, and I feel drowsy. I inhale the night air, then lift my eyes to gaze at the stars above.
Luxe barks, sharp and bold against the peaceful wood. I shush him without even looking his way, letting one of my feet dangle into the chilly creek water. It’s freezing—far, far colder than I would have anticipated given the dense southern air.
He barks again. I whirl my head around to glare at him for interrupting this moment of solitude.
His fur is on end, his front feet braced against the forest floor, his teeth bared. I tap a hand on my leg, concerned, and Luxe slinks toward me, tail between his legs. When he reaches me, he curls up against me, pressing his body against my calves.
He’s shaking in fear.
Suddenly the creek seems deafening as I rise and strain to listen to the forest. Something is out there, something to scare Luxe, but I hear nothing. I turn in circles, eyes scanning the trees. The rational part of my brain tries to convince me that it’s something harmless and that Luxe is just a wimp, but no—I sense something, something no amount of lemon peel will let me ignore. Dread creeps up from my feet and begins to overtake my body; my hands tremble and my throat tightens.
Luxe peeks his head through my legs. He lets out a low, dark growl. Something rustles, something large enough that I hear it over the creek’s rapids. I blink hard and stiffly turn to see whatever it is that Luxe is growling at. Whatever it is that’s moving. Whatever it is that’s waiting for me on the other side of the creek.
It’s a man.
And he has yellow eyes.
“Oh, hi,” the man says, smiling. Perfect white teeth, sweeping blond hair that’s only a shade or two darker than mine. “Didn’t mean to frighten you.”
He’s just a man—I want to believe he’s only a man—and yet the eyes. Those are the witch’s eyes. They stall my breath and make my fingers tremble. My chest aches, as though my heart is pounding so hard that the skin may tear, and yet I can’t run. I can’t run now.
The man in front of me is the witch. And I can’t run from him again.
“Miss?”
“Where is she?” My voice is hoarse, and I can’t believe I’m speaking to the witch after all this time.
“I’m sorry?” he asks, and now he sounds different, partway between a growl and a mutter. He takes a step toward me, and I catch his scent. He smells like something dead.
“My sister. What did you do with her?”
He
just
smiles.
The witch jumps for me, long arms outstretched. My brain reconnects with my legs. I dash through the forest. The flashlight slips from my sweaty fingers. Trees fly by me, limbs slice at my face ruthlessly, I feel as if I’m a little girl again. Lost in the woods without a trail of candy and running running running. No hands to grab on to, no hands to let go of. Luxe dashes ahead, a golden ball of fur that cuts under brambles and around trunks faster than I can. I stumble. Twigs and branches cut into my palms, sting and grind, but I ball my hands into fists and keep going. I look behind me.
He’s there, only not. The man is different now, his shoulders hunched forward and his jaw too long for his face. Teeth break out of his gums like bloodied white mountains, his fingers are curled and ragged, but his eyes—his eyes are the same, golden suns in the darkness, watching me, chasing me, toying with me—
Did she see his eyes before she died too?
Run. My chest aches, begging for water or rest, and my legs tingle and weaken. I don’t remember walking this far. The lights—I should be able to see the lights from the porch. But all I see are fireflies, and Luxe is gone, far ahead of me. The witch—the man—the monster—says something I can’t hear over the wind whistling through my ears.
Faster, Gretchen, faster.
I stumble again, and this time my head slams against the trunk of a tree. Everything swirls and the corners of my vision go red. I hear his feet getting closer, an inhuman gait. I use the tree to haul myself to standing.
“Now, now, miss. Let’s not be careless,” he says, the final sound a groan. I blink, trying to stop seeing the same man three times, and my vision clears. His blond hair is gray and brown, dungy and matted. Skin mottles with bits of fur, and he takes another step forward. His nails break off his fingertips, and claws ooze out of the skin.
I grab the wound on my head, feel sticky blood, run. My feet move, but I can’t see—wait, I can see. There’s moonlight ahead, intense moonlight. The backyard of the chocolatier. Which means the windows will be open, Ansel and Sophia will hear me…
The witch laughs, and suddenly the sound of two feet on the forest floor becomes the sound of four. Get to the backyard, get to Ansel, get to my brother. I don’t want to be a girl on the Live Oak post office wall.
My feet hit pavement.
It’s not the backyard; it’s a road. A road with no cars, no houses, no anything in either direction.
I swallow hard; my body refuses to continue running. I turn around, trying to stop the trembling that ripples through me.
There is no man behind me. Just a monster. Head slung low to the ground, teeth jutting up through hanging black lips. His ears are plastered back on his head. Each time he takes a small, careful step toward me, his claws click and scratch at the pavement. The yellow eyes are locked on me.
The monster’s breathing grows more labored, hungered; he extends his nose toward me and inhales. He’s close now, so close that the stench of his body suffocates me. He circles me, eyes running up and down my body, surveying his catch. I hear him lick his lips, sloppily and hungrily.
Something in the woods cra
shes.
The monster and I both snap our heads toward the sound. Another witch? Ansel, maybe? It doesn’t matter—the monster is distracted. I force my deadened feet to move. Anywhere, any direction. Go, go, faster. My sandals clip against the pavement, my arms pump, air flying behind me.
I hear the claws. Walking, running, faster and faster. I keep moving but lock my shoulders, bracing myself for impact. Where will he bite first?
Please don’t let me disappear.
And then the shot screams out.
The claws stop, and I hear flesh hitting the pavement. My body keeps moving, keeps running forward, but I dare to glance behind me. The monster is on the ground, slumped over a heap of fur and blood. Someone emerges from the woods—a man. A real man. He trudges forward slowly, as though he’s not worried that the creature will spring to life.
The stranger stands over the witch’s body, fiddling with something on what I realize is a gun of some sort.
And then the monster explodes into darkness. Shadows dance away from the pavement, terrified of being exposed over the asphalt. They skip off into the forest, leaving nothing but the bare moonlight and a puddle of blood.
I should feel relieved, but I can’t—I can’t feel anything. Too many emotions, and my body has shut down. Where was the man with the gun twelve years ago? Why did he save me, and not my sister?
Why do I get to survive?
“You!” the man’s voice cracks through the night. I snap my head up. “Who are you?”
He lifts the gun and aims at me.
CHAPTER SIX
I’m not scared.
Maybe I should be, but after I’m nearly killed by a witch, a man with a gun doesn’t scare me.
“I’m Gretchen? Gretchen Kassel?” I say raspily—my throat is dry and my lungs ache. The stranger walks forward, sure-footed, confident steps that make me feel queasy. As he nears, the shadows on his face lessen and I make out his features. He’s young and wearing a stained blue T-shirt and jeans. He slings the gun over his shoulder from a strap as his feet thud against the pavement in heavy leather work boots. Recognition hits me—the guy from the diner our first day in Live Oak, the green-eyed boy who hates Sophia.
“Are you okay?” he snaps, seemingly irritated.
“I’m fine,” I answer, coughing. I rub my throat, touch the cut on my head, and wince.
He gives a curt nod and then, without stopping, breezes past me.
“Who are you?” I ask.
He turns to face me, and I take a step backward. His eyes pierce me, judging, perhaps, evaluating, darkening more each moment they stay on mine. I look down, trying to escape the glare.
“Samuel Reynolds,” he answers. His voice is gruff, carries the weight and sorrow of a much older man. “Come on, you need to get out of here. There could be more of them.”
“More?”
Samuel takes forceful strides, daring something to leap from the woods and take him. I run after him.
“There are more?”
“Of course there are more,” he hisses. He suddenly ducks off the road, toward the tree line, and pulls a motorcycle from its hiding spot in the grasses. He pushes it along the road, dusting bits of dead leaves off as he walks.
“What are they?”
My voice stops him, though I’m not sure if it’s the question or the fact that it sounds so much smaller than normal. But he has the answers. He clearly knows about them. He knows what they are, and after all this time I’ll finally know what it was that stole my other half. I hold my breath in anticipation.
He turns, gaze shooting through the night and startling me once again. “They’re monsters. Werewolves. And there are more out there, but I’m going to guess you want to be behind locked doors at that candy store before they show up and I start shooting. So if you could not attract them by shouting stupid questions, it’d be great. Doesn’t do a lot of good to keep the bike quiet if you’re going to shout like an idiot.”
He turns back around and continues to walk. My feet won’t move.
Maybe I should be afraid. Maybe I should be angry, or I should cry, or I should scream because this means that my sister didn’t vanish—she was slaughtered. The same teeth the monster snapped at me were in her skin—skin that looked and felt just like mine.
But instead, all I feel is warm, flooding relief. Because my sister didn’t really just vanish.
And now I know what the witch is.
“Are you stupid or something? I said, come on,” Samuel mutters, eyes glancing off the trees that frame the road.
“I thought they were witches.”
Samuel freezes midstride. He turns toward me and raises his eyebrows. The act changes his entire face—the hard lines vanish, the deep-set eyes become interested instead of foreboding. It lasts only a moment, and then the intensity returns full force. “The Fenris? You’ve seen them before?”
“Yes,” I answer, touching my forehead. “When I was little. It—one of them—took my sister.” How many are there? How many yellow eyes waiting in the forest?
Enough to take eight Live Oak girls, I realize, and I grimace as their faces run through my mind, trailed by my sister’s face, the last terrified expression I saw in her eyes.
“Your sister…” He shakes his head, and I’m afraid he’s going to yell again, but then it seems as though he can’t remember what he was going to say. The chocolatier appears in the distance, an oasis of light beside the road.
It’s another moment before I answer. “I thought they were witches,” I repeat, defeated. I feel as if the fear is draining from me now that I know the face of the monster, and it leaves me raw and unfinished—it turns out I’m not sure who I am without the fear. “But werewolves—I don’t…” I look up at the moon. There were werewolves in the book my sister had used to help us find the witch, in other fairy tales. Full moons, silver bullets, red capes—
“They have nothing to do with the moon,” Samuel says, rolling his eyes at me. “They’re monsters. Don’t overthink it.” He turns and continues walking, facing away from me; I can barely hear his words over the sound of locusts crying. “Besides, Sophia Kelly is the only witch in Live Oak. I’ve been trying to convince everyone in Live Oak the Fenris exist for the past two years. All it’s gotten me is a reputation for being a lunatic.”
“Sophia isn’t a witch,” I argue, though I’m not sure why that’s the point that struck me.
“Whatever,” Samuel says, waving a hand at me. “Just remember that I warned you to stay away from her.”
“What does Sophia have to do with the… Fenris?” I ask. I don’t like the term. It makes them seem like an animal, a dog or a cat or a bird, instead of something that might devour me, instead of a werewolf. I can’t believe the witch is another monster entirely. We stop in front of the chocolatier, and I fold my arms, unsure what to say.
“You’re here. Go inside and stay out of the woods.”
“Obviously,” I mumble, brushing my hair back over my head. I hesitate, glancing at Samuel. I feel as if I should say something. Thank him, maybe, but he doesn’t seem like the type you thank—he seems like the type I should run from. I shuffle my feet until Samuel gives me an impatient glare.
“I’ll… um… see you later. Thanks,” I add, just for good measure. Samuel shakes his head, turns the bike, and walks back down the street.
I climb the steps to the chocolatier silently. Luxe waits for me on the porch, a tired look on his face.
“Some protection you are,” I tell him. I look over my shoulder to see Samuel still walking away. He strides as though he’s protesting something, storming the street to tell it off for existing. He eventually fades into darkness. I wait until I hear the distant grind of the motorcycle before ducking inside.
I keep my eyes off the forest and lock the chocolatier’s front door.
As if a dead bolt could possibly keep the witches—no, the wolves— at bay.
CHAPTER SEVEN
My dreams are mostly nightmares
—the witch charging, transforming into a hundred thousand werewolves. Then Samuel, stepping out of the darkness, followed by my father. But neither raises a hand to help me as the werewolves close in, and Ansel is nowhere to be found. At the very last moment my sister arrives with a rifle in hand, a shadow of a girl who steps out of my body and looks just like me; the werewolf turns and runs when it sees her. The dream repeats itself—I wake up at the end, then drift back to uneasy sleep only to dream it again.
Maybe Ansel’s lack of presence in the dream is why I don’t tell him about the witch the following morning—or maybe it’s because claiming to be chased by a werewolf is as unbelievable as claiming to be chased by a witch. My brother is in the storefront messing around with some of the shelving; our eyes meet very briefly.
I should tell him.
No. He survived. He moved on long ago. Don’t send him backward, don’t make it like you’re kids again. I feel guilty—Ansel has spent so much of his life trying to keep me safe, and here I am, keeping it a secret that danger is right outside.
But I still can’t do it. I can’t watch his face when I try to explain to him that the witches are werewolves and they’re real. I can’t handle what he’ll say if he believes me or, worse, what he’ll say if he doesn’t. I love my brother too much to tell him.
So I nod at my brother, an understated “good morning,” and make my way into the kitchen with my secrets intact. For now.
“What happened to your head?” Sophia asks in alarm, slamming a mortar and pestle down on the counter and hurrying toward me. I cringe—I thought I’d swept my hair far enough over my forehead to cover the mark left by falling in the forest, but apparently no such luck.
Think, think fast. Sophia pulls my multicolored hair away from my face, eyeing the wound with a look of dismay. “It was stupid,” I say quickly. “I was playing with Luxe last night in the yard and fell off the front steps.” Ansel, who’d been coming in to see what the problem was, returns to the storefront through the saloon doors when he hears my explanation, shaking his head teasingly at my apparent clumsiness.