Sweetly (24 page)
Ansel sighs and looks down. “Do you?”
“No.”
He pauses for a moment, then speaks. “It would be really easy for people to think you and I aren’t exactly stable. I mean, our sister and… everything. And half of Live Oak thinks Sophia is crazy, and I know she’s not. So I’m not going to take some waitress’s word for it. If you trust him, I trust you.”
I don’t know how to answer—gratitude, surprise, relief, run through my head, but I can’t think of a single all-encompassing word. Nor can I think of a word to express the feeling in my stomach, the tight, twisted frustration of knowing that my brother still trusts Sophia completely.
“Thanks,” I finally say.
The radio in the kitchen turns off, and I hear the clicks and clatters of Sophia locking up. “I don’t think you should tell Sophia, by the way. She’d probably be upset, hearing you’re hanging out with the guy who hates her.
You
don’t hate her now too, do you?” Ansel says suspiciously.
“Of course not.” Why do I feel as if I’m lying to my brother? I don’t hate her, I just…“But I agree—don’t tell Sophia.”
“Not yet, anyway,” Ansel says. He drums his fingers on the edge of the rocking chair. I inhale and suddenly have to know something—an odd question, but one I feel as though I need to ask before I go trudging into the forest after witches.
“Do you miss Abigail?”
Ansel does a double take, then stares at me incredulously, as if I’ve struck him. “You said her name.”
“Yes.” I give my brother a long look, waiting for his judgment. I’m ready to say her name again, but is he? Can he understand just how much I’ve changed since we got to Live Oak?
“Right… wow…” He shakes off his surprise and inhales. “I… I didn’t know Abigail.” Her name is strange on his voice, as though it were a foreign word he doesn’t quite know—but at least he said it. At least we’re
both
ready to say it again. “I was seven. I know I’m supposed to miss her, but all I miss is the way things were before she was gone. When Mom and Dad were alive and things were normal.”
“When we weren’t the kids with the sister who disappeared.”
“Exactly,” he says. “When we weren’t just the kids who survived some mystery attacker.”
I consider once again telling him about the werewolves here, but… no. It wouldn’t help. “Why do you think we survived, Ansel?”
He shrugs. “Luck? Our feet moved one step faster than hers?”
“But she and I were the exact same. She could have run faster. If I could, she could have.”
“Maybe.” Ansel frowns. “I don’t know, then. Maybe it was fate. Maybe we were supposed to survive.”
I raise my eyebrows at my brother—my practical, reasoning brother. It isn’t like him to chalk something up to fate. But I realize that fate is actually the most reasonable answer. It’s either that, or he has to think that her vanishing had no purpose whatsoever. Fate may sound unlikely, but it’s a lot less painful than thinking your sister is gone for nothing.
“Why were we supposed to survive, then?” I muse in a whisper, as much to myself as to Ansel.
He exhales loudly, looks up at the night sky. “Maybe we’re supposed to do something important. Something bigger than just survive.”
“Like what? Save people?” I ask, thinking of the eight missing girls, of Naida, of the girls who have already RSVPed to this year’s festival. If I save them, have I fulfilled whatever fate had in mind for me when it doomed my sister to vanish?
“Yeah, maybe so. Like Sophia.”
I bite my lip. I nod. He’s right, of course—it’s just that I no longer think of Sophia first anymore when it comes to people I want to save.
Ansel looks relieved when we hear Sophia’s feet on the stairs, climbing up to the bedrooms. He rises, knocks my hair into my face teasingly, trying to lighten the moment. “I’m going to bed. You staying out here for a while?”
Not without a gun
is what I want to say, but instead I shake my head and follow him into the chocolatier. He flicks off the porch lights, and just as I’m about to turn around and shut the door, my eyes land on something by the foot of a rocking chair.
“What’s this?” I ask, motioning Ansel back out. He frowns and flicks the lights on again.
“Goddamn,” he says, shaking his head.
I reach down under the rocker and remove a shell, a blue and gray swirl that looks like a wave crashing into itself over and over. I turn to Ansel and hold it out.
“Oh, no,” he says. “I’m not taking another one of these things inside.” He takes the shell from my hand and, with the power of a former football star, hurls it into the forest. I hear it bounce into the leaves.
“ ‘Another one’?”
“Counting the one you found, and the one she found in the middle of the night”—he probably means the night she was drunk—“this makes four since we’ve been here. I found one a week ago and showed it to her. She freaked out. I’ll tell her about this one later, but I’m not bringing it inside again.”
Seashells. They must be a piece to the puzzle of Sophia Kelly—I just don’t know where they fit. “She’s never explained them to you?”
“Not a word. She won’t even answer when I ask about them,” he says, looking at me grimly.
“There are more in the shed out back,” I tell him. “Two boxes. They’re all wrapped up in cloth. I wonder why won’t she talk to us about them…”
“Yeah, well, if you want to try to get an answer out of her, be my guest,” Ansel says, “but I’ve tried. Believe me. She shuts down. When the second one showed up and I tried to work it out, she wouldn’t talk to me for the rest of the day.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” I mumble, more to myself than Ansel.
“She’ll tell us when she’s ready,” Ansel says, but he doesn’t sound very convincing. I glance at the spot where the shell disappeared into the trees, another bread crumb in the mystery of Sophia.
T
he day rockets by. No, that’s a lie—the day drifts along lazily, dotted with helping Sophia fill bags and test out a chocolate fountain. Yet still, when it’s dark outside and approaching midnight, I’m struck by how soon this moment has come. I peer out my window, worrying Samuel will be here early, that it’ll start to rain, that he’ll change his mind and I’ll have to shoot another tennis ball seven times.
Strangely, I’m not worried about dying. I should be, I know I should be, but all I can think about is hunting. I feel powerful. Vengeful, almost. I won’t vanish—I
can’t
vanish.
At least, that’s what I’m telling myself.
11:55. I rise from my bed and tie my hair back. I choose my clothes carefully—casual enough that if my brother or Sophia catches me, they’ll pass for pajamas, but not so light that they’d impede my trudging through the forest.
Shoes in hand, I tiptoe out my door—earlier I complained about Luxe waking me up and got Sophia to lock him in her bedroom so he couldn’t give my escape away. My heart bounces furiously in my chest as I creep past my snoring brother and down the stairs.
They don’t wake. I turn the upstairs AC on so the fan drowns out any additional noise and slink under the Nietzsche quote above the front door frame.
Samuel is here. Somewhere. I can feel him, oddly enough, even though I don’t see him.
“Gretchen,” his voice calls out, louder than I’d have personally risked. I squint through the porch lights and finally make out his form by a tree. I hurry over to him. His eyes are sparkling in the starlight, and he looks younger than normal.
“You ready?” Samuel asks, looking into my eyes for a long time as he hands me a rifle.
“Yes,” I answer immediately. I’ve never been so ready.
Samuel smiles and nods, then motions toward the forest. “After you, then.” That’s what I like about Samuel. He didn’t have to ask if I’m sure. He touches my shoulder meaningfully—proudly, almost—and grins.
I step in first, and Samuel follows.
We crunch into the forest, our hushed whispers mirrored by the sounds of tree leaves sliding against one another. I have a moment of tense fear; it bubbles up in my chest and surprises me, an emotion illustrated by memories of the night Samuel saved my life.
I ignore it. We push forward.
“I’ll cut back this way,” Samuel whispers after we’ve been walking almost a half hour. “I’ll walk beside you a hundred or so yards out. I’ll have a gun on you the whole time. Well, not on
you,
but on anything that comes near you. I promise.”
“Right,” I say.
Samuel gives me a sharp nod and long look before disappearing into the forest; I can’t hear his footsteps after a few minutes. I move forward, slower now, breathing heavily to make up for the lack of Samuel’s breath. The younger part of me, the scared girl, she wants to rear back up, to demand I run through the trees and out of the darkness. But she’s overpowered—easily overpowered—by whomever this is that I’ve become. When a branch nearby cracks, I’m surprised to find I
want
it to be a witch. I want to see yellow eyes. I want to see them, then destroy them.
It’s not a witch—just a raccoon, I think—something small that darts into the undergrowth. I turn around, waiting, watching.
Two hours later, I’m still waiting. I’ve readied my gun for a startled doe, a falling branch, even no noise at all, just my mind playing tricks on me. I flick the safety on and off, check the number of rounds, spin in circles around trees, even hum to myself. My legs are tired and I’ve walked through so many spiderwebs that I keep feeling invisible spiders on my arms. With a defeated sigh, I turn and walk toward where I think Samuel is.
I can see him standing, leaning against a tree. “Can we try again tomorrow?” Samuel shrugs.
I trudge closer, toward the patch of moonlight right in front of him.
“What, you’re mad?” I ask when he lowers his head.
“Uh-uh,” he mumbles, shaking his head. His eyes raise a little, meet mine tentatively.
His eyes are not green.
They are yellow.
I spin the rifle over my shoulder so fast that I almost miss catching it. My aim locks, everything lined up on his head. The man grins and takes a step closer. I should fire, I should kill him now, but he still looks… human, and that makes it impossible to squeeze the trigger. His hair is dark brown, but it’s speckled with deadened silver and is rapidly growing into dirty fur. His teeth are grayed and pointed slightly, and his fingernails are yellow and black, diseased looking. He stretches his mouth open, and the jaw disconnects, cracks and pops, lengthening into a ragged mouth. My heart twists, stomach churns in disgust, as the world slows down.
The monster crouches, his pupils dilate wildly, and his back legs crunch and burst into fur. His teeth jut outward and erupt into long canines. My heart is stopping, the air in my chest stalling as the monster tilts his head to the side, studying me with wild, crazy eyes that are too wide for his face. I stare—I need to move, but all I can do is stare in wonder, in horror. He went from man to monster so easily, so—
The monster lunges.
The world speeds back up, flies into fast-forward. I fire.
It doesn’t stop him.
The werewolf crashes into me, topples me backward. My head hits something; everything goes gray. I lose track of my senses—I can smell the rot in the wolf’s fur but can’t see him, can’t feel his weight. I scramble, grasp at the ground with my fingers, squeeze my eyes shut and try to slow the whirring in my head. It won’t be long before he bites down, before I feel his teeth. I have to—
Someone says my name, someone who sounds far away.
I gasp for breath; my vision gets clearer. Samuel is standing above me, eyes shining through the moonlight. He reaches down, hauls me to standing with rough hands.
“Talk to me, Gretchen,” he says, shaking my shoulders. I’m confused—what happened? I look around, turn in circles.
“Where did he go?” I finally wheeze, coughing. I look around frantically, certain the monster will come raging from the darkness at any moment.
“What?” Samuel asks, putting a hand on my cheek to stop my frenzy.
“He jumped on me, he…” I shake my head, confused, as if my mind is moving faster than it should be.
“He’s gone, Gretchen.”
“You shot him?”
Samuel shakes his head, smiling. “No. You did. I was on my way; I saw you aim. You hit him just as he was lunging for you. He knocked you over, but he was shadows before you hit the ground. By the time I could have fired, he was gone.”
I don’t believe him. I relax my hand on my rifle, stunned. He’s lying. He must have shot the wolf. I didn’t even think I hit him. I search Samuel’s eyes for the lie, for the truth, but all I see is sparkling, nodding.
“I killed him?” I whisper.
“
You
alone,” Samuel finishes firmly.
And then it hits me. I grin, I laugh, I shout all at once, and a feeling of warm freedom sweeps through me. I don’t need to be afraid, not anymore. My mind swirls. I’m
happy
. I’m happy.
I’m free.
I shake my head as my heart pounds in excitement. “I…” I don’t even know what to say to Samuel, how to tell him what he’s given me. “Thank you, Samuel. I mean, it sounds stupid and like it’s not enough, but thank you.”
