How do you kill a Hollow Walker?
It’s the question I asked Mistress Bramble.
I find with most things, fire does the trick.
“If we can get him to go inside, we’ll light it on fire and you’ll have all the time in the world to getthe hostages to safety. If that doesn’t work, then I’ll distract him for as long as possible before he takes me.”
Jude closes his eyes. “Selah.”
“He isn’t going to kill me, Jude. Whatever his plans are, I’m an integral part of them.” I look from him to the others. Harper is scared. Naomi, exasperated. Twig? Completely on board. “Plan A, Rafe and I get rid of him in the hedge maze. Plan B, I surrender. He brings me to the Water Garden, but by then, his prisoners will be gone. He won’t be able to draw any power from them.”
“And his hounds?” Naomi asks.
“Jude will shoot them.” I speak the idea before it can fully register in my head, but as soon as it’s out, the beauty of it is undeniable. “You’re a perfect shot with a bow and arrow.”
Something hard settles over his expression.
And I almost feel sorry for the hounds.
The dots on my forearm tingle, as though waiting to do what they were always meant to do—open a rift and deliver me to Vorat.
My mind races.
We need Rafe.
We need blowtorches and weapons.
We need to figure out how to navigate around the police and the FBI.
But all of that is logistics.
I can feel the trembling tightness of Mrs. Calloway’s hug.
I can see the painfully thin frame of Mrs. Winslow as she collapsed on top of that casket.
I won’t let anything happen to Kate.
And I will bring Ivy back from the grave.
I look around—from Naomi to Harper to Twig to Jude—my jaw set, my resolve solidified. This is going to work. Ithasto work. “We need to go tonight.”
51
JUDE’S PROMISE
Police want us to stay put. But we need to organize. Gather supplies. Make preparations. We have tasks that need to get done, and we can’t do them in Twig’s basement. Unfortunately, the entire town is on high alert, which makes keeping a low profile difficult.
After two and a half weeks of no new developments—families waiting for answers, the spotlight slowly fading—the media has rolled back into town with a vengeance. Two more teenagers have gone missing. They vanished on the infamous Vandenberg Estate. Investigators are also searching for a pair of students believed to have been in contact with the missing teens before theirdisappearance, but their whereabouts remain ominously unknown.
News vans converge, parking outside the gate while authorities commandeer the property. By noon, the invasion is complete. The Vandenberg Estate has become a spectacle.
Exactly like it was thirty years ago.
To make matters worse, extreme winter weather is expected to hit Foggy Hollow by nightfall.
Authorities are racing the clock.
Emergency lights flash against the mansion. A mobile command trailer has been parked along the drive. A pop-up canopy flaps in the wind as police, FBI agents, and search-and-rescue volunteers hunch over tables crowded with maps and coffee thermoses. Generators hum. Radios crackle. K9 units sweep the grounds while Dad helps in any way he can, walking officers to service paths, explaining the trails, unlocking and re-securing sheds and maintenance buildings.
