I nod, which isn’t something Twig can hear. So he just keeps talking, one overexcited word tripping over the next as I back away from the flickering doorway. “She showed up at Griffin’s house this morning. Police took her to the hospital. Kate and I are headed there now.”
Kate is Twig’s older sister and one of Lainey’s good friends. She has no idea anything unnatural occurred on Halloween night. Like the rest of town, she believes the story the police have presented to the public—a high school prank gone wrong, one that resulted in a serious injury and two missing teens.
The only people who know the truth?
Me, Twig, and Jude Vandenberg.
“Selah, are you there? Can you meet us at the hospital?”
Again, I nod.
“Selah?” Twig says, louder this time, more impatient.
“Y-yes,” I reply. “I’ll head there right now.”
That’s all I can manage.
I don’t tell him what I’m staring at, what I’m backing away from. I say nothing about the odd creature that led me here, so deep into the woods. I simply end the call. Then I make an abrupt about-face and return to the spot where the creature first appeared—the Vandenberg well, where I’d dropped the skeleton key my mother used to wear like a necklace. The skeleton key that unlocked an ancient crypt beneath the ruins of St. Fortuna’s. One that contains a treasure trove of supernatural and historical paraphernalia. Dropping that key into the well was my attempt at closure. A way to put the whole ordeal to bed.
That’s when I heard the scuffling behind me.
The creature coughed something up.
A luminous sort of seed.
I hurry to the bushes. I push aside brambles and paw through the overgrowth until I spot it on the ground.
“Great Scott,” I whisper, sitting back on my haunches.
I stare in wide-eyed wonder at the seed—the size and shape of an almond, glowing against the damp earth.
Never having come upon a glowing seed before, I pick up a nearby stick and give it a tentative nudge. When nothing happens, I ditch the stick, and in a move Twig would absolutely not approve of—because for all we know this thing could be radioactive—I pluck it off the ground.
The world drops out from under me.
I’m falling.
Moving.
Rushing.
Running?
Over the forest floor, through the fog, tearing through vines and branches in hot, hungry pursuit as howls echo through the trees. My insides are feral. My heart desperate. I must get to her, the girl running away, fleeing as fast as she can, her long auburn hair whipping in the wind.
She trips and crashes to the ground.
I loom over her, my impossibly long shadow casting the girl in darkness as she turns around and looks up, her eyes filled with terror.
It’s my mother.
With a loud, long gasp, I drop the seed andtumble backwards, my heart racing, blood pounding like I really was just racing through the woods. I clasp the tip of my finger and blink at the seed on the ground, coughed up by a creature that doesn’t exist. At least, not on any taxonomy charts I’ve ever seen.
What in the world just happened?
What did I just experience?
I stare hard at the seed, like the intensity of my gaze might peel back its glowing exterior and force it to reveal its true nature. When nothing happens, I take a steadying breath and touch the seed again.
