Outside, the thunder grumbles like a giant’s hungry belly.
I scoot away from the counter with a shaky breath. Very slowly, I creep down one of the aisles.
Floorboards creak underfoot.
The lamp by the armchair is on.
Goosebumps prickle up my arms. I reach under the shade and pull the chain.
Lightning flashes through the windows.
A loud crack of thunder makes me jump.
Behind me, a book thuds to the ground.
I turn around and pick it up.
Outside the rain-soaked window, the night sky ripples with electricity. Then another flash. And suddenly, he’s there. A reflection in the window pane.
Rafe Vandenberg, deathly pale.
“Lainey isn’t… Lainey,” he rasps.
A hand touches my shoulder.
With a strangled cry, I spin around.
Maggie jerks back, clutching her hand against her chest. “What in the name of Amos Vandenberg are you doing, staring off into the night like that?”
My heart crashes against my sternum—a violent one-two punch set on repeat. “I—I thought I saw something.”
“Jumpier than a cat in a house full of rocking chairs,” she mutters, turning toward the front. “I came down here to tell you to go on home. Nobody’s shopping for books in weather like this.”
10
NIGHT OF THE HOWL
On Saturday, the storm front moves along. Night of the Howl is welcomed by the kind of November weather bonfires are made for. Fog rolls thick over the Blackwillow River and the weeping willows droop into the dark currents.
Twig and I sit across from one another at a picnic table drinking hot chocolate, sharing whispered theories over what in the heck Rafe could have meant byLainey isn’t Lainey.
Around us, the atmosphere is rowdy and alive—a cacophony of drums and laughter, nervous shrieks and echoing howls as teenagers call into the woods and school kids play capture the flag, only instead of a flag, they’re trying to snag a bone carved from wood. Along the walking path,industrial bins blaze with fire and police officers stand sentry, hands on their batons as though at any moment, the revelry might descend into chaos. Or perhaps they’re worried someone else might go missing.
“Do you think he meant literally or figuratively?” I ask.
“Figuratively would make more sense.” Twig looks at the girl in question. She drapes herself over Griffin and laughs with Brynn Alcott. Kate sits at the same table, but she isn’t engaging with Lainey. As the week progressed, she seems to have distanced herself, like her immediate relief has cooled into something more like uncertainty.
Twig scratches his chin. “I don’t know, Selah. I’m not sure we can trust what Rafe says. I mean, he doesn’t exactly have the best track record in truth telling.”
Twig is right, of course.
Rafe is a manipulative liar.
But he did tell the truth on Halloween night. Inside the Overlay, on our way to Dante’s tomb. Rafe had dropped the pretense. For once, he’d been candid. Forthright. Much less deceptive charmer and much more man on a mission.
“What does Jude think?” Twig asks.
“I haven’t told him yet.”
