Harper’s mouth falls open.
I begin a short-routed pace and tell her about the creature and the seed and the visions—both of them.
“You think she’s still in there, trapped with Simon?”
“She might be,” I say with a quick glance at Jude. He thinks Rafe is behind the visions. He thinks it’s a trick.
Harper bites her lip, her face going a bit more peaked. “So, if Lainey isn’t Lainey, who is she?”
“She could be a changeling,” Twig suggests.
“What’s a changeling?” Naomi asks.
“A paranormal substitution.”
She rubs her temples. “In layman’s terms, please.”
“Imagine a supernatural creature takes a human child,” Twig begins, “or in this case, a human teenager, and leaves a different creature in the teen’s place. An exact double.”
“For what purpose?”
“According to lore, the supernatural creature requires the human child for something. In this case, however, it seems like they’re using the supernatural replacement to… lure more in.”
“Lure more in?” Harper repeats weakly. Never mind peaked. She is officially white as a ghost.
Naomi throws up her hands. “Who isthey?”
I snap my fingers and point. “That, right there, is the question.”
Who is they?
“At Night of the Howl, Mistress Bramble said we woke a great hunger. Now it will hunt.”
Never mind peaked.
Harper is officially white as a ghost.
“Which makes me think Lainey and Griffin are hunting.” Like the Hollow Hounds, only they’re human. Or, human substitutes. “Butwhoare they hunting for?”
“Rafe,” Jude says.
I shake my head. “I think it’s the same thing that hunted my mom. Maybe it’s been in some kind of hibernation. Maybe the fight we had with Seraphina on Halloween night woke it up. Now it’s hunting our classmates.”
For a long moment, nobody speaks.
Harper stares at the journal, her fingers tracing the edge of each page. Jude stands in the shadows with his arms crossed. Naomi sits just as rigidly. Twig scratches his elbow nervously. And me? Questions pop inside my brain like hot kernels of corn.
Naomi breaks the silence first.
“Please, Harper,” she pleads. “You have to believe us. It’ll be so much safer for you if you do.” She presses her hand against her chest. “I would never make something like this up. Twig and Selah, maybe. But me?”
Twig and I vehemently object.
We don’t make up stories.
We loathe hoaxes.
They stand in direct opposition to everythingwe’ve been trying to accomplish for the past two years on our podcast.
