Jasper laughs, quick and blunt. He’s wearing the reindeer sweater again, but it’s dirty, slept in, spilled on, frayed along the neckline.
“You’re going to take us into those woods,” Rhett says, a strangesmile peeling across his upper lip, like he’s enjoying this. “You’re taking us to Oliver.”
I frown. “Oliver isn’t in the woods.”
He lowers himself closer to me, eyes wide, nostrils flared. “No? Then where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“You told Suzy that you found him in the woods, that he’s been hiding there, and now you’re going to take us. You’re going to show us where he’s been all this time.”
“No,” I tell him again.
Jasper moves across the room and grabs me by the arm, pulling me up from bed. The cut on his cheek has healed slightly since I saw him last, white along the edges, but red in the center where the border of the scar will never heal completely. “Yes, you are,” Jasper declares through clenched teeth.
Fin is growling from the corner where Lin is holding him tightly by the scruff at the back of his neck. And in an instant, I’m on my feet and they’re forcing me down the stairs.
Oliver left me.A pain cuts through me, knowing he fled while I slept. And he didn’t say why.He just left.
Jasper tells me to pull on my boots and coat, and I do, then they push me out the front doorway. I see that the door’s been kicked open—the hinges bent, the lock broken. I didn’t even wake at the sound. Only Fin heard them enter.
“You’re wasting your time,” I say. They manage to close the broken door enough to keep Fin from following us. But I can hear his whine from the other side—at least they didn’t hurt him. “Oliver’s not in the woods.”
In the moonlight, standing on the deck, Rhett looks wild eyed and bored and edgy all at once. The boys remind me of a pack of wolves out searching for something to tear apart. They’re fidgety and drunk. Reckless.
“Then where is he?” Rhett asks, leaning so close I can feel the heat of his breath.
“He was here,” I say, glowering up at him. “He’s been staying with me, but now I don’t know where he is.”
“She’s lying,” Jasper says, his voice like a braying cow.
“You’ve been hiding him here this whole time?” Rhett asks.
I set my jaw in place and my eyes flash to Lin, who stands with his hands in his jean pockets, looking not entirely comfortable with what’s happening, but not trying to stop them either. “He wasn’t hiding,” I say. “He just didn’t want to stay with you assholes.”
Rhett sneers. “If Oliver was staying with you, then why isn’t he in your house?”
“I don’t know.”
“We can’t trust anything she says,” Jasper interjects. “She’s just trying to protect him.” He winces, and I see that his sweatshirt is bloody where Fin bit into him.
“You’re taking us up to those woods,” Rhett announces, the decision made.
Jasper grabs onto my arm again, but I yank it back. “We can’t,” I tell them, my thumb itching at the finger where my grandmother’s ring used to sit, wishing I still had it, wishing she was here now. “It’s not a full moon.”
“So what?” Jasper says.
“The forest will be awake. It will see us.”
Jasper laughs—an unpleasant sound—and Rhett moves to only a few inches from my face. “I don’t care if it’s Saint Patrick’s Day and you’re worried about leprechauns stealing your gold, you’re taking us to where he’s hiding. And no more of your witchy bullshit.”
Jasper pushes a palm against my back, and I move forward just to keep him from touching me again. We march down the steps, little tin soldiers all in a row. They’re drunk and desperate. Whatever happened that night, out on that lake, whatever they’ve been hearing in their cabins, they can’t escape it—and it’s starting to make cracks along their minds.
But then I see someone else standing in the trees, chin lowered, waiting for us.
Suzy.
She came with them—she’s part of this. And a raw, acrid pit sinks into my stomach. Rotting me from the inside out. This must be what betrayal feels like.
