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“And what is that?” Devere asked, eyebrow raised.
“This is my fault.”
“Leaving in such a storm did seem foolish.”
“See.” I waggled a finger at him and toed through the debris of my suitcases strewn about the snow. “I knew you’d find a way to blame me. The driver assured me it was safe.”
Devere nodded toward the driver’s remains. “That driver?”
I threw him a snarl and picked up another coat, in addition to the one I already wore. I was going to need it. “As you can see, I’m busy. So, unless you’re going to be helpful, please go away.”
His perfect lips twitched, which was how I knew it couldn’t be the real Devere. He didn’t smile so easily. “You spend weeks searching for me, and now you send me away.”
I waved a hand at him, shooing him off, then threw the second coat around my shoulders and stepped back to study the scarred cliff face. No wonder I was hallucinating. I’d been lucky to survive such a sudden drop. A bump to the head was to be expected.
“If you’re thinking of scaling it, you truly have lost your mind.”
I sighed. “I know what this is, what you are. This is a trauma response. I likely struck my head during the fall. You’re here because I’m lost in the woods, with no food, heat, or a way out, and if I hadn’t dreamt you up, I’d be sobbing in the snow.”
“Hmm,” he said, which wasn’t helpful at all. “Imagine people often, do you?”
“I have been known to, in the past.” I shrugged the second coat tighter across my shoulders and eyed the thick forest. The coach was pointing one way, but that didn’t mean it had begun its fall facing that direction. There was no moon, no stars, just a heavy blanket of mist. If wolves roamed nearby, I’d be done for.
“You should have taken the pistol,” Devere said, eyeing the steaming remains of the horses. “These carcasses will draw wolves.”
“Yes, thank you. Do you have it on you now? No, of course you don’t. Because you’re not real.” I couldn’t climb the cliff, so my options were simply to walk left or right, track along the cliff, and hope I found a way up to the road.
“Strange, isn’t it, how these bizarre events seem to happen to you?” he commented.
“Life is bizarre. You’d know if you ever stepped foot outside Minerva. There’s no rhythm or reason to some things. They just happen.”
“No.”
“No?”
“That’s not how things work in Minerva. I knew you’d forgotten.”
“Then how do they work in Minerva?” I’d talk and walk. He’d keep my mind off the very real fact that I might freeze to death in the cold, or bleed out, or be eaten by wolves or bears. Or all of those things.
“Everything has a reason, each step leads to the next, until it brings you here, to this clearing in this forest, attempting to escape a town that refuses to let you go.”
I narrowed my glare on him. He wore his storefront clothes, the gray trousers and waistcoat over a loose shirt, with the collar gaping at the neck. He clearly wasn’t real, or he’d be shivering in the cold. “Hush was at least more helpful than you.”
“Hush?” He tilted his head curiously.
“Never mind. Can you at least suggest which way I need to go?”
He nodded at the space behind me, suggesting I turn around. “You should make it by nightfall tomorrow, providing you don’t slip and cripple yourself.”
I turned my back on him and began to trudge through the snow. My boots sank in, up to my knees. This would be hard going if I couldn’t find a way back to the road soon. “I wish I’d never returned to this fucking town.”
“Why did you?”
“Necessity.”
“Was it really, or had your guilt become too great a weight to bear?”
I tossed him a scowl as he waded through the snow alongside me, but as I looked back, there was only one pair of boot prints—mine—confirming what I knew. He wasn’t here.
