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“Think she went into the water?” Mattias asked.
“Not unless she jumped the last six feet,” Johesha said. “Look. The last footprint–” He walked in a line between the last footprint and the water’s edge. “What is this?” He crouched down.
At his feet was a bloody mess. Bits of unidentifiable matter, as if a mound of viscera had been left behind, but from what was anyone’s guess.
“That’s not–” Jessamine started but stopped.
“No.” Lachlan shook his head. It wasn’t. He refused to believe it, though his heart hurt looking at the gore. Bits of black dust coated it, some of which floated into the air, drifting toward the shadow of the woods though there wasn’t a breeze to carry it.
Lachlan’s pained heartbeat quickened with stark awareness that there was something terrible in the woods—a sharp awareness like a knife in his gut. He didn’t want to follow the floating dust but asked, “Do you think Tarley’s there?”
“Look!” Jessamine cried out, upstream, leading away from them. “Look! Tracks here. Bloody footprints. Tarley.” She looked up at Mattias with a tentative but hopeful gleam on her face.
Relieved for a trace of Tarley that wasn’t whatever had been left on the shore, the party followed her tracks until they disappeared altogether at the edge of the river.
“She went into the river?” Brendsen asked this time.
“Or on it.” Johesha was crouched down next to a patch of depressed grass along the shoreline.
“A boat,” Jude said and turned to look downstream.
“How do we know they didn’t go upstream,” Mattias asked.
“We don’t,” Johesha said as they backtracked to the horses, “but if you were afraid of being killed, would you fight the current?”
They grabbed the horses, and once mounted started downstream along the river, back toward Sevens.
Each of them focused on the landscape looking for footprints, depressions, anything to tell them they were going the right way. Only most of it was looking at the woods, the river, the bushes, the grass unsure and afraid.
Lachlan tried not to be afraid. He did. Only when he wasn’t afraid, he was angry that she’d run, and he didn’t want to be angry either. He just wanted her. So he distracted himself by asking, “What’s with the ribbons?”
Jessamine, riding in front of Captain Johesha next to Lachlan, glanced at him. “Our mother gave them to us when we were babies.”
“Did you get new ones each year?” Lachlan asked.
Jessamine shook her head and looked at the ribbon. “No. Actually–”
“They’ve grown with us,” Mattias said.
“Where’s Auri’s?” Lachlan asked.
“She lost it in the woods.”
“Tarley did too,” Lachlan said, but he didn’t know when. She’d had it, then it was gone. “Why did Auri say they were a protection spell? What would you need to be protected from?”
He watched Mattias look over his shoulder at Jessamine then face forward. He shrugged and Jessamine said, “We don’t know.”
“That’s why Tarley said your mother lied?”
“We know about as much as you do,” Jessamine said, her voice tight with irritation.
So Lachlan let it drop but hated that his mind wouldn’t stay where he wanted it, on the landscape.
“There,” Mattias eventually said, pointing across the river at a canoe dragged up onto the shore.
“Two lira that we’ll find bloody footprints and at least one more set with them,” Johesha said. “Safe to cross here?”
“No,” Mattias answered. “But there’s a spot downstream a bit further, and we can backtrack on the other side.”
