What Lies in the Woods(84)

“We should tell Bishop,” I said. “Shouldn’t we?”

“We need a plan. We need to be smart about this,” Cass said. “Go to my place. Don’t call anyone, don’t answer the door. I have to stick around for another hour or so, but then I’ll come right there, and we’ll figure out exactly what we need to do, okay?”

“Okay,” I said. Cass would figure it out. She always did. I folded my hand over the key, letting it bite into my palm. My mind was reeling. Ethan was Alan Stahl, Jr. He came here because he knew I’d lied before even I did. He’d been angry. He blamed us. He’d come to town. Olivia had agreed to talk to him, and he’d hurt her, and—

What? Why stick around?

To keep an eye on things. To make sure no one else suspected him. To fuck with the person who’d fucked up his life.

“Are you okay to drive?” Cass was asking.

“Yeah. I’m fine,” I lied. I took a steadying breath. “It’s just a shock. I’d better go.”

“Not to the motel,” she said firmly.

“I’ll go to your house,” I agreed. I couldn’t think past that, but I could get that far. I folded the page from the file into thirds, then in half, with overly precise movements. I tucked it into my skirt pocket slowly, as if by taking my time I might wait out the pain. Sneak past while it wasn’t looking.

Cass got me out the back door. I barely registered getting into my car, starting the engine. I was parked in Cass’s driveway before my brain caught up with my body, and when I stepped into her empty house I just stood there, uncertain.

I’d never been in Cass’s house alone. It had an antiseptic quality to it. Even the decorations seemed utilitarian, there to create a certain image. Cass had decided who she wanted to be and constructed her life around it. The single mom, successful business owner. She’d clawed her way to normalcy. I could understand why she hadn’t wanted Liv to disrupt it.

If we hadn’t shut her down, would any of this have happened?

I drifted up the stairs to the bedroom and sat on the end of the bed, feeling ridiculous in my black dress.

I should have known. I only ever went for terrible men. There was always going to be rot at the core of what I had with Ethan. I just hadn’t known it would be this.

Ethan didn’t seem like a violent guy. But his father had had everyone fooled, too.

I wiped my eyes to clear my vision and took a deep breath that didn’t seem to fill my lungs. Across from me, the closet door was open. On the highest shelf in the back was a wide wooden box, Celtic knotwork carved along the rim.

She’d kept it all these years. Of course she had. All of us had kept our trinkets. Our pieces of the past. I stood and walked slowly to the shelf. There was a footstool in the corner of the closet, and I maneuvered it under the box and stepped up.

It was heavy, solid. We’d found it at the antique store, coated in dust. The lid was carved with twining leaves and vines. I had been the one who found it. Cass had been the one who kept it. That was the way it worked.

I carried the box over to the bed and opened the lid. It creaked faintly. Inside was a collection of Liv’s drawings; a stack of Polaroid photos; a gaudy costume ring I remembered Cass getting from her grandmother; a silk scarf patterned with stars; a cat’s collar, “Remington” etched on the tag; a silver cup we’d declared the Goddess Goblet. A small cloth bag held a tiny, hard object; I didn’t have to take it out to know that it was a knucklebone.

Cass had taken the bracelet with Persephone’s name on it, too, but she’d given it to me at the hospital. A bit of extra magic, she said, to help me get better.

I picked up the stack of Polaroid pictures. I remembered that camera. I’d found it in my dad’s stuff when a stack toppled, along with a few boxes of film. The film had been old even then, and the photos had come out washed-out and hard to decipher at times, but I’d hauled it with me everywhere until I ran out of film. I hadn’t thought about it since, but I supposed that was the spark that had gotten me interested in photography.

It always came back to that summer, didn’t it?

With the passage of years, the poor quality had given the photos an eerie quality. A blurry snapshot of Cass in the woods, holding up the goblet with the starry scarf around her shoulders like a shawl, took on an air of ancient mystery. A shadowed shot of Liv, looking upward, her surroundings indistinct, seemed as if she were emerging from a blackened void. Cass and Liv walking side by side, pinkies hooked together, Liv looking over her shoulder at the camera, at me, with a brilliant slice of smile.

Then a photo of the three of us, together. I was clearly holding the camera. We were sitting on Liv’s childhood bed, shoulder to shoulder, and I was in the middle. Cass and Liv were sticking out their tongues, looking at the camera. I was looking at Liv, my eyes shining.

A little breath slipped between my lips, my heart aching. Liv was dead—but so were all three of those girls. The girls we’d been before.

Under the photos were two pieces of notebook paper, folded over, the creases worn with age. I unfolded one delicately, and my breath caught in my throat.

I stole money from Mrs. Green’s purse.

I hate my dad and sometimes I wish that he would die. He’s a drunk and he’s useless.

I cheated on a math test last month.



There were a dozen more lines. I’d written them all. My secrets. We’d all made a page like this—the sixth ritual. The darkest secrets of our hearts, Cass had said. We wrote them down and then we burned them. She’d thrown them into the fire and rambled about purifying our souls with the flames. But then how were they here?