What Lies in the Woods(87)

I shoved everything back into the box and closed the lid.

Cass had known about Jessi Walker. Had she made the connection to Persephone? Was that why she was so insistent that Liv let it go? She was trying to warn us off because she knew what her father would do if he found out.

Or else she was the one who had told him what Liv knew.

I had to get out of here. I grabbed the box, tucking it under my arm, and made for the front door.

At the bottom of the stairs, I heard a floorboard creak behind me. I turned, meeting Oscar’s eyes. He held a beer in one hand, his arms crossed. We looked at each other. I wondered for a moment if he would stop me. Cass had told him to keep an eye on me, after all. Making sure I was okay definitely didn’t include letting me run off unannounced. But he only nodded once, and turned away. Done with me.

I fled.





There was only one place left for me to go. I parked beside the old Chevy and walked woodenly to the door. I stood on the step, mind blank, paralyzed by the decision of whether to knock or walk in.

The door opened before I could decide one way or the other, and Dad looked at me with his usual blend of scorn and amusement, like it was a big joke I’d wound up back on his porch. Which I guess it was.

“You look like shit,” he informed me. “What are you doing crying in a fancy dress?”

“It was Liv’s funeral today,” I said.

“That’s Tuesday.”

“It is Tuesday. Can I come in?”

“Not like I can stop you,” he said, and walked back inside, leaving the door hanging open. I stepped in. Couldn’t bring myself to close the door and shut off my escape route.

“You need something?” he asked.

“No. I just— There’s nowhere else to go,” I said. My throat felt scratchy, and my eyes were puffy, though I hadn’t actually cried.

“That’s obvious enough, since there’s no way you’d come here otherwise,” he said, grumbling, but then he stopped and narrowed his eyes at me. “What the hell happened to you?”

I pressed my lips together and shook my head.

“Are those bruises? Did that pretty boy hurt you?” he asked, and I barked a laugh that turned into a strangled sob.

“I don’t even know where to start with that,” I said. My grip tightened on the box. “I need to look through some of my old things.”

“Go ahead,” he said, gesturing toward the back hall. “It’s just how you left it.”

I suppressed my disbelieving snort. I picked my way past the guest bedroom and discovered it was completely full, stacked five feet high in the back. He’d just been chucking things in for years, not bothering to leave a path, and even the doorway was blocked with a broken bookshelf canted on its side. I crushed a bright pink Easter basket underfoot and kept moving, dreading what I would find in my bedroom.

To my shock, it was almost as pristine as he’d implied. The bed itself had some random detritus stacked on it, but a closer inspection proved most of it was mine. Stuff I’d thrown out the last time I was here. He must have just brought it right back in the house. Old clothes, books, even stuffed animals from when I was a kid.

Everything was still here, untouched. Which meant—

I walked to the closet. It was packed. It took me a few minutes of pulling things out to get at the loose floorboard in the back of the closet. The shoebox, dust-coated and battered, was still inside.

Right at the top was a small cloth bag. I loosened the drawstring and turned it out onto my palm. The white knucklebone was cold against my skin. My good-luck charm. My talisman. My curse.

I’d left it here, like leaving it would mean she wouldn’t haunt me.

I set it on the carpet and took out the others. Liv’s bone in its earring case, tucked in my pocket. Cass’s, in the bag at the bottom of the box. I laid them carefully next to each other. Hecate, Artemis, Athena. The prayer, the flowers, the burial, the water. The blood and the fire. Six rituals, when there should have been seven. We’d never reached the end.

I turned to the box again. What else had been important enough to hide? A geode, a feather, a few photographs: of Liv, of Cass. An overwrought self-portrait, eleven-year-old me looking off to the side, her face unmarked by the tragedy that she had no idea was about to strike. And—God. A photo of Persephone herself. The bones, with lilies in the eye sockets and our trinkets arrayed around her. The photographic twin to the drawings in Liv’s sketchbook.

“You seem like you could use a drink,” my dad said. I jumped, scrambling around. My back hit the wall before I could claw back a semblance of conscious control. He laughed. “You’re such a jumpy little thing.”

“Fuck,” I said, rubbing the back of my head. Like I needed another head injury. “You know you’re not supposed to sneak up on me like that.”

“Didn’t think I was.” He stepped into the room and held out a beer. I leaned forward to take it, then settled back against the wall again. It tasted like stale cereal steeped in water, but it was cold. I drank deeply.

“You’re not having one?” I asked.

He hooked his thumbs in his belt loops. “Thought maybe I should cut back.”

“Yeah, right. Wait, you’re serious?”

He shrugged. “About time, don’t you think?”