The Hazel Wood (The Hazel Wood #1)(37)

As we waited for it to boil, I looked for a place to sit. There was a folding chair pushed up to the table that held nothing worse than a stack of newspapers, so I went to move them onto the floor.

A headline on the top one caught my eye. Police Launch Probe into Upstate Killings. While Ness slapped a box of Lipton onto the counter, I sat down and began to read.

The tiny hamlet of Birch, New York, has lately been at the center of a statewide investigation, following three unsolved killings over the course of seven months …

“Lemon or cream?”

My head snapped up. Ness’s milky blue eyes pinned mine. “Er. Sugar?” How old would the cream be? How shriveled the lemon? Sugar, at least, was safe.

As Ness turned back to jiggle an open Domino bag over my cup, something made me rip the article from the newspaper’s front page and tuck it into my skirt pocket. When the tea was ready, Ness used her arm to sweep aside some of the junk on the kitchen table, and tipped the contents of a second folding chair onto the floor. She set a white-and-orange Zabar’s mug in front of me and sat.

“So,” she said. “What do you want?”

Not small talk, any more than she did, apparently. “I read the last post on your blog, and I’m hoping you can tell me how to find the Hazel Wood.”

“Hah!” She threw back her head and yelled it, like people do in books. “Tell me three good reasons you need to go. Three is a fortuitous number in fairy tales. But you already knew that.” She screwed her face up and glared at me.

“What if I gave you one really good one?”

The vacancy in Ness’s blue eyes was burning off like fog. “How old do I look to you?” she said. A non sequitur.

I lifted one shoulder. If she wanted to be flattered, she was asking the wrong girl. “I don’t know. Thirty … five?”

“I’m twenty-six years old.”

I wrapped my hands tight around my mug and looked at her. The gray threads in her hair, the delicate lines around her eyes. I’d heard of people’s hair going white from trauma, but this was something else.

“You got in, didn’t you?” My voice was hushed. “How did you do it?”

Ness leaned forward, letting her hair fall over her face. “We got in,” she said tonelessly, “because they let us in. We’d have looked forever if they hadn’t. They killed Martin, but they let me live. I still don’t know why.” Something came into her face, the analytical light she must’ve once lived by. “Why didn’t they kill me? Why did they let me go?”

“Who killed Martin?” I managed, leaning forward so the table’s edge pressed into my rib cage. “Was it the Hinterland?”

She peered at me, her voice settling into a pedantic singsong. “When you spend a night in a fairy hill, you come out and the world is seven years older. But when the Hazel Wood let me out, nothing had changed. Only one night had passed. Our car was still there. With Martin’s … his coffee cup. In the holder. The coffee was still drinkable. But I was changed. I’d aged in a night—seven years, if I had to guess.” She touched her fingers to faint crow’s-feet on each side. “Just look at me.”

I looked. It was all I could do for her.

“The point is, I wouldn’t help you get into that place if you had three hundred reasons,” she said fiercely.

“I told you, I only have one. They’ve got my mother. I have no choice. I know you think it’s crazy, but I have to go. Anything you can tell me might help.”

Ness shook her head convulsively. Then she said something in a small, singsong voice. “Look until the leaves turn red, sew the worlds up with thread. If your journey’s left undone, fear the rising of the sun.”

The words blew through me like a cold wind. Nursery rhymes always did that to me, even the harmless ones. This one didn’t seem harmless.

“That’s all I can tell you,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“What did you just tell me? That wasn’t anything. Why even let me come here?” A lighter clicked beneath the kindling that lived in my chest. “Why write back at all?”

She shrugged, the sharpness gone out of her eyes. Her mind was a blue sky with clouds dashing across it, clarity cut with a mental haze. She sucked in a breath and spoke all at once. “I thought it would change something. Seeing you. Wake me up again, make me care, or feel something. The night in the Hazel Wood was the longest night of my life. I saw things nobody should see. My friend was killed—I should be sad, right? But I’m not. I haven’t felt anything since that night. I’m just numb. Half of me is still there, trapped in that hell. While the rest of me is here, trapped in this room.”

She stood like it took the last of her strength to do it and went to the front door. I thought she’d open it, kick me out, but instead she leaned her back against it and looked at me.

“You might think you have a really good reason, but nothing could be worth this. Nothing could be worth feeling this way. I feel like a changeling wearing someone else’s skin. I can’t remember what I liked, or what I wanted, why I worked or left the house or did anything. It’s all gone.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I think whatever I used to be, it dropped through the binding. I wish the rest of me had gone with it.”

Then she did open the door. I stood on legs I wasn’t sure would support me.