The Hazel Wood (The Hazel Wood #1)(50)

The old men pushed past us, sour-smelling and laughing at some granddad joke we hadn’t heard. The driver gave me a hard look as I left the bus. I glared at him, wondering suddenly if he was Hinterland. If he’d done something to the radio. He wasn’t, I decided. He hadn’t.

Behind me, Finch held back. “What’s your next stop?” I heard him ask, as I stepped out onto the pavement. “You turning right around and going back?”

“You bet. But you can’t chicken out on hiking now, son.” The driver leaned forward to peer at me. “Your girlfriend doesn’t look like she’d take it quietly. Just get out of those woods by dark, alright?”

Finch turned, his shoulders raised high, and wouldn’t look at me as he walked down the steps.

“What was that?” I asked.

Finch stared past me, to where the old men were filing into the bait shop. He started to say something, but shrugged instead.

I turned away. If he was going through some existential fan dilemma, I wanted no part of it. I still had to figure out how to shake him before we got too close to the Hazel Wood.

Through the trees at the back of the lot, I could see the hard glitter of water. It made me thirsty. “Want to find a convenience store before we walk to Birch?” I started, turning, then cut off. Finch was standing behind me, too close, eyes wide and jaw set. I startled away from him.

“Damn it,” I said, my heart hopscotching. “What?”

He smiled at me. He smiled like a dog who doesn’t want to get kicked but will take it if he is. “I messed up.”

Adrenaline made my stomach kick and my eyes go dry. “What do you mean?”

“We need to walk—we need to get to the highway.” His voice was high and too fast as he stared at the pavement where the fisherman’s bus no longer was. “Maybe we can hitch. We need to … if we can just get back to the city. I’ll explain on the way. I should’ve explained last night.”

“Explain what?” I planted my feet on the pavement, gripped his arm. “We’re standing here till you tell me.”

“I made a promise,” he said. “But I don’t want to keep it.”

“You need to stop threatening not to take me to the Hazel Wood. At this point I can find it on my own.”

“Not a promise to you,” he said. “A promise to them.”

Them. The word hit me like a blackjack. “What. The fuck. Are you talking about?” I grabbed the front of his jacket.

“I thought … I thought it might help you.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It is. You don’t understand yet. They told me not to tell you…”

“Tell me what? Who told you not to tell me what?”

“I can’t.” He looked around nervously, a tremor in his jaw making his teeth clatter. “They’re probably listening right now. We need to go.”

“Just tell me. No riddles, no excuses.”

He shrugged, the gesture heavy with disgust. “I wanted my life to change. I wanted for it to be real. And it is. But I don’t think this is worth it.”

It struck me, suddenly, that no amount of bottomless funds should’ve been enough to convince me to lead an Althea Proserpine fan to the Hazel Wood. It struck me, too, that I didn’t know that much about Finch.

I wrestled back my rage and sudden fear, trying to make my voice reasonable. “If you don’t tell me what you did, I can’t help you fix it.”

“Oh, no,” he said, the words bottomless and bleak. “They’re already here.”

His eyes flicked past me, just as I registered the quiet purr of an idling car. I turned and had time to see its bright paint job and the figure at the wheel—wait, there were two of them, someone was in the passenger seat—before Finch yanked me behind him, sending a hot pain through my shoulder.

“Go,” Finch said, his voice ragged. “Run!”

Off balance, I stumbled to the dirt.

The car exhaled heat like an animal from its yellow sides. It was the cab I’d seen creeping on me outside of Whitechapel. And there was its dark-haired driver, the boy from the diner. He pushed the hair from his face with a gloved hand.

His passenger stepped onto the gravel, staring at me with lantern eyes. It was Twice-Killed Katherine. She wore the same black gloves the boy did.

I froze. I knew if I moved, I would give myself away—a shake in my knees, or my voice.

“I’m sorry,” Finch was saying. “I’m sorry. They just said to get you to the Hazel Wood. That’s all! You were going anyway, you asked for my help…”

“Don’t pretend this was for me. Since when? Since when were you working for them?”

The boy was watching us, amused. Katherine looked like she couldn’t hear us at all.

“Working for them? No, it wasn’t…”

“Since when?”

“Since the bookseller’s,” he said, small. “They talked to me while you were passed out. They kept you … they kept you under a little longer.”

“Thank you for your service, Ellery Finch,” the dark-haired boy said. “Ready for your reward?”

“No,” Finch said. His dark skin looked bloodless. “I don’t want it.”