The Hazel Wood (The Hazel Wood #1)(53)

I looked away from her drawn-tight face, watching our headlights slice through fog. “Books. Did you like books?”

Her shoulders dropped a little. “I did. I liked to read everything but fairy tales.” She sighed, sounding older than salt and way too young to be a mother, all at once. “Hours to go, love. Get you some sleep.”

My eyelids dropped like she’d anchored them with stones. I was falling asleep, or waking up, or some combination of the two. I wasn’t in the car with my mother, I was somewhere else, and she was very far away. My mind clawed its way to consciousness.

“Wake up.”

The sun shone red through my eyelids. I opened them a fraction and cringed. It was too bright. A gloved hand slapped my face, once, twice, three times. The third was a crack that made my ears ring, and my eyes snapped open wide.

I was in the back seat of a car, and it was night. Twice-Killed Katherine crouched over me, shining a Maglite in my face. Her teeth were small and milky blue, like baby teeth.

I could’ve tried to hurt her, but I didn’t. Finch’s death lay like a heavy stone on my chest. I saw him go in flashes, when I blinked and when I didn’t. The careless slice of the knife, the wanting eyes. The relentless crumple to earth.

Katherine hung over me a moment longer, her breath stinking of week-old roses. “He’d still be alive,” she whispered in my ear, “if you’d just done it.” She scrambled backward like a spider, tugging me with one gloved hand.

I followed mutely. I felt every breath and the ache of my hip where I must’ve banged it. My mouth tasted like dead coffee and the air smelled prickling and green and my head ached like a hangover and my skin felt electrified. I was here, aching and alive, while Finch bled out somewhere in the Hinterland.

“What’ll you do with his body?” My voice guttered and clogged.

Katherine slammed the car door, a gunshot sound I flinched from. She looked at my face like it was something she was trying to place. A puzzle piece that wouldn’t fit anywhere.

“Don’t waste your worry,” she said. “You’re here.”

I looked around wildly—for the Hazel Wood, a gate, a road. Anything. All I saw were trees, pressing in around a clearing barely big enough for the car. I couldn’t see where we’d come from, or how we’d get out. “I’m where?” I asked, my voice cracked. Thirst rose up in me again, more desperate this time.

“You’re in the Halfway Wood,” Katherine said. “And here you’ll wander. Till death is preferable, and you choose it.”

She grabbed my arm and flung me in a wide half-circle, like we were at a square dance. I stumbled forward a few yards and down to my knees. By the time I struggled up, she was in the cab. I lunged at the door and was thrown back as it rocketed into a wall of trees. They parted obligingly, then sealed back into place as neatly as a curtain.

I turned slowly in place, alone in a clearing in the deep dark woods.

That was when I entered a fairy tale.





21


The clearing I stood in was perfectly circular. I could see that once the car was gone. Something about the trees was off, and it took me a moment to place it—they didn’t rustle in time with each other, or with the mild breeze that made my chapped lips tingle, but one by one. The way they shook their heads and shushed their leaves convinced me they were having a conversation.

My body shook with sorrow, with rage—rage at Finch’s killers, and rage at Finch for his stupidity.

But he was dead. My body hadn’t caught up with my mind.

I lurched blindly from the clearing, scraping past a stunted dogwood tree. Its heart-shaped blossoms trailed velvet tongues along my neck. I shuddered and hurried my step, trying to outrun the thought that circled my mind like a hangman’s rope: What if I wandered this place for one night, like Ness, only to be ejected a day later, and seven years older?

I saw Finch’s face every time I closed my eyes. The walls of my mind were painted with his blood. It stained my palms and stiffened the sleeves of my sweatshirt.

“It’s okay,” I whispered to myself. “It’s okay.” I counted to ten and did a few yoga breaths. Red ran down Finch’s shirt. I couldn’t stop it I couldn’t stop it I couldn’t— “Stop it. I couldn’t stop it.” I made a sound I didn’t recognize, like a laugh and a wail at once, and it scared me quiet. I slapped my own face the way Ella used to when she was too tired to drive.

“It’s over. Nothing to stop. It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.” Nonsense words. Was this what going insane felt like? Was I really in the woods, or was I still dreaming in the back seat of my abductor’s car, going somewhere even worse?

A tree flung a stinging branch of green buds across my cheek. The hurt woke me up, and for a while all I could focus on was shielding my face from branches, and trying not to trip over hidden things in the dark. The air was so close and dense among the leaves it felt like the trees were breathing on my skin.

He’d still be alive. If you’d just done it. Katherine’s whisper unfolded from empty air. I slapped at it like a mosquito and sped up, welcoming the pain of a skinned knee and scratched palms, and the secret rustle of creatures that drowned out anything else.

Finally I broke free onto a creek bank. I sucked in mouthfuls of cool, wet air, propping myself against a willow tree whose branches poured themselves into the water a few yards from my feet.