“Are you a food cart type of girl? Want to get fish tacos and crepes?”
Chin, left to right.
“Well, what do you want, then?”
“I can’t go to dinner with you.”
“All right, we’ll go to a movie.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. I can’t.”
This was the first time a girl had ever told me no. I didn’t know how to handle it, honestly.
“You can’t go . . . or you won’t go?” I sounded annoyed and kind of pissed.
Everything was really tense all of a sudden.
We both just stared at the sky for a bit, not talking. It was starting to turn pink and orange and purple.
Sunset.
I felt her jerk suddenly, her shoulder snapping against mine. She stood up.
“I have to leave.”
“All right. I’ll walk you home.” It was a good three miles back to town, even with the shortcuts I’d honed through the years.
She shook her head again.
“Look, I’m not trying to hit on you, since I can see you’re not interested, somehow. But the Hush Woods are dangerous at night. Let me walk you home.”
“I am home,” she said.
And just at that second, the setting sun blazed up, right in my face, and blinded me. I rubbed my eyes. When I opened them, she was gone.
It was usually easy for me to forget about girls. Far too easy. I had a lot of distractions. But I couldn’t stop thinking about Indigo Beau after I saw her in the woods. She’d crawled into my brain, and I couldn’t get her out.
I expected to see her around town the next few days. Valois is small, small enough that eventually you run into people. I asked around about her at the coffee shops and some of the restaurants, to see if anyone knew where she lived, but that went nowhere. I even spent a few hours hanging out in the downtown library to see if she’d come in, looking for more books on wolves.
Nothing.
So I went back to the Hush Woods. I waited until evening, right before dusk . . . and— I found her reading in the glen, sitting in the ferns, just like before.
She didn’t look surprised to see me.
I sat down next to her, and we talked.
We talked about our siblings. She had four sisters to my three brothers. We talked about books and wolves and trees and places I’d been and places she wanted to see.
The sun dipped lower, and Indigo heard the witch screams again. I held her this time, and she let me.
I went back the next night. And the next. Night after night. Afterward, she never let me walk her home. She’d just disappear between one breath and the next. I’d close my eyes for a second, and when I’d open them, she’d be gone.
Someday she would trust me enough to let me in on all her secrets.
On the seventh night, I kissed her. Plump, warm lips sliding into mine. I lifted her hair with the back of my hand and kissed her neck. She opened the front of my shirt and kissed my collarbone. I groaned, and she grabbed my hair in her fists.
I tried to warn Indigo about the Beast again. I tried to get her to meet me in town instead of the Hush Woods. But she’d only shake her head and smile kind of sadly.
Autumn crept into winter. During the day, I hunted buck and antelope and mule deer with my younger brothers, arrows cutting through air, into flesh, bringing moans and blood. I spent a lot of nights roaring drunk at the Valois Watering Hole, beating up anyone stupid enough to challenge me. I even tried to fight some emaciated hipsters once, with their tight jeans and stupid beards and pretentious talk about small-batch microbrews, but they scuttled away before I could throw a punch.
Philippe was the first to call me out on it. He told Jean George and Luc I was meeting a girl in the woods—how he’d figured it out I never knew. He told them I was in love. They teased me and my temper sparked, and the four of us ended up breaking two mirrors, a glass table, and my mother’s damn rococo cupid statue. Brahm Valois the First took away my credit cards and my black BMW.
And yet . . . I hardly cared.
I was in love. Philippe was right about that.
I was in love with Indigo Beau, and life could have gone on like this forever and ever . . .
And then they found the body.
A girl, fourteen. Soccer player, straight-A student, and daughter of Marie and Jon Jasper, owners of the best French bakery in town. Some tourist hikers stumbled upon the corpse at the edge of the Hush Woods. Her heart had been ripped out.
Indigo Beau lived in the Hush Woods, and the Beast was on the prowl.
I felt sick at the thought of her in that forest with it.
Sick.
It had been almost fifteen years since the Beast had killed someone in the Hush Woods. No one had believed the Bellerose twins when they’d said it was back.
But they would have believed me.
I should have told someone.
The people of Valois had tried to kill the Beast in the past. Of course they had. But it was always too clever, too fast, too cunning. Generation after generation and still the Beast lived.
But now it would be different.
Now they had me.
I was the best tracker in Valois, next to my father. I wouldn’t let the Beast go this time.
I would track it, hunt it down, put an arrow through its heart. I’d free my town from this curse.
I was born for this.
I’d become the town hero twice over. I’d march back into Valois, dragging the Beast’s body behind me. I’d save Indigo Beau from the Hush Woods Beast, and we’d live happily ever after.
This is what will happen.
I could feel it in my bones.
I went to Hush Witch Glen at sunset, but Indigo wasn’t there. I waited over an hour, but she never came.
I was starting to get worried. Really, really worried.
The moon rose high and fat in the sky.
I went back to town and grabbed my cloak and my recurve bow. Yes, I own a black wool cloak. Philippe tried to make fun of me for it once, and I broke his arm.
I strode past the local Beast hunters gathering in the town square, mapping out their attack. They’d never find the monster.
It would come down to me, and me alone.
It had rained the night before, and I took it as a sign. The mud was going to help me fulfill my destiny.
I found the tracks near midnight. Four toes, four claws. Just like a wolf. I stretched out my fingers next to the print. It was the size of my hand.
The wind had a spooky feel to it, sharp and cold, bite and teeth. But it was more than that, too. I thought for a second I could hear voices. No . . . screams. Was this what Indigo kept hearing? Was this the cry of the hanged women?
If there were ghosts in these woods, then they’d have it in for a Valois, after what my ancestor had done.
The screams seemed to float around me like feathers falling from the sky. Goose bumps rippled down my arms and down my spine.
That was when the doubt set in.
Maybe I wouldn’t kill the Beast.
Maybe it would kill me.
I’d never felt doubt before. The Valois men didn’t feel doubt. We didn’t even know what it was.