My feet lurch forward, and a sob rips through me that startles him awake. He is OK. He’s alive. Still with me.
Concern creases his features in an instant, his eyes straying from my tears to my elbow to the warm trickle I feel leaking down my knee.
“What happened?” he asks.
“We have—” I’m beyond breathless. Forcing words out in chunks while I scan the trees for danger. “Go. Have to go.” Another shaky breath, my good hand tugging at his shirt. “Mr. Walker.”
His eyes go wide. “Mr. Walker’s here?”
“Yes.” I touch his arm, tears dripping off my chin. I’m crying? When did that happen? It doesn’t matter. I can’t talk. Can’t think, so I’ll explain while we go. I pull him again. Trucks weigh less than Lucas. Mountains maybe. “It’s not him. Help’s coming, but—”
But we need to go. We need to go before we are found.
Thankfully, Lucas doesn’t require much explaining. He scoots around, grabbing the trunk of the tree. He groans, and I push him up like a piece of furniture, using shoulders and knees and urging him off the ground.
He bumps his bad shoulder and lets out a cry that cleaves my insides in two. Lucas slumps against the tree, and I stroke his back, still watching. I want to apologize, want to tell him what I know, but I am choked on terror and tears, and we just need to go. If we’re on the quad, we are fast. We can run.
I pull him off the tree, and he swallows down most of the next groan, eyes drifting as he forces himself through one step and then another. He stops all of a sudden, pale face going paler, until he’s sheet white.
“Do you have the keys?” he asks.
“What keys?” I follow his gaze to the quad, and there are no keys in the ignition. Did I pocket them? God, how could I not know this? How could I flake out about this?
I pat my pockets, front and back, and swear, digging in each one to be sure, but I don’t have the keys. I don’t remember taking them out of the quad. I search the ground and look around. Nothing.
“Oh my God, Lucas. I left them in the quad. They should be there.”
“It’s OK,” he says. “Just breathe.”
Oh, I’m breathing all right. I’m gulping air so fast and hard that my cheeks feel fuzzy and my vision is graying at the edges. I reach for a tree and slow down.
I just need to think. The keys have to be here. I just need to open my eyes and look. I take a slow breath, and something shuffles ahead of me in the trees.
Wait.
My eyes pop open, and Lucas shifts behind me. He’s behind me.
“I saw something up there,” I whisper.
Lucas goes stone-still, and we both search the trees beyond the quad. The rain is falling harder now, heavy drops plopping into my hair, onto my shoulders. Another shuffle, and my eyes catch on a shadow.
There’s a flicker of movement behind the quad. The jangling sound of keys that sends my heart into freefall.
My face goes cold as the shadow emerges, stretching into an arm. A hand. My throat cinches shut as fingers wrap around the trunk of a baby maple. I catch a glimpse of purple nails and one charred, bloody stump.
A stump where Ms. Brighton’s finger should be.
Chapter 32
“It’s her,” I say, still breathless. Panting out every word. “Ms. Brighton is Hannah’s stepsister. She did this to us.”
Ms. Brighton’s mud-dyed shirt is stained with things I can’t look at. Her smile twists, and my head swims. Spins.
“Do you see how the forest brings the rain again?” she asks. “It was my sacrifices. I pledged my devotion, and look what the forest gave me.”
It’s a little kid voice, shrill with delight. Like the one I heard in the valley. God, it’s really her. Even after reading Ms. Brighton’s name on Hannah’s memorial card, I couldn’t quite swallow this. Now I have no choice, and the truth is going down like fishhooks.
“Your finger,” I say. “That’s a sacrifice?”
She inclines her head. “And the deer.”
“You’re alive,” Lucas says, a bit of wonder in his face.
I bump my back into him to hold him away from her because he doesn’t know. He hasn’t put all the pieces together yet, but I have. Lucas and Madison didn’t see Ms. Brighton’s body, and neither did we. She killed a deer and skinned it. That’s what we saw.
Lucas moves, and I snag his arm to hold him back. She is not here to save us.
“I can’t believe you’re alive,” he says again, obviously confused. He’s probably in shock.
“I’m full of lives,” she says. “We are all full of lives. Do you feel yours now? The past stays with us, even when we wish it would go.”
She scowls and is transformed. Her quirky crystal earrings dangle like broken teeth. The streaks on her hand-dyed shirt look more like blood than earth, and that mouth that once smiled so easily now gapes like a maw.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Lucas asks. He shifts on his feet, tries to move past me.