“For starters, yes. The sun’s going down, and I’ll be damned if anything happens to you.”
“Fine. But you better let me know the minute you hear anything.” I don’t like the idea of Joe facing this alone, not when we have no clue who this guy’s supporters are or why he’s back. Not when people keep disappearing and the wood is being poisoned with the one thing that can kill the Old Ones.
He nods. “Now, get home.”
“Be careful,” I say to his already fading form. I can’t lose him, too.
His smile turns to dust, ripped away by the wind. “Always.”
*
Mom pulls into the driveway as I exit the wood. She’s watching the faint line of orange on the horizon being smudged out by the darkness, and then her eyes find mine. Her whole body folds in, and though I can’t hear the sigh from here, I know it’s a big one.
She doesn’t need to know what happened in the wood. One more near-death experience for me would likely be one too many for her to handle. At best, she would have a complete nervous breakdown, and probably end up in a hospital from exhaustion or malnutrition by Christmas. At worst, she’d kidnap me and try to take me somewhere the wood can’t reach me, even though such a place doesn’t exist. So, I meet her on the driveway after doing my stretches with the brightest, nothing-bad-happened-while-you-were-gone smile I can muster. She grabs a box full of papers from the backseat.
“Sorry I’m late,” Mom says, placing the box on top of the trunk and reaching in for another. “I tried to get here before sunset, but there was traffic—”
“Mom. You’re allowed to have a life, you know. You don’t have to be here every time the sun goes down.”
She stops. “Yes, I do.”
I don’t argue with her.
“What are you doing out here anyway? I thought you were going to call your uncle.”
“Oh, I, uh, I was, but then I took a nap after lunch, and felt a lot better. I must have just overdone it last night.”
Mom looks skeptical. “Oh?”
“Yeah. I mean, it’s like you’re always telling me. I need to slow down before my body does it for me. I guess this was just one of those days.” It’s the you-told-me-so card I’ve been keeping in my back pocket, and I feel like a terrible daughter telling such a blatant lie, but it works.
“Well, you should still take it easy,” she says, mollified. “What do you say to a mother-daughter movie night?”
I grab the box on top of the trunk and try to think fast. Normally, I’d be all for a movie night, but I don’t want to leave Henry all alone in my room for God knows how long while he gets into God knows what. “Um, yeah, that sounds good, but I kind of promised Meredith I’d go to this bonfire thing tonight if I was feeling better.”
Really? Was that really the first thing I thought of? Were there really no other options?
“You were too sick to go to school, but you want to go to a bonfire?”
“I don’t want to go, but a bonfire next door with a bunch of drunk teenagers means a lot of foot traffic near the threshold.”
Mom looks off into the distance at Brian’s house. “You couldn’t just watch them from the house?”
Yeah, that was my original thought, before my fear of Mom finding Henry overrode my aversion to high school parties. “It’d be easier to keep an eye on them at the party. Besides, I know you really want me to socialize more outside of school. You know, be a normal teenager.”
Mom softens, and I have to fight the urge to wince. I’m so going to be paying out the you-know-what in karma for this.
“What time is this bonfire?”
“I’m not sure,” I say. “After the football game.”
“Are you going to that, too?”
“Not if I can help it.”
Mom arches a brow.
“I mean—I think I’m going to lie down after dinner and get a little more rest first,” I say. “Just to make sure I feel up to going out.”
“All right, but you owe me a mother-daughter movie night.”
“Deal.”
XXI
Henry is sitting at my desk, flipping through Lord of the Flies, when I slip into my room. He looks up at me, his brow furrowed. “These children are heathens.”
“That’s kind of the point,” I say. “Any luck in the attic?”
Henry sighs and sets the book on his lap. “Unfortunately, no, but I have not given up hope.”
“Still, we should come up with a backup plan, just in case. Even if we find a journal—which I highly doubt we will—there’s no guarantee there’ll be anything useful in it.”
“I’ll take that under advisement.” His tone is light, but I can tell by the set of his shoulders, the hardness of his jaw as he grits his teeth, that he’s worried. I want to comfort him, to put my arm around him and tell him everything will be all right. But I don’t know him well enough to touch him, and the truth is, I don’t know if everything will be all right, and while sometimes it feels like all I do anymore is lie, I don’t want to lie to him.
“Henry, something happened. In the wood.”
He bolts out of the chair and crosses the room to me. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine, but”—I take a deep breath—“Varo’s back.”
“Varo? The Old One who was banished?”
I nod. “I saw him. In the wood. Uncle Joe confirmed it was him. And whatever he’s up to, he didn’t like that I saw him.” I tell Henry how he clapped his hands together and changed day into night. How the wood turned on me. “If Joe hadn’t shown up when he did, I don’t know what would have happened.”
Henry pales. “If he’s the one behind all of this … If he tried to hurt you just for seeing him…” He swallows. “What did he do to my parents?”
“Hey.”
He doesn’t look at me.
Oh, to hell with not knowing him well enough. Tentatively, I reach for him, wrapping my arms around his shoulders and holding him against me. His body is tense at first, resistant, but I don’t let go. “We don’t know what happened to your parents, but there’s no reason right now to think the worst.”
Of course, I had the same thought. If they truly did disappear for knowing too much, the chance that Varo would let them live, given his track record, is slim. But I can’t let Henry lose hope yet. Partly because I couldn’t stand to see the same hollow look in his bright green eyes that I see in Mom’s every day, and partly because I can’t get the image of Dad’s name on Henry’s parents’ desk out of my head. If Dad’s somehow connected to all of this, I have to find out how, and I’m afraid that if I lose Henry now, I never will.
“Jumping to conclusions isn’t going to help us,” I continue, “and it certainly isn’t going to help them. We just need to stay the course, okay?”
He takes a deep breath and, finally, nods. “You’re right,” he agrees. “Of course you’re right.” But the blood still hasn’t returned to his cheeks.
I let go of him and take a step back, worrying my bottom lip between my teeth. “So, I know this is going to be the last thing you want to do right now, but we have to leave.”