Page 92 of Half the Summer's Night

I want to strangle her. I’m about to, in fact, when the scent hits me. Coppery. Sweet.

Blood.

Abi’sblood.

“No,” I gasp out, throwing the useless gun aside. As dark as it is out here, I’ve always been able to see at night. Just like Charlotte, I suppose.

And I see it now: a smear against the tree trunk. I press my fingers into it, and they come away wet. I can both see the red of Abi’s blood and smell the fear in it. The air buzzes around me, hot and unforgiving. My eyes are wet like my fingers. I blink, and a tear falls.

I wipe it away before Charlotte can see.

“Rowan,” she says softly, putting her hand on my shoulder.

“Get the fuck off me!” I whirl around on her, throwing out my arm to hit her. She catches me by the wrist, unbothered, and wrenches me away. “This is your fucking fault! I told you I needed to be here before dark, and you?—”

“I know,” she says, which brings me up short. “I’m sorry. Truly. I should have brought you back earlier, okay? But we can find her.” She swallows. “Youcan find her. That blood is fresh, which means they can’t be far.”

My heart races. The wind blows through the oak tree and stirs around Abi’s scent.

A trail, I think suddenly. How many times have I tracked prey through the night, waiting for them to step into my trap?

Charlotte’s staring at me, grim and determined. I think she knows what I’m thinking.

“How do I do it?” I say. “Show me how to fucking do it.”

“You already know how to do it,” she says. “Rowan, we’re called Hunters for a reason.”

I take a deep breath, desperately trying to latch onto Abi’s scent.

“It’s time for us to go hunting.”

33

ABI

All I can feel is a constant, throbbing pain in my head.

I blink my eyes open, trying to make sense of my surroundings. They’re a dark blur. Everything’s dark. The last thing I remember?—

The oak tree. Wet grass. Sea wind.

A man with a familiar voice, his face covered by a stocking.

I shriek and try to sit up, but I’m stopped short by my wrists, which are pinned in place above my head. No, not pinned. I’m tied down by thick, rough ropes, one around each wrist.

I slump down. I’m on a mattress, I think. A thin, lumpy mattress. I’m inside. I can tell that much. There’s a window across from me that’s covered in a thick but transparent plastic tarp, enough to let in some yellow light from outside. It’s bright enough that I can make out the edges of the room. The surrounding walls seem unfinished. I can see bare beams, the occasional tangle of wiring.

I twist against my bindings, trying to push myself up by shoving my feet against the mattress for leverage. It works, although I bang my head against the wall behind me. A finished wall, I think, and I manage to twist around to look at it.

Itisfinished. It’s also covered in overlapping sheets of cheap printer paper, each with a photograph on it. For a moment, I can’t make out what I’m looking at. Just blobs of light and darkness. But then one of the images comes into focus?—

It’s a blonde woman, stretched out naked on a pale mattress, her arms tied to hooks in the wall above her, her face twisted in fear.

Ms. Staunton.

I scream and jerk on the ropes, scraping them against the printed photographs. One of them comes detached and floats down and lands beside me. It’s a close-up of a woman’s face, her eyes red from crying, her lips smeared with a pale, creamy liquid. I can’t tell who it is, if it’s Heather Staunton or Olivia Pearce or someone else. All I know is I can’t look at it, and I flop my body around until the picture crumples beneath me.

I slump down, my chest heaving. Panic courses through me like a riptide.