Page 1 of Just Right (The Beasts of Blackmoor #3)

F our years ago, my best friend disappeared.

It was during a backpacking trip to Europe that she’d been planning for most of our twenties.

At twenty-eight, she finally decided to go for it.

Charlotte quit her job, put all of her savings into travel and everything she would need for it, and gave me a hug, promising that she’d be back by the end of the summer.

By mid-September, I’d realized something was wrong. By October, I started to worry. By November, I tried to track her steps, but it was as if she’d vanished. Charlotte Linden had ceased to exist following a trip she took specifically to a small town on the edge of Germany.

Like me, Char didn’t have any family. It’s one thing that bonded us; the other being the super original nicknames we got as kids for our hair.

With hair as deep and rich as the shade of a ruby, she was Red.

Me? Thanks to my bouncy golden curls, I became Goldie.

Somehow we formed our own family, the two of us, even when we lived states apart or when Char insisted on taking her trip alone.

That was four years ago, and it’s been just as long that I’ve been looking for some sort of closure about what happened to her.

My friend is as good as a ghost. She has no online presence, and the phone number she had before she disappeared was reassigned last December; a fact I discovered when I made my umpteenth call, hoping she’d answer, and ended up wishing a stranger a merry Christmas.

As far as I know, she never returned to her apartment, and her whole life in Massachusetts was put on pause the summer she left.

Mine slowed to a crawl as loneliness set in, walking hand-in-hand with continued concern.

And then, when I’d slowly begun to accept that she either couldn’t be found or didn’t want to be, a random search of one of her old screen names—one I’d forgotten before it seemed to pop back into my brain—brought me to a website that took me to message board that led me to a discussion about that same small village in Germany?—

Blackmoor.

It’s a myth.

A legend.

A fairytale .

At least, that’s what the anonymous posters on that strange message board believed.

That, in the forest of Blackmoor, if you pledge to stay three days inside of the trees, you can get what you most want.

A wish, that’s how they reverentially referred to it.

Sacrifice everything… risk it all… and you could walk out of the woods with a ticket to the one thing you desire, plus enough cash to make it worthwhile.

Me? I wanted to know what happened to Charlotte.

And considering her username was one of the most insistent posters on the board that this wasn’t just a fantasy, but that the forest of Blackmoor was real…

considering that she made her intentions clear starting seven years ago that she would petition the town council to enter and face its beasts… I decided to go on a trip myself.

Of course, it wasn’t as easy as I make it sound. It took a year, a good chunk of my savings, and requesting leave from my job at a New York publishing house to be able to leave on my ‘European vacation’, all of that without actually believing that:

I’d actually find out what happened to Charlotte; and

Anything I read in those years-old online messages could possibly be legitimate.

Tell that to the woman who spent the last four hours interviewing me to see if the Blackmoor council would allow me to enter the woods, hoping to earn my wish. Her name is Sandy—or that’s what she told me it was—and she started the conversation by asking me if I believed in monsters.

Monsters .

There’s a reason the denizens inside those woods are referred to as the beasts of Blackmoor.

When the council say ‘sacrifice’ and ‘risk’, they mean it.

Before I reached this level of a final interview, only one of two women staying in the small town’s only hostel who were given the opportunity to even request stepping foot into the imposing forest, I had been warned against pursuing this by nearly every local I met.

Because here there be monsters, and if I decide to step foot inside of the trees, I’m agreeing to the idea that they might see a thirty-two-year-old mid-sized blonde who is desperate enough to chase her old friend into a mythical forest and decide… hmm. Lunch .

Shit. I’m not afraid. I stopped being worried when, on the off-chance, I asked the elderly taxi driver—who was the sole car that agreed to take me from the small airport all the way to the village of Blackmoor—whether he remembered once bringing a determined redhead this way, and he did .

At the very least, Charlotte was here, and all I’ve been told is that, if I want to know what happened after she agreed to face the forest, I have to do the same myself.

Three days. That’s how it works. You promise that you’ll stay for three days…

So why does the contract that I’m signing say three weeks ?

Sandy is waiting expectantly for me to scribble my signature at the bottom of the two-foot long sheaf of aged parchment.

Despite the ancient look of the paper—on purpose, I’d bet, considering how everything in the town seems so old and, well, like out of a fairytale—the words are all printed.

I was able to read it easily, though she assured me that wasn’t necessary, but I’ve done my fair share of contracts at work.

Only a sucker signs without knowing what they’re signing for, and though I might be searching for hope in the last place I can find it—or Charlotte—I’m no sucker.

I read every line, using the pen to circle the word weeks .

I glance over at the pleasant-faced woman in her mid-fifties. Like me, she’s blonde, even if her hair is paler than my more golden color. Her hair is twisted up and out of her matronly face, though there’s something about her shrewd dark eyes that has me clearing my throat.

Her answering smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “Yes, dear?”

I use the point of the pen to tap on the paper. “Um. Sorry, but I just noticed something… I went through the last week of filling out forms, talking to the entire council… and then the interview with you today… I thought I was agreeing to three days. This says ‘weeks’ here.”

She doesn’t even look at the contract. “Is that a problem?”

Is it?

With all of the vacation time I’ve racked up since I first interned at my company before being hired on full-time at nineteen, I was approved for a month’s leave.

I thought I would need it to recover from the heartbreak of another failed search for Charlotte, but if she did go into the forest…

if there’s a chance someone in there might know where she is or what happened to her…

if I need to survive three weeks in there to earn a wish that could give me that closure…

three weeks. Can I really survive a magical forest for three weeks?

I believe in magic. At least, I believe that there are things out there that I can’t explain, or that I don’t understand. Aliens or monsters… the idea that there’s more to the world than the ordinary humdrum existence we all seem to lead was something else that Charlotte and I had in common.

If there was a chance to prove it, and maybe even get a wish out of it? I have no doubt in my mind that my best friend would eagerly walk into a ‘mythical’ forest and try her best against any sort of beast or monster that called it home.

The question is: will I?

Feeling a little nervous, and not so sure why, I lick my lips. My tongue is dry, and I’m wishing that I’d grabbed one of the water bottles from my room before I met Sandy at the town hall for today’s final interview.

I still haven’t signed. I was actually a little surprised when Sandy finished the interview by presenting me with the contract in the first place even if that’s what I wanted, but putting some legalese into something that’s supposed to be so fantastical? It just seemed… odd.

The sudden bait-and-switch doesn’t make it any better.

“I didn’t bring enough supplies with me for three weeks,” I admit at last.

She taps a lower paragraph with her fingertip. “You won’t be allowed to enter the forest without anything more than the dress provided for you. So even if you had other items from the outside world, the council wouldn’t allow them in Blackmoor.”

Blackmoor… it didn’t take long for me to realize that this isn’t just a small European village full of people with thick accents who, luckily, speak fluent English. They’re the guardians to this forest, and the forest itself is Blackmoor.

And I’m walking into a supposedly monster-infested woods with nothing ? For three weeks ?

“What do I eat?” I ask. “Or drink?” I thought I would at least be able to pack a bag for three days… “I’ll never survive three weeks.”

“A resourceful girl like you, Ms. Holloway… I think you would. The forest provides, after all. It welcomes its challengers. But if you’d prefer to refuse…” Sandy’s eyes darken notably as she purses her lips. “Jemma’s hair isn’t quite as gold as yours, but she might work in a pinch.”

Jemma. I’m not sure why the council seem so obsessed with finding a blonde, but I noticed that my fellow petitioner looked enough like me that it was a little eerie.

She came from California, I’m from New Jersey, but apart from her summer tan setting her apart from my pasty white skin during these last few dreary September days, we could pass for sisters.

We’ve met for dinner at the hostel a couple of times, each of us keeping the reason we’re here close to our chest. The only thing I can say is that Jemma is one hundred percent convinced that earning a wish… that’s true. It’s real.

And she wants it.

But you know what? I want it more. It looks like, of the two of us, I’m the one that got the first nod since every council member I’ve spoken to after my arrival has made it clear that, no matter how many people find their way to Blackmoor at a given moment, they only allow one petitioner in (if any).

I got picked, but if I don’t agree to spending twenty-one days inside instead of just the three, everything I’ve done so far was for nothing.

The research. The plane tickets. The countless hours online, poring over the messages, trying to reach a Charlotte that doesn’t exist anymore.

Figuring out how to make it to the small town in the first place, then jumping through every hoop the village council put in front of me to be given the chance to enter the forest… no.

I’ll do it. For more than twenty years, Charlotte was there for me. Even if the last thing she did was walk into Blackmoor, I owe it to her to find out what she wanted so desperately, she’d give up her life for it.

And if I can’t? Then at least I’ll know I tried, and is there anything else I can ask for?

I don’t have any living family. I’ve jumped from relationship to relationship, never finding someone that felt just right to me.

There was always something wrong. Too cocky, too loud, too shy, too rough…

I never wanted to think I was picky, but when I ended every single relationship because of some flaw…

who knows? Maybe I just can’t be satisfied.

Or maybe I’ve had so much loss in my thirty-two years that I’m guarded against anything less than forever.

For me, Charlotte was that one constant in my life. I loved her like a sister, and I just can’t accept that she disappeared. I tried, but I couldn’t, and this is the last lead that I have, fantastical as it is.

Let Jemma fight for her wish instead of me?

Sorry, girl.

I scrawl my legal name— Aurelia Holloway— onto the line at the bottom of the contract.

There. I signed away the next twenty-one days, for better or for worse.

Let’s just hope that I didn’t sign away my life with it.