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Chapter Sixteen

E ven though his back was stiff, Ben thought there were worse things in the world than waking up next to Sidney Lowell.

Yes, they were out in the middle of nowhere, and he desperately needed to find an accommodating clump of trees so he could take a leak, but still, he couldn’t help thinking how beautiful she was with the dawn light touching her velvet-smooth cheeks and catching golden glints in her long brown hair.

Interestingly, as sunlight spread over the clearing, the bioluminescent glow of the moss disappeared.

In fact, everything disappeared — the standing stones, the unusual flora. The only thing that remained were the ordinary trees that always grew in the forest, pines and birch and oaks and the occasional fir and sequoia.

Good thing they’d chosen a large pine tree to lean against while they tried to get some sleep, or they probably would have toppled right over.

Sidney must have realized that something about their surroundings had abruptly changed, because she opened her eyes and looked around them in shock.

“What just happened?”

“Everything disappeared as soon as the sun came up.”

Those big gray eyes widened even further. “How is that possible?”

He grinned, figuring that was the only real response he could make. “How is any of this possible?”

Her mouth twitched. “Okay, you have a point.”

Wincing a little, she placed her hands against the bare earth and pushed herself upward. Ben thought getting up was probably a good idea, especially since they no longer had the moss to cushion them.

“Do you think that’s what happened?” she asked. “That maybe my mother and grandmother were investigating the circle, and then the sun came up and it took them away?”

“Possibly,” Ben replied. “Do you know what time of day they disappeared?”

“No,” Sidney said, and her lips thinned a little — in frustration, he thought.

“I was at UC Davis when it all happened, so the only thing I have to go on is what’s in the police report.

People reported my mother missing when she didn’t show up to open the pet store at ten like she always did, and so a sheriff’s deputy went to the house to check on things the next day — they had some sort of excuse about having to wait twenty-four hours or whatever.

Anyway, the deputy said the front door wasn’t locked, but that wasn’t so strange.

Plenty of people around here don’t lock their doors. ”

No, probably not. Silver Hollow was just that kind of town.

“Nothing was missing from the house?”

“Not that the deputy could tell.” Sidney paused there, her brows drawing together as she seemed to work on gathering all the details about the situation that she could.

“But when I got here, I found a note waiting for me inside my grandmother’s latest journal.

She’d always told me to look there if something strange happened. ”

And having two women disappear into thin air could definitely be counted as “strange.”

“What did the note say?”

“Only that she and my mother were going into the woods to find out where all the creatures were coming from,” Sidney replied. “She said they wanted to clear up the mystery, and that the women of our family had been dealing with this long enough.”

While Ben could understand their motivations, they hadn’t achieved what they’d set out to accomplish. No, they’d only created another mystery to add to the original one.

“But nothing about when they actually went into the forest.”

Frustrated, Sidney shook her head. “Nothing at all. But if they’d known about this circle and knew that it only appeared after sunset, then they must have set out late in the afternoon.”

“And they never told you about it?”

“No.” She paused there and crossed her arms. Something about her looked small and forlorn right then, and he wished he could reach out to embrace her and offer her whatever comfort he could.

But even though she’d allowed him to touch her shoulder — and even though she’d slept with her head pillowed on him for half the night — he wasn’t sure whether she would be all right with that sort of intimacy.

Better to leave it alone for now. At least he could comfort himself that she appeared to have let go of most of her anger about the way he’d hidden so many things from her. That had to be a promising development, right?

“They took their backpacks with them, though,” she added.

“I thought you said the deputies didn’t notice anything missing from the house.”

Now the corners of her mouth turned upward slightly, and Ben was glad to see that hint of humor in her expression, which had been deadly serious just a moment earlier.

“Well, they didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, because all the valuables were still there — the electronics and the jewelry and my grandmother’s silver service for twelve.

But I knew that my mother and grandmother always kept their packs hanging on the hooks in the mudroom, since they never knew for sure when they’d get the impulse to go wandering.

” Sidney stopped there, sadness creeping across her delicate features once again.

“Or at least, when my grandmother did. My mother worked at the pet shop five and a half days a week, so she didn’t have as much free time.

It still sounded as if they went out together after work in the summer, or on Sundays. ”

“If they had their backpacks, then they would have had some supplies with them, right?” Ben asked then. Maybe it was a very small reason for hope, but better than nothing.

“Yes,” Sidney replied immediately. “Water and protein bars and trail mix and dried fruit, first aid kits, that kind of stuff. Still, it’s not the sort of thing that would keep them alive for three months.”

“If it’s even been three months where they are,” he said, and she lifted an eyebrow.

“What do you mean?”

Since he’d only just begun to formulate the theory, he made himself go slowly as he tried to explain his comment.

“I mean that if these creatures are slipping into this world through some sort of portal or rift in reality, then the place they come from may be operating on a completely different set of rules. Time could be different there — three months to us might only be three days to them, or maybe even three hours.”

Sidney stared at him, brows creasing again as she attempted to process the concept. “Like those science fiction books I read when I was a kid, where people would travel on spaceships near the speed of light and time would barely pass for them? Um…time dilation?”

Not for the first time, Ben reflected that there was a whole lot more to Sidney Lowell than met the eye.

Mostly, she seemed brisk and businesslike, but now he wondered if that was her way of coping with all the troubles the world had thrown at her and if there was a whimsical, imaginative side to her personality that people rarely saw.

“Exactly like that. It’s part of the reason why most popular sci-fi shows have stuff like warp drive or lightspeed or whatever.

If they had to follow Einstein’s rules of relativity, then it would be impossible to run around the galaxy and not have everyone planetside aging and dying while the heroes were out there trying to have adventures. ”

She brushed a lock of hair away from her face. Before they’d slept, she’d pulled it into a hasty braid and secured it with a hairband she’d stuffed in her pocket, but a few strands had slipped loose sometime during the night.

“I like that,” she said. “It makes the whole situation feel a little less awful, somehow.”

“Good,” he responded. “Now, let’s get back to town and see if we can figure out what’s going on with those letters on the standing stone.”

The hike back wasn’t as bad as he’d feared.

Yes, he was tired and had a massive crick in his neck, but with the compass app on his phone to guide them, they reached the edge of the forest about two hours after they’d left the clearing.

Now the sun was high enough in the sky that Ben thought he was getting almost hot in his jacket, so he unzipped it to let himself cool off.

And then there was Sidney’s house up ahead, looking big and substantial and very welcome.

“Do you want me to make you some coffee?” she asked.

Coffee sounded great, but what he really wanted was to get to the B&B so he could peel himself out of these clothes and take the hottest shower he could stand. “Rain check?” he responded. “I was thinking maybe we could get cleaned up and then meet for breakfast at Eliza’s.”

For a second or two, Sidney looked dubious. But then she said, “That would work. Her bacon and maple donuts are divine.”

While that sounded good, Ben thought he might want something a little more substantial, like steak and eggs. Then again, a donut might very well do for a kind of breakfast dessert.

“Meet you there in an hour?”

She gave him a weary smile.

“Sounds perfect.”

Belatedly, he realized he’d walked into the woods the night before and now he’d have to slog his way over to the B&B to get that shower, but she’d gone into the house and shut the door before he had a chance to ask her for a ride.

Well, he’d already walked God knows how many miles. Less than half of one shouldn’t be too big a deal.

Breakfast at the Silver Hollow Inn had already come and gone when he arrived at the bed-and-breakfast. Mabel Whitaker was taking an empty tray to the kitchen when Ben came in the front door, and she shot him a surprised look.

“You were out early today.”

“I went for a hike,” he replied. It was only the truth…even if he was leaving a whole lot out of his story.

“You missed breakfast,” she said, and now her tone bordered on disapproving.

He smiled, hoping he looked sufficiently contrite. “I know. But I’m meeting Sidney for breakfast.”

At once, Mabel’s expression brightened. “Oh, isn’t that nice. Then I’ll let you get ready.”