Page 9 of Skalterra By Nightmare (The Skalterra Duology #1)

I acted instinctively, pulling down Riley’s flyer without questioning my mother. Then I hesitated, and the paper wrinkled in my grip.

“Why?”

I asked, and the phone line crackled as Mom sighed heavily into the receiver on her end.

“Just do it. It’s too much to explain right now, and I’m tired. But Keel Watch Harbor is a small, quiet town, and missing posters bring the wrong kind of people sniffing around.”

“The wrong kind of people?”

I scoffed.

“Like the kind of people who might find Riley?”

“Riley’s gone, Wren.”

Mom’s voice was hard and final. My stomach dipped. How could she be so certain from across the world, and after only a couple of days.

“He was a good kid, but if he’s missing, then—”

She cut off, and the silence that followed was strained.

“Mom?”

I prompted.

“Please.”

She was urgent now, and pleading.

“I’ll explain later, but I need you to take down those flyers. Your grandmother never should’ve let you go to put them up. She knows better.”

She spat out those last three words, angry and frustrated. I gulped and hoped I hadn’t landed Gams in hot water.

“She’s only trying to help,”

I mumbled.

“Listen to me. If the wrong people come snooping around Keel Watch Harbor, it could be the end of the town. Everything will be gone, including your grandmother’s entire livelihood.”

That didn’t make sense. Keel Watch Harbor was a peaceful place. There wasn’t anything dark or sinister hiding behind the bright storefronts. Everyone at Siobhan’s Tavern the night before had been so lovely and so normal.

“But that’s—”

“Wren. There will be no more Keel Watch Harbor. Your grandmother will have nothing. Take down the posters. Promise me.”

“I—”

“Promise me, or I’m coming home to do it myself.”

She’d already considered canceling the book tour after graduation. The waver in her voice told me she’d just as easily cancel it now.

“I’ll take them down,”

I promised. Riley’s crinkled face looked back at me from the paper in my hands, but I squashed the guilt that gnashed in my belly.

If anyone else had asked, I would’ve said no. Even if it had been Gams asking me to remove the posters, I probably would’ve left them up. But Mom was supposed to be light and gentle and unserious. If I had to sum her up in a single word, it would b.

“fun”. That wasn’t a bad thing. In fact, it was something I loved about her.

This dark tone and her new, serious edge scared me enough to fold up the poster and push it into the pocket of my hoodie.

“I’m serious, Wren,”

Mom said. The quiver of fear that laced her words felt out of place on the sunny marina. She’d only sounded like that once before, when she’d begged me to tell her what had happened when I’d gone to that party after graduation.

“Make sure those papers come down.”

I’d hoped the first phone call I’d had with my mother all week would’ve been more cheerful. It had at least started that way, but now I scanned the shops as I pocketed my phone. There was no way Sabrina and Liam wouldn’t continue to put the pictures up. I’d have to follow them and remove any they’d already posted.

My cheeks burned as I picked a shop at random and trudged inside.

Riley’s face stared at me from the register of a bakery. I was able to pull it down and run back to the sidewalk before the baker came out from the back kitchen.

The next shop was trickier. The old woman at the counter smiled at me with Riley’s poster on the wall behind her.

“Hi!”

I pushed as much fake cheeriness into my voice as I could muster.

“Sorry, my friends were just in here posting these, but there’s a mistake on them.”

I held up the poster I’d stolen from the bakery and forced a sheepish shrug.

“Oh, dear,”

the woman tutted, pulling the poster down to hand it to me.

“Come back with the new one. It makes my heart sick to think about that poor boy.”

I ran out before she could see the guilt on my face.

Maybe Mom was wrong to ask this of me, but she’d never been wrong before. She wouldn’t ask me to do something so horrible without good reason.

There was definitely something she wasn’t telling me, though. I wasn’t naive enough to let that go unnoticed. My resentment for it grew with each shop I ducked into, until I had a hearty stack of flyers in my hands. I shoved them into a trashcan, hoping Liam wouldn’t pass by and see them.

“Wren!”

Liam called from across the street. I jumped at his voice, but his kind smile told me he hadn’t seen me throwing away his hard work.

“Over here!”

I bounded across the road to meet with him and Sabrina. Their stack of flyers was considerably lighter than it had been when they’d set off without me. I tried to gauge my memory of how many they’d started with against how many I’d just shoved in the trash, hoping I got most, if not all of them.

“I already did the shops down that way.”

I jerked a thumb over my shoulder.

“I think we’ve papered the whole town.”

Liam cocked his head at me, and I tried to tone down my enthusiasm just a touch. I was overcompensating.

“That’s great.”

Sabrina smiled, flashing white teeth behind red lipstick that stood out against pale, smooth skin.

“On to the next town?”

I kept my smile in place. The next town. I’d have to chase after them all afternoon, pulling down posters when they weren’t looking.

I wondered if they knew what secrets Mom was so scared of being discovered. At least the drive gave me an excuse to poke for answers.

The car had heated up again in the sun, but I ignored the sweat beading under my hoodie as I leaned between the driver and passenger seat.

“Tell me about Keel Watch Harbor,”

I said, straight to the point. I’d never been a tactful person.

Sabrina laughed.

“You know just about everything there is to know already,”

she said.

“And to be honest, after you ran out of dinner last night, I wasn’t left with the impression that Keel Watch is somewhere you care about that much. ”

She pulled back onto the two-lane highway. Liam kept his window up this time, sitting instead with his head turned precariously, so I knew he was watching me without looking at me straight on.

“I care.”

I shrugged defensively.

“If I get into Von Leer, I might live with Gams during the school breaks. It’s closer to campus and the train station connects directly to the university town.”

“I think Keel Watch would like that.”

Sabrina smiled at me in the mirror.

“Everyone loves Ethel, but we all worry about her living alone like she does.”

“She’s got Jonquil,”

Liam reminded her.

“That old bag?”

Sabrina snorted, and I cracked a tentative smile. I wasn’t Jonquil’s only enemy.

“She’s a precious baby.”

Liam would be Team Jonquil.

“But, yes. Ethel needs more than a cat and ceramic chickens to keep her company.”

“Those chickens keep us all company.”

The car swerved as Sabrina leaned over to pull open the glove compartment. A purple chicken fell out into Liam’s lap.

“I think I’m nearing my tenth one.”

“Oof, she must not like you very much, then,”

Liam retorted.

“I’ve got twenty-two.”

I thought back to the cross-hatched chicken Gams had brought me earlier that day. It was the only chicken she’d given me, and suddenly I felt very much like Mom had robbed me of a happy, close-knit upbringing in Keel Watch Harbor.

I’d always thought her publishing career had been what dragged us away from her hometown and away from Gams, but after that phone call, I wondered if there was another reason.

“So everyone in Keel Watch is nice, then?”

I pressed.

“There’s no town weirdo lurking somewhere?”

Sabrina and Liam shared a bemused look.

“I guess Gladys is a bit overly enthusiastic about most things, and she likes to lurk in other people’s business,”

Sabrina offered.

“But she’s not a weirdo,”

Liam said with just a touch of defensiveness.

“No, the only weirdo in Keel Watch is that loser Liam Glass.”

Sabrina laughed as Liam struck a face.

Maybe this was the wrong way to go about it. Sabrina and Liam loved Keel Watch Harbor as far as I could tell. They’d never air out its dirty laundry.

“It’s a quiet town, isn’t it?”

I continued.

“Nice and peaceful, right?”

Liam cracked his window, and my ears popped.

“Last night at Siobhan’s was as wild as it gets.”

His brow furrowed in the mirror. Riley’s disappearance really was out of the ordinary then. So why was Mom so worked up about the missing posters?

The crumpled poster in my hoodie pocket crinkled as I adjusted in my seat. I could figure out Mom’s reasons later. For now, I had no reason to not believe her, and I didn’t want to give her a reason to cut her big European tour short. Besides, Riley hadn’t been gone long. He was probably fine. I wasn’t hurting anyone by taking the posters down.

We drove to two more towns, and I followed behind Liam and Sabrina, reversing their hard work and removing as many of the Riley flyers as possible. I was able to slip most of them into the trash, but a few joined the crumpled poster in my pocket, folded tightly enough that they wouldn’t crinkle with my every movement and give me away.

When Liam insisted on paying for my dinner in the last town, my guilt nearly brought a confession to my lips. I swallowed it, letting it fester in my stomach instead. I picked at the skin around my thumbnails to keep from pulling out any hair or eyelashes. Skin healed much faster than hair grew.

I stayed quiet through our dinner of burgers and fries. Not only did I feel guilty about sabotaging all our efforts this afternoon, but it was hard not to feel like a third wheel with Liam and Sabrina.

It wasn’t that they seemed romantically involved. Far from it. No, they were more like siblings. They ate the food on each other’s plates without asking, and each time Liam’s smile faded as thoughts of Riley returned, Sabrina knew all the right things to say to distract him again.

I wondered if either of them had actual siblings, or if this was it. I had neither biological relatives or friends close enough to consider family, and usually this was where I’d let jealousy get the better of me. Instead, I felt something like growing curiosity. They’d let me tag along on their mission today. That had to mean something. As annoying as Liam was, maybe he wouldn’t be so bad if we were friends.

Of course, if they found out I actively worked against the fight to find Riley, any chance at friendship would be over, so maybe it was best to not get my hopes up.

The drive home was long, and the sun was setting over the ocean horizon. I leaned my head against the car window, resenting Mom, resenting Riley, resenting what I’d done today, but hoping it had been the right thing to do, and that it would make sense after Mom explained.

I’d been so worked up over the fliers, that I had forgotten to be worried about the sound of Galahad’s voice in my head. Maybe I’d killed the Grimguard after all. Or maybe it had been just a dream.

I drifted to sleep to the sound of the sedan rumbling down the highway, not worried about where I might wake up.