Page 12 of Sweet Silver Bells

CHAPTER NINE.

“ Y our tree,” Olivia’s ethereal yet eerie voice seeped into Hunter's bones, “is not thriving.”

Hunter slid his thick skeleton key into his front door, hearing the heavy click as he turned it. She stood behind him, goosebumps prickling her arms while she lingered. Olivia blinked at the withering bare tree in his front yard.

Hunter was about to invite her into the home he and Sarah had built together. A place of peace and refuge that would now be a refuge for something more violent.

Are you really saving her?

“It’s just winter,” he mumbled, opening the front door and stepping into his home. “All the trees look like this when it’s cold.”

“Not the trees in the forest,” she replied. “They thrive in all seasons.”

Hunter waited for a sign, an omen of anger from Sarah’s ghost, before he stepped inside and let Olivia in. It felt like a betrayal, bringing a woman here who collected his stares, whose lips had stolen his breath.

A horrifying feeling crept into his heart, the certainty that once her toes touched his floor, nothing would ever be the same. He could never turn back.

But no omen came.

She’s only a guest. You're being paranoid.

Though when Olivia's near-naked body was bent over his in the car, no thoughts of her being "only" anything had crossed his mind. He hoped his silent prayer to any spirit listening would count for something.

Because he cared.

He cared so much that the ache it caused could not heal. There would be no recovery.

Besides, Sarah’s ghost wouldn’t haunt you. She would watch over you.

Olivia stepped inside behind him as he reached out to pull the cord on the lamp, illuminating the living room, scaring away the shadows that lurked. Shadows that Hunter assumed would watch with curiosity as this new monster had found herself with his crushed spirit effortlessly woven around her.

His situation felt precarious as he turned to her, the digital clock above the mantle glowing bright crimson.

3:46 a.m.

“It isn’t much,” Hunter said, but Olivia held out her hand and hushed him as she took in the room. She gasped and giggled when the clock changed to the next minute. The sound was infectious, and Hunter found himself laughing, too.

It was a nervous, misplaced chuckle because there was no denying that his world was not her world. The modern day was so new, so foreign to her.

Her large, dark eyes devoured every detail.

“It’s everything,” she exhaled, staring at him like he was something important.

Hunter cleared his throat to break the spell. How easy this was, standing with her.

“We need to work on empathy a bit, but you’re welcome to stay for as long as you need. I’ll sleep on the couch. The bedroom is just down the hallway.”

“My empathy?”

“That cop didn’t deserve that.”

“Oh, right, because it’s Christmas.” Olivia sighed, as if Hunter was ruining her joy.

“You only have the one bedroom?”

“There are two. The other one is used for storage… hobbies, I guess.”

"Hobbies?"

"Painting, knitting, I think there are some pottery supplies in there too."

“The home I grew up in had many rooms.”

Ritzy little tree siren, I see.

“Vultauge Manor, I know it well,” he replied.

Olivia's head snapped to him at the name, her mouth frowning.

"What did I say?" he asked.

"My family name. I almost forgot it." She left it at that.

Hunter moved into his bedroom, the worn beige carpet under his feet. He slid the mirrored closet door open and crouched in the back, pulling out a box. It was a box that he had never opened, not since he had packed it.

Sarah’s clothes.

Hunter couldn’t bear to get rid of them or give them to her family. He swore her citrus perfume still lingered, though maybe that was only in his head after all these years.

There were sweatpants inside and a warm thermal shirt. Getting Olivia clothed before she slept in Sarah’s bed, in their bed, felt necessary.

He frowned at the black heavy metal band t-shirt he picked up, thinking about the piece of clothing on another woman.

This is wrong.

He wouldn’t do it. He wouldn't mix memories like this.

Hunter put the shirt back into the box and tucked it away. It was better sealed away, safe from time and air that would one day steal any lingering scent. The thought made his stomach sink.

“I can work with the tree,” Olivia said, running her hand along the bedspread, the frame, the pillows. “Would that make up for the cop? I would be happy to make it happy.”

Hunter stood, grabbing one of his t-shirts stuffed on the bottom shelf of his closet, followed by a pair of jersey shorts that fit him too snugly. He waited for guilt to hit him, to feel the blood on her hands staining his too. It never came, and that scared him more.

Where is your panic, Hunter?

“Here, you can wear this tonight. I’ll show you how the shower works in the morning,” he said, closing the distance between them and handing her the clothes.

Olivia stepped closer to him, letting the jacket she wore fall to the floor. The clothes crumpled between their bodies as she stared into his eyes, not smiling, not grimacing, but there was a light, a spark that flashed in her pupils.

“Your eyes,” he said. Lustrous, intoxicating, Hunter found himself falling into them again and again. Hot frothy espresso in a mug to greet him after being too long in the cold, ready to wrap him in warmth, in a blanket of terror and comfort, horror and kisses.

“What about them?” she breathed.

Hunter took a step back.

“You asked me what I saw in the car. It was a black hole in the ground; vines inched out, reaching, growing, threatening to swallow everything near. It felt like they were looking for me—the vines, the emptiness.”

“Hmmm.” She smiled, aloof, her gaze moving toward the ceiling as she got lost in the world that only existed in her mind.

Her body bobbled, her eyelids fell closed, and she raised her chin as if she were standing in the middle of a field during a summer rainstorm.

It was as if she were absorbing the environment around her, the stillness of the ceiling, and the light rapping of the wind on the shutters outside. "Maybe they were."

Olivia grabbed the clothes out of his hands with the speed of a cat, raising the shirt to her face in confusion. It would engulf her.

“Why do I have to wear this?”

“Because I’d expect more propriety from a woman born in the early nineteen hundreds,” Hunter said.

Olivia laughed in his face, her smile big and beautiful, filled with the light he would expect to see bouncing off a waterfall deep in a Scottish forest.

“It’s easy to forget that I’m not one of them,” she admitted.

“One of them?”

“One of the trees.”

Hunter put his hands over hers, gently removing the shirt. She let him, her arms dropping to her sides and waiting while he opened it from the bottom.

“Arms up,” he instructed, and she obeyed.

He slid the shirt over her head, getting her hands through the appropriate holes.

“Are trees quite scandalous then?” he smirked at his sarcasm.

“Oh yes,” she said thoughtfully. “You’d be surprised at their thoughts, communications, and rage.”

“Rage?” Hunter asked.

“Would you not have rage if you were a tree?”

He hadn’t thought about it.

Why would you think about it?

“Olivia,” Hunter said softly, opening the shorts as she stepped into them. “Can you explain again? Why did you leave the forest?”

“I thought that was clear,” she mused, now covered, the shorts barely hanging onto her hips. “You sang for me. No one’s ever sung to the trees like that before, no one’s ever come back and sung then, just for me.”

Hunter ruffled the back of his hair nervously.

“It’s not a traditionally manly trait, singing.” He laughed awkwardly, turning around. “But I used to sing to myself in the middle of the night as a kid. When I woke up scared, my parents' bedroom was far on the other side of a hallway. In the night, it felt like that hallway led somewhere else.”

He got lost in the memory, lost in that too-large house with the people that were supposed to protect him so far from reach.

Olivia hummed, bringing him back.

“Let me know if you need help figuring out the bed. I’ll grab one of these pillows here. I’ll be out in the living room.”

He could have sworn that the vines on the windowsill shivered, stretching ever so slightly toward him as he bid her goodnight.