Page 14

CHAPTER 14

Meet Me in the Woods

T he flight that should have taken me home instead crawled over the mountain ranges of Norway, the flat and barren highlands of Scotland, the Isle of Skye—pointed out by James—wrapped in mist. Then, the patchwork of Ireland flew into view with its golden rapeseed fields, pale-mint greens, and washed-out lavenders. The land resembled my nanny’s quilt blanket—that’s what I’d first thought all those months ago.

But here we landed, on the west coast of Ireland at Shannon Airport. Not the dirt runway of L’Ardoise where Willow and I had watched the planes take off a lifetime ago.

Hitching my backpack over a shoulder, I squeezed between a stroller and a teenager walking with her nose in a novel, and scanned the crowd.

A man with a thatch of sandy hair clenched the saddest bunch of roses I’d ever seen, a hopeful smile dotting his chapped lips. But my eyes slid to the man next to him, and our gazes connected.

Tye’s lips pulled into a tight, restrained smile, but not a flicker of surprise lit his shadowed eyes. So James had told him then, that I’d changed my mind, and what would Tye make of that? I was coming back, but not for the right reasons, not to dream in a world that wasn’t mine, but to encounter an Inquitate in the life that belonged to Willow. To hope that when I did, I’d know why it’d targeted her.

But where did that leave Tye and I?

I searched his face, looking for some sign. The toothpick between his lips bopped up and down in a face so tanned, even Ireland couldn’t get rid of it, like that homey warmth was a part of him.

I hadn’t said goodbye, had never once thanked him once for spending six months in L’Ardoise trying to bring me here. It wasn’t Tye’s fault he’d grabbed the wrong person.

Something in those August-green eyes shifted as I approached.

“ Darlin’ .”

That one word, just that one word, loosened something inside me. “I—you don’t look surprised to see me.”

He straightened off the pillar. “You ain’t the first woman to change her mind on me.”

Then his dimple winked. Before I could think better of it, Tye was yanking me to him in a tight hug.

God, he smelled good, like a broken-in baseball glove—leather and salt and sweat. His hand smoothed my hair, his mouth a whisper of summer at my ear. “It’s gonna be okay, hun,” he said as I clung to him, clung to what I’d known. “I know all of this is scary, I know it ain’t easy, but ya did the right thing. You’re gonna get the hang of it too.”

Because I’d be visiting the Gate like the rest of them, living that other life, pretending it was mine. But maybe it didn’t matter that it wasn’t. It was just a dream, after all, a memory, and I wasn’t hurting anyone by watching it. Or was that just an excuse to justify the desperate desire already curling in my gut to see that world again?

When Tye released me at last, I noticed he held the second saddest bunch of roses in this airport. He angled them under the overhead lights. “Got these for James. Guy goes sweet on me every time I buy him flowers.” Tye fanned himself with the bunch. “Man’s weak for ‘em.”

He grinned when I laughed again, and handed me the bouquet. I pretended to smell them, then got an unexpected whiff of cigarette smoke and the back end of a convenience store.

“We all square, hun?” Tye asked.

I lowered them again, met his now-cautious eyes. “Only if you don’t spring another magical world on me.”

His lips tugged up as a sly look came over his face. “What, James didn’t tell ya about the Alice in Wonderland hole in the garage?” He slipped my backpack off my shoulders and swung the leather stirrup over his. “Right under the table saw. Ya slip right through.”

“Must be buried under all the Christmas decorations he keeps there.”

Tye chuckled. “It’s pretty good to have ya back.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Sure, the electricity went out twice.” He flicked my ball cap, but the playful light in his eyes faded to serious green. “Now, ya wanna tell me what ya found out ‘bout your sister?”

While Tye dug out the airplane food I hadn’t eaten, I told him what Bryn suspected of the Inquitate and their involvement in Willow’s death, that he believed it was an attack, and the possible overlap between my sister’s life and the others who’d died. I left out all mention of their appearance in Oslo.

“So Stornoway thinks this disease ain’t a thing but a who ,” Tye said when the corn cobbler was almost gone. “Seems a little far-fetched. Ya sure James believes it?”

I didn’t admit that I’d seen them myself. “Bryn saw them in L’Ardoise before he was injured.”

Tye gave me a tight nod. “Yeah, James said as much when he called me.”

“Why didn’t you tell me Bryn was there before you?”

“Didn’t see much point in complicatin’ things, ya know? Besides, he wasn’t nothin’ to ya anyway.”

I guess not. “So you’re not going back to Montana on me?” I pried. “You know, now that I’m officially staying.”

“What, and leave all this?” Tye gestured with the cobbler to the sheet of rain blurring the window. “Naw, I’m here for the long haul. Maybe hang up my recruiting hat and let Kazie take the next one.”

Relief washed over me, and a little of something else too. “Bryn wants me to keep visiting the Gate,” I admitted. “He thinks it’s related to what happened to—”

Bang .

I jumped out of the way as a suitcase—no, my suitcase—nearly landed on my foot.

“Speak of the blond devil,” Tye said, lighting a cigarette as Bryn stepped into view.

“Your luggage, Rowan. Though, generally, they prefer that one collect it. Tye,” he said, voice clipped.

Tye tilted his head back, blew out a puff of smoke. “ Romeo ,” he replied smoothly. Romeo ? Few people on the face of this earth could less fit the image.

Bryn shook his head before limping for the exit.

Tye draped an arm across my shoulders. “This is a proud moment, Roe.”

I looked up at him. “What?”

“Stornoway seems to like ya even less than he likes me.” Tye wiped a mock tear from his eye. “Now tell me why, and don’t spare a single gruesome detail.”

I didn’t.

J ames was trying to kill me.

Well, either myself or the car, but one of us wasn’t getting to Naruka alive.

The 1972 Ford Granada sailed over a speed bump, teetering on the edge of a potholed road designed for a doll’s house, while brambles thwack-thwack-thwacked against its metal side.

In the backseat, I gripped the Jesus handle, trying to focus as James explained everything he and Bryn had discussed about the Inquitate. Tye nodded along, but I could tell he wasn’t convinced the aneurysm wasn’t from a disease. And truthfully, the farther from Oslo we got, the more the whole day seemed like a dream.

Ireland was sort of like that, too, the land bathed in the foggy beauty that lent itself to the whimsical. Mist swelled on hills of eye-watering viridian, all framing ancient ruins and abandoned churches.

Opposite me, Tye cracked his window, tapping his smoke in the wind as Ireland flooded in—a wet, peaty fog that mixed with the taste of tobacco and coated the back of my throat.

The first time I’d seen the west of Ireland, I’d been struck stupid by the glowing fields, the ruins that would have been made into theme parks in North America. Then, in the smoky hills above Naruka, the Gate had made it all insignificant.

I pressed my forehead to the cold glass. Was I ready to see that again? To live and love as someone else? To be someone else? Someone at the mercy of a memory, with no control of their own actions, of what they touched, heard, or saw. What if I had a spouse, like James? Family? Kids?

When I asked as much, it was Bryn who drawled from the seat in front of me, “If the possibility of motherhood concerns you, then on this, at least, you need not worry. Ruhavens do not procreate as humans do.”

But I thought that James…? “They don’t have sex ?” I blurted, then blushed.

Tye guffawed. “Hun, ya really think I’d live in a world where a man and woman can’t do what god intended?”

The blush spread to my neck, but it was Bryn who saved me. “That is not what I said, Rowan,” he answered like we were talking about the weather. “I said that is not how they procreate.”

Because I didn’t want to know how they did it otherwise, I vowed not to speak again for the rest of the car ride.

Tye made up for my silence, giving everyone a complete rundown of Ireland’s racehorse breeding schedule. While he did, the soft hills of Limerick gave way to the rugged terrain of County Kerry. Here, the grass was thicker, rougher, and buoyed like a trampoline when you strode across. Wildflowers as hearty as the landscape thrust their way from rocks and sand, so purple and yellow flowers dotted the banks of the beaches we drove past.

There were few sidewalks, no curbs. Roads that had been relatively recently expanded for cars fought for space with the ash and birch trees, and anyone who was brave enough to walk got a two-finger wave from James. Tye’s cigarette smoke had slowly built up inside the car, and combined with James’s driving, my stomach didn’t stand a chance.

The moody weather switched from rain to hail to glittering, gorgeous sun, then—as we lurched up another mountain—to clementine rays that lit up the clouds like a flashlight shone through a thin blanket.

“Close that damn window, Stornoway,” Tye admonished as we bumped from a small gravel road to an even smaller dirt one—the one that would wind its way to Naruka.

I leaned forward in the seat, gulping that worm-laden air and squinting at the No Vacancies sign for a hotel that never was. It flapped in the wind, the fierce crack of its chains a built-in warning sign for the brewing storm, as were the leaves upturned to the sky, their white bellies marking the wind’s change in direction.

Hotel Naruka— but only for Ruhavens. How long had that moss-ridden sign marked the entrance road, a harbinger of half-truths and myths for those recruited like me?

The car ambled on, ducking the oaks whose acorns pinged off the roof, creeping around puddles that had only deepened since we left.

Then finally, finally, like a princess at a ball, Naruka made her entrance.

It was a punch in the gut as much as the first time. The old hunting lodge that looked more like an enchanted castle, the glinting windows that seemed alive in the purplish evening light, the sweat steaming inside the rose house awkwardly installed on its left side, the foxgloves holding on to the end of summer.

But there, in the gravel beside the stable, was a familiar blood-red Mercedes.

“Bryn, I’ve kept the room as ye left it,” James said quietly in the front.

The one with the sailboats, the medieval bed, the photos in the drawer.

Bird calls replaced the car’s rumble as James pulled to a stop outside the barn and cranked the parking brake. The odd baying of sheep carried from the fields surrounding the manor, and further yet yawned the Atlantic Ocean, the bruised water dividing Ireland from L’Ardoise.

After climbing out, Bryn opened my door as he passed, his cane squelching in the long-haired grass.

“Well, kid,” Tye said, patting my leg. “Guess you’re about to do this, huh?” He climbed out, the car lurching to the side with the weight before I followed with the flowers.

Not only would I need to visit Ruhaven, but I’d also have to work with Bryn to find the details of my twin’s life that mattered. To sift through concerts and travel plans, retracing her steps in the last few months of her life. What if we found a connection between her and—

The door of Naruka burst open.

Kazie leapt from the house, bounding down the stone steps like a dancer in search of a stage. Had she died her hair blue ? The twisting curls bounced around her shoulders with each step of her ballet slippers. Beneath the setting sun and mist, her skin shone like wet velvet. She dashed through the untamed weeds of the front yard, yelling Bryn’s name.

He’d barely gotten his luggage from the car before she launched herself at his torso. He fell backward, adding a new dent to the rear door, but still managed to catch all hundred pounds of her.

She grinned up at him, barely reaching his chest. “Bryn, oh-my-god-I’ve-missed-you,” she squealed, the words coming in one long jumble.

He laughed—actually, genuinely laughed—the sound like a deep bell. His eyes softened, too, all the tightness in his face melting away until, for the first time, he actually looked my age. Then he murmured something in her ear, patted the blue curls back from her face, and set her on those prancing toes.

“Oh, I can’t wait to tell you everything ,” she enthused, pirouetting in the mud. Then, as if noticing me for the first time, she added, “So I guess you came to your senses.”

Rain pelted the ground between us so entrails of mud ran under the car’s smoking engine. “I guess so.”

Her tightened lips relaxed. “That’s good. You can come with me to the Gate now. I’ll anchor you. Maybe you’ll meet Kazmira.”

“Who?”

She rolled eyes that I noticed were lined with a color to match her hair. “ Me . Kazmira. Kazie. James is Jamellian.”

It took me a moment. Then another. They actually went by their Ruhaven names.

I shot a glance at Tye. “You’re not…?”

“Tyrellius?” He wiggled his eyebrows. “Naw, hun, just Tye. Ya don’t gotta change your name like these freaks.”

Speaking of… “And Bryn?”

“To you ,” he said without even a glance to indicate the ‘ you’ part, “I am Bryn.”

James hoisted the luggage with a grunt. “Why don’t ye all make yerselves useful and help this freak with dinner? I’m bloody starving, like.”

“I’m not much of a—” I broke off when Naruka’s door groaned open, and another woman stepped out.

Tye dropped the bags he’d been unloading.

Polished crimson heels sidestepped the weeds and divots eating away Naruka’s entrance. The woman wore stockings beneath a trim pencil skirt and a blazer in the same matching color of the shoes. Her brows were colored in with military precision. With her silver hair drawn into a tight bun, she looked like a Russian ballerina—poised, pretentious, her lips pressed to a smooth, bloody line.

I felt Tye behind me, his warm cinnamon scent smothering the sudden chill.

James stepped forward, bags in hand. “Auntie Carmen. I hope Kazie didn’t drive ye too mad while I was away.”

So this was the woman who’d recruited Tye.

Aunt , James had said, yet there wasn’t a line on that stern, beautiful face that would have even hinted at fifty. Was that because she was Ruhaven? Was her Mark youth?

“Not at all,” she said in a faint, British accent.

“Carmen looks after Naruka when I’m away,” James explained after he’d kissed each of her pale, waxy cheeks.

Because they needed someone to anchor?

Carmen’s lips pulled out and up, so the red line had two ticks at the end. “I only worry how you shall manage when I leave for the chateau in France next week. But I see, at least, that Norway was successful?”

James clapped Bryn on the shoulder as the Norwegian only stood there, staring at Carmen with a look that could have finished off the roses I held. A typical Bryn welcome, I assumed.

“Bryn’s agreed to continue his research on the aneurysms.” I held my breath, waiting for James to explain the rest—the Inquitate, the illusions—but he only said, “With some of our help, of course.”

Carmen made a non-committal noise as she surveyed Bryn. “I only worry, like Maggie did, that you shall grow too close to the Gate again.” So he’d known Maggie, James’s mom.

The skies darkened behind him. “Of that, you need not worry.”

Carmen’s gaze flicked to me. “Indeed.”

James said quickly, “Was there any trouble while we were gone?”

She looked back at him. “There was something. This imbecile came by on Saturday, asking about a— What was her name?— Lana , I think. Yes, Lana.”

“Colm,” James said sagely. “I’ve not been able to get rid of the lad after his girlfriend left.” He spoke to me now. “She didn’t much care for Ruhaven and took off.”

“Well,” Carmen continued briskly, “you should deal with him, lest he bring the Gardaí here and they wonder why there are so many foreigners.”

“Speakin’ of the foreign rabble.” Tye gripped my shoulder. “This is Roe.”

She extended a hand that looked as brittle as a Christmas wafer, but was strong and firm when she shook mine. “Rowan, of course. I was Tye’s recruiter, as he is now yours.”

She dropped my hand to greet Tye, and this time, the kiss lingered, her wine-red lips brushing the hard line of his jaw.

His recruiter . Had she shown him the Gate all those years ago like he did me? Just how deep did a connection go between recruiter and recruitee?

Tye took Carmen’s elbow, tipped the hat he’d stolen back from me, and said, “Why don’t we catch up before ya head on back to France?”

She patted his offered arm with crimson nails. “I would love that. James? Kazie? You do still have that Shiraz I left last time?”

James picked up our bags with an easy smile. “If I’d drunk it, ye can be sure I’d pretend otherwise.”

The wind pressed against their backs as they followed the winding path to Naruka’s entrance. Tye kept Carmen’s arm in his, the worn jeans stretching over his muscled calves as he walked, his legs toned from years in the saddle—

In one deft movement, Bryn grabbed the roses from me and tossed them into the weeds.

“Hey!”

“They are dead , Rowan,” he said when I protested. “Leave them be.”

I fished them from the lawn, though most of the petals had been flung off by his throw. “Don’t throw my things away,” I said, swearing as a nettle pricked my wrist. “I’m going to help with the research, to find the overlap between Willow and the others, but that doesn’t give you the right to—” I glanced over my shoulder. “Bryn?”

But he wasn’t looking at me, wasn’t even listening.

Mist wetting his pale cheeks, Bryn stared at the jutting cliff rising over the hotel. His eyes all but glowed, two visions of Neptune in a face as surreal as the Gate.

They swirled with emotion. Not tepid waters, but a churning sea of longing, guilt, and—and hunger .

I shivered at the blatant desire simmering in a face that had forgotten about me, about Naruka, about the decomposing roses.

He slid the satchel off his shoulder. The leather smacked into the mud at his feet, strap flopping into grass before raindrops beaded and ran in veiny rivers down its weathered surface.

Leaving the bag, Bryn took one step with the cane, then another.

Not toward the hotel but to the woods, where the trail was a faint patch of shadow on the edge of Naruka. The rain came harder, protesting at the choice, soaking his hair until it was closer to muddy blond than pale gold. Until it was glued to the pulsing vein in his neck.

The trail would be impossible with the loose stones and churned soil, the banks of the mountain slippery and unforgiving.

Impossible with a cane.

But he limped forward, never looking back, and didn’t pause until he stood at the cusp of Naruka, where the winding trail led up the mountain and to Ruhaven.

Then he stopped, turned slowly.

Across Naruka’s sprawling gardens, the weight of his gaze landed like a blow, a heat that zinged down my neck.

It was only an instant, then he looked away again.

I shall see you in the Gate, Rowan.

And started the climb.