I forced a smile. “No problem. I’ll just follow the path.”
She stood outside until I was out of sight. I never glanced back, but I could feel her eyes on me. The others watched me, too. I had a terrible thought that they had all gathered at the studio to observe me, but how could that be? How could they know that I would give Catrice a ride home…unless it had somehow been prearranged?
But why?
As I hurried along the path, my nerve endings tingled with an awareness I didn’t understand. It was as if some long-dormant instinct had suddenly come alive, and I could feel the forest reaching out to me, hear the leaves whispering to me once again. Even the screams of the hawks somehow seemed familiar.
I was so attuned to my surroundings that even the miniscule sound of a snapping twig brought me to an abrupt halt. I told myself it was nothing, just an animal rustling in the underbrush. A bird flitting in the treetops. I didn’t believe it, of course. Someone was out there.
The silence seemed palpable as I stood on the trail holding my breath. My heart began to hammer, and I could feel the blood pulsing in my ears. So many things rushed through my head. Wayne’s warning about wild animals. The face wavering in the pool at the waterfall. The chill of the wind, that awful howling. I had the sense that I was being stalked, but was the tracker human, animal…or something from the other side?
I took a few tentative steps along the trail and heard the rustle of leaves as the pursuer moved with me. Now I really was scared. I considered turning and making a run for the studio, but how could I be sure it wasn’t one of
Swallowing hard, I willed my pulse to slow. The last thing I needed was to succumb to a full-blown panic. My father had grown up in woods like these. I tried to remember everything he’d told me about wild animals.
Prey.
The very word sent a shiver of dread up my spine. I hadn’t understood before, but it came to me clearly in that moment. I’d been watched at the cemetery, lured into the woods, followed to the laurel bald and now something was stalking me up this trail. I’d been prey ever since I arrived in Asher Falls.
And with that thought, I gave up all pretense of calm. I whirled and plunged headlong up the path, my footsteps pounding in time to my heartbeats. I didn’t know if I was pursued. I had the sense of something rushing through the woods, but I didn’t look back until I rounded the corner to Catrice’s house, and even then I spared only a brief glance over my shoulder.
He came out of nowhere.
In the split second my attention was diverted, he appeared on the path in front of me and put out his hands to stop me.
If not for years of suppressing fear, I would have shrieked louder than the hawks, but instead I gulped back the scream and wrenched myself free of him. I heard him laugh, and in my agitated state, the sound took on a sinister connotation. But when he spoke, his voice was almost pleasant. “Whoa,” Hugh said. “Where’s the fire?”
“I—”
He gazed down at me in bemusement. “Are you all right?”
Even in broad daylight with the pine boughs stippling the sunlight, Hugh Asher’s looks rendered me speechless. Everything about him, from the casual but elegant attire to the way he carried himself, was so excessively perfect.
Once again, I searched for the flaws, and this time they were easy to spot—a faint tinge of yellow beneath the jawbone where a bruise had almost faded and a scab above his left eyebrow where the skin had been split. He’d been in a fight recently, and the thought was so incongruous as to take my breath away. My mind shifted at once to Thane’s cut temple, his bruised knuckles. Had he and Hugh fought?
I tore my gaze from his face. “I was just coming up from the studio. I thought I heard something in the woods.”
He looked past me down the path. “Probably a deer. Could have been a coyote but they don’t normally come out until dusk.”
Like ghosts.
“I’m a city girl,” I tried to say lightly. “I’m not used to the wildlife around here.”
“It does take some getting used to.”
The way he stared down at me made me increasingly uncomfortable, and I had to wonder why he was there. Had he come to observe me, too?
“How’s the restoration coming along?” he asked, still in that pleasing cadence. But no matter how agreeable or personable he seemed, I had no wish to make small talk. I really just wanted to go home, and I glanced longingly toward my car.
“Fine.”
Still he lingered, but I didn’t think he was as relaxed as I’d first thought. There was something about him, some tension or excitement that made his eyes overly bright. “When I was a kid, we used to play hide-and-seek up on that hill. Not a game for the faint of heart. It could get a little hairy after dark.”
“I can imagine.”
“There are places up there where you could hide and not be found for days. If ever.”
Like the laurel bald, I thought with a shiver. “Speaking of the cemetery…I should get going,” I said, latching onto the first excuse I could think of.
“I won’t keep you. But you’ll have to come to dinner soon. Maris has gone away for a few days and it gets dull in that big house with just us three men.”
“I’m sure Luna will be more than happy to accommodate,” I said, surprising myself as much as him.
He lifted a brow, eyes gleaming in amusement. “I think Father may have underestimated you,” he murmured.
“What does that mean?”
Something dark flashed across that handsome face. “You really don’t know, do you?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. If you’ll excuse me…I have work to do.”
I brushed past him and headed toward my car. This time, I did glance back, but Hugh Asher had vanished.
That afternoon Thane came by to see me. I let Angus out the back door, and he prowled the yard while we sat on the steps in the sunshine. Neither of us talked much at first. I was too preoccupied and disturbed by what I’d heard at Catrice’s studio and by that brief clash with Hugh. I still couldn’t understand why he thought Pell Asher had underestimated me.
Thane leaned back, elbows propped on the top step as he looked out over the glistening surface of Bell Lake. I followed his gaze. The uninitiated would never guess at the darkness that lay beneath that silken shimmer, but my time with ghosts had given me nothing if not sufficient imagination to envision that sunken necropolis with its overturned monuments and encrusted angels. I could picture Freya down there, too, floating among the headstones.
I turned back to Thane. “Can I ask you something?”
He shrugged. “Sure.” His eyes were very clear and very green in the sunlight, but like Bell Lake, his secrets were hidden beneath that placid surface. In the short time I’d known him, I’d detected ripples of some underlying disturbance. Flashes of some deep-rooted anger.
“Why did you tell me about the flooded cemetery that day on the ferry? Were you trying to scare me away?”
He smiled, but his face remained impassive. “Not at all. I only meant to entertain you with a little local color. I figured a cemetery restorer would appreciate a good ghost story. Was I right?”
“You have no idea.”
