All of what he said made a certain, sickening sort of sense, but it didn’t change the fact that I had to find Conrad. Even though he’d begged me not to come after him, I couldn’t leave my brother to the Folk. Knowing now how my father felt, Conrad was all I had.
“I’m doing it” was what I voiced.
“Aoife, dammit. There are things I can’t explain to you, but know that the curse cannot be broken. To try is to fail.” He reached for me again, but I backed away. My father’s face fell. “Please, Aoife,” he said softly. “Just go home.”
I slapped the notebook shut, and the silver memory shattered into a million dancing motes before it vanished into the shadow of the library above.
“This is my home now,” I whispered, but my father was gone.
I stayed where I was for a few moments, feeling sick with disappointment and confusion. My father wasn’t going to help me. He didn’t even want to speak with me.
There was a knocking on the ladder, and I swiped at my watering eyes and opened the hatch. Sniveling wasn’t going to break Tremaine’s curse or get Conrad back.
Dean stood at the foot of the ladder, rolling a cigarette between his forefinger and thumb. I shoved the notebook into my pocket and climbed down.
Dean examined me.
“You look upset.” No pet names this time. No doubt he was sick to death of my antics and broody moods, just like Cal.
“I am upset,” I ground shortly. “And no, I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to talk or think or do anything but ball up my fist and hit something, but if I do that I’m unladylike, so I guess I’ll just go try on some dresses or put up my hair until the urge passes.”
Dean’s eyebrows rose. “Let’s you and me take a walk,” he said.
“I don’t want to walk,” I snarled. “I don’t need to be protected.”
“No, you don’t,” Dean said. His calm was maddening when matched with my rage. “But I want to walk, and I want you to walk with me, so before you take my head off again, consider that you don’t have to say a word.” He flashed me his grin. “I hate mouthy broads, you know.”
The tightness in my chest eased, a fraction. “You said you wanted to hear what really happened when I disappeared.” I went to the panel and shut up the library above. “That still true?”
“So true it squeaks,” Dean said. He put the cigarette in his mouth and tipped his head toward the door. “Come on. I’ve been listening to the cowboy smack over pancakes for the last half hour. I’d swear that kid was a rot-gut if I didn’t know better.”
I crinkled my nose. Rot-guts were gluttonous globs of used-to-be people who hid in dark damp places when the virus overtook them and ate anything they could. Tin, garbage, human flesh. It was all the same when the necrovirus was riding your bloodstream.
“No,” I told Dean. “He’s not. He just eats like one.”
Dean nudged my elbow. “Come on. Walking. You and me.”
I followed him outside, not wanting to admit how much I liked the sound of just Dean and me, together.
23
“IF IT’S A long story, we should go out on one of these woodland trails,” Dean said after we reached the foot of the drive and he’d smoked his Lucky Strike down to the nub. “Get ourselves some privacy.”
“What about the ghouls?” I said. “Isn’t it dangerous?”
“Hey, now,” Dean said. “You’re with me, Dean Harrison. Finest guide east of the Mississippi and north of the Carolinas. And right now Dean Harrison wants to go somewhere where he doesn’t have to listen to anyone talk about baseball or wonder if their shoes make their ankles look fat.”
“You’re terrible,” I said. “Bethina’s a good girl.”
“Never was too interested in the good ones,” Dean said. “The sinful ones are more fun.”
“We’ll go,” I decided. I wouldn’t have agreed even a day ago, but after the horrible scene with the notebook I was feeling downright impulsive. I had to get out of Graystone before I screamed. It was my father’s house, and I knew now that I wasn’t welcome there.
The ever-present fog lay light, and I even caught a bar of sunlight as we walked down the narrow country road switchbacked into the side of the mountain before turning off onto a trail that snaked away into the bare- branched forest like any of the paths in Nerissa’s tales.
The crows watched us from their perches in the naked trees, eyes like glass.
“They never leave,” I said. “They just stay around the house. It’s eerie.”
“Corvids are smart birds,” Dean said. “They stick where there’s food and shelter and where nobody sprays buckshot at ’em. They watch and wait with the best.”
“In Lovecraft, they use the ravens to spy and take you away,” I said. “This is too similar. I don’t like it.”
“Crows don’t take from you,” Dean said. “They give your soul wings.”
My mouth curled. “Well, who took you for a poet, Dean Harrison.”
He ducked his head, his hair loose and falling in his eyes. “That book you had at breakfast.” His boots scuffed the dirt of the path. “I take it that has something to do with this vanishing act you pull?”
I stopped walking, and swung in front of Dean so he had to stop too. “I trust you,” I told him. “Implicitly. I barely know you, but I trust you with the truth. Am I wrong to do that?”
“Some cats would say ‘undoubtedly’ ”—he grinned—“but I’m no blabbermouth, Aoife. If I were, Cal would have punched my lights out days ago. For my ‘familiarity.’ ” He quoted the last word with his index fingers.
I ignored the gibe at Cal. “Day before last, I went exploring in that old orchard behind the grounds. I got lost in the fog and I …”
We walked again, picking our way over rocks and tree limbs, and it was a good twenty yards before I could get my courage up.
“I stepped through a fairy ring.”
Glimpses of the old stone walls and a fallen-down farmhouse were visible through the mist, and I focused on them instead of panicking because Dean wasn’t speaking.
The crows called to one another, inkblots against the mist, spattered across the tops of the trees ahead. They were definitely following us.
“Hold up,” Dean said. “A fairy ring … you mean a
“You know that name?” Surprise negated my worry that Dean would finally decide I was too far-fetched for his taste.
“I’ve heard of them.” He didn’t look interested in my tale any longer. His mouth was set and the frown line had appeared between his eyes. Dean was angry, but with me or a secret something I couldn’t tell.
“I got caught up in the ring and the mist,” I continued. “And I swear, Dean … I wandered right into the Land of Thorn. A fairyland.”
Dean whipped his gaze from left to right across the trail, into the trees on one side and the old farmhouse yard on the other. His hand went into his pocket, the right one, where he kept his switchblade.
A wind ruffled the hairs on the back of my neck, and the tree branches stirred, a clacking like hungry mouths as the branches scraped.
Dean snatched my arm. “We can’t talk about this out in the open.”
“What in the—” I started, as he dragged me down the lane toward the skeleton of the house. The roof had caved in and the floor gaped down to the root cellar. The crows increased their volume as Dean dragged me.
“Just walk,” he murmured in my ear. “Try to look natural. We’re just a boy and girl, out for a stroll.” He let go his vise-tight grip on my arm and slipped his hand into mine instead.
I glanced at the trees again. The wind had ceased as quickly as it had been born, and the trees were still. The shadows under them looked longer, the bare branches sharper, and I felt the blurriness in my head that had
