The argument I prepared while she was talking almost leaves my lips—I loved Kai, but I also loved the idea of what we would do together. Of how his talent would mean me leaving Atlanta, finding a new home. Did I use him as a means to an end, as an excuse not to create my own plans, my own life?
“Tell me about your boy,” Flannery interrupts my thoughts quietly.
“Kai?”
She nods.
“He… plays the violin. He’s amazing at it—he’s better at playing the violin then I’ll ever be at doing anything. But the thing about Kai is underneath all that talent, he’s normal. He’s not arrogant; he’s not waiting to become famous or rich. He just loves playing the violin for what it is.” I pause, because everything I’m saying seems stupid, mundane. “That’s how he loves me—for what I am. Kai makes me feel like myself. Like for the rest of the world, I’m pretending, but with him, I’m real.”
“So what happens if you don’t get him back? You’re a paper doll for the rest of your life?”
“I used to think so,” I say. “Part of me still thinks so. I never pictured a version of my life without him.”
Flannery spits on the ground, rolling her eyes. “Goddamnit, Ginny. You don’t realize how lucky you are. I’m the Princess of Kentucky no matter what. But you can be whatever you want to be; you can do whatever you want to do. You can be… I don’t know. A teacher. Or a drunk. Or both, I don’t know.”
“You really don’t like being the Princess of Kentucky?”
“Of course I like it,” she says, looking a little offended. “It means I’m gonna be queen someday. This is my home. And that aside, it’s my favorite place in the world. I mean, you should see it at Christmas. Everyone turns off their trailer lights at night, and we use all the generators to run thousands and thousands of string lights all over the camp, connected to every single trailer and tent. Like a knot between every one of us. It’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen.” She runs her tongue along her teeth and shakes her head. “What kind of leader would I be, though, if I got married just to hold on to the crown tighter? Nah. If I’m not queen enough on my own then… maybe I’m just not queen enough.”
“What would be your first order of business?” I ask, lifting my eyebrows. “I mean, day one. What do you do?”
“Well, I bury my mother I guess, since if it’s my first day that means—”
“Okay, okay.
Flannery grins wickedly. “I tell all the women here they don’t have to clean the entire trailer every damn day. Or at the very least, they don’t have to mop every day.”
“Every day?” I ask, shocked.
“Most of them,” she says. “And let’s see, second order of business…” She looks toward the woods and drops her voice. “We go after the Fenris.
“My mother says you think she’s the queen of the Fenris. That she’s as evil as they are,” she says. “Is that true?”
I exhale. “I don’t know what she is, really. I don’t know how she does what she does. You’re the only people I’ve met since leaving home who already knew about her. That song, Flannery…”
“I’m not singing it for you,” Flannery says, shaking her head. “It’s ours. Besides, I know you just want it so you can use it to find your boy. Grohkta-Nap claimed him, he’s hers—”
“You don’t really think she’s a goddess, though, do you?” I ask, and Flannery stops short. She cracks her knuckles and presses her lips together.
“I dunno. Me and some of the other Travellers our age have our doubts. No one will say it outright, ’course. But… the Fenris take our girls. Grohkta-Nap takes our boys. Seems like the same thing, different name, and some of us are getting tired of it.” Flannery looks at me for a while, then back to the trees. “I’ve walked along the edge of the woods before. Worn all the red I could get my hands on. The Fenris have never taken me.” She drums her fingers across her knife. “Wish they’d try. Maybe then I’d get some answers about Grohkta-Nap. Some vengeance for the girls they’ve taken, too.”
“Why not go after them, then?” I ask seriously.
“You think I’m afraid?” she asks, eyebrows lifting. I shake my head, and she exhales. “Maybe I should. Take a page out of the buffer book, go after the monsters with a cookbook and a pair of high heels.” Flannery kicks at the ground a little before speaking again. “Difference between you and me, Ginny, is you’re chasing after your family. I’d just be running from mine.”
The hunting party returns three hours later, at twilight. They exit the forest shadows of the men who went in—they look tired, sweaty, and hungry. Beaten. Flannery, Brigit, and I are standing at the door of their RV letting news filter back to us. The Fenris were sluggish in the snow, and they ran instead of fighting back. Still, there was no sign of Keelin—though one of the men has a scrap of the scarf she was wearing, the ends frayed and bitten off.
“Come on then,” Brigit says quietly. We follow her to her tent, where she unlocks a large steamer trunk. Inside are three unopened bottles of liquor. She hands one to me and one to Flannery, and holds on to the other herself. Together, we walk to a small black tent, one that’s near the boundary of the camp.
There are dozens of people here, but no one speaks; the sound of feet padding across frost and mud suddenly seems loud and imposing. Inside the tent, I hear crying, but not the loud, hysterical sort. A gentle noise, like a rain that will last for days instead of a storm that will last an hour. There are dozens and dozens of bottles at the front door already, some with silk flowers tied to them, or scarves, or charms. The crowd steps back as Brigit approaches—I see Callum among them, looking grim.
Brigit says something in Shelta—something that includes the word
A piece of paper flutters in the wind, stuck under a candle. It’s a photo, I assume of Keelin. I lean in closer to see it, my eyes widening a little. Long blonde hair, sunny face—I remember seeing her.
My heart stops.
She was the little girl wearing Mora’s coat.
Keelin was too young to be taken. They usually want them older—that’s what Callum said. Unless they didn’t mean to take Keelin, unless they thought she was someone else. Lucas said it was strange for them to be around in this sort of cold. I think about the way Mora ran back in Nashville rather than fighting, about the way the Fenris at the rest stop looked at her fur coat in the back of my car. About the fact that the snow slows the Fenris down.
They thought Keelin was Mora.
“They’re chasing her,” I say under my breath. “She makes it snow to slow them down. They’re—”
“Quiet,” Flannery hisses at me, and I go red, dropping my eyes in shame. But there it is, the realization, unfurling inside me. I’m not the only one who wants to find Mora.
No wonder she’s running.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Travellers are mostly quiet the following day. There’s no music echoing over the camp, no laughter, and every now and then someone paces along the edge of the forest with a shotgun, waiting for a target that never comes. A rainstorm sweeps through in the afternoon, cold and miserable; I fall asleep to the sound of it pelting the RV’s roof.
When I wake up a few hours later, Flannery is at the kitchen table. She’s fiddling with a music box she’s taken apart, broken into a million pieces; the little plastic ballerina lies on her face on the kitchen table across from where Flannery is sitting. Flannery moves the pieces around as if she means to put the box back together but doesn’t know where to begin. She looks up at me.
“
