The blood drained out of my face. “How did you know?”
Greer didn’t answer but from the way he peered up at me from under his eyebrows, I knew he knew something more about Lothaire and me besides the meeting at the restaurant. From the looks of him, it was a lot more. “What do you know? You’re not telling me something.”
“Oh, we are both keeping things from each other.” He pointed down the path. “After you.”
Up a small hill, we stopped for a quick rest. Greer had a phone call to make, so he left me on a fallen log. He assured me that no cassowaries, penguins, or owls were nearby.
When he left, I looked down the hill to the full forest and river below. As far as I could tell, there wasn’t a town or city in sight. I strained my eyes, hoping to see something in the distance. I saw nothing but trees and water.
Greer came back over.
“Are you ready?”
“Yeah. I thought you said we were close.”
“We are. Haverhill is right there.” He pointed down the hill from us.
“Where?” I saw nothing.
“You’ll see it soon enough.”
The road to Haverhill was nothing more than random chunks of asphalt strung together with long grasses.
We were practically in the middle of town before I saw it. Among the overgrown forest were homes, or at least what I assumed were once homes. It was hard to tell with the missing roofs, half-collapsed walls, and rusted-out cars. Haverhill wasn’t a place anymore. It was rubble. Whoever abandoned Haverhill had left a long time ago. Most of the walls were ready to break apart at any moment, and the barriers that remained had watermarks from repeated flooding.
“What happened here? Well, besides flooding.”
“Time, mainly. This happens when people abandon towns.”
Greer lead and I followed him. The town was even creepier when we reached the middle of the ruins. Broken benches, garbage cans, and asphalt littered the forest.
Besides the town being rock piles and junk, I got a hard-to-shake eerie feeling being there. This place was dark, even in daylight. It was darker than the other parts of the woods, darker than a town should ever be. It was a quarter of noon, but the lighting made it more like after dusk. Something wasn’t right. The hairs on my arms stood up, and I stopped right in my tracks. I didn’t want to go any further.
And that was how I saw it, a blue light like mist, floating at the side of the road. While Greer walked on ahead, I went to investigate it. It was pretty, soft looking in a strange way. I raised my hand, not thinking. I wanted to see what it felt like. Was it like the clouds in my room in Boston or was this different? Warm? Cool? Wet or dry? Was it like that shadow I couldn’t catch?
My fingers were a centimeter from the mist when Greer’s hand clasped mine. “What part of touch nothing don’t you get?” His voice was harsh.
I turned to him. His mouth was a hard line, and this time the annoyed expression didn’t vanish.
“What is it?”
“It’s a trap. You touch it and you will be stuck here until the person who set this comes back to free you. If you have to ask what something is, don’t touch it because most of this world wants you dead.” His grip was harder than necessary. “Stop trusting everything.”
I wasn’t in danger of touching it anymore and I twisted my hand free from his.
We continued through town, passing a large lake as we made our way to the outskirts and to our destination, a mini version of a castle. It looked in perfect condition and if I didn’t know any better, I’d have guessed that people were still living there.
“So this is where we are meeting the Galvantry?” The great haters of all things Merric had chosen a castle as their meeting location. I could not have come up with a more unlikely place in my head.
“Yes.” Greer opened the front door.
Dust clung to the dark wood wainscoting and trim, but otherwise, the large room appeared as it must have before the town moved away. The door creaked shut behind me. I wanted to open it and run outside. The hairs on my neck stood straight up like I was being watched. “Does anyone live here?”
“No, the people abandoned it at the same time as the town,” Greer said.
I compared the shape of the town to the condition of this building, and there was something unexplained. Someone had to be living in this place. The upkeep was too maintained. “Why is this building in such good shape then? It had to have been a target for vandals or squatters or something.”
The first step creaked under the weight of Greer’s foot. His hand unsettled dust from the banister. “Old Man Mychak owned this. All these years later, no one wants in this place. Come on.”
“Why are we meeting the Galvantry upstairs? Isn’t there a place somewhere down here where we can talk?”
“No one cleaned out Mychak’s tech. I need to make a call.”
“A call? Like the calls you were making in the woods? All day?”
Greer turned around. “I have a life outside of rescuing you, a life that needs checking in on.”
Well, then. I leaned against the front door, still unmoved. I did not want to go in there. “So the Galvantry, do they know about this life?”
“My identity is kept secret. Only a select few know who I am.”
“Then how do you know you need to check into that life?”
Greer took another step. “Come on.”
My foot made the same creak on the step. “Hardly fair, you asking me to go into this creepy place without an explanation.”
“Fair is a child’s game made up by parents to keep their children from fighting, not real life.”
“So, you have siblings?” I said half-jokingly.
“Yes.” This admission was the most information I had on Greer.
“Ah, mystery solved. You’re the youngest child.” From the way he turned
