“Within the hour.”
“Do you think we should stay here and wait, in case…?” I slid my hands into my back pockets and shrugged. The air around the house and grounds remained unnaturally quiet for a summer day.
“I’ll know if anyone steps onto the property.”
I started to ask how, wavered my foot over the bottom step, and closed my mouth before giving in to the crush of curiosity. “How?”
“How will I know if we have visitors?”
“Mm-hm.”
“You’re an Earth witch, right?”
“And you know that because…?”
“Because the pentacle glowed green,” he said, “and there’s dirt ground into your knees and the palms of your hands.”
I looked down. Okay, he paid attention, and some of the clues were pretty obvious. “So your powers of observation are good. What else?”
“Druids are connected to the earth as witches like yourself are, but…differently. I knew when your car crossed the property line. As long as my feet are on the ground—this ground—I’ll know if others do too.”
Later, I’d ask him why he waited to show himself to me. For now, I would keep him within eyesight. “You ready to go look for damaged trees?”
At his nod, I turned my back to the farmhouse and contemplated the two paths. I chose the one bordered with reddish-purple fireweed and trailing curlicues of vetch and indicated Tanner could go first.
Chapter 3
The trail soon sloped toward a trio of ponds, each edged with plump, brown cattails. Past those, the ground rose into a shoulder-like ridge that eventually connected the property to one of the island’s tallest mountains.
Pausing at the crest of the valley, I shielded my eyes and scanned the area. “There.”
The south-facing slope, where winter frosts nudged boulders at random and generations of deer carved narrow trails through the meadows. The older trees had long since ignored the directives of annual pruning and instead twisted and turned with the pull of the sun and the push of the wind.
I paused at the first wild rebel, caressing its patchy, lichen-splotched bark. The lowest limbs were suspended in a cathartic dance, the upper ones covered with ripening fruit.
“We’ll start here,” I said. “We’re looking for trees with wide trunks that may have split.”
“Ashmead’s Kernel.”
“What?”
“It says this tree is an Ashmead’s Kernel.” Tanner reached over our heads and pointed to an apricot-sized apple with a blemished, dull green skin. “Not very pretty on the outside, but one of the oldest varieties grown on the island. And one of the tastiest,” he continued. “This trunk’s in good condition, and I don’t see evidence of pesticide use or other topical residue on the leaves. Let’s keep moving.”
I swept my gaze across the uncut grass. “Look at the ground too,” I reminded him. “In the photographs, it looks like someone—or something—was digging near the bases of the trees.”
Tanner kept his lead along the path. I lagged behind, running my hands over the roughened bark of every tree we passed, gathering tidbits of their lives through my fingertips. I smiled to myself, giggled softly, wished I could take off my boots and meander, eyes closed and senses open. The orchard’s occupants had triggered my witchy curiosity, making it difficult to stick to the plan.
“What’s so funny?” he asked.
I shook my head. “These trees have stories to tell, and if we weren’t here on such gruesome business, I’d still be hugging old Ashley back there and listening to what she had to say.”
“Ashmead,” Tanner corrected me with one eyebrow up, and the side of his mouth quirked in a half smile.
“Ashmead,” I echoed. “Got it.” The sudden trill running along the bones in my chest had nothing to do with tasty apples and everything to do with the timbre of Tanner Marechal’s voice.
Focus, Calliope. Focus.
My inner compass didn’t warn me soon enough. Fingers trailing lightly over low-hanging fruit, sun-warmed apples releasing their scent and inciting thoughts of desserts—apple crumble, apple pie, Marechal a la mode—I stumbled on a rock and fell to my knees.
“Ouch!” I went to press myself to standing, only to be diverted by a swath of flattened grass. Rocks the size of my head and larger, loosened from some prior event, rolled away easily when pushed. “Tanner. Get down here.”
I clambered forward on hands and knees to where roots, bent like the knuckles of a giant hand, plunged into the dense, dry soil. The center of the tree’s trunk was split and slightly hollowed, its interior darkly shadowed.
“Whoa.” I used my flashlight to illuminate the grotto-like opening. Fresh gouges on the outer bark, close to the ground, confirmed a match with one of the photographs. Gouges meant claws—or thick nails—and perhaps a struggle, and it wasn’t clear to me on first look whether the struggle had been to get in or not get pulled out.
Leaning forward, the cool air hovering inside the trunk cast a wave of goosebumps over my neck and down my back. I hadn’t come to the orchard prepared to find severed heads, and I wasn’t prepared to come across the bodies formerly attached to the heads. If there had been a fight here…
Strands of hair and bits of faded fabric snagged on the interior surface confirmed that possibility. Tanner kneeled, his thigh pressed against mine, and added his light. Two-by-fours, roughly cut and splintered by use, framed a hole in the ground. Below that, a ladder made from thick branches disappeared into the inky darkness. I inched closer until my head and shoulders were inside the trunk. Shining the light over the ladder, I counted the horizontal pieces of wood. The top two were lightly gouged and the rest descended to a depth of at least ten or twelve feet.
“I think we should see where this goes,” I said, claustrophobia and childhood trauma be damned. I had a lead to follow, and Tanner was much too broad-shouldered and tall to maneuver through the opening. “Whatever was here—is here—feels benign, like their work is done.”
“How can you tell?”
