“Warn me about what?” I asked, bringing her into a hug to soothe her tremors.
“My parents. It was them. They’ve been going after the hidden folk, threatening them, trying to get them to leave the land so Aunt Meribah could buy up the properties.”
Wes looked at me and nodded. “There’s more.”
Sallie let out a long, shuddering breath. “They’ve been away from the house so much. I got lonely, which was why I started my pie business, and one day, when they’d actually been home for longer than five minutes, I asked about getting apples and other ingredients wholesale. They told me to be patient, that pretty soon I would have access to as many apples as I wanted. I just wanted to have something of my own, Aunt Calliope, something of my own I could be good at.”
I hugged her tight. There was nothing I could say, no more questions I could ask. “Wes, can you take Sallie to Belle and Rowan, please? And Sallie? You can stay here, with me and Harper and Thatch. You don’t have to go back to your parents.”
I hoped I could stick to that promise. With the teenagers accounted for, I went to check on Abigail.
She and Clifford were gone.
I ran into the house, asked Rowan and Belle if they’d seen or treated either of the elder Pearmains or if they’d left with anyone. They hadn’t.
Standing on the front deck, I scanned the yard. Sections of turf had been disturbed in the melee. I took the stairs in one jump and ran to where chunks of sod been had been sutured together, their edges rolled and tucked under. I tried to wedge my fingers into the grass and rip the sections apart, but the ground was not giving up what had been taken.
Tanner had followed me out of the house.
“She took them, Tanner. She took them,” I said, scrubbing at the ground with my flattened palms.
“We’ll find them,” he assured me.
Hyslop and Peasgood were on their backs some distance away and likely going into shock. I had to let go of my grief and help them. Or get them to someone who could. Tanner picked up one of the men, jogged him over to the care of our witch healers, and returned for the other. When he returned the third time, he grabbed a scarf off one of the chairs and wrapped it around my shoulders before lifting me to stand.
He crushed me in his embrace.
“I think I know where she’s taken them,” he said, smoothing my hair, his breath running ragged on its way in and out. “I have to go.”
Tanner released me and gripped the braided cord of his necklace, the very one I had never seen him take off. He pulled the cord over his head and from around his waist and placed both loops around my neck. “Calliope, do not take this off for anyone but me. Can you promise me that?”
He tucked the burnished pouch under my blood- and dirt-stained shirt and pressed his hand against the center of my chest.
“I promise,” I said. “Please, be careful.”
Tanner nodded once, turned, and ran toward his truck.
“And please come back.” I wasn’t sure he heard me.
The emptiness threatening to submerge me in that moment was an emptiness I had known a few times before. When I crossed the threshold into the A-frame house after my mother had died and understood her laughter would never again entice me into her room for a tea party. Again, when Doug walked out of our house after telling me he wanted a divorce—more than a divorce, to wash his hands of me.
And now.
We were so lucky that only two people had been lost in the fray, but those two people were dear to me. They were gone, taken by an entity I did not understand, with motivations that were still unclear, to a place I might not ever find.
“Calliope.”
I didn’t recognize the voice calling me. I scanned the overturned tables and chairs, the matte black silhouette of the Old One, the house lights blazing over the front and back porches.
“Calliope.”
The voice was coming from high in the treetops or the roof of the house.
I looked up. “Who’s there?” I asked. “And what do you want?”
A figure rose to standing at the peak of the roof. The outer garment they wore stiffened and opened out to the sides, and what I thought was clearly a tall man in a billowing overcoat became a tall man with wings. With a repeated, sharp-edged whoosh, whoosh, he swooped down the long expanse of the A-frame’s roofline and landed a few feet from me.
The night had painted his cloak a charcoal black when he was on the roof. Up close, the cloak—his wings—were mostly white with pale gray speckles. His silvery white hair was longish, sweeping across his forehead and covering his ears, and he was old. Not nearly as old as Clifford, but his face was lined and the stubble along his jawline and under his throat shone white in what little light was coming off the torches.
I had never seen this man before. I had never seen a bird-man before. I wasn’t sure he was even real.
He took two steps toward me, tapped the pins attached to my T-shirt, and enveloped me in his arms and wings.
“Granddaughter, I have so much to tell you.”
Chapter 24
Tanner was gone. River, Rose, and Belle had bundled Peasgood and Hyslop into Rose’s sedan and driven off soon after they heard Tanner was going after the Apple Witch. Rose wanted to take the young men to the Pearmains’ farmhouse and continue the search for Cliff and Abi from there. River gave me a knowing look and expressed the hope he might be able to catch up with Tanner.
The bird-man followed me across the lawn and into my house, the
