Edon clamped a hand down on his shoulder. “It’s the way into town. If you want to get to Ms. Reid’s, you’ll turn there and take the right at the next two forks in the road.”
“Well, then, thank you for your help.” Deena’s voice was overly-bright, her fingers tightly gripping her phone.
“Not a problem.” He eyed me and then smiled a different smile. I knew that one. I’d seen that smile on the nurses when I woke up in the hospital—and on Deena when she first stood by my hard hospital bed and told me I was “safe.” It was the smile of someone who hoped you weren’t going to break.
“Hey.” He kept his tone light, but his eyes pinned me down. “If you change your mind, take the left at the first fork. Everything on that side of town is safe.” He jerked his chin and I followed his gaze that indicated the northeast rather than the southeasterly direction where Maeve Reid lived. There was nothing to see. Just more rural Colorado with dried-out prairie grass and winds that whipped through the area without the suburban sprawl to stop them. When I looked back, it was to his profile as he turned to whisper to one of his friends.
There.
There it was. His shadow had triangular-tipped ears just like the elves on Christmas specials.
Maybe I gasped, because he turned back to me, his brown eyes narrowing as I continued to gape. I shook my head. I was losing it. I needed to ignore the hallucinations, not become socially handicapped because of them. But things were getting to be too much. All of this was getting to be too much.
I quickly replayed the last things we said and responded with, “If things go sideways, I’ll keep that in mind.”
Edon chuckled, his brown eyes glinting as his mouth curved into a half-smile, half-smirk. My heart leapt into my throat before falling not quite back to where it belonged. I swallowed. Edon had the sort of smile that made grown women act like idiots just so they could see it again. I’d seen it happen enough to know, and up until now, I thought that’d made me immune to it.
I stood frozen, staring up at Edon like paralyzed prey. In that moment, I came closer to understanding my dad’s ex-girlfriends than I ever had before.
And that was terrifying—more than any hallucination.
Edon’s voice seemed to come from miles away. “Then we’ll get the place ready for you, since it’s not really a matter of ‘if.’”
A few heartbeats went by before I could shut my mouth. A few more beats before I realized my feet were moving me toward the van without me giving them permission. But even when my mind caught up with my feet, I didn’t stop them. Instead, I walked faster, tripping over a tree root while trying to get to the van as quickly as I could without running.
By the time Deena caught up with me, I was sitting in the passenger seat, staring at the beige glove compartment.
The vinyl squelched as Deena sat down. She eyed me while she buckled up.
After a long pause, she said, “Don’t get too worried. Maybe they don’t like each other, but that doesn’t mean you’ll have any problems with Ms. Reid. That guy is full of it, in any case. If I was Ms. Reid, I’d probably give him reason not to like me, too.”
I didn’t say anything. What could I say? My gut wanted me to go with him to his lodge in the middle of nowhere, and the only reason I didn’t want to anymore is because he had a great smile? What was wrong with me?
Deena sighed and started the car. She slowly backed the van out of the campsite.
“Just so you know,” she said, “your face is looking a lot better.”
She was lying. I always knew when people lied.
And anyway, I didn’t care about the bruises; right then, I didn’t even care about the shadows. It was my response to Edon’s smile that freaked me out. I’d seen my dad smile at women with that same charming smile and get away with anything. It was like it stunned the last brain cell his girlfriends had left. Well, Edon had stunned every last one of mine. And that was with me knowing better than anyone what a charming smile really was—lies and pain wrapped up in a pretty package. And to think, he’d had me wanting to take him up on his offer.
As we backed out, Edon’s careful gaze caught mine, taking it hostage for two breathless seconds. I let my curls droop down, shielding me as I stared at my feet.
You don’t trust charming.
Chapter 3
Whatever I expected when we turned onto the no services road, it wasn’t this. What started out as random copses of trees steadily grew denser as we drove. And these weren’t the scraggly oaks we’d passed on the prairies or the pines that were so common, they made one the state tree. No, these trees were lush and spread out on a canopy of vibrant green grass. By the time the asphalt gave way to smooth dirt road, the canopy of trees was so dense that the grass underneath disappeared, replaced by a few determined shrubs.
“What is this place?” I asked as lights deeper in the forest caught my attention. They flickered in and out as if people were was walking with a flashlights—very bouncy flashlights that lit up at strange intervals. Was it some kind of search party? Maybe someone got lost.
“I…have no idea,” Deena said before turning right at a fork in the road. “It’s like something out of a…” She trailed off.
“Fairytale?” I squinted at what looked to be a tiny rustic cottage in the middle of the woods, but we drove by before I could be sure. Maybe it’d been a shed. Had to have been a shed.
“Yeah,” Deena said.
The closer
