Page 3 of The Heart of Moonlight Falls

Sebastian tore his gaze from James. “You can test it all you want, but that shade-thing called me a gatekeeper. It seemed to know I couldn’t leave Moonlight Falls. Like maybe it knew I was tied to the veins. I think it has a much better understanding of what was happening than we do. It makes sense for the intersection to be a gateway when there have always been so many more shades on my property than anywhere else.”

“It explains why so many shades are in and around Moonlight Falls,” Hazel added, though she didn’t look pleased by the idea. “We’ve always wondered why they come here specifically.”

“I’d love to know how many shades there were in the area before my ancestors messed with the veins.” Sebastian rubbed his brow, a headache building behind his eyes. “I bet there weren’t many.” If Sebastian was a gatekeeper, his uncle and everyone who came before him must have been one too. “Storms have been holding the veins stable and apparently holding a passage to Beyond open. So until we figure out how to solve the imbalance and return the veins to their natural, stable state, the passage will stay open and that shade could return. It said as much to me before I banished it.”

I will come back. Beyond isn’t for the living.

The words echoed in Sebastian’s head, the memory of the shade’s eerie voice giving him chills.

There was a heavy silence in the living room.

“Well, if we weren’t motivated to solve the imbalance before, we are now,” Hazel said dryly.

Eli and Parker shared a quick look of alarm, but Eli’s focus immediately returned to Sebastian. “The humanoid shade can’t have come back yet. If it had, surely it wouldn’t wait to attack again.”

“Maybe.” Sebastian shrugged. That didn’t mean it wasn’t still coming. Maybe the shade needed to bide its time and get its strength back. Either way, it wasn’t gone for good.

James studied Sebastian, worry lining his face. “If it does come back, you can’t fight it off again.”

Sebastian didn’t want to disagree, and even more than that, he didn’t want to worry James. “But I don’t see any other way to beat it. It was way too powerful.”

“Then we’ll need to get actual assistance next time. If there is a next time.” James scowled, clearly determined to protect Sebastian from this. “Eleanor was right. Attacks from Beyond are not our responsibility to fight off.”

“Getting help if this happens again might not be so easy,” Hazel grumbled, slouching against the couch. “By the time anyone from out of town got here, things were back to normal and the officials started questioning Eleanor like they didn’t believe there’d ever been an invasion.”

James’s brows flew up in shock. “You’re kidding?”

Sebastian’s heart sank.

“No.” Hazel bit her lip in apparent frustration. “It’s classic misogyny, really. Acting like Eleanor overreacted to the darkness and doesn’t know what she’s talking about rather than believing what she says. Like they can’t trust her first-hand account.”

“Why didn’t you tell me Eleanor was having so much trouble?” James asked.

Hazel looked at him helplessly. “You had more than enough to worry about, James. And it’s not like there’s anything you could have done about the state not believing a shadow-being from Beyond tried to overtake the town. Of course, Eleanor has no idea how the invasion was stopped, which didn’t help when she was trying to explain. But even now that we know what Sebastian did, it’s not like we can tell her.”

Hazel’s voice rose along with the tension in the room. Sebastian’s headache intensified, the familiar guilty feeling growing inside him doing nothing to help. They couldn’t explain to Eleanor how he’d defeated the shade or banished the darkness without telling her about the veins and the curse.

“She knows we’re hiding something,” Hazel added. “She hasn’t forgotten that I let slip we couldn’t leave Moonlight Falls and won’t stop asking me what I meant.”

“Shit.” James rubbed at his stubble-lined face.

“Not that this is the most important aspect of the whole mess, but lying to her is screwing with our relationship.” Hazel heaved a heavy sigh. “She keeps accusing me of not trusting her.”

“I’m so sorry, Hazel. But the only alternative to keeping it secret is trapping her,” James said as if the words pained him. “If a gateway to Beyond is sitting open at Storm House, and there’s a good chance that shade-thing will come back and do this all over again, we can’t get her stuck here with us.”

“I know,” Hazel growled. “I don’t want her trapped here if it’s going to get dangerous.”

Eli and Parker shared another apprehensive look.

Sebastian pointed at them. “What’s with you two?”

Eli’s eyes went wide. “Um…”

Parker put a hand on Eli’s shoulder. “We might as well lay out all the problems.”

Eli slumped, seeming almost guilty. “We’ve been collecting the data from Storm House and noticed the fuel cell is draining a lot quicker than before. The energy levels in the veins are higher too. And after Sebastian said he burned the darkness away using the veins, I think that could have made things less stable, and that’s why we’re seeing these changes. It would have been a huge amount of energy passing through a system that was already precarious.”

Sebastian put his head in his hands. He couldn’t deal with any of this right now, and it wasn’t just because his head was killing him.

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