Page 59 of Samhain

“It’s a last resort, okay?” Carter said, ever the peacekeeper. “We’ll check out the library. Maybe ask the townspeople.”

“Let’s take a moment to think before we do anything stupid,” Lex added.

I returned my focus to the trees as a shiver snaked down my spine. Energy emanated from them, reverberating through my bones the same way it did with my flowers back home, but this was different. It brewed infinitely more powerful. I understood Bill’s fear. I was terrified myself. The trees were strong, and they hid a closely guarded secret, one we’d only gotten a glimpse of on Midsummer.

When I was a little girl, one of my nannies had taken me on a hike in the woods behind my house in Aberdeen. I’d raced through the undergrowth all morning, and she’d struggled to keep up with me. I couldn’t have been more than ten, so my eagerness to explore far outweighed my concern for her tiredness. She’d stopped to take a breath, I’d wandered off, and by the time I realized I didn’t know where I was, the sun had set low in the sky.

I called out for her, but I didn’t hear an answer.

As the moon rose higher, shadows played on the ground like monsters in a nightmare, their twisted limbs like long icicle fingers, waiting to wrap around my throat. I’d walked for hours until my legs went numb and my knees couldn’t hold me anymore.

Eventually, I’d collapsed in a hollowed-out log, convinced that if I closed my eyes and stayed still, the monsters wouldn’t get me.

The trees know all, my nanny had said. They see all.

Help is coming, I heard them say. Stay calm. Stay calm.

I listened to it until I fell asleep. The hounds found me shortly after that. Search and rescue escorted me back to my house, mostly unharmed. In the morning, I’d convinced myself I imagined the whole thing, that I’d been dehydrated and trees didn’t talk.

But standing in the window of that bed-and-breakfast in Killwater, I thought perhaps I hadn’t imagined it at all. Perhaps I’d been marked from birth, given the ability to communicate with nature in a way no one else ever could. If that was the case, then Siobhan had nothing to do with our fairy curse, and this was a fool’s errand after all.

“We have two days until Samhain,” Ivy said. “If we haven’t found anything substantial by then, I say we take the ring and go for a camping trip.”

Carter sighed and scrubbed his face, clearly as exhausted as the rest of us.

“Even if we find Siobhan, what exactly are we planning to say? Thanks for the gift, but no thanks?” I crossed my arms and turned back to the room, tugging my jumper tighter around me. “The first thing Ashley told us was not to piss off the fairies.”

“We don’t know she’s a fairy,” Lex said before quickly adding, “I can’t believe that’s something I seriously said.”

“We don’t know she’s not.” Ivy sat on one of the beds and leaned forward so her elbows rested on her knees. “One of us should double back to the college.”

“Why?” Carter asked.

“Ashley was the lore historian,” Ivy said. “She and Siobhan came there every day. They were chummy with Peter Smythe, the associate professor who was friends with Stephens.”

“Shit, that’s right,” Lex said.

I had all but forgotten about the other people who were there when this started.

“They still have the intensive every year,” Ivy said. “Stephens is still the sponsor, and Smythe still works in the theater department.”

“Fuck, Weeds,” Carter said. “You’re brilliant.”

That settled, we started planning. Ivy and Carter decided to hit the local library to ask around, and maybe, with Carter’s luck, they’d find someone who could be useful. Lex and I headed to campus to find Dr. Smythe. If anyone could make someone tell the truth, Lex could. How did he know Ashley and Siobhan? Was he a fairy, too? And if he was, did he know how to find our mystery woman?

When we entered the art department’s lecture hall, Smythe stood at the front, giving a talk on the types of movement in theater theory. At this time of year, the students were in full study mode. We slipped in the back and took the seats closest to the door. Disguised among the sea of coeds, I relished the opportunity to assess him before we began our interrogation.

Tall and handsome with curly salt-and-pepper hair and a beard that matched, he wore wire-framed glasses that gave him an educated aesthetic. But what I hadn’t noticed last time that stood out now was the tattoo on his hand: a beautiful, timeless rose with ivy vines swirling over his wrist and disappearing under the sleeve of his cardigan.

Something about him drew me to him. I didn’t know if it was the streaks of gray in his hair or the way he spoke, his voice like butter and honey and molasses, sweet as decadent pie. No, there was something else there, too. Something…elemental.

No sooner had the thought skidded across my mind than his eyes settled on me. Even from the center of the hall, I sensed the danger in him. The power. The raw force of whatever made him him. He wasn’t human, certainly. Or…he wasn’t entirely human, not like everyone else in this room. Maybe he could tell I knew that about him because one side of his mouth pulled into a smile before he returned to his chalkboard and continued his speech.

“He knows we’re here,” I whispered to Lex.

At the end, we waited until everyone else left before we stood and made our way down the stairs. He closed his briefcase on the desk and snapped the locks in place before turning to face us with a smile, his hands folded in front of him.

“Miriam Stuart,” he said. “Alexei Fairfax. I’m so pleased to see you again.”

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