Page 19 of Soul of Shadow
“Can we get back to the important stuff?” Abigail asked. “These peanut butter blondies aren’t going to stack themselves.”
“Yes, please,” said Lou, gagging slightly as she grabbed a handful of blondies. “Anything to wipe away the image of Mason Hudson’s lips.”
9
The second disappearance came less than a week after the first.
It was a Tuesday, the second day of the new school year. At seven that morning, Mrs. Peterson went down the hall in her favorite robe and knocked on her sons’ bedroom door. When she got no response, she stuck her head inside to tell the boys to get up.
But when she looked at their beds, they were empty.
An hour later—and after many frantic, unanswered phone calls to the boys’ cell phones—the police arrived. An hour after that, a search party was assembled. By lunch, the news had hit every television in Silver Shores—along with every cell phone at the high school.
By the end of the school day, the search party still hadn’t found the boys. What they did find was another tree. A white ash carved up with Norse markings, Odin’s Knot once more at their center.
Two pairs of shoes hung from its branches.
10
That day at school, Charlie told herself she was done with the investigation. That she had nosed around enough. That nosing brought her more questions than answers.
Everyone was talking about the missing boys. The Peterson twins. Charlie used to know them well. They were both rowdy and athletic. When Sophie was still alive, their mom used to send them to the Peterson house for playdates. Something about being the only sets of twins in their grade. Their moms assumed they should be best friends. And theywerefriendly with the boys, bouncing on the trampoline in the backyard or showing off a simple magic trick or two, but they never becamebestfriends. Not the way they did with Lou.
All afternoon, Charlie tried to keep her mind off of them. When Lou and Abigail blew up their group chat with messages, she slipped her phone into her pocket. When her other classmates showed each other news clips of the carved-up tree on their phones, she averted her eyes. She had made a promise to her mother, hadn’t she? And even though she had already broken it once, that didn’t mean she should do it again.
That was what she told herself, over and over, until the final bell rang.
After school, she dropped off Lou and Abigail at their respective houses. Then she stepped on the gas, heading straight for the woods.
The forest was just as flooded with police as it had been the first time. If anything, there weremoreauthorities involved. Probably at the state level, maybe even federal. The longer this case went on, the more attention it would get. Charlie had watched enough murder mysteries to know that much.
She parked well out of sight. The tree they were investigating this time was approximately two hundred yards from the original. Whoever took these boys clearly had a target area: this forest. Which Charlie promised her mother she would stay away from. A promise she had now broken twice.
She shut the car door quietly. Touched her back pocket, checking to ensure her lucky deck of cards was still in place. Then she crept over the dying leaves and moss-covered rocks, deeper into the woods.
As she walked, she wondered, for the dozenth time, why she was there. What she could possibly add to this investigation that the police couldn’t handle on their own? She received decent grades and never struggled with her subjects, but she was no genius. Not like Abigail. She supposed the best display of her intelligence was through her magic tricks, through her quick mind and even quicker fingers, always one step ahead of the viewer. But magic didn’t solve missing persons’ cases, did it?
Still. She felt compelled to be there. It was as if a siren stood somewhere in the forest, and it was calling just to her.
She was contemplating the image of a siren when she saw him.
At first, it was only a flash of dark hair, the hem of a black T-shirt. Someone was darting from tree to tree, trying to keep out of view of the police. Charlie crouched low, taking cover behind a patch of juniper and peering out over the top.
Behind the tree, twenty feet ahead, was Elias.
She knew it the minute she saw his haircut. Knew it in the wide lines of his shoulders, the circumspect way he peered around the tree trunk. He was here, at the scene of the crime.
Again.
Charlie thought back to Monday afternoon, when, after her conversation with Mason, she had written him off as not suspicious. She had been so sure then. So sure that he was just a lost boy, marred by grief, masking that sadness with humor and sarcasm. But now…
Now she wasn’t so sure.
Up ahead, Elias crept a few yards to the left, so Charlie crept a few yards to the left, too. Elias dropped to his hands and knees and bear-crawled between bushes. Charlie did the same. She played this copycat game for five full minutes before realizing that she was, in fact, stalking him.
What was her purpose here? Elias hadn’t actually done anything wrong. Sure, he showed up in the forest when he shouldn’t have, but if that was her accusation, Charlie was guilty, too.
Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something deeper was at work here. Either he was connected to these disappearances, or he felt the same siren’s call to the forest that she did. Ineither case, she wanted to know the truth. So when Elias skirted around a bush and ducked under a tree, she did the same, never letting him out of her sight.
