Page 8 of Soul of Shadow
“Why?” she asked. “It’s just a carving on a tree. It’s not like it can bite me.”
Elias’s eyebrows shot up his forehead. His lips lifted on both sides, the first real smile she’d seen on his face. “As far as you know.”
“What?” She felt thoroughly flustered by this boy. There was something… strange about him. About the way he carried himself. The way his green eyes seemed to stare right through her. His gaze was doing something funny to her stomach. Twisting it into a knot not dissimilar from the one on that tree.
Elias gestured to the wood. “Lots of things that can bite lurking around here.”
Lots of things that can bite.That phrase shook loose her memory of the night before. Of the animal she saw through the trees.
“Wait.” Charlie took a step closer to him. “Is that why you’re here, too?”
“Is what why I’m here?”
“The animal,” she said impatiently. “The wildcat, or whatever it was. Are you looking for it, too?”
He held her gaze steadily. “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.” He somehow managed to say it in a way that suggested he knewexactlywhat she was talking about.
Charlie narrowed her eyes. “Okay,Elias. If we’re going to play things this way, at least explain to me why you’re out in these woods, all alone, on the day of a police investigation.”
Elias grinned even wider than before and gestured between them with one hand. “Pot, kettle, darling.”
Darling?Who did this guy think he was?
“I’m not alone,” Charlie said. “I’m with—” She craned her neck, looking for any sign of Lou. Scanned the trees, the bramble, the rocks. Nothing.
Elias leaned into her line of sight. “You were saying?”
Charlie sighed. “She’s around here somewhere.”
“Sure she is.”
Warning bells sounded in Charlie’s head. She shouldn’t be here. She was alone in the woods with a complete stranger, just two days after one of her classmates was pronounced missing. You didn’t have to be a genius to realize how unsafe that was.
And yet—
And yet Charlie didn’t feel afraid. Well, maybe a little, but any fear was overpowered by a different feeling, one entirely foreign to her. It was that fluttering in her chest again. Like a hummingbird had awoken in her breastbone, its delicate wings sending excited shivers around her body.
Is that what this feeling was?Excitement?
Jesus. She was even more fucked up than she realized.
“Seriously, though,” Charlie said, trying to steer the conversation back on track. “Whoareyou?”
Elias waved a hand. “A curious lurker, same as you.”
“I’m not alurker,” Charlie huffed.
“Sure you’re not,” Elias said jovially. He clasped his hands behind his back and walked in a small circle, looking at the trees around them. “It’s been an interesting week to move to Silver Shores,” he said. “Police tape everywhere. News vans driving in from all around the state.” He looked at her with an arched eyebrow. “Is it always like this around here?”
At last, some concrete facts she could latch onto. “So, you’re new to town?”
“I am.” His eyes glinted as he looked at her. “But I’m assuming you already knew that.”
“A good assumption,” Charlie said. “I grew up here, and I’ve never seen you before.”
He stared at her in silence for a few slow beats, just long enough to make her heart pound faster and her toes start to tingle. “I start at Silver Shores High tomorrow.”
“Oh,” she said. “Really?”
