Page 37 of Brody

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“All right,” I said once the waitress had left. “No more stalling. I’ve already told you everything I know on the phone. Now, it’s time for you to start talking.”

I could see the hesitation that still lingered in Deputy Hillard’s eyes, but it wasn’t as strong as it once was. After everything that had happened to us—being robbed and spied on, Magnus and Trent being drugged, and now Ellis and me openly attacked at gunpoint—even Deputy Hillard had to admit that we deserved to know the truth.

Sighing heavily, the other man pushed away the cold plate of pancakes. “Were do I even start?”

“How about the beginning?”

“The beginning?” He laughed under his breath with a slow, sad sound. “The beginning starts over a century ago.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

The waitress chose that moment to return with my coffee, and we both waited in awkward silence until she left.

Staring down into the dark liquid in my cup, I was reminded of another mystery that I’d forgotten about. The coffee beans we’d found inside Rose Milford’s locket were still unexplained.

I stared at Deputy Hillard over the rim of my mug as I took a sip. We’d switched out the coffee beans when we gave him the locket.

Did he know?

Would he try to trick me the same way we’d tricked him?

I had no reason to trust what he said, but I also had no other place to look for information.

It wasn’t a great position to be in, but I didn’t let any of that show on my face as I held his gaze.

“I’m not going to sit around here all day. If this all started a hundred and twenty-five years ago, then you’ve got a long story to tell. So, start talking.”

Each second felt like an hour as I waited for him to find his words. Finally, after a lifetime of patience—which was probably only about thirty seconds—he spoke up.

“You know about how the Milford sisters came to this town, right? They just wandered out of the woods one day without an explanation. From what I’ve been told, they were barely more than teenagers at the time. Early twenties, at most, but there was something about them that made them seem much older. They got jobs at the town’s mill and lived quietly until people started to notice something strange about them. Their garden was ten times more fruitful than anywhere else, and they gave away their surplus of food. They healed illnesses, could fix anythingthat was broken, and could even tell the future. They predicted the fire that destroyed the town, saving most of the people. The few people who did die in the fire were corrupt individuals that everyone wanted to get rid of. After that, the head of the Milford family took over as mayor, adopted the sisters as his daughters, and the town was renamed Emberwood.”

“Then a cult was formed around these newly crowned ‘Mothers of the Mountain’ and everyone lived happily ever after,” I said with as much sarcasm as I could muster before taking another sip of coffee. “I’ve heard your fairytale before, but none of that explains what’s happening now.”

Deputy Hillard quickly waved his hand in front of me, silently begging me to lower my voice as he looked around nervously. “I’m getting to that. I just wanted to make sure we were on the same page, and explain why, even now, the reverence for the three sisters is still so strong. There are a lot of people in this town who wouldn’t be alive today if their families weren’t saved from that fire all those years ago. And it’s not just the fire. Drought. Famine. Plague. War. None of it was able to touch Emberwood while theMothers of the Mountainwere here, and even now, the town is relatively prosperous despite its small size.”

I’d never agreed with religious worship of any kind. It all felt very silly and impractical to me. If you wanted something to happen, you had to achieve it with your own hands. Praying to a god to solve your problems for you was not only a waste of breath, but also a lazy way to avoid putting in real work.

Although, I supposed it was better that the ancestors of this town at least worshiped something that was tangible. If the sisters were able to accomplish even half of what the stories said about them, it was no wonder other people ended up worshiping them.

“Okay. I get it. These sisters are really important to a lot of people. I’ll try not to rock too many boats, but if people keep attacking me and my friends, then I can’t guarantee anything.”

“I know,” Deputy Hillard nodded, swirling the last dregs of his own cup of coffee. “It never should have gotten this far, but that body you found has stirred up a lot of hostilities.” He sighed again, and I nearly reached over the table to grab him and shake the answers out of him.

I didn’t need a long-winded story about the town’s history. I just needed to know how to keep my own people safe.

“The story of theMothers of the Mountainhas been told over and over,” Deputy Hillard finally said, though it sounded like every word had to be forcibly dragged out of him. “But there’s one part of the story that is always glossed over. The sisters’ initial arrival in town. They just walked out of the woods one day, with no indication where they came from.”

I couldn’t contain the snort that escaped from my nose, and quickly took another sip of coffee to try and hide my reaction. “I’m sure your cult has come up with all kinds of supernatural explanations. They were born to a pack of wolves? Or maybe they were actually fallen stars that took human form.” I snapped my fingers as a new idea came to me. “Oh. I know. They grew up out of the ground and bloomed from flowers. It would explain their names.”

Based on the way his expression shifted, I could tell I’d hit the nail on the head with my last guess. Deputy Hillard cleared his throat and waved down the waitress for a refill on his drink, never once meeting my eye.

“Something like that used to be the common belief,” he mumbled once the waitress left. The diner wasn’t very loud since it could only hold a handful of customers, but I could still barely hear him over the chatter of the couple at the table next to us.

I leaned back in my chair, conscious of the creak of old wood. These chairs had not been made for someone of my size and weren’t very comfortable. Every time I moved, I feared it would collapse under me, but I still tried to look as relaxed as possible.

“Cults are all the same. Always trying to make their story seem more extraordinary than it really is.”

“It’s not like that,” Deputy Hillard snapped, clearly bothered by my repeated use of the word “cult”.