Page 53 of Welcome to Blackbird Hollow
The hellhound crouches down, slavering as it lets out a puff of sulfurous smoke. Alice has fished ammo out of the glove compartment, but the otherworldly sound of a pack of hellhounds baying makes her jump so hard that the bullets spill from her hands.
Everything happens at once. The agents take aim—at us or the hellhound, I have no fucking clue. The pack shows up on the heels of the thickest mist I’ve seen crawl out of the forest in all the time we’ve lived in these parts. I push Alice down as Sector opens fire. Not a single bullet hits the truck. But the sound of growling grows louder, the smell of sulfur so thick in the air now that every breath triggers the worst of my gag reflex.
“Stay down for me,” I mutter as I turn the ignition. The truck roars to life.
Alice grabs my hand. “Don’t leave.”
I glance over at her from our mutually crouched positions. “Darlin’, we’ve gotta go.”
She shakes her head, her honeyed waves swaying. “We need to see what happens here.”
Alice really is missing a few integral marbles for her jar, but from a strategic standpoint, she’s not wrong. We came to Three Ravens for information on the Hunt, and we’re being offered up a prime morsel of it, complete with firsthand evidence.
I sigh at the sounds of those absurdly large guns. “Fine. Just a peek.”
We both raise ourselves up just enough to peep over the dashboard. One agent’s reloading, and the other appears to take aim again, but they’re not gunning for any of the sixteen hellhounds that stand between us and the agents. They’re aiming straight into the woods.
And then I clock it. The truck’s position, facing toward Old Main, backed straight up to the forest. Like always, I parked as far back as I could, under the canopy of trees. The place where I feel the safest—the most at home.
Is it possible the hellhounds aren’t protectingus? Are they protecting something in the forest? I spin in my seat, searching the dark wood for something, any scrap of evidence that this isn’t about Alice—but there’s nothing behind me. Nothing I can see now, anyway—and apparently neither can the agents.
“They’re packing it in,” Alice hisses, hitting my shoulder with an insistent little fist.
The touch brings back the memory of her skin under my fingers, and I flush hot at the thought. Apparently, now that the danger’s passed, my body’s going to take the opportunity to remind me that I nearly got to third base with Alice just ten minutes ago.
One long, deep breath centers me somewhat. Enough that I turn back, and sure enough, the agent who’d been reloading has started the car. Before I can gather my thoughts enough to say something, they’re peeling out of the parking lot with a dramatic squeal.
The mist rises, thick as split pea soup, and the hounds fade into it, their scent of rotten eggs receding as they do. In moments, it’s like nothing happened at all. Even after a lifetime of dealing with this shit, I find it surreal that I can be in the thick of it one moment, and the next…everything’s normal.
And my new normal means that I think about Alice every second, even during an encounter like the one we just had. My head’s spinning with myriad adjustments. I’ve always been adaptable, and now that my heart’s all the way in with Alice, my mind’s rapidly shifting to make room for her.
Her and her big brain that needs both time and space to process.
I stay quiet for a few stray moments, scanning the parking lot for more trouble and finding none. I watch as the last of the mist curls back into the forest, birdsong slowly returning as the air clears. Next to me, Alice is still, her eyes narrowing like she’s thinking hard.
“What’re you putting together, Blythe?”
She shakes her head. “Nothing. That’s the trouble. That was strange, wasn’t it?”
I nod. “It was.”
There’s something she’s not saying, and I wonder what she’s made of all this that I don’t see yet. Caden does the same thing occasionally when he’s chewing on a theory. It never does to rush him, and I don’t want to pressure Alice if she needs the space in her head clear to work things out her own way. The voice inmyhead that reminds me not to be chickenshit at love also reminds me that trusting someone means giving them room when they need it, so I don’t pester Alice into telling me what she’s pondering.
I lean back in my seat a little, stretching my shoulders. “You like fruit?”
Alice raises an eyebrow. “Is that code for something?”
I chuckle as I take the truck out of park. “No. Just wondering if you like citrus. Barnes Whitney drives down to the Groves periodically, and we haven’t picked up our crate yet.”
Alice’s face lights up. “There’scitrusin Blackbird Hollow right now?”
I nod. “Yeah, Fallon asked me to pick up our crate on the way home. Marion’s got ours at the Stardust, if you want to stop by. I’d also like to ask her about what we just saw.”
Alice nods. “That’s a good idea.” She grins. “You said citrus…does that mean there might be limes?”
I grin. “Key limes, if we’re lucky. You might not guess it, but Fallon makes a killer key lime pie.”
Alice smiles a smug little smile at me, tweaking my nose with her index finger before pressing the sweetest kiss to my lips. When she pulls away, she’s still smiling. “That’s where you’re wrong, Wyatt. I believe the Hayes kids can do just about anything.”
