Tourmaline had always looked up to feel safe. To the ridgeline swept across fathomless blue sky. To the jagged outcroppings and exposed meadows. To the eternal shadows deep in the folds of the mountains.

The sight of the ridges, always on the horizon, did something she never really bothered to explain to herself—as if she’d been formed out of their dirt and it was the gurgling mountain creeks and the muddy James and Cowpasture rivers that flowed in her veins. As if she had crawled out of honeysuckle, bloomed in a humid night, and wandered under the stars before making her way to her crib. She looked to them, as if to her true mother—always there, always watching.

The Appalachians. The Blue Ridges. Those places outsiders drove around and tried not to get lost in had been there the whole time, watching the world give them a wide berth, just as it did her family. Iron Gate was held tight in the still-pulsing umbilical cord of the Great Appalachian Valley. Closed in on all sides, but with plenty of open sky.

Here, she belonged.

But never had she felt so much a child of those hills as when she dropped Virginia off in Roanoke and headed deep into the mountains, turning her truck up Sheep Creek Road to face the sheer gravel switchbacks.

Her parents had lied. The world, with the crib and its toys and those people, was never hers. But the rocks and trees would never deny her. It was as if they’d been waiting this whole time to accept her back into their wild folds.

With her heart pounding in the back of her throat, she stared at the trees climbing up the mountainside, and the stranger kudzu vines tangling pockets of darkness overhead.

The truck skidded around the first turn and kicked up a cloud of gravel; in the rearview, a great swirl of golden dust billowed into the hanging emerald leaves.

Tourmaline smiled.

This place was deceptive. It made you feel alone in the wilderness. Here, on a deeply rutted gravel road that had long been abandoned, the place made you feel that way, and all the while it betrayed you.

Dust whispered to the trees. The trees whispered to one another. And the wind whispered to those faces that remained, warning them that someone had dropped down off that slick, manufactured parkway and entered through the ancient gates.

The ghosts were awakened. They picked up their muskets from the apple orchards and climbed out of moss-covered tombs, watching from deep inside the oak and hickory forests.

Tourmaline pressed on. Slower. Balancing the power needed to climb the mountain and the care needed so she wouldn’t kick up traitorous dust along the way.

Her mother’s directions were not all that helpful. Tourmaline passed several houses tucked back deep in the hollows. But she kept on, deeper into the mountain, trusting that her mother had told her enough, and the mountain and its ghosts would accept her as one of its own. She fought the ruts and bounced up another twisting pass, trying not to look down the sheer drop-offs. Jason and Cash were still trying to smash Virginia’s truck back into drivable shape. She didn’t need to add her truck to their list.

The sun streamed in dazzling, white-hot bursts over the valley, and there was a lot of daylight still left for those rolling plains. But here, tucked deep against the mountain’s side, a shadow had descended. Some places she passed were always in shadow.

Tourmaline rolled down her window and turned off the air-conditioning. Slowing the truck as much as she dared, she scanned the woods for signs of a cabin. For Wayne’s cabin.

The road grew rougher. The trees narrowed overhead. Giant, lichen-covered boulders now marked the hairpin turns.

Finally, something brown and thinly horizontal caught her eye. Pressing the brake, wishing for a gun with a scope or for binoculars, she peered into the leafy shadows and studied the crooked, steep slope.

Slowly, the forest released its secret. The enchantments drew back, and she blinked at Wayne’s house, clear as day, hunkered beneath the now groaning and creaking trees.

The breeze poured in the window, lifting her hair off her shoulders and bringing the scent of wild onion and mint—and the trail of something unnatural and poisonous.

She’d been worried that at this moment she would falter. Faced with the reality, what would she do? But she felt no hesitation. If anything, she was assured.

The mucky green cast to the weathered boards hid the cabin well. Rust stains streaked the low-slung metal roof. Shoving the emergency brake to the floor, Tourmaline tucked her hair into her shirt, put on a crushed camo hat from behind the seat, and got out.

Closer, she saw that the windows were covered over with cardboard. Cans of paint thinner and drain cleaner lined the porch and littered the leaves around the house. She didn’t see a truck or car, but as she hunkered into the brush, the wind died long enough to let her hear a radio playing inside, and boots scuffing over the floor.

The sun sank far behind the ridge. The shadows deepened to huckleberry blue and bruised plum. The spiders spun their silver-corded webs. And somewhere far above her, the faint sound of thunder rolled through the ridge.

Shifting her weight on her heels, she memorized the cabin. The road.

The trees began to wail. The wind lashed at their tops and tugged her hair loose from her shirt, playing with it behind her and whipping it across her face.

She’d been here long enough. The mountains were saying it was time to go.

Exhaling, she turned for the truck.