CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
VIV TORE THROUGH THE WOODS like there were beasts at her heels. She was less familiar with this stretch of forest, but she knew that if she kept running she’d reach a pond with a picnic area. Families used it during the day, teenagers hung out there at night. She didn’t know who might be there this early, but she hoped there would be someone who could help.
When she stumbled into the clearing, the last of the morning mist was rising off the pond. Blood plastered her torn dress to her skin, and she clutched the dagger in a death grip. Her feet hurt like someone had burned them. Her chest was heaving, and she knew she looked like she’d committed a murder. Or escaped one.
She saw Beth Teal sitting on a picnic table on the far side of the pond, her head bent over the nettle jacket she was knitting. Viv gathered her breath to yell—and Beth’s swan brothers swam toward her, honking aggressively. Beth glanced up at the commotion.
“I need your phone!” Viv shouted. “Henley’s in trouble!”
They met halfway around the pond, Beth pushing her phone into Viv’s hand before Viv had a chance to ask again. It was already calling Jack Tran’s number.
Jack sounded worried when he answered—“Beth?”—and Viv realized it was because Beth never called people; her brothers would die if she spoke.
“It’s not Beth, it’s Viv. Henley got into a fight with the other Huntsman. The Huntsman has a knife and—”
“Where?”
She did her best to explain, but it was hard to describe their exact location. “I can take you there.”
“No, you stay with Beth. I’ll find them.”
Viv paced while she waited; despite her injured feet, she couldn’t sit still. The swans had stopped menacing her, and birds were chirping and sunlight glimmered on the water and it just seemed wrong that Henley could be dead in those woods. If he didn’t get his hands on the knife fast enough. If he didn’t strike first.
“I shouldn’t have left him. God. What was I thinking?” She burst into tears and Beth rubbed her back with one blotchy red hand.
Two hours had passed by the time Jack showed up at the picnic area. The dirt on his clothes and skin hinted that things hadn’t gone smoothly, and Viv ran to find out what he knew. Beth came with her, tossing a handful of crackers to her brothers to keep them busy.
“Did you find him?” Viv asked.
“Just this.” Jack took Henley’s cell phone from his pocket. Dirt was caked in the grooves and the screen had been smashed. “This doesn’t mean anything,” Jack said. “He probably dropped it and stepped on it while they were fighting. But I think I found the place where they fought. I followed the blood trail, but … it just stopped.”
“Blood trail? Whose blood was it? Why didn’t you—?”
“I don’t know whose blood it was. It probably belonged to both of them. But—it looked like someone was being dragged. I don’t know who came out on the better end of that fight. I wish I did. We just have to hope we hear from Henley. And hope we don’t see that other Huntsman again.”
“We can’t just wait! We have to look! I’ll go with you this time. We have to find him. He could be hurt! He might be—”
Jack wrapped his arms around her and hugged her tight. He smelled like pine needles and earth. “Viv, I want to find him as much as you do. But there’s no one in those woods anymore.”
“Then we need to find a grave.” She buried her face in Jack’s chest, wiping her runny nose on his shirt, not caring how disgusting that was because she didn’t have any pride left.
She’d always worried about whether Henley would kill her. She’d never considered that he might die because of her.
“I’m going to get Viv out of here,” Jack murmured over her head. She felt Beth patting between her shoulder blades and then Jack was leading her to his car—an old Mustang painted the leafy-green color of a beanstalk. Viv felt like a zombie. Jack opened the door for her.
“I need to take you somewhere safe,” he said. “At least until we know if that Huntsman’s still out there. You can’t stay at my place.… Is there somewhere you can go?”
“Jewel the singer?”
Viv nodded.
“What’s the address?”