THE WOODS CAME FOR Emeline the way they always did: creeping in with the shadows, seeping up through the cracks.
Emeline, they whispered. Sing us a true song.
Emeline gritted her teeth, ignoring it. From her perch on the wooden stool beneath the white lights, she continued to croon into the mic, picking the strings of her ukulele, telling herself she didn’t care if the ale in the bar taps turned to mucky creek water tonight, or if the cash in the register transformed into crisp golden maple keys. She didn’t care if those spongy green clumps currently sprouting up between the floorboards were, in fact, forest moss.
She needed to stay focused.
She needed to not screw this up.
Emeline couldn’t give the representatives from Daybreak Records—sitting at the back of this crowded pub—any inkling that freaky things happened when she sang. Nope. Tonight, she was Emeline Lark, folksinger with a pop vibe. Rising star with foot-stomping melodies and a breathy, warbling voice.
Nothing freaky to see here at all.
The lights of La Rêverie were turned down and a real fire crackled and spit from a hearth in the pub’s stone wall. Along the opposite wall, round logs for the fire were stacked neatly from floor to ceiling, and oil lamps glowed on wooden tables throughout the room.
It all felt very hyggely. Cozy, warm, and dark. Minus the sterile white lights above Emeline. These blinded her, heating her face and making her sweat, hiding the patrons from view as she hurtled towards the end of her final set.
Emeline …
As she sang, the scent of damp, mulchy earth festered in the air. Emeline scrunched her nose, trying to focus on the faceless audience beyond the lights. Her leg bounced as she plastered on a smile, cracking jokes between songs, keeping things cheerful and light.
She only played songs her manager approved. Those likely to jive with the Daybreak representatives at the back, watching her. Representatives in a position to offer her a contract.
A contract.
The thought made Emeline crackle and spark with hope.
A contract with Daybreak—one of the biggest record labels in the country—would launch her to the next level of her music career.
But will they see a rising star? she thought. Or will they see a hack?
She kept strumming.
When she reached the last song of her last set, the pungent smell of moldy earth made Emeline glance down. The spongy green moss had skulked right up to the scuffed brown toes of her Blundstones and shiny black insects were starting to scuttle out of it.
Just one true song, rasped the woods.
Her spine stiffened as she thought of last Thursday’s gig. The woods sent spiders that time. The creepy-crawlies arrived during her third set, crawling up her jeans and falling into her water glass. Drawn to the sound of her voice.
Emeline shuddered at the memory.
She’d found one in her hair later that night, and an infestation in her guitar the next morning.
Don’t let it happen tonight.
Before the insects crawled over her Blundstones and up her stool, before green moss could start sprouting out of the mic—a thing that happened a month ago—Emeline skipped the last verse of the song and moved straight into the final chorus.
No one ever noticed the strange things that happened when she sang. Maybe it was because she played so late at night and most people were into their third or fourth beer. Or possibly it was because the lights were always turned down so low. Or perhaps she’d just gotten really good at ending her sets before things got out of hand.
Or maybe it’s because you’re seeing things that aren’t there.
Emeline’s last song trailed into silence, ending her set ten minutes short. The forest paused, waiting for her to begin another one.
Not a chance.
Because the moment her set ended, so did the forest’s reach. It was something she’d learned after moving away from Edgewood two years ago: the woods—real or imagined—only came for her when she sang.
The problem was: Emeline was always singing.
Music was her life.
The audience applauded. She smiled, hoping it didn’t look forced. Thanking them, she wiped her sweaty palms on the threads of her yellow sweater, then let out a deep breath. The house music started up, relieving Emeline of her role as entertainer.
Lifting her ukulele from her lap, she set it on the stand next to her guitar and covertly scanned the room.
The green moss was receding, along with the bugs, taking the scent of the woods with it.
Emeline slumped with relief. She’d done it. Managed to get through all three sets without causing an incident. No one noticed the mossy presence in the room tonight. No one except her.
It made her wonder—not for the first time—if it wasn’t all in her head. If her mind wasn’t perhaps going the way of her grandfather’s.
Maybe I’m crazy too.
Like everyone who lived in Edgewood too long.
An ache flared in her chest as she remembered the last time she’d seen her grandfather. That sterile room. Her shoes on the gray linoleum floor as she walked away and out of his life.
She forced herself to breathe.
You did the right thing. It’s what he wanted you to do.
She shoved the thoughts from her mind, but a sharp ache remained.
To soothe her throat—which was dry and parched from singing—Emeline reached for the bright pink Hydro Flask beneath her stool. The one Joel gave her. She’d filled it up with water at the beginning of her last set.
Her fingers grabbed air.
She leaned down, scanning the floor. No Hydro Flask. Emeline narrowed her eyes. She’d put it right there, beneath her stool. But it was gone.
In its place rested a flower. A white anemone, pretty as a star.
What the…?
Emeline pinched the flower’s stem between her fingers and plucked it out from beneath her stool. Light caught in the translucent white petals circling the black center.
The sight sent a chill down her back.
“If this is a prank,” she murmured to the woods, “it’s not your best work.”
As Emeline cast her gaze like a net over the pub, her attention snagged on a bright pink water bottle. It was instantly familiar: her missing Hydro Flask.
She glanced from the bottle to the young man holding it. He was little more than a silhouette standing just beyond the reach of the bar’s dim lights. Watching her. The shadows hid his face and clothes—but not his tall frame. Nor the intensity of his stare.
Awareness crackled like electricity across her skin. There was something familiar about his presence. Like a book she’d read a long time ago and forgotten.
He lifted her water bottle as if to salute her, then tipped it back, drinking deep.
Emeline’s mouth fell open.
He’d stolen it. And now he was draining it dry.
Indignation blazed through her. The nerve! It was one thing to lurk; it was another to steal her beverage out from under her and drink it while she watched!
But how had he taken it without her knowing?
Emeline’s insides flickered at the thought of him near her, taking her water bottle as if it belonged to him, leaving the flower for her to find.
She forgot all about the Daybreak reps. Forgot about music contracts. Forgot about the woods and Edgewood and everything she’d left behind to pursue her oldest dream.
She would not be taunted by this boy. She would not be intimidated. Her grandfather raised her better than that.
Emeline was used to being underestimated. She was a nineteen-year-old girl in a cutthroat music industry—a fact that seemed to give people license to dismiss her. It bothered her, but it also made her grateful.
When people underestimated you, it was easy to turn the tables on them.
Rising from the stool, Emeline stepped out from beneath the bright lights. Keeping her target in view, she zigzagged between tables, closing the gap between her and the bar.
Between her and him.
He thought he could stalk her without consequences? She would cure him of that notion.
He set down her bottle on the bar. Even with him veiled in shadow, Emeline sensed the struggle in him. Pleasure that she’d risen to his challenge, unease at her approach.
That’s right, she thought. You picked the wrong girl to mess with.
She curled her hands into fists, ready to use them if need be.
He made no move to leave. Merely gazed at her from the darkness. Daring her to unveil him. As if he wanted her to.
There was something unearthly about him, she thought as she drew closer. Something that didn’t belong in the chic atmosphere of La Rêverie.
She was ten steps away now. Nine. Eight—
“Emeline.”
Someone stepped into her path, making her halt. Emeline blinked, jolted out of her tunneled thoughts, her mission interrupted. The young man who cut in was wiry and tall. His dark jeans clung to his lean, toned legs and his blond hair was cropped short on the sides, but long on the top. He brushed it off his pale forehead.
Joel White.
“For you.” Joel smiled warmly as he held out a glass of icy root beer. “In celebration.”
Emeline paused, momentarily confused by the sight of her manager’s son. As if he—not the mysterious stranger—were the oddity here. As if they weren’t standing in La Rêverie, but somewhere else entirely. She looked from the glass Joel held out, to his sky-blue eyes, then over his shoulder.
Her stranger was gone.
Vanished.
As if he’d stepped straight out of this world and into another.
Emeline blinked, then clenched her jaw. Damn it. Grinding her teeth, she scanned the room, but there was no sign of him.
“Everything all right?”
Fastening on her performer’s smile, Emeline took the cold, bubbling root beer from Joel. “Of course.” She pushed the stranger from her mind. “What are we celebrating?”
“You.” His cheeks dimpled. “Wowing the Daybreak reps.”
Emeline stood frozen, her mouth falling open like a hinge. Around them, the dim lights of the pub faded and the house music blurred.
“I overheard them talking with my dad. They adored you, Em.”
As the words sank in, her chest expanded with a satisfied warmth. Did you hear that? she wanted to say to the woods. Despite your best efforts, they adored me.
She took a celebratory sip of root beer. “So, they’re making an offer?”
Joel’s smile faltered. “Not quite.”
Oh.
Emeline’s joy flattened like a muted note.
Joel leaned in so she could hear his voice beneath the music. “They want to see how you handle a bigger audience. They’re coming to watch you again, at your first tour stop. My dad sent you an email with the details.”
Joel tapped his bottle of beer against her glass, clearly unperturbed by this disappointment.
She should have known better. Joel always made things sound sunnier than they actually were. Not because he liked to pretend things were fine; he was simply never daunted by setbacks.
It was probably the reason why, at only twenty-one, Joel was the lead guitarist in a successful indie band, St. Urbain’s Horsemen. Their most recent album had won this year’s Polaris Music Prize, and he’d just gotten back from touring in Australia. Raised in the music scene, Joel dropped out of college after deciding it was a waste of time and money. Growing up in the industry had given him all the contacts—and credentials—he needed.
“Want to go over your set list tonight? I think a few tweaks is all you need to blow them out of the water.” He winked at her. “They should know exactly what they’ll lose if they don’t offer Emeline Lark a contract before she even walks off that stage.”
But as Joel pressed his palm to her lower back and steered her towards a table, Emeline thought of the bright green moss creeping up the stage tonight. She remembered the spiders crawling up her jeans last week, her root beer turning to creek water a week before, and the bills in her wallet replaced with leaves.…
The forest was more persistent than usual.
As if it was getting desperate.
It’s nothing I can’t handle, she told herself. I just need to stay vigilant.
But what if things worsened while she was on tour?
“What’s the flower for?” Joel asked as he guided them through the thick crowd. After three hours spent sitting beneath white-hot lights, sweat soaked her, and Emeline was glad for the sweater shielding his hand from her clammy skin.
Not that Joel minded her sweaty.
“Flower?” Emeline looked down to the white anemone gripped in her fist. “Oh.” She’d nearly forgotten it. Already, it was beginning to wilt. “It’s nothing. A gift from … a fan, I guess?”
Emeline glanced back over her shoulder to the bar, thinking of the stranger in the shadows. Of his lips pressed to her Hydro Flask, drinking her water.
Who is he?
It didn’t matter. He was gone—and he had taken her water bottle with him. Deeply annoyed by this fact, Emeline resolved to put the stranger and the woods out of her mind.
Finally, she and Joel arrived at a table littered with empty wineglasses and craft beer bottles. Four wooden chairs ringed it. Emeline plunked herself down on the closest one.
“So, your first tour stop is obviously the most important.” Joel cracked his knuckles. It was his getting down to business move. “Can you pull up your set list? I want to…”
The floor should have been sticky with beer beneath her boots; instead, it was squishy. Joel’s voice faded into the background as Emeline bent her head to look under the table.
Beneath her Blundstones grew a bed of emerald-green moss.
She blinked, sure she was imagining it. The woods only encroached when she was singing. But there they were: shiny, black, bead-like things emerging from the moss. Scuttling over the floorboards, swarming up the table legs.
Beetles.
She stared in horror at their little black bodies, shimmering and flashing iridescent blue and green. She could almost hear their tiny legs clicking.
The sharp smell of crushed pine bloomed through the air.
It’s not possible.
She wasn’t singing.
The forest doesn’t come for me when I’m not singing.
Emeline shoved back her chair, almost toppling it, then rose and stepped away from the table.
“Em…? You all right?”
Joel’s forehead crinkled as he stared up at her. She was afraid to look down, in case the motion drew his attention to the beetles.
Ask him. Ask him if he sees them.
But what would happen if he couldn’t see them? It would mean she was losing her mind, just like the rest of them. Pa and Poor Mad Tom and …
“Want to get out of here?” Her voice strained over the music. “Maybe go somewhere quiet?”
Not hearing the panic in her words, Joel arched a brow. A small smile curled the edges of his mouth. “Your place or mine?”
“Yours,” she said, grabbing his hand and pulling him up. As the horde of black beetles teemed over the edge, flooding the tabletop, she quickly turned him towards the door and shoved. “Definitely yours.”