THE MOMENT EMELINE STEPPED across the tree line, her footsteps slowed. As if her body was having second thoughts.
The wind stopped.
The leaves quieted.
The thick, piney smell of the forest enveloped her.
Awk!
Emeline jumped at the sound, looking up. A large raven perched on the branch of a maple overhead. Its feathers gleamed blue-black in the light of the setting sun, and its beady eyes shone as it cocked its head at her.
It was twice the size of a regular raven. For one silly second, Emeline wondered if it was a shiftling.
Shiftlings were an Edgewood myth—creatures who moved between forms. In Edgewood, people believed that a raven or a fox or a deer might be nothing more than an animal, or they might be something else—spies sent by the Wood King himself.
You can always tell a shiftling by its shadow.
Awk! the bird croaked, and flew off, feathers shuffling.
Her skin prickled, as if the raven’s call had sounded some alarm and the eyes in the woods were turning to look at her.
Emeline pulled her cardigan tighter and trudged on, her feet crunching twigs and fallen leaves. Cupping her hands around her mouth, she called for Pa. As she walked, the forest closed in on her like a fist. Her sleeves snagged on thistles and thorns. Clumps of brown burrs collected up and down her jeans.
The trees thickened. Their massive boughs blocked out the sky and the woods grew darker around her. At every creak and moan, Emeline turned sharply to look, only to find herself alone, and the way behind her as tangled and dense as the way ahead.
Will I be able to find my way out?
“Don’t think about that. Think about Pa.”
She shouted his name, over and over. But there was no answering call, and worse: no sign of him.
Worse still: the daylight was disappearing around her. Emeline needed to head back; she didn’t want to be in here after full dark.
Tomorrow I’ll go to the police station. If she told the police she believed Pa was in the woods, they’d have to assemble a search team. Wouldn’t they?
But as Emeline turned to go back, she found the forest … changed.
The trees around her were diseased. The buds on the sumac trees were gray, not red, the hickory leaves were white and withered, and the trunks of the poplars were rotted.
Even the air was wrong. Cloying and moldy and wet.
Emeline turned again, but the lush green forest she’d just come through was gone. In its place was something sick and decaying. The light here wasn’t the deep gold of sunset, but the pallid gray of death.
“What is this place?”
The Stain, breathed the trees. Cursed territory.
“Cursed?”
But the trees said nothing more. And Emeline, realizing she was talking to inanimate objects, moved quickly on.
Head north, she thought, her skin turning to gooseflesh. Edgewood is north of the woods. All she had to do was walk back in the direction she came and she’d get there. Beneath her footsteps, shriveled leaves dissolved like ash. The forest—which had been creaking and moaning—had gone eerily silent.
The voices of the trees turned to breathy rasps: Something’s coming.
Her skin hummed with awareness as she heard it too: movement in the distance, scraping against branches as it went, air rattling in its lungs as it drew closer.
Go, said the trees. Run, Emeline!
But what if it was Pa?
Through the murky gray light, she saw it. Like a shadow, only darker. Black like a cellar with no windows or lights.
As its elongated shape slinked closer, she saw sinewy arms, oddly jointed, and shining white claws crusted with dried blood.
A chill spread through Emeline, like the winter frost sweeping through Pa’s garden, killing everything in sight.
She knew what this was.
A shadow skin.
She shook her head, backing away. It’s not possible.… Shadow skins were cunning, ruthless things. Servants of the Wood King sent to terrorize Edgewood. It was a shadow skin that ate Corny’s horse last winter. A shadow skin that bled Abel’s cows dry two years before that. And when Maisie found one lurking in her shed, she locked it in, intending to burn the whole thing to the ground—only to watch the monster burst through the door and come for her.
If Pa hadn’t been there that day, hadn’t grabbed her and pulled her into the house, barricading the door, the thing would have torn out Maisie’s throat.
But these were only stories.
And if they’re not only stories? Emeline thought as the thing slinked closer.
The creature stepped into the clearing, only a dozen paces away. Staring straight at her. Or it would have been, if it had any eyes. Instead, there were just two slitted nostrils and a crack for a mouth. That crack widened, revealing rows of serrated teeth.
It stalked closer.
Run, Emeline!
But it was too late to run.
Sighting a broken white branch on the ground, she reached for it. Her fingers curled around the hard wood. Lifting it furiously over her head, she swung with all her strength.
There was a resonant thud! as the branch connected with the shadow skin’s palm.
The creature flexed its clawed hand, seizing the branch and snapping it in two.
Emeline stumbled back.
It stood over her now, mouth gaping open, revealing blood-encrusted gums. Strings of saliva glistened between its needle-sharp teeth as its breath wafted over her, smelling like rot.
Emeline felt herself stiffen: muscles seizing, bones locking. She willed her body to move, but it wouldn’t. As if someone had taken control of her motor functions.
An unnatural cold flooded her limbs.
And that’s when she remembered that killing wasn’t the worst of what a shadow skin could do.
You’ll never see him again, a putrid voice oozed through her mind. You’ll never hear his voice. When they find him, they’ll put him back in that white room, and he’ll die there. Frightened and alone.
She saw Pa then, in a room that wasn’t his, waiting for someone who was never coming. She saw him so clearly, as if he were right in front of her. She watched him stand at the windows. Watched him pace the halls. Waiting for his granddaughter. Longing for her to come. Wasting away, a little more each day.
She tried to pull herself out of these thoughts, but resistance only triggered darker, sadder visions. As if something was inside her mind, forcing her down the most heartrending paths.
It was this that shadow skins were known for: finding your worst fear and using it to immobilize you.
As the monster clawed through her thoughts and memories, looking for the things she buried deepest, Emeline stared at its gaping maw. She knew that once it was done ravishing her mind, it would sink those glistening teeth into her throat.
Emeline opened her mouth to scream.
Before she could, the sharpened tip of a blade split open the monster’s face.
The shadow skin shrieked, relinquishing its hold on her.
Emeline’s legs buckled in shock and she dropped to her knees.
The blade vanished back through the shadow skin’s skull, but instead of blood, darkness spilled out of the wound. The monster’s high-pitched wail stabbed her ears. It lifted its talons, clawing its face as if to stop the flow, then crumbled like dust to the forest floor.
Emeline gaped as its dead form bloomed into poppies, their red petals flickering like drops of shining blood.
From above, a rough-soft voice growled: “You reckless fool.”