NORA
Hello?” I call into my own home.
As if I were the stranger. The intruder picking locks and slinking through shimmied window frames.
Fin sniffs the air, quick inhales through his nostrils.
I tiptoe into the living room, trailing snow across the floor. Tink, tink, tink go the droplets of water.
And then someone appears at the bottom of the stairs. “Shit, you scared me,” Suzy says.
My shoulders drop. “I thought the house was empty.” But my tone betrays something—the uncertainty I feel, looking for cracks along her edges, for something she’s hiding.
“Just me.” She moves into the kitchen and leans against the white tile counter, as if she’s still a little unsteady on her feet, a little hungover after last night. Dark circles rim her eyes.
“Oliver’s gone?” I ask.
Her mouth puckers to one side. “Guess so. No one’s in your room.” She rubs at her temples, then lifts her bloodshot eyes to mine. “I only went up there to see if you were still asleep. I wasn’t snooping.”
“It’s fine,” I say. I walk to the stove, the fire burning brightly—she must have added more logs. My head has started to pulse, little pricks of light fanning across my vision.
“Where were you?” Suzy asks.
“Just needed to get out of the house,” I say. I don’t know why I lie, why I don’t tell her that I went to see Mr. Perkins. That I found a watch that belonged to Max in Oliver’s coat. That I think he did something he can’t take back.
But I do know why I don’t say any of this: because I’m not sure I can trust her.
I’m not sure she doesn’t know more about Max. About everything.
She blinks several times, like she needs more sleep. “What’s wrong?” she asks. She senses something is off.
But there are too many things wrong. A bone moth is following me, a dead boy’s watch was in Oliver’s pocket. Something bad is happening and I can’t tell who’s the villain and who’s just as scared as me.
Nervously, I twirl the moonstone ring around my finger. “Were you there with them that night?” I ask, the timbre of my voice cracking.
“When?” Her eyebrows crush together.
“The night Max died. And Oliver went missing.”
She frowns even deeper, little lines creasing the sides of her mouth, confused. “No,” she answers, straightening up from the kitchen counter. “I was asleep in Rhett’s bunk when they all left.”
“Did you know they were going to the cemetery?”
She crosses her bony arms, her sweatshirt twisted around her torso, a defensive posture. “No, what are you talking about?” A strand of hair slips free from the tanged bun atop her head.
“But when they came back,” I urge. “You must have known something happened? That Max and Oliver weren’t with them.”
She chews on the side of her cheek like she’s trying to remember, to sift through the drowsy fog of her mind. A little black smudge is just visible by her right eye, her mascara rubbed away while she slept—the only makeup she must have brought with her. “Why are you asking me this?” Her tone is suddenly acrid, flint scraping together. Sparks catching on her teeth.
Because a bone moth is following me, I want to say. Because the throb at my temples won’t go away.
Because death is coming for me. Tiny black spots of doom—just like her smeared mascara—always just beyond my vision.
Suzy and I stare at each other, neither of us breathing, looking for the truth in the other’s face. In the lines around our eyes that often reveal when someone’s lying.
Never trust anyone who blinks too often: a note—a warning—within the spellbook.
“I didn’t know anyone was missing that night,” she says flatly when I don’t answer her. “I don’t keep track of who sleeps in which cabins.”
Anger boils up inside me now, wings thwapping against my ribs—the certainty that she knows something she won’t say—and I take a step closer to her. “But you heard them talking about it—that someone had died?”
She lifts both shoulders in an exaggerated shrug, her perfect dark eyebrows raised like little tents. “I guess,” she answers. “I wasn’t really paying attention. I was more worried about being stuck up here.”
“A boy died, and all you cared about was being stuck?”
She sets her jaw into place and uncrosses her arms, looking suddenly rigid. “You think I had something to do with it?”
“I just want to know what happened.”
“And you assume I’m lying?”
“I don’t have any reason to believe you aren’t.” The words should probably sting, but I’m beyond that now. Beyond caring what she thinks. I feel like I’m losing control. Like I can’t see what’s right in front of me—everyone is hiding something and I want to scream. This is my forest, the place where I’ve always felt safe, yet I have no idea what’s happening.
I am a Walker who can’t see the truth.
Suzy moves her hand too quickly, and she knocks one of my mother’s honey jars off the counter onto the floor. It lands with a loud shatter, the glass breaking on impact, and the sticky amber liquid spills into the cracks. She stares at it, like she might apologize, but then she lifts her eyes and says, “Why would I lie?”
The honey pools along the wood floor, following the divots and lines, filling in the scrapes like mud. Slow and mercurial. “To trick me,” I say at last, my ears ringing louder now. “To make me look like an idiot. Because that’s what people like you do—find ways to torment the Walker witch.”
People like you, I think. People who only pretend to be nice but say awful things about me behind my back. People who form circles that no outsiders can enter. Who like to watch others squirm while rumors are passed ear to ear.
Her mouth hangs open for a second, and then her eyebrows dip back down. “I thought you were my friend,” she says, her voice thin as paper, tearing slowly along a crease. Like she might sink into a crack and disappear. Just like the honey.
But I refuse to feel bad for her. “We were never friends before this,” I point out, my voice bitter and quick. I don’t belong in her world, among her circle of friends. I am lost in that gray in-between. Not quite normal enough to have friends, not quite powerful enough to summon real magic like the Walkers before me. “You’ve never talked to me at school, you’ve never even smiled at me in the hall.” The words are tumbling out. “I’m just a convenience for you. Because I’m all you have right now—because you have nowhere else to go. You’re just using me.” The words have left my mouth before I can even regret them. Before I can feel their full weight slam down inside my skull.
Suzy’s round lips snap shut.
And the anger I felt dissolves on my tongue just as quickly, turns to nothing. And I’m left feeling empty—as hollow as an acorn husk.
Suzy crosses the room to the couch without even looking at me, grabs her bag from the floor, and walks to the front door. As she passes, the air has the hint of stale rose perfume—the last of whatever she dabbed onto her skin days ago. She pauses and flicks her gaze back to me. And for a moment I think I should say something, a string of words to undo what’s been said—a balm for the wounds I’ve just caused. But she speaks before I can. “I always thought everyone was mean to you at school for no reason. I defended you to Rhett and the others, I told them you were nice and that all the rumors weren’t true.” She pulls her jaw back into place. “But maybe I was wrong.”