by Fleur Smith
He sighed. “It doesn’t really matter. I called to say that I miss you already.”
I grabbed the phone with both hands and closed my eyes to stop tears from welling in my eyes. “I miss you too.”
The silence between us stretched out into an endless, yawning maw that exaggerated every mile between us. For my part, I was usually happy to just listen to the sound of his breathing because it proved that he was safe, but now it just reminded me exactly how far away he was.
“I won’t be able to stay on the phone for long; Eth wants to go soon. It’s a three day hike into the valley, and he wants to get a jump on it while we still have the energy.”
I wanted to tell him that I didn’t want him to get off the phone, that I wanted him to come home. If I was selfish, I would have told him about my nightmares, but it could easily backfire. It might not send him rushing back to my arms, and would only cause him to go into the mission with his mind full of concern over me. “What’s the plan then?”
In the rush of him coming home and then heading out again so quickly, I hadn’t asked him any of the vital information that I needed to know, like what he was hunting. Clay spent the next few minutes running through the details of their agenda. The instant we finished our phone call, he and Ethan were going to be heading on foot into the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes where they would begin their hunt for whatever it was that had been terrorizing the area and attacking the hikers. There had been no deaths yet, but a few people had been scared witless. They planned on getting a bus back once they were done. He said they could have taken the bus in, but they didn’t want to risk missing an opportunity to search for tracks or clues as to the creature they were hunting for, whatever that was.
“I’m afraid it’s going to be a while before I’ll be able to call you again,” he said as he finished. “It’ll be at least a week.”
Instead of focusing on the time he’d be out of range and uncontactable, my mind was stuck on what he’d said just before that. A knot of unease began to twist in my stomach. Neither of them really knew the specifics of the creature they were dealing with. “You don’t know what you’re hunting?”
The words Clay had said to me months earlier, in response to my charge toward the Slender, rushed into my mind. “Some things can’t be killed by bullets or by knives, or by any man-made object. There are creatures that are impervious to all manner of weapons. Others would even laugh in the face of your fire. You have to know what you are fighting.”
“We’ll be okay,” Clay replied.
“But what about what you said in Germany?” I reminded him of the words that were running through my head on a panicked loop. “You can’t just run into these things blindly.”
“This isn’t the same thing. We’re not going in completely blind; we’ve got a few ideas about what it could be, and we’re prepared for each of those eventualities.”
The baby twisted suddenly, somersaulting in my stomach. I carried the phone away from where I’d been standing against the kitchen bench and sat on the sofa, giving the baby a gentle rub through my stomach to try to calm her down.
“Like what?”
“A shapeshifter,”
After listening to Clay’s assurances and guesses as to what they might be facing for a few more minutes, I asked to speak to Ethan.
“How’s my niece doing?” he asked.
Because I was already stressed enough from Clay’s admissions, I couldn’t hold back my anger at Ethan’s disregard for me and my needs. I was more than a breathing baby maker, and it was his fault that Clay had believed it necessary to leave us. “She’d be doing a lot better if her Daddy was home to be with her,” I snapped.
“Yeah. Sorry about that.” Although his words could have been sufficient for an apology, he didn’t sound guilty enough to my ears for me to accept it as such.
“Just promise me that this is the last one, and that you’ll bring him home in one piece,” I stated in a non-too-pleasant tone.
“What’s up? It’s not like you to be quite so . . .”
“So . . . what exactly?” It was impossible for him to miss the danger in my tone.
“So paranoid.” He said the word with such flippant ease, which only served to ramp up my irritation.
Once upon a time, I’d used the word to describe my father. As an expectant mother, I was really beginning to understand the stress he must have lived with every day, especially when he’d let me go to school knowing what he did about my secrets.
“I guess it runs in my family,” I said. “Add in a whole bunch of hormones and it doesn’t make for a very happy wife or mommy or sister-in-law.”
“Well, I promise he’ll have all his bits when I return him to you, safe and sound.” Ethan’s voice was dripping with innuendo as he spoke, and then he guffawed as Clay said something in return before grabbing the phone back.
“Please promise me you’ll stop stressing, Evie,” he said. “It’s not good for our daughter.”
I sighed but before I could respond there was a commotion on the other end of the line and Clay issued a muffled curse. “I’ve got to go. I’ll call you as soon as we’re done. Love you.”
He didn’t even give me a chance to respond before hanging up.
“I’ll stop stressing when you’re home,” I murmured into an empty phone line.
I hated being such a hostage to the hormones, but nothing I did seemed to change how readily my moods shifted. The fact that the one person I wanted to comfort me was thousands of miles away and I wouldn’t be able to speak to him for a week only made my mental state more unstable.
Glancing at the clock, I realized that Aiden was due for his visit in a little over an hour and I still had to shower and get ready. I tried to push the tears and tantrums away to concentrate on the visit, which was, to be fair to Aiden, an almost bright spot in my otherwise bleak day.
Stop stressing, I thought. Clay’s right. It isn’t good for our daughter.
It won’t hurt to know that he’ll be safe though.
By the time I finished my shower, I was determined to be in a better mood before Aiden arrived.
AIDEN KNOCKED on the door to signal his arrival. When I pulled it open, he was holding a slice of cake and an iced-mocha in his hand.
“Ooh, gimme!” I said with a grateful clap.
We were both well aware that my enthusiasm was a little forced, but neither of us acknowledged it. His little treat for me showed just how well he knew me and how readily we’d fallen into a near-perfect routine for Clay’s absences. Well, near-perfect for me at least.
Day one usually consisted of me sitting around either doing nothing or maniacally cleaning.
Day two was always the opposite of day one.
By day three, I usually had some sort of beverage in hand and was sitting at the breakfast bar in my tiny kitchen by the time Aiden dropped around to see me. It was the day I usually opened up and allowed myself to feel—the good and the bad. Usually, I whined about Clay, then gushed about him, and just generally talked around in circles for hours. Through it all, Aiden sat like a saint and listened to me.
“Do you not agree that it would be considerably more polite to allow me to enter through the front door before you snatch at my goods?”
“Nope!” I popped the “p” and then raked my tongue through the cream on the top of the iced-mocha before grinning at him through my creamy, white moustache. I turned around and walked to the breakfast bar in the kitchen, taking my treats with me. It was all part of our routine. Aiden always stood on the kitchen side while I sat in the dining area across from him as we talked through Clay’s latest exploits. More often than not, he didn’t care whether or not I had any real information for him; he just wanted to keep me talking so that I didn’t sink into myself. It had been years since he’d first pulled me from melancholy and saved my life, and he was still doing it.
“I’m glad that you appear to be feeling better than you did yesterday.”
“I am,�
� I said as I got out a plate and some cutlery for the slice of cake Aiden had brought. As usual, I offered him half and, as always, he declined. I think he assumed, correctly, that I didn’t always eat properly when I had my bad days. “Clay called me again this morning and they’re almost there. Which means he’ll be home soon.” I ignored the fact that he’d only been gone for three days out of a possible fourteen—or more. The way I saw it though, the sooner he arrived, the sooner he’d be headed home.
Thankfully, Aiden was willing to overlook it too. “What was their destination this time?”
As usual, Clay hadn’t told Fiona and Aiden where he and Ethan were going, or what they were hunting, only how long he was expecting to be away.
“Alaska,” I said. “A national park or something somewhere near King Salmon.” The place name came out as more of a question than a statement. “They had to catch a float plane in and then they were hiking from there.”
Aiden sat forward and stared at me intently. It was the most interested he’d ever appeared in Ethan’s and Clay’s whereabouts. “Do you know the name of the national park?”
Unable to recall the exact name, I shook my head. “Cat something.”
He frowned. “Do you know what they are searching for?”
I shrugged and took another mouthful of the iced-mocha he’d brought me. “They don’t know. I think they were hoping to get more information from the base camp when they get there. When he called this morning, he mentioned something about a shapeshifter, but that’s all I know really.”
My words reminded me of the fact that the phone call was likely to be the last contact I’d have for almost a week—and that was assuming things went well. I went from enjoying the cake Aiden had brought me to pushing it around on the plate.
“Where did your mind travel to just now?” Aiden asked.
I explained about the upcoming lack of communication.
“You should return to the court with me, at least temporarily,” he said. Concern and pity clung to his voice like static, causing me to shift in my seat with discomfort.
I didn’t need pity, I just needed company. I just need Clay.
“Or did it slip your mind that there was a room available for you there. It is available for yourself and Clay forever. You are always more than welcome to stay. I know there are concerns about the safety of the enchantment long term, but I do not believe a handful of nights will significantly alter the outcome of the pregnancy or the health of your daughter.”
“I know it’s there, but I don’t know about staying there.” I thought about the expansive bedroom Clay and I shared at the court; the space that practically burst with our shared personalities. When we’d left, we hadn’t taken any of the personal items that had lined the walls and covered most surfaces during our months-long stay, so it was still all perfectly in situ. The photos of Mom and Dad and Dad and me, the giant photo of Clay and me, the mural-style artwork made with all of his notes were all right where we’d left them. I could go stay in that room, but it felt wrong to be there without Clay.
“Please understand that this is not a one-time offer,” Aiden said. “The invitation is always open to yourself and Clay to return.”
“I know and I appreciate that. I really do. Honestly, I don’t know what I would have done without your support while Clay’s been on his missions. You’re a good friend.”
“Lynnie, we are not friends. We are family. You are part of the court, and not simply because of Clay’s relationship with Fiona.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I feel the same. But I want to stay at home, at least for now.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
IT WAS ALMOST exactly a week after my last phone call from Clay before the phone rang again. Having survived the bulk of our separation relatively unscathed, I was more than ready to hear his voice again. I raced to the breakfast bar to answer the closest handset with a smile on my face.
Punctual as always.
I picked up the phone and said a cheery “hello” before waiting for Clay to confirm that he was headed home.
“Evie?” The wrong voice—Ethan’s voice—traveled down the line in response to my greeting.
My hand instantly closed around the receiver in a vice-like grip, as the room began to spin. Although I tried not to panic, it was impossible to ignore the voice in my head that warned that there wasn’t any good reason for Ethan to call me if they were both near the phone. Clay would have beaten him to it, which could only mean Clay wasn’t there.
There were only a few reasons why Ethan would be near a phone when Clay wasn’t, and not one of them was good.
“What’s wrong?” I asked in a blunt tone as my blood turned to ice in my veins and my heart struggled to move the sludgy mess around my body.
“Is Aiden there at the moment?” he asked quietly.
I ignored his question because the reason he was asking had nothing to do with him needing to speak to Aiden. Truthfully, I had no idea who was currently on guard, but Ethan had his own ways of contacting the court. If he’d genuinely just wanted to reach Aiden, he could have called them to find out where he was with less hassle than calling me. There must have been another reason he wanted to know, and it sent the worries in my mind spiraling, overtaking every conscious thought. Our daughter kicked sharply, and I pressed my hand against the spot to calm her, even though I was anything other than calm myself.
“Where’s Clay?” I countered.
“Evie,” his voice was strained and tight; my eyes naturally screwed closed as my mind considered the ramifications of his tone. “I need you to sit down,” he said quietly.
No, no, no, no, no. My breathing hitched as all of the worst case scenarios began to rush through my head again, flashing one after the other. All of the nightmares I’d had with Clay, battered and bleeding and me unable to help, ran though my head. I heard Ethan saying something else down the phone line, but I couldn’t hear it over the sound of my blood thundering in my ears as it pounded through my body. Please just tell me he’s okay, let this all be a stupid prank.
“What’s wrong?” I asked again in a breathless whisper. The two words were the best I could force through my sudden inability to form words.
“It’s Clay.”
“No,” I said as soon as Clay’s name left Ethan’s mouth.
Ethan sighed. “He’s . . . missing.”
I shook my head rapidly even though Ethan couldn’t see me. Tears pricked at my eyes, stinging and welling but refusing to fall. I thought about the consequences of Ethan’s words until the whole world was nothing more than a streaky blur of colors. Each breath I took was shallow and failed to provide me with the oxygen I needed to stay upright. The baby kicked my stomach again and brought everything into rapid focus. “No, he can’t be,” I said. “We . . . we need him here.”
Stuttered breathing came down the phone line until Ethan inhaled sharply and evened out his voice. He sounded as panicked and close to tears as I was. “He’s okay, Evie, I’m sure he’s okay.” Ethan’s words might have been exactly what I wanted to hear, but his voice lacked the confidence I needed to believe them. “He just . . . we just got separated.”
So many questions began to race each other around my rapidly shrinking sanity, but overarching all of them was a pledge, one that I was relying on to bring my husband home safely.
“You promised,” I hissed venomously as the reality of how terribly Ethan had failed me and my unborn child began to permeate my thoughts. “You swore you’d bring him home to me.”
“I know I did, and I still will. I promise. I thought he might have come back to base camp. That was our contingency for if we got separated, but he’s not here.”
A strangled sob rose in my throat.
“He’s not here yet,” Ethan continued carefully, but again I could tell the words were selected to inflict the least amount of pain, not because he genuinely believed them.
“Where is he then?” I asked quietly before I realized my near-silent
voice was entirely inadequate. I needed to shout the question out to the gods and demand an answer from them. “Where is he?” I screamed at the world with all of the volume I could muster in my failing voice.
The front door banged open as someone came charging in. I lifted my eyes from the spot I’d been staring at on the kitchen counter—watching as it went from fuzzy to clear and back again as my eyes watered before the tears finally fell—to meet Aiden’s bright-blue eyes.
“What is the matter?” he asked, ignoring the fact that I was on the phone.
Seeing the concern in Aiden’s eyes was too much for me, it echoed the fear twisting itself around the sinew and muscle in my body. The hand holding the phone dropped to my side before the rest of my body followed behind, slumping down to the floor. I wrapped my arms around my legs as best as I could with the protruding bump in my way. Aiden continued his path to me and gently pried the receiver from my fingers, lifting it away from me to talk to Ethan as he turned his back on me and left the kitchen.
“Clay,” I sobbed into the now empty space. I threw my head back against the cabinets and began to wail loudly. “Where are you?”
A horrific shudder ripped through my body as I sobbed until eventually the baby gave another couple of choice kicks to my kidneys, and I shifted position so that I could rub soothing circles over my stomach.
“He can’t be gone,” I whispered to my bump. “We need him, don’t we, Ava?”
Realizing that not only did we need him, she needed me, I forced myself to calm the hysterics and pulled myself to my feet. Falling apart wasn’t going to do anyone any good.
What would Clay think if he came home to find you like this? I reprimanded myself. I tried to take solace in the fact that Ethan was certain Clay was still alive and disregard the fact that he was alone in an inhospitable wilderness. He was a fighter, a survivor, whatever happened, I was certain he would return home to Ava and me.