Dead Man's Stitch

by Meg Collett

  She spoke to the guards about their rotations for the night—mindless yammering I mostly ignored as I bounced on the balls of my feet beside the gate. Out or in. Out or in. A foot crunched on the loose rocks along the trail outside the gate. It meant she wasn’t right on the other side anymore. I knew that crunch. I’d walked that trail plenty of times.

  I sidestepped along the gate and peered out. Marley stood a few feet away, peering up at the guards in the rook’s nest. Two guards leaned over the railing and spoke to her. The evening was late enough that the shadows from the tree and fence mostly hid me.

  “Have a good evening,” Marley called, smiling happily.

  The guards said goodbye as she turned directly away from me.

  Ignoring the voice in my head that said to turn around, I sidled through the gate right as it started to close. I slipped along the fence with my back pressed to the rock, my shoes silent over the loose rocks.

  No one yelled down at me, and Marley walked on along the trail without a backward glance.

  I picked up my pace and kept to the shadows. Only when I was out of eyesight of the guards did I let out a breath of relief. I focused on Marley’s plaid shirt and frayed denim jeans.

  She’d headed off into the woods opposite the hunting grid Ollie and I patrolled. I wasn’t familiar with the area, but we were circling around the west side of the school, heading toward the center of Kodiak Island instead of the shore side near Tick Tock Bay. Out here, the woods were denser and the darkness more complete. I followed farther behind in case I stepped on a loose twig and alerted Marley to my presence.

  We walked long enough that I worried about getting turned around. I flicked my eyes between the ground at my feet and Marley’s back as she slipped in and out of the trees like a phantom. She moved with an easy, long-legged grace, her head bowed and never once looking up. Birds called from the trees above, and the sky was red with the last dregs of sunset. It would be dark soon, and I saw no signs of weapons on Marley.

  Either she was extremely confident in her hand-to-hand combat skills or she was incredibly stupid.

  She reached into the back pocket of her jeans and pulled something out, her steps slowing.

  I slipped behind a tree and peered around it.

  A long slip of red ribbon hung in her hand. She stared at the ground, her focus on something I couldn’t make out. With her foot, she tapped the ground. It made a hollow knocking noise. I frowned. What the heck was on the ground? Then she looked up at the low-hanging branch above her. Carefully, leaning far over whatever was on the ground, she pulled a limb toward her and tied the red ribbon in a loose bow around it, pulling the ends tight.

  When she released the limb, it slapped back into place, bobbing up and down, the ends of the ribbon fluttering.

  Marley watched it for a moment before wiping her hands on her jeans and turning toward me.

  I flattened myself behind the tree and held my breath. Her footsteps crunched on the ground, getting louder the closer she came. When she passed, I skirted the tree to keep the trunk between me and her. She walked by without a glance.

  When I was certain she was heading back to the school, I ducked out from behind the tree and scuttled over to the thing on the ground.

  It was a warped piece of plywood with tufts of weeds growing out of the edges. It was circular and directly beneath the ribbon. I frowned. Crouching and glancing back over my shoulder to make sure Marley hadn’t doubled back, I lifted the edge of the plywood.

  A putrid smell hit my nose, and I gagged. I covered my mouth and nostrils and peered down.

  And down and down.

  It was a massive circular hole. Smooth river rock lined the edges, and far at the bottom, I caught the shifting gleam of water. It was an abandoned well, and the smell was from stagnant water and possibly dead things down there. I dropped the piece of wood back into place.

  Why had Marley marked an old well? Was she worried someone would fall in? Then why come here at night and alone? And why a red ribbon?

  The plywood wasn’t thick enough to hold anyone’s weight if they were to step on it, but the red ribbon wouldn’t deter anyone unless they were looking for it in the branches above the well. I frowned up at its fluttering ends.

  What the heck was Marley doing?

  I stood and dusted off the knees of my pants. I needed to hurry if I was going to catch up.

  I took off down the trail, moving quickly and silently. Keeping a sharp lookout for Marley’s red hair, I returned down the route we’d taken, but Marley was nowhere in sight.

  After a few minutes, I realized I’d lost her. I stopped and glanced around.

  “Son of a biscuit,” I grumbled.

  Where the heck had she gone? The wind gusted again, and I tugged up the neck of my turtleneck. It was getting late, and I had nothing but a few knives on me. But at least I had new information to tell Ollie and Mr. Clint. If Marley was coming out into the woods alone to mark old wells, then she was up to something. Giving up on following Marley, I oriented myself and resigned to head back to the school.

  A flash of black darted out from the trees. The shadow hit me full-on in the side, hard enough to rattle my teeth. Grunting, I hit the ground with the weight of a rhino on my chest. I was thankful for my training with Mr. Clint that my first instinct was to tuck onto my side, buck my hips, and get my knee up.

  A hand wrapped around my thigh and wrenched my leg down. I flopped onto my back, my head smacking into the frozen ground. When I blinked up at the person on top of me, I saw nothing but a balaclava-covered face and piercing blue eyes.

  The person froze. “Oh shit—”

  I punched him with everything I had straight in his mouth.

  His head snapped back, and he howled as he fell off me, holding his mouth and crawling away in the snow.

  I jumped to my feet and sprang on top of him. Grinding my knee into a kidney, I grabbed the base of the balaclava and used it as a noose to rip his head back, cutting off his air supply.

  “Shit,” the man wheezed. “Let me go, Sunny. Shit.”

  I squinted. I jerked his head back farther to look at his face.

  “Thad! Oh-my-gosh!” I jumped off him.

  He sat up, rubbing his mouth. His hand came away wet with blood from a busted lip. “Your right hook has gotten better, I see.”

  He spat onto the ground.

  I grimaced. “I’m really sorry.”

  “Why are you apologizing? I attacked you.”

  “Good point, but I still feel bad.”

  “Don’t. Just help me up.” He offered me his hand.

  I took it and hauled him to his feet. When I went to drop his hand, he held tight.

  “What are you doing out here?”

  A hint of his scarred, disfigured neck showed above his jacket. He’d masqueraded as the human Thaddeus Booker for months before Ollie and I discovered he was a halfling sent by Hex to spy on Fear University. But he’d liked the persona so much that he’d taken the name and stood by Ollie’s side against her father when many others had abandoned her. We owed him a lot—even if he was a pain in the bottom sometimes.

  “I was …” I almost said “following someone,” but I stopped myself. “Going for a walk. Why are you jumping people out in the woods? Where are the halflings you went after?”

  “I didn’t know who was sneaking around this close to the school, so I wanted to find out. If I’d known I would land on top of you, I would have taken my time.” He winked at me.

  I punched him in the stomach—lightly, of course. Though he still grunted. “Whatever. You need to find Ollie. She was worried about you.”

  He barked out a laugh. “You don’t have to lie.”

  “Well,” I mumbled, “she does want to talk to you.”

  “That I believe.” He hooked his arm around my shoulders. “Come on. Let’s get home. I’m starving.”

  E L E V E N

  Ollie

  I ate a late dinner thanks to waking up face
down in a textbook with drool dried to my face. Ravenous and pissed for no good reason, I’d wandered into the cafeteria and found Ms. Brightly cleaning up the buffet. She set out some baked rosemary chicken, loaded mashed potatoes, and roasted asparagus for me, and then, after seeing how I’d tucked into the food, gave me another helping.

  I was just polishing off some chocolate mousse cake when the cafeteria doors banged open, and Sunny, windblown and red-cheeked, gusted in. I narrowed my eyes at the person behind her.

  “The prodigal son returns,” I said around the last mouthful of cake. I pushed my plate away regretfully.

  Thad smirked at my comment. He and Sunny took a seat at my table. The cavernous room was empty, and his voice echoed when he said, “Miss me, Ollie?”

  I nearly choked. Thad and I didn’t have the best track record. “Hardly.”

  “I heard from a little bird you were worried about me.”

  I shot Sunny a look. “You really should stop lying, little bird.”

  She sighed. “You two can at least try to get along.”

  Thad and I scoffed at the same time. With less contempt, I asked, “How did things go in Anchorage? Any sign of the other halflings?”

  His stubble had grown out, turning his pretty-boy good looks a bit haggard. His hair was longer, and the hollows of his cheeks had deepened. He wore the collar of his coat turned up, but I could make out the garish white scars marring his neck. Though he looked weathered and worn, his turquoise eyes burned with purpose. Thad, a halfling himself, had always understood my mission to protect those like us. On that, at least, we could agree.

  Even if he had agreed with my father to leave me in Max’s sadistic hands for weeks so I would be nice and broken when they took me to Anchorage to rebuild me in my father’s image.

  Men had always underestimated me. Thank God Luke wasn’t stupid like the rest of them.

  “The halflings have scattered,” Thad answered. “I found traces, but I lost any credibility by vanishing for so long.”

  It was only because I was looking for it that I saw pain shutter across his face. I glanced at Sunny—she’d seen it too. Like with Sam, we had to tread carefully around Thad when it came to our friendship with Zero. Thad didn’t hate her like Sam did, but he didn’t harbor the best intentions toward her either. Being tortured would probably cause that.

  “I’m not surprised.” I tapped the edge of my plate, making it rattle on the table. “But they’ll come around in time. We’ll find them, Thad.”

  “They should be home.”

  “They will be soon.”

  He shook his head, his dirty blond hair tumbling across his forehead. Maybe the scruff didn’t make him look haggard after all. Maybe it was more of a homeless surfer look that was so hot these days.

  “I’m going to grab a few things and head back out. I think if I go farther north, I’ll—”

  “Thad, no. We need you here.” It took about ten minutes of continuous talking, but I caught him up on everything that had happened since he’d left.

  He wrinkled his nose. “What kind of name is Marley Summers? She sounds like a hippie.”

  I snorted. Fine, Thad wasn’t so bad. “Keep talking like that and we might become friends.”

  “I won’t get my hopes up.”

  “Probably a good idea.” I leaned across the table with a glance at Sunny. She understood the need to have fighters in our corner that we could count on, especially since I would be useless in a battle. We needed people we could trust, and like it or not, Thad at least fell on my side. “But we need you here, at least until we see how this Marley thing shakes out.”

  “I was following her tonight before I ran into Thad,” Sunny said. I blinked at her, completely surprised. “She hung a red ribbon above an old well.”

  I frowned. “What?”

  Sunny pushed up her glasses. From the corner of my eye, I saw Thad watching her closely, his eyes skimming across her face and down her body, following the line of her back as she shifted in her seat. She glanced at him and then back at me. “Yeah. An old well. I can take you there tomorrow.”

  “A red ribbon.”

  Sunny nodded.

  “Yeah,” I said, sighing. “She’s a problem. I’m talking to Mr. Clint tonight. This ends now.”

  “It’s just a ribbon. What are you going to tell him?” Thad asked.

  I threw up my hands. “That normal people don’t go walking around in the woods tying ribbons above old wells unless they plan on hiding bodies in there!”

  “Did she have a body with her?” Thad asked Sunny, half smirking.

  Her mouth twitched in a return smile like they were sharing a joke. “Not that I saw. Her jeans were pretty tight. I don’t know where she would have hidden it.”

  I studied the two of them. “What the hell happened out in the woods with you two?”

  Sunny tensed, but Thad’s smirk only grew. “Jealous, Ollie?”

  “Oh, zip it,” Sunny fired off at him. She turned to me. “He attacked me. I was just walking back.”

  Thad lifted a shoulder. “Thought she was the bogeyman.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m done with you two. If you need me, I’ll be yelling at Mr. Clint. I’m in the mood to fight with someone.”

  “Where’s the big dumb brute with green eyes and bad hair when you need him, am I right?” Thad laughed. “How is good ol’ Luke doing these days?”

  “If you value your life,” Sunny said quickly, “I would be careful what you say to her.”

  Thad glanced between Sunny and me. “Why? Is she on her period or something?”

  I smiled. “Something like that.”

  I stood from my chair, scraping it across the ground, and picked up my plate. Without glancing back, I dropped off the plate in the sink and headed out of the cafeteria. I didn’t have enough time in the day to worry about Sunny and Thad acting cute together on top of all the other shit I had to worry about.

  On my way up to Mr. Clint’s office, I ducked into my cryptozoology classroom to pick up a spare textbook. As if I didn’t have enough crap going on, I had an essay due at the end of the week.

  It seemed preposterous that they expected me to save the world while also turning my homework in on time, but that could have been the hormones talking.

  “You’ve been avoiding me.”

  I whirled around, my instinct to fight taking over my body, even though my heart always recognized his voice instantly.

  Luke stood in the doorway. The last few rays of sunlight slanted through the windows, lighting half his face and casting the other half in shadows. His tanned skin glistened, and his green eyes sparkled as he leveled his too-serious gaze on me. He wore a white thermal, setting off his dark hair. His jeans hung low on his hips, the bottoms stuffed into the tops of his work boots.

  My breath stuttered in my chest.

  Holy shit, he was hot.

  “I, ah …” I began, wondering where the hell I was going with this. “I haven’t been avoiding you.”

  His jaw flexed. Without glancing back, he reached behind him and flipped the lock on the door. He crossed his arms over his chest.

  A man of many words, my Luke.

  “I’ve just been busy is all. Schoolwork and …” Shit, I couldn’t even use hunting as an excuse. His smell—cottonwood and caramel—scrambled my mind. “And stuff.”

  “Ollie,” he growled, dropping his arms and stepping forward.

  I retreated a step. And bumped into an empty desk.

  “I’ve had a stomach bug. I didn’t want you to catch it.” I tugged on my shirt collar. A bead of sweat rolled between my shoulder blades. When the fuck had someone turned up the heat? Didn’t they know it was already summer?

  I wasn’t willing to admit Luke Aultstriver made me sweat.

  He advanced another step. I sidestepped two paces to the left. We were in a chess game, the king and queen locked in a death match. I had a feeling I already knew who wouldn’t get checkmate.

 
Hint: It wasn’t me.

  “I know you,” he said in his low “shit’s about to get real” voice that sounded like it had been dragged over rough gravel. “I know something’s going on, and I know you’re hiding it from me.”

  He prowled a few more steps forward.

  I backed up and smacked into the wall. I swallowed heavily.

  He stopped in front of me. Our chests nearly bumped, and I had to crane my neck back to look up at him, my palms pressed flat against the cold brick wall.

  “You will tell me,” he continued, “now, so we can go home and get in bed. There are things I’ve been needing to do to you.”

  I shivered. I couldn’t help it. Dammit.

  “Maybe we can talk and walk,” I said, skirting to the side.

  He slapped a hand to the wall beside my ear, stopping me in my tracks.

  I bit my lip. His eyes fell to my mouth.

  Double dammit.

  Without looking away, he ground out between his teeth, “Tell. Me.”

  Just do it, I told myself. Just tell him. Practice the words. I’m pregnant. I’m pregnant.

  “I’m …” My throat closed up.

  “You’re what?” he pressed, leaning closer and stealing the air I was about to breathe.

  I couldn’t. I wasn’t ready. They were two simple words—I’m pregnant—but they couldn’t make it out of my mouth. Out of my heart. They were too big, and I was too small.

  “I’m … I’m …”

  “Ollie.”

  Shit, this wouldn’t work. I did the next best thing: I distracted him.

  I’d always been good at causing a distraction. And this pregnancy was already making my boobs bigger. Like they jiggled when I walked bigger. I wouldn’t call them my ace up my sleeve, but they were one hell of a flush.

  I tore open my shirt, Superman-style, popping a series of buttons straight off the material.

  Luke’s eyes widened. They widened further when they recognized the ample swell of my B-cup cleavage. A pregnant pause—no pun intended—later, he lifted his eyes to my face and narrowed them in suspicion. “You’re trying to distract me.”