by Molly Ringle
The part of her compelled by the spell that wanted to enter those trees and choose a mate was the unnerving thing.
But she didn’t have to. She had fought it so far. In the past month she had gone for walks alone, even along the same forest path as before, and had not heard the goblins, nor called out to summon them. Of course, it had been daylight, so they wouldn’t have shown even if she had.
It’d be light for at least another hour. Skye could, theoretically, wander into the woods again and come home, and still remain human for one more day.
Livy had come back yesterday from a date at Carol’s with Kit Sylvain, smiling and humming. “He’s a total womanizer,” she’d said to Skye. “He kissed my hand. Can you believe that? It was kind of cute actually… anyway, he’s fun to talk to, but I can’t imagine anything’ll come of it.”
Still, she’d been just about glowing.
It made the non-enchanted part of Skye’s heart ache with longing. God, to be able to date again. A human guy, not a goblin. To chat, laugh, kiss. Another perfectly normal part of life stolen from her.
She spat the fir needle out of her mouth, unlatched the gate, and strode out. In a minute she was across the weedy grass of the greenway, and up and over the railroad berm with its seldom-used tracks. She trotted down the other side and along the barbed wire fence until reaching the spot where the fence ended and a footpath led into the woods.
She walked down it, the same path where she’d so foolishly accepted the goblins’ invitation. Cloudy gray light filtered through the ceiling of branches. Silence wrapped around her. High above, a crow cawed a few times, and a car swooshed by somewhere in town. Her feet squelched through the carpet of needles. She breathed in the familiar wet forest scent that now triggered a combination of intense desire and terror.
I’m defying it, confronting it, not giving in to its draw, she insisted to herself.
She reached the spot where the lines of glowing mushrooms had led her off the path. White shelf-shaped mushrooms did still stick out of the fallen logs, but they grew in no particular pattern now, and she doubted they would glow if she cupped her hands around them to shut out the light. They were just mushrooms. In frustrated defiance, she left the path, stepping over the low branches of evergreen huckleberry that stuck into her way.
After several paces, she stopped and looked around. Still the everyday forest. Another car whooshed past in the distance, and when she craned her neck she spotted the white edge of the railroad signal back on the tracks.
You had to be invited, and accept that invitation, before the forest turned into faeryland. And that had to happen after dusk. She got that now.
Movement caught the corner of her eye, accompanied by a thump of shoes on the ground. She turned her head. Someone was walking down the path, headed toward town. From her partly shielded position in the bushes, Skye watched the newcomer.
He was a young man, around her age. A little lanky, but he had a pretty enough profile and a pleasant thatch of dark hair.
The idea sizzled through her in a second, leaving her hot and trembling.
Come to the woods and choose your mate.
They never said it had to be a goblin. And even a total stranger, as long as he was human, was better than a goblin.
Maybe this wouldn’t even work, wouldn’t do a thing to save her. But she felt the magic ricocheting inside her, rising to the ready.
Skye stepped toward the path.
Grady Sylvain stomped through the forest, barely registering the majestic mossy trees he’d been so stoked about on his summer visits to this town.
Another “Sorry, the position’s been filled” from a Seattle restaurant this morning when he’d called to follow up on what he’d thought was a promising conversation last week. Then another two hours wasted this afternoon in searching Seattle apartment listings online, and still finding nothing remotely affordable except places that looked like crack houses.
He’d moved to Bellwater after Christmas, three weeks ago. He had expected it to be a step up from Moses Lake out in central Washington, where he grew up. At least he was technically closer to Seattle now, his dream destination. But it turned out Bellwater—an idyllic bayside town in summer, all stand-up paddleboards and ice-cream cones—became a nothing-happening town in winter.
He wasn’t even that near Seattle. The city was two hours away, one hour of which involved a ferry ride, and he’d only been over there twice to pound the pavement and look for a cooking job. Jobs, like apartments, were being devoured in Seattle ferociously, and employers could afford to be picky. The places he longed to work didn’t want some kid from Moses Lake with a community college degree. The places that did offer him a job dispirited him just to be in them, so he had politely said he’d consider them, and left, hoping he’d never be desperate enough to accept those.
Apartment hunting had been equally frustrating: oh, you don’t have a job yet? Then no, you can’t lease an apartment. And rent prices staggered him, especially for the tiny living spaces they came attached to.
So here he was, stuck in Bellwater, skinning his knuckles on greasy car bolts, cooking for his cousin because there was no one else to appreciate it, and tonight was Friday and that didn’t even matter since he had no one to go out with and nowhere to go. Did becoming a grownup and seeking a real job suck this much for everyone?
Something moved at the edge of his vision, out in the trees. He slowed and looked.
A girl stood there, well off the path, just her head and shoulders visible, framed by leafy branches and bare twigs. She stared at him, her eyes imploring. She took a step toward him, then paused.
He came to a full stop and turned toward her. “Hey,” he called.
Shadows surrounded her big eyes, and her expression was intent and unsmiling. But she riveted him, reminding him of someone from a spooky beautiful painting, her hair all loose and dark around her pale face, her lips parted like she wanted to say something important.
Grady moved to the edge of the path, closer to her. “Hi. Uh, everything okay?”
“Help me.” She whispered the words, seeming to struggle to force them out, as if something were wrong with her tongue. He barely caught the phrase, even in the silent forest.
But he did hear it, and it galvanized him. He threaded between plants and stepped over logs to reach her.
He stood before her, shooting her a glance from head to boots. She didn’t look injured or anything. But she breathed shallowly, and kept staring at him with that intensity.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “You need help?”
She grasped the front of his fleece coat. Her knuckles dug into his chest. Grady gazed into her brown eyes in wonder.
“I pick you,” she said, again with a peculiarly stilted, numb-sounding vocalization, but she enunciated the words in a deliberate enough manner that the effect was almost formal.
“You what?” he said.
Then she laid one cold hand on the side of his face, and pulled him down toward her.
She couldn’t mean to kiss him. That couldn’t be about to happen. But she lifted her parted lips as if that was exactly what she had in mind, and though Grady knew the honorable thing, the smart thing, to do was to step away, he felt mesmerized. As her breath touched his face, his common sense fell to shreds. Temptation roped itself around his head, impossible to resist. He longed to kiss her all of a sudden, and his mind even supplied a rationale: hadn’t he just been wanting something pleasant to happen in his life? Didn’t this count, in a weird way?
So although it was beyond crazy, he met her halfway and kissed her. With restraint, like a gentleman. Well, at first.
Through a breath in her parted lips he caught an unusual, enticing flavor, rich and green like the forest itself, and he opened his mouth further to taste it. The kiss locked deeper; their heads tilted. He shut his eyes. Her fingers twined into his hair. The hand clutching his coat relaxed and she slid her arm around his back, snake-like. He wound his arms aro
und her, his fingers penetrating the holes of her loose-knit sweater, clawing at the soft curves and hard bones of her body. As their tongues met, Grady felt like the ground was sinking languorously beneath him. His head buzzed in astonished delight and a fire started in his lower body and crept outward.
She pulled her mouth free. Breathing hard, Grady blinked at her. Some pink had entered her cheeks, making her even more beautiful.
Just as he was about to speak—maybe ask her name—she ripped herself out of his arms and turned and ran into the forest.
“Hey!” Grady lunged after her, and fell on his front. A fallen branch bruised his chest, making him wince. He tried to rise, and found his feet were stuck. Twisting around, he discovered blackberry vines wrapped around his shoes. “Goddammit. How the…hey!” He twisted forward again. “Come back! Please! Who are you?”
He heard her fast footsteps, but only for a few seconds, then they went quiet. By the time he had disentangled his feet from the vines and stood up to look around, she was nowhere in sight.
He called and searched a long while, roving around the forest until the light faded too much to continue. His mystery woman was gone.
It was later than he thought, he realized upon checking his phone. How could it already be nearly dinnertime?
Disheartened, enraptured, and strangely lightheaded, Grady emerged from the trees and walked back through town to the island bridge, his ankles and hands marked up with thorn scratches.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SKYE TORE THROUGH THE FOREST, BREATHING HARD, STUMBLING AND CATCHING HERSELF OVER AND OVER AS SHE leaped rotting logs and whipped through thickets of young cedars.
What had she done? She didn’t know that guy from Adam, and she’d grabbed him and started kissing him like a strung-out maniac. Even at parties during college she had at least exchanged names.
It had been a wonderful kiss, and a corner of her mind still glowed with thrilled triumph over having done it. But it was a seriously insane thing to have done, and her mind raced in terror as fast as her feet bounded across the forest floor. Because, oh God, what were the goblins going to do to her—or to him—if this did work, and he had now been tapped as her chosen mate?
The afternoon light was fading. She stopped, panting, and turned around. She fumbled her phone out and checked the time, and gasped. It was later than it should’ve been; somehow she had lost an entire hour. Part of the enchantment? Could they have stood in that kiss for an hour?
Whatever the explanation, twilight had arrived. Which of course meant…
“Sky-eye…” The rasping voice from above turned her name into two singsong syllables.
“No,” she whispered.
“What have you done, sweet sister?” Redring’s voice said, closer. Others chuckled in the background, sinister and low.
Though ninety-five percent of everything in her longed to approach the voice, reach her arms up to the trees, accept the invitation, accept even the fruit, she squeezed her eyes shut and clung to the five percent. That still belonged to herself, to the human world, maybe even partly to the stranger whose warm body she could still feel upon her own.
“No,” she said.
“Come in and talk to us.”
“No!” She opened her eyes, pivoted, and took off running again, down the slope, back toward town.
“What…have…you…done?” The voice reverberated behind her, furious now.
Skye faltered, turned around like a child seeking her mother, then caught herself and spun toward home again.
“You will weaken. You will be back,” Redring called. “And he will follow you, and be ours too.”
She broke free of the forest, raced over the railroad berm, and sprinted across the grass. She was almost sobbing when she reached her gate, its peeling white boards standing out in the twilight.
“Skye!” It was Livy this time, sounding scared and relieved. Her sister jogged down the concrete steps from the house. The screen door banged shut behind her. “Where were you?”
Skye shot into the garden, shut the gate behind her, and wilted back against it, nearly fainting from exertion. “Walk,” she managed.
“You were taking a walk?” Livy planted her hands on her hips. She was breathing fast too, like she was just coming down off a panic. “Are you okay?”
Skye nodded.
“You need to leave a note, or text me or something. Can you at least do that? I was worried.”
Skye bowed her head, eyes closed. Her heart still galloped, blood circulating dizzily through her.
“Look, I’m sorry.” Livy’s hand settled on Skye’s arm. “It’s fine if you want to go for walks. I just get worried if you don’t let me know, all right?”
Skye nodded, not opening her eyes.
“I’m happy to go for walks with you if you want.” Livy was making an effort to sound upbeat. “I mean, it’s usually dark by the time I get back from work, but hey, we own flashlights, right?”
Skye finally opened her eyes, and focused on Livy’s blue and white running shoes. “Right.”
“Come on in. It’s getting cold. Let’s find something for dinner.”
Skye let her sister lead her back into the house.
The goblins were right. Someday she’d weaken. She would go back out there, and she wouldn’t come back.
She didn’t even know yet what fate she might have brought down upon a well-meaning stranger with his whole life ahead of him.
Grady’s desire to forge a life in Seattle screeched to a stop. Everything in him concentrated upon the mystery woman. Presumably she was here in Bellwater, but where?
For the next three days, during non-work hours, he walked up and down every one of the few streets in town, and along the shore and around the bobbing docks of the marina, and of course through the forest too. His feet were blistered and the soles of his sneakers starting to peel off at the edges.
The woman was nowhere, vanished like a ghost.
While working at the garage he watched Shore Avenue in distraction, hoping to see her pass.
“What are you looking for?” Kit demanded on the third day.
“Nothing. Just looking.”
He couldn’t bring himself to ask Kit about her. Obviously he couldn’t say, “Hey, I kissed this babe in the forest, but I didn’t get her name and then she ran off. Dark hair, medium height, around my age. Any idea who that is?”
He considered altering it to a story about seeing a girl in passing, thinking she looked familiar, and describing her to see if Kit could identify her. But after the way Grady had teased Kit for his milkshake date with Livy, he didn’t dare. Kit would razz the hell out of him.
What was her name? He couldn’t leave town again without at least learning that much, without seeing her one more time, without asking what exactly had happened in the forest.
Yes, he knew it was crazy to be this obsessed over an encounter that had taken up maybe sixty seconds of his life. (Or had it been an hour and sixty seconds?) But what an encounter. His fingers still felt the bones and flesh through her sweater, his tongue still tasted her mysterious bitter-greens mouth, her voice still haunted him with that whispered Help me.
He needed an explanation. He had to know why she needed help. He might very well go insane if he never saw her again.
CHAPTER NINE
“CAN I FOLLOW UP WITH YOU A MINUTE?” LIVY ASKED MORGAN TRAN, SKYE’S THERAPIST.
Skye had just come out of Morgan’s office in Olympia after her weekly hour there.
“Sure.” Morgan tucked her notebook against her chest. “Skye, make yourself at home. We have some yummy new green tea you can try if you like.”
Instead of fixing herself anything from the beverage counter in the clinic lobby, Skye plucked a Seattle Weekly from the racks and hunched down into a chair with it.
“I won’t be long,” Livy promised her.
Skye nodded without looking up from the newspaper. Livy exchanged a glance with the receptionist, who reassured her
with a smile. At least the receptionist knew to stop Skye if she tried to wander off. Lord, the things Livy had to worry about these days.
She entered Morgan’s office, which was soothingly done up in aquamarine paint and cushions, with a splash of orange in the form of Gerbera daisies in a vase.
“Have a seat.” Morgan shut the door and came around to one of the two chairs facing her desk.
Livy sat in the other, appreciating that Morgan joined her there, rather than clinically putting the desk between them.
Livy clutched her hands atop her knees. “Did she talk today?”
“Not much. Still only a few words at a time, mostly just echoing me, though in a way that made sense as an answer. It’s like you’ve said—I think she’s present, just inhibited from communicating with us for some reason. Have you come up with any ideas about what might have happened?”
Livy shook her head. “If anyone assaulted her, I haven’t seen any proof, and she hasn’t said a word. Which isn’t like her.”
“Well, while we hope it’s not that, sometimes a trauma does take a while to surface. Which is unfortunate for the law enforcement side of the issue, where sooner would be better.”
Livy curled her knuckles tight inside the opposite palm. “But it could just be S.A.D. or other depression?”
“It could. It’s a sudden onset and a serious case, but depression works in a lot of different ways. I’ve seen quite a variety of cases. Were you concerned about any new behavior of hers?”
“Sort of. She went out for a walk a few days ago without leaving a note or anything, and it was dark when she got back. When I got home and she wasn’t there, I kind of freaked out. I mean, she seemed mostly okay—tired and winded, like maybe she walked too far. But I feel like I can’t even trust her to leave me a note anymore. I feel like she might just wander off and…not come back. If she went out by herself…I guess, do you think she’s in a condition where I should worry?”