Two girls. Two secrets.
Only one can survive.
Years before Nelle Wychthorn plans her escape, Tabitha Catt may unearth something in a Horned God's lair that is the key to freedom.
Desperate to save her beloved aunt from a dark curse, Tabitha is out t...
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Valarie and I approached the derelict dwelling, moving past what might have been a chicken coop, the structure having fallen apart from weather and age, a tangled cloud of thin-stemmed plants with tiny late-blooming flowers carpeting what was left of it. My movements were silent on the forest floor, carefully placed and light of foot. Not that I was looking to obscure my presence, but simply because it felt wrong to be here. An almost undetectable hum, unsettling and ominous, thrummed through the air.
The forest had twined itself around the cottage, strangling it with ivy and creeping vines, while lichen and rampant moss crept up the mismatched stone walls. One side had collapsed in on itself along with part of the thatch roof. Twisted, claw-like trees grew inside, poking out of the roofless area, and sickly-looking honeysuckle climbed in through the open windows.
I edged past the rotting door that had fallen off its hinges and stepped inside. A chilling, ghostly breath whispered across the back of my neck and made all the fine hair stand on end. The packed earth that had once acted as the floor had given way to nature. Spider webs caught in my beard and across my nose. I quickly brushed the sticky strands away, rubbing my fingers on my armored chest to remove the webbing from my skin.
Valarie followed closely behind and palmed a knife. Apart from spiders and nature stealing inside, it seemed as if nothing had been disturbed by forest critters. Everything lay untouched on the kitchen bench, utensils, and clay canisters, and what once could have been flour scattered over the table, a dusty, wooden rolling pin nearby.
My sister picked up a jar from a wooden shelf that held preservatives. Bottled food that was now a muddy-brown color. She put it back down, turned around, and swept a curious, troubled gaze around. "Creepy," she murmured.
Cracked plates, mugs, and dull cutlery neatly set, remained on the small dining table, along with a rusted metal pot right in the very center, as if what had occurred here to those who had lived in the cottage, had been swift and abrupt.
An eerie chinking sound had us both whirling around. The wyrmbone hunting knife clenched in my hand rose. An icy shudder rippled down my back to see that the sound had come from a mobile hanging above a baby's crib. The empty crib stood in the corner of the room beside the deteriorating frame of an old straw bed. A slinking breeze stirred the tiny carved birds that had been hand-whittled and made them dash against one another once more—chink-chink.
"Creepy as fuck," I agreed. I jerked my chin toward the cottage's doorway, wanting out, and my sister and I made our way back to the forest, glad to be gone from the creepy tomblike dwelling.
We wove around thickly knotted trees and waded through wild rushes that feathered against our boots and calves until we found the water well not too far from the cottage.
Valarie's hair, braided into a rope, fell across the shoulder of her fish-cut armor. Both of us leaned over the stoney side of the well. It was deep and dark down there. A dull shimmer like oil on water came from below, and something else...a collection of things that were mottled-white and mostly still intact.
