FABLE

Chapter Thirty Four

By the time I get to the part of the forest where the two trails meet, the midmorning sun is filtering down through the leafy canopy.

I passed by only one hiker on my way here, and I'm grateful for that - I must look really silly, and totally unprepared for a hike. I'm dressed in the outfit I was going to wear to Zee's house - a white babydoll dress with a print of tiny green flowers, a light cardigan and totally impractical white keds. Or at least they were white before I set out. Now they're brown, with a green stain on the left one's side.

These shoes cost $70. Dammit.

I stand at the crossroads, looking up and down the trails in case there's anyone coming, before I leave the path and slip into the forest.

I walk in the direction of the tree with the silver fox pendant.

The pendant is still hanging there, twinkling high up in the branches like a fallen star as it catches the morning light. Picking my way through the undergrowth, I walk around the side of the tree to the holly bushes where I hid my bike.

It's gone.

That's... this can't be happening. I chose this spot because it's totally hidden from the main track, so there's no way a hiker took it. Only someone with a reason to be standing right here, in this one random part of the forest, could have spotted it. Someone who knew where the pendant was.

That means...

It must have been one of them.

If I want to get my bike back, there's only one thing to do.

I take a deep breath, turn my back to the path and head into the deep green embrace of the waiting forest.

*****

The forest seems quieter than yesterday. Still. Silent.

I can't hear a single bird as I head down the faint path through the trees.

It feels like the woods are holding their breath, watching and waiting as I pass beneath the giant oaks and pines and beeches.

Unlike the last time I was on this path, I'm in a hurry, and I'm speed walking, stumbling at times over branches but never stopping. Even when the thin crescent of scars on the left side of my ribcage starts throbbing, sending icy prickles radiating through my chest. Even when I see dark shapes moving between the trees out of the corner of my eye, urging me to stop, turn around and run screaming back to civilization. I ignore everything apart from my desire to get to keep going.

It's all in my mind. Mysterious shadows. Phantom pains in my chest. I guess I really am losing it. The sooner I get back onto Dr. Martel's couch and back onto the meds, the better. I need to get this over and done with.

I smell it before I see it. Tendrils of heavy perfume reach out through the air, wrap around me and pull me in like spectral hands, towards their source - the blood red roses that curl around the cabin's porch.

Light streams through the trees up ahead as I step into the clearing.

The cabin's waiting for me, the front door wide open. Sunbeams glint off the stained glass windows set into moss-encrusted stone.

Yesterday the storybook sight filled me with childlike wonder.

Now it fills me with a sudden rush of terror, ancient and primal.

An echo of that day on the bus, watching my classmates drowned and impaled and cracked open. And of another, older horror. Locked away but just beneath the surface.

That makes no sense at all. What's happening to me?

An icy shard of fear stabs through my scars, embedding itself into my heart. I'm frozen in place. I'm pinned, like a deer about to be devoured by a hungry wolf.

Get away. Get away, right now. Something's not right. I shouldn't be here.

This is my last chance.

Whatever's inside this Pandora's Box is beyond human comprehension.

I start to turn around, ready to sprint all the way home, when I see him.

On the porch, sitting on the wooden steps. Framed beneath the red roses. All in black, his hazel eyes fixed on me, unmoving and watchful as an old painting.

Felix.