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 around 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?”