Greer slid her hands down his chest to tug at the waistband of his trousers. “I need more, I need you,” she murmured, echoing his earlier sentiment. “All of you.”
As her fingers ran along his length, he released a soft groan that she felt all the way down her middle. She brought her legs up, catching him and curling round his waist.
“Greer, I—”
A scream ripped through the night.
It was loud and long, its pitch ugly as a gut punch, and Greer clasped her hands over her ears as it tore into her mind. They fell apart. The night air washed over them as quickly as an icy wave, dowsing their desire.
In the yard below, the barn warming’s merriment hushed with concern.
“Just a fox,” Ellis said. His words were meant to be a reassurance, but his eyes flickered with uncertainty.
The cry came again, a jagged ringing off the trees and boulders. Greer fancied she could hear it racing over the water to echo against the cliffs of the Narrows.
She shook her head. “That’s not a fox.”
Again and again the scream came, breaking up into a maddening cadence that drove into Greer’s skull like a hammered nail. The surrounding forest fell silent as its nocturnal denizens paused, attuned to the anguish playing out on the far side of Mistaken.
“Help! Help!” came the voice, clearer now, carried on the night breeze. “For God’s sake, someone help us!”
6
“Greer!Where’s Greer?”
Hessel’s panicked voice rang high above the mêlée as Greer and Ellis crept from the loft. Their caution proved unnecessary. Chaos had erupted, and not a single person gave them so much as a sideways glance. Everyone was clamoring, loud and harried, trying to find unseen loved ones and guess at what had caused the cries.
No one else heard the call for help,Greer realized.Only the screams.
As they pressed through the crowd, making their way out into the yard, she felt Ellis pause, unsure if he’d be welcomed. She took his hand with resolute assurance. It didn’t matter what her father wanted; Greer needed Ellis with her.
She watched Hessel note their clasped hands, watched his jaw harden, but there were too many other pressing things for him to comment on it. He leaned in, keeping his voice low and hushed. “Can you tell where the cries are coming from?”
Greer was taken aback. Hessel had never spoken of her strange gift, never acknowledged its existence. But now he knew she could help. With a queasy sense of gratification, she nodded. “From the south, out by Cormac Calloway’s place?”
The Calloways owned the largest flock of sheep in all of Mistaken. A generation before, Arthur Calloway had allowed the mill to chopdown every Redcap on his land, then spent the profits on three sets of rams and ewes, bought from a passing mercantile ship. Now nearly every family in town owned at least one Calloway sheep. Their wool helped ward off the frigid cold, and their mutton made for delicious broths and roasts.
“Someone is shouting for help.”
Hessel paled, then turned to the nearby Stewards. “We should take a search party and investigate.”
Ellis held up a hand, waylaying them. “You’ll need weapons. There’ve been bear tracks down along the creek.”
Michael Morag scoffed. “So late in the season?”
By Reaping, black bears were usually secreted away in their lairs, dreaming of spring salmon.
Ellis did not back down, even in the face of the Steward’s scorn. “It’s a big one, too. Gil Catasch said he caught sight of it while he was checking traps. It was white.”
Greer froze. White bears didn’t usually come so far inland—they preferred to stick to the coast, where the ice was thick and their prospects for a meal much easier—but every so often, one would venture along the shores of the Great Bay, making its way to the cove.
They were monstrous beasts, nearly as tall as a man when on all fours, and more than double that when prompted to stand on two legs. The bears were impossibly fast, able to outrace nearly anything, despite their massive girth. A bear so far outside their normal hunting grounds would likely be disoriented with sickness or very hungry.
Greer swallowed back the urge to run home, to flee from the danger like the child she no longer was.
Neither Hessel nor Ellis could be left on their own.
Not in the dark. Not with a white bear roaming the woods. Not when she was the one who could hear it coming.
