She thought of her phone. Without a signal, she couldn’tcontact Joel, and soon her battery would be dead. But maybe it wasn’t the only way to reach him. Maybe someone here could help her.
“I would enjoy my stay more if I could get a message to someone. So he knows I’m all right. Is there a way to do that? Send a message home?”
If she could get a message to Joel explaining that she was … temporarily detained … he could tell his dad not to worry, that she would be there ready to go on opening night.
Nettle reached across the table, taking Emeline’s hands from where they cupped her glass and clasping them in her own. Her fingers were rough, and a little curved. Almost like talons. But when Emeline looked … no. They were definitely fingers, with perfectly rounded nails painted in gold. She shook off the disorienting feeling as the shiftling leaned in.
“Poor thing.” Nettle’s voice turned whispery. As if they were friends confiding in each other. “This young man you left behind, is he … a lover?”
Beside her, Hawthorne choked on his wine.
Emeline blushed red. “Um.”
Nettle tsked sadly. “They often have lovers, the singers who end up here.”
Alerted by Hawthorne’s choking, Rooke leaned in. “Don’t mind Nettle. She hasn’t been properly socialized.”
Tugging her hands free from Nettle’s, Emeline took a big, long sip of her drink and desperately wished this conversation was over. From the look on the shiftling’s face, however, she was still waiting for an answer.
Is he a lover?
The night she first invited Joel up to her hotel room, it was because of the woods. She’d been traveling the summer festival circuit, trying, as always, to outrun the dark thing chasing her.But it always caught up, creeping through crowd after crowd, slinking towards the stages where she sang.
But it wasn’t only the relentlessness of the woods; it was the ache that seemed to grow with every performance. That cavernous gap between her ribs, as if something there was missing, only she didn’t know what. It made her feel like a puzzle with a lost piece. Sometimes after a gig, she would lie awake in her bed, rubbing at the place in the middle of her chest where she imagined the hole to be.
She’d grown so tired of running from it—the woods and the ache. Joel was there, and he wanted her. He’d made that very clear. Always texting and flirting and inviting her out with his friends, coming to all her shows, then walking her home when they ended.
So, just like all the others before him, Emeline let Joel in, erecting him as a shield between herself and the things she was running from, using him as a way to feign normalcy.
“You poor, poor thing.” Nettle patted Emeline’s hands, deciding the answer to her own question. “So tragic.” She sighed, almost happily, as if she relished a good tragedy.
“Save your pity.” Hawthorne’s voice was barbed. “Emeline was warned. I actively dissuaded her from coming.”
Emeline scoffed. “Activelydeceivedme is more like it.”
His gaze cut to her, gray eyes flashing silver in the dusky light. “The singer didn’t heed me,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “Now she’s suffering the consequences.”
Emeline’s hands dropped to her dress, where they clutched the fabric, wrinkling the midnight-blue silk. “If you hadn’t stolen my grandfather,” she hissed under her breath, “I wouldn’t have had to heed you. I would never have come to the woods at all!”
Before he could answer, the girl he’d been conversing with earlier cut in.
“Couldn’t you deliver the message, Hawthorne?” She was long boned and delicate, with white-gold lashes and eyes like soft gems. She glanced to the ring on Hawthorne’s hand, a stark white band against his light brown skin. Emeline hadn’t noticed it before. “You’re the tithe collector. You can walk deep into her world whenever and wherever you want.”
“Yes, Hawthorne,” said Sable, crossing her arms. A small frown creased her brow as something unspoken passed between them. “Couldn’t you do it?”
Hope flickered inside Emeline.Could he?
Hawthorne stared straight ahead, at no one in particular. “I believe I just gave my opinion on the matter.”
“Your opinion,” said Emeline, suddenly desperate to convince him. Her career depended on it. “But not your answer.”
He shot her a piercing look. “I’m not delivering a love letter to your boyfriend. Is that answer enough?”
“It wouldn’t be—”
“Emeline.” He ground out her name through the stubborn clench of his jaw. “Don’t ask me again.”
Rooke narrowed his eyes. “Really, Hawthorne. Must you be so disagreeable?”
