Chapter 2: The Eyes of the Town (2)

You're not ordinary, Iris. You were never ordinary. The night you were born, the fog sang. We spent eight years hiding you from the ones who watch — and we did it so well that even you forgot. That was the point. The forgetting was the protection. Your father locked your first eight years in a box inside your own head so that no one could use what you knew against you.

Don't come looking for us. You'll find what you're not ready for.

But if you ever stand in the fog and it calls your name — don't answer it.

— Mom

Iris sat in the dark with her mother's letter in her hands, and she was eight years old again, and she could not remember being eight years old. She'd always assumed her childhood was unremarkable. Now she understood it wasn't missing from her memory. It was locked. Her own father had done it to her.

She remembered, suddenly, one thing. A fragment, sharp as a shard of glass: a woman in a white dress, standing at the edge of the fog, holding her hand. A woman who was not her mother. A woman who had looked at the valley like it was a door, and at little Iris like she was the key.

"You'll open it someday," the woman had said. "I hope you're strong enough to close it again."

Iris pressed her palm against her sternum, where the wolf fur sat in its baggie, and took a breath.

She was wrong about one thing. The town wasn't watching her because they feared her. The town was watching her because they'd been told, eighteen years ago, to watch for the girl with the key — and she'd finally come back.

Her phone buzzed. A new text. Still no number.

You found the letter. Good. The next one is buried under the oak at the fork in the trail. Bring the wolf hair. He'll want to see it.

Iris read it twice. Then she read it a third time, because the message knew what was in her bra.

Someone was playing chess with her, and they were very good, and they wanted her to go back into the valley tonight.

She should absolutely not do that.

That night, Iris stood at the fork in the trail — the one the letter had told her about, under the oak with the split trunk — and dug where a circle of stones said dig. She found a locked steel box, and inside it, wrapped in oilcloth, a key-shaped piece of black stone, warm to the touch, and another note, printed, no handwriting:

The lock is in the valley. The lock has been waiting a thousand years. He knows the way. Ask him nicely.

Iris looked up. The fog at the valley's mouth was thicker than it should have been at midnight. And there, at the edge of the light, a figure stood waiting — tall, black coat, silver eyes catching the moon like a coin at the bottom of a well.

Kael Thorne had come out of the valley to meet her.

"You found the stone." His voice carried across the dark. "Good. Then we have a problem, witch blood. You've been holding the key for eighteen years, and now that it's awake, every hungry thing in this territory is going to come looking for you. Starting with the ones who dug that hole."

"Irony of ironies." Iris tucked the stone into her jacket and straightened. "The wolf is worried about the sheep."

"I'm not worried." He stepped closer, and the temperature dropped with him. "I'm inconvenienced. You're my problem now, and problems don't die on my territory. So here's the arrangement: you stay where I can see you, and I keep the things with teeth from eating you. You'll be my guest."

"Your guest." Iris raised an eyebrow. "That's a kidnapping with a hotel amenity tray."

"It's a prison cell with a better view." His eyes, silver in the dark, held hers. "Take it or take your chances with what's already watching you from the trees."

Iris looked past him, into the dark. Three pairs of eyes gleamed at the treeline, and they were not his, and they were not friendly.

She held up the stone. "Do I get to keep the key?"

"Keep it." A ghost of something moved across his face — amusement, she would have bet money, except she wasn't sure he knew how. "It's yours. It's been yours longer than I've been awake."

"Then we have a deal, Your Wolfishness." Iris stepped forward, past him, toward the fog — then stopped and looked back over her shoulder. "One condition. You owe me a straight answer."

He went still. "Ask."

"You said you've endured a thousand years of loneliness." She met his eyes. "What's in that valley that's been alone with you this whole time? Because it called my name last night. And I'm pretty sure it's not you."

Something flickered behind the silver — old, cold, and terribly human. For a second, Iris thought he wouldn't answer. Then he said, very quietly:

"It's what's left of the thing your ancestors buried under the mountain. It's been feeding on the valley's memory of you for a thousand years." He turned, and his voice dropped into the dark. "And it thinks you came back to let it out."

The fog at the valley mouth chose that moment to sigh her name — soft, patient, almost tender.

"Iris…"

Kael didn't look at her. "Don't answer it."

— End of Chapter Two —