Eden Riverwallow's Arc

Chapter 2 of 18

The branch bent a second time and held. Eden stood at the moss line with her hands open at her sides. The watcher was close enough now that she could see the shape of a shoulder, the pale line of a jaw between two trunks. He would not step past the last tree. She understood the shape of the problem. He had answered her once. He would not answer again unless she gave him a reason to cross. "He's waiting," Willow said behind her. Her friend's voice came thin through the air, the way it always did outside the cottage. "You said your name. Say more." "More what." "True things. He can smell a lie." Eden believed her. Willow had been dead six years and had not been wrong yet. Eden took one step forward onto the moss. The black cat moved with her, tail up, and stopped at her ankle like a marker driven into the ground. "I was afraid of the house for a week," Eden said toward the trees. "I slept in my car. I came back because it said my name and no one else ever has, not like that." The watcher's shoulder shifted. One boot came forward onto leaf litter. Not moss. Not yet. "Keep going," Willow said. "I don't know what you are," Eden said. "I don't care. I want to." The watcher took the second step. His boot pressed the moss. He was in her yard now, tall, thin, hair long and black, skin the color of paper held to a window. His eyes caught red at the center like a struck match. He did not smile. He looked at her the way a man looks at a door he has been standing outside of for a long time. "Riverwallow," he said. His voice was low and old. "I am Maleficit. This wood has been mine since before your grandmothers." "I know," Eden said. "I'm not offering it back." His mouth moved. Not a smile. Something under one. A branch snapped hard to her left. Eden turned. A man stepped out of the far treeline in a black jacket, white hair pushed back, brown eyes tired and fixed on the vampire, not on her. Kane. She had seen him twice at the market and once at her fence. He had never crossed her yard before. "Eden." Kane did not look at her. "Inside." "I'm talking." "You're bleeding at the wrist and you don't know it." His voice was flat. "Inside. Now." Eden looked down. A thin red line ran from her palm where she had gripped something without noticing. The paring knife lay on the porch behind her. She had not carried it. She was sure of that. Maleficit's eyes were on the cut. He had not moved. He was not going to. Eden stepped back toward the porch. She had wanted him closer. She had gotten him closer. Now two men stood in her yard, and only one of them had been invited.