“I’ll search there too,” I said.
Matthias looked uneasy. “Perhaps you could help Merry back home? She’s in no condition to search, and Sadie might have returned there.”
“I’m going after my sister,” I said, a flint of determination steeling my voice.
“I can take Merry back,” Bonnie Maddin said, working free of the crowd.
“Thank you,” I said as we pulled Merry to her feet. “I’ll find Sadie,” I whispered, bringing Merry into a tight embrace. “I promise.”
Matthias scanned the crowd. “Cora and Charlotte, why don’t you form a party to check the north side of town? Violet and Alice, you ladies take a group to the south. Calvin, take some men to search the western fields near the Our Ladies. Edmund, Thaddeus—the lakeshore. Gran and I will take the east. Everyone else, join a group and let’s get to work.”
I gave Merry a final hug before joining Ephraim and Thomas. They’d already edged away from the rest of the group, planning in private.
Ephraim squeezed my upper arm. “Ellerie, there’s no shame in searching the town.”
“You know that’s not where she is.”
“Then…if you’re going to do this…you need to arm yourself.”
I bit my lip. “Papa took our rifle with him.”
“Not with bullets.” He reached into his leather satchel and pulled out a stash of…things.
“I don’t…I don’t understand.”
Rabbits’ feet and four-leaf clovers—some pressed between small panes of glass, others encased in resin. Vials of ladybugs and monarch butterflies. Rosaries with silver crucifixes. Spinner rings with prayer wheels. Horseshoes. Pennies. Sets of dice, and so many animal figurines.
“Luck,” Ephraim said, as though the word ought to clarify everything. “Dark Watchers feed off fear, despair. Items of luck bring people hope and comfort. They can repel them.”
He pressed a handful of the trinkets into my palm.
“I’ve never seen anything like all this before,” I said, toying with an elephant charm. The soft fur of a rabbit’s foot brushed against my fingers, and I suddenly realized I had seen such a collection. And it belonged to the one person who would need it most, living out in the woods, surrounded by the very monsters he’d claimed not to see.
Whitaker.
I froze, hearing his footsteps behind me, as if he’d been drawn by my thoughts.
He reached out and trailed a gentle finger down my shoulder blade. “Ellerie, I’m coming with you.”
* * *
The woods were darker than I’d thought they would be.
Much darker.
Hundreds of branches, laden with long pine needles and dozens of Bells, blocked even the boldest sunbeams and cast the forest into an eerie, murky gloom.
Years of fallen needles softened our footsteps, deadening them to the point of silence.
I’d expected to be attacked the moment we set foot on the forest trail, eviscerated by sharp claws and barbed teeth, but there’d been nothing. No monsters, no shadowy figures. Not even a bird or squirrel scampered through the canopy overhead.
It was only us and the pines.
And the Bells.
I stood at their edge now, staring into the dark, silver-less void before us. The Bells did not taper to an end, simply trailing off where our forefathers had run out of trinkets. There was an unmistakable boundary dividing the areas as sharply as a line of ink upon a map.
Here there was protection.
Here there was not.
I took a deep breath, clutching at my silver locket for reassurance. Months before, I’d tucked away Whitaker’s four-leaf clover within it and had been unknowingly protected against the Dark Watchers ever since.
“Sadie! Sadie Downing!” Whitaker called out, cupping his hands around his mouth to make his voice carry deeper into the woods.
We paused, listening to the air around us, but all I could hear were the cries of others searching for my sister.
For the first time since the social, I turned to face Whitaker, truly looking him in the eye. I’d expected him to look different somehow, as if his betrayal would cast a tangible mark across his face.
But he was as he’d ever been.
Just Whitaker.
“We can cover more ground if we split up,” I said.
“And we have already,” he said. “Ezra and Thomas went east.”
“I mean—”
“I know what you mean, and no. It’s better to stick with someone—”
“But—”
“Especially when one of the team members doesn’t know the lay of the land.”
“Especially when the lay of that land is full of monsters.” The accusation burst from me like shrapnel.
He sighed. “There are no—”
I grabbed every piece of Ephraim’s luck from my pockets and hurled them at his feet. “I know they’re real.”
He looked at the scattered trinkets, confusion growing across his face. “What is all…How did you—” His eyes met mine with swift understanding. “Ezra.”
“Ephraim,” I corrected him. “Why did you lie to me? You said there was nothing out in the woods. You said everyone was imagining the monsters. You said there was—”
“I wanted to keep you safe.”
“By lying?”
“To protect you!” His voice was firm, resolute, but after a moment he pushed at his sleeves, fidgeting uncomfortably as if his tattoos itched. “Then…he lied as well. He’s not Ezra Downing.”
“He’s not.”
“Not your uncle.”
“No.”
“And that’s all right with you?”
I dragged my gaze up from the green bands. “I never said it was.”
He raked his fingers through his hair. “So…he knows about them. About the—”
“Dark Watchers.”
“Dark Watchers,” he agreed unhappily. “And you obviously know about the luck.”
I glanced at the scattered pieces that lay between us.
“Then you must see I’ve been trying to keep you safe, from the moment we met—the four-leaf clovers, the silver horseshoe for Merry at Christmas.”