we stood, buffered from the cold.
After several long minutes, Sam stepped back from me and looked at the woods. For a moment I thought he was listening, but of course, no wolves would howl from Boundary Wood now.
He said, “This is one of the last poems Ulrik had me memorize.
“endlich entschloss sich niemand
und niemand klopfte
und niemand sprang auf
und niemand öffnete
und da stand niemand
und niemand trat ein
und niemand sprach: willkomm
und niemand antwortete: endlich”
“What does it mean?” I asked.
At first, I didn’t think that Sam was going to reply. His eyes were narrowed against the sun, looking out into the woods we’d escaped into an eternity ago, and then, into the woods we used to live in, an eternity before that. He was such a different person than the one that I had first met, bleeding on my back doorstep. That Sam had been shy, naive, gentle, lost in his songs and his words, and I’d always love that version of him. But it was okay, this change. That Sam couldn’t have survived this. For that matter, the Grace I’d been then couldn’t have.
Sam said, looking at Boundary Wood,
“at last no one decided
and no one knocked
and no one jumped up
and no one opened
and there stood no one
and no one entered
and no one said: welcome
and no one answered: at last”
Our shadows were as tall as trees with nothing to block them. It was like we were on another planet, here in this scrubby area, shallow stretches of water suddenly glowing orange and pink, the exact same color of the sunset. I didn’t know where else to look for Cole’s body. There was no sign of it for yards around, other than his blood, dotted on blades of grass and pooled in hollows.
“Maybe he dragged himself to the woods,” Sam said in a flat voice. “Instinct would tell him to hide, even if he was dying.”
My heart sped. “Do you think —”
“There’s too much blood,” Sam replied. He didn’t look at me. “Look at all of it. Think of how I couldn’t even heal myself from a single shot in the neck. He couldn’t have healed himself. I just hope … I just hope he wasn’t afraid when he died.”
I didn’t say what I was thinking: But we’d all been afraid.
Together, we combed the edge of the woods, just in case. Even as it fell dark, we kept looking, because we both knew that scent would help us more than our sight anyway.
But there was no sign of him. In the end, Cole St. Clair had done what he did best.
Disappeared.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN
• ISABEL •
When we first moved to this house, the piano room was the only room that I loved. I’d hated that we’d moved from California to a state equally far from both oceans my country had to offer. I hated the old, moldy smell of the house and the creepy woods around it. I’d hated how it made my angry brother even angrier. I hated the way my bedroom had slanted walls and the stairs creaked and the kitchen had ants, no matter how expensive the appliances were.
But I’d loved the piano room. It was a round room made up half of windows and half of short wall sections painted deep burgundy. There wasn’t anything in the room but the piano, three chairs, and a chandelier that was amazingly non-tacky, given the rest of the house’s lighting decor.
I didn’t play the piano, but I liked to sit on the bench, anyway, my back to the piano, and look out the windows into the woods. They didn’t seem creepy from inside, with a safe distance between me and them. There might have been monsters in them, but nothing that could contend with twenty yards of yard, an inch of glass, and a Steinway. The best way to experience nature, I’d thought.
I still had days when I thought that was the best way to deal with it.
Tonight, I ventured down from my bedroom, avoiding my parents, who were talking in hushed voices in the library, and crept into the piano room. I shut the door so that it wouldn’t make any sound and sat cross-legged on the bench. It was night, so there was nothing to see outside the windows except for the circle of grass lit by the back door light. It didn’t really matter that I couldn’t see the trees, though. There were no monsters in them anymore.
I pulled my hoodie around me and drew my legs up to my chest, sitting