that he’d left only that morning. She thought about calling him, asking him to come back. Everything Wyatt had said had been true: her aunt and uncle, her sister, the body in the woods. It was a lot to process. Wyatt didn’t even know about the dreams, the sleepwalking.
For the first time, Hannah felt afraid and unsure. Huck had always had such confidence in her, an easy belief that she’d be fine. That he’d always be fine; they’d be fine. Vulnerability was a weakness; needing others meant you were failing yourself. It explained why he loved her. She’d been closed up and shut down. It was easy to love someone with no baggage. That part of her life, the needy, vulnerable childhood part, had been packed away in a dusty corner of her brain for so long that she hardly recognized herself now. She’d spent the last seventeen years moving forward, making her life.
Then why now, for the first time in as long as she could remember, when she was careening backward in time with Wyatt blowing the dust off her memories, did she suddenly feel alive?
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Then
July 13, 2002
The river was high, thick with rain, and brown, rushing and loud. It swirled in yellow-white foam around her thighs, her nightgown pushed up to her waist. Floating, pillowing around her.
She woke up freezing.
The faint moonlight bounced off the water, the sky inky black and huge.
She hadn’t even been dreaming, but she woke up in the river. The river rushed around her, cold, gripping, and she felt frozen with fear.
She was going to die.
Hannah inched her feet along the bottom, felt the sand and pebbles shift under her heels. She could hardly see her hand in front of her face. The moon, waxing crescent, barely gave her enough light to get back to the beach, where she fell forward on her hands and knees. She was soaked and freezing, trembling with fear and exhaustion.
It wasn’t the first time she’d sleepwalked. It had started about a month ago, maybe more. Time was distorted at Brackenhill: a week seemed like a year, a month like a blink. It didn’t always make sense.
Last time she’d woken up in the basement. On the steps, in particular. She was facing the kitchen door and ascending. She had no memory of going down to the basement. She and Julia hadn’t gone downstairs since that second summer with the index cards and the moving doors. They’d been too skittish about it. After Uncle Stuart had to rescue them from the center, Aunt Fae forbade it. Said they’d “carried on too much about it.”
Hannah pushed her way up the embankment and through the woods. She had no idea if she was on the path back to the house or not—she had no flashlight, and under the canopy of the forest, she could barely see her hand in front of her face.
She was so tired. She hiccuped and realized she’d been crying. Sobbing, really. In the courtyard she sat on a bench to catch her breath. She hadn’t told anyone—not Julia, not Aunt Fae—about the sleepwalking for fear they’d send her to Plymouth to see a doctor or, worse, send her home for good. Julia had already been going on about Brackenhill being evil and wanting to go home. She had an overactive imagination. Did she really believe the nonsense she spewed about seeing things? About Aunt Fae? Hannah couldn’t leave. What waited for her at home? The creaking open of her bedroom door, even more fitful sleep, cold hands inching up her thighs. No. It was out of the question.
Still, she was tired in her bones. She stood, wanting to get back to bed. The warmth of her comforter. It had to be two a.m.
A shadowy figure at the mouth of the path caught her attention, fear instant and sharp in her chest. A blur of red shirt, black skirt, a cloud of hair. Ellie. Julia’s friend. The girl with the bright-red hair. Slowly, the girl raised her hand in a cautious wave. Hannah waved back. What was she doing here?
“Hey!” Hannah called out, but Ellie turned and ran away, down the path, toward the river.
She was gone.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Now
“That’s a scrying ring,” Jinny said matter-of-factly. She was busy reorganizing a spice cabinet behind the counter, jars and bottles and tubes and shakers all scattered next to the cash register. Her long black-and-white hair was piled on top of her head and held in place with chopsticks. She had a