your mother and tell her about our guest. And you.” She looked at Abby. “Who are you and what on earth are you doing out here?”
“Abby. Abby Ryder. Nobody would take me, so I had to find my own way here,” Abby said. “I was trying to beat the storm, but I got a bit lost. With all the mist I didn’t even know I’d found the place until it busted a hole in my boat.”
“You were trying to get here?” Kenny asked, mystified.
Abby gave a sharp little laugh. “Assuming this is Bitter Rock, yeah.”
“But why?” Kenny pressed.
Abby’s eyes flicked to me for a split second. “I’m doing this school project. About mass disappearances. I was in Juneau visiting my aunt and I heard about the whole Landontown thing. I wanted to visit and check it out, and, well . . . I guess I got carried away?”
She was lying. She’d called me about Bitter Rock months ago, and she hadn’t said anything about a school project then. She’d said she worked for a professor or something—Dr. Ashford. She said he investigated “this kind of phenomenon.”
“So you’re one of those,” Mrs. Popova said, shaking her head with obvious disapproval. Abby had opened her bag and pulled out a wad of wet clothes, grimacing.
“I’ll grab you something to borrow,” Lily said. “Put those by the fire to dry.”
Liam was speaking quietly on the phone in the kitchen. He hung up and joined us. “Dr. Kapoor says to stay put. Bring her to the LARC in the morning,” he said.
“For now, everyone should get some sleep,” Mrs. Popova said. “And get out of those wet clothes. Especially you, Ms. Hayes.”
Abby’s eyebrow quirked at the surname. I looked down at my soaked jeans and bare feet, the latter of which were an unsettling shade of gray. “Right,” I said.
“Where’s she going to sleep?” Lily asked, returning with the offered clothing.
“She can bunk with me,” I said immediately. “I don’t mind.”
“Sounds good to me. Sorry again. And thank you guys for saving my ass,” Abby said.
“There will be a reckoning in the morning,” Mrs. Popova said, more a warning than a threat. Dr. Kapoor, I imagined, was not going to be pleased.
And I could be sunk before I’d even gotten started.
I pointed Abby toward the room and started to follow, Abby awkwardly carrying Lily’s borrowed clothes and her own bag while keeping the quilt wrapped around her. Liam grabbed my arm. “I know I’m not supposed to ask if you’re okay, so this is me not asking if you’re okay,” he said quietly.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” I asked. I didn’t ask it dismissively—I needed to hear the answer.
He swallowed. “Something happened out there.”
“You saw something?” I wanted the answer to be yes. Because that would mean it wasn’t just me, letting my imagination run wild.
“There was someone out there,” he said. “And she looked . . .”
“What?” I asked.
His hand dropped from my arm. “I don’t know. The mist was really thick.”
Disappointment and something deeper sang through me. For as long as I could remember, I’d been waiting for someone to tell me that they saw what I did. That I wasn’t alone. Or delusional. But anytime anyone came close, it ended like this. They saw something they couldn’t explain, and they ran as fast as they could in the other direction.
At least, that was what it had been like when I was younger. Before everyone figured out what a freak I was and stayed away in the first place. Liam would figure it out too.
“Good night,” I said, and told myself I was used to it. That I didn’t care what Liam Kapoor thought about me.
* * *
“Pardon my nudity,” Abby said once the door was closed, and dropped the quilt. I turned away while she shimmied into the sweats and long-sleeved tee that Lily had offered. Lily was shorter and stockier than Abby, and the sweats hit awkwardly above the ankle.
As I stripped off my own sodden jeans, she unpacked the rest of her bag. There was a camera case and a notebook, along with a three-ring binder. The camera case was damp but the interior looked dry, and the notebook and binder were in plastic bags. She let out a sigh of relief.
“Nothing vital lost,” she said. “So, Ms. Hayes. What brings you to Bitter Rock?” I glared at her, but she just smiled a little. “Sorry. I’m assuming you being here is my fault.”