Into Their Woods (The Eerie, #1)(67)
On my next exhale, a low sound erupts from my lips, the shadow of a growl.
Perth wraps his arm around my shoulders just as Karen pushes the door open. She freezes, for a second, glancing around the opening, and then she disappears inside.
The seconds tick by with agonizing slowness. Perth and I seem to breathe in unison as we hold silent vigil, tense, waiting, ready for anything. Nightmare visions dance in my head as I wonder what the fuck could be lurking in my room.
“All clear,” Karen calls out.
I startle again before heaving a massive sigh of relief that I can feel all the way down to my kneecaps.
Thank fuck.
“This shit is too damn stressful,” I mindspeak.
“You’re telling me,” Perth replies.
“You can come in,” Karen’s voice instructs from inside my room. Perth bends and gathers up the abandoned boxes and garment bags and then leads the way. But he stops mid-step in the doorway.
This time I avoid crashing into him, and I lean to the side to try and see what’s going on.
“Shit, what is it?” I ask, when all I see is Karen running her crystal around the windows in the room.
Perth steps to the side and lets me pass, and I instantly know what the problem is. Just like the hallway, the entire room is absent of any fragrance. It’s like it’s all been erased somehow. Nothing has a smell to it. Not the couch, not the sheets, not the curtains billowing in front of a window that’s been left cracked open.
The only thing is, I haven’t opened the windows in this room. Not once. It’s been too cool outside for that.
“What the fuck?” I croak.
“Someone was definitely in here,” Karen states flatly.
“Someone with magic,” Perth adds. “If they’ve wiped the smell, they’ve probably wiped all other traces of themselves.”
When I glance over, he’s fuming, and somehow his outrage helps to settle mine.
Karen gives him a grim nod, and then her head jerks toward the open window. “Guessing that’s how they got in or how they left.”
And just like that, my safe haven is ripped away.
Stepping deeper into the room, I look around. My eyes land on the bench at the foot of the bed, on the spot where I know I left my pajamas. They’re not there. I scan the ground, looking to see if maybe they fell, but my gut is screaming that I won’t find them.
“They took my clothes,” I rasp, vacillating between the urge to throw open all the drawers and closet to check if anything else is missing, and the aversion to touching anything because now it’s fucking tainted.
Ellery comes rushing in and I squeal in surprise.
“Fucking shit!” I gasp, not sure if I’m cursing the surge of adrenaline that just shot through me or this whole fucked-up situation in general.
I take one look at Ellery and freeze. His eyes are zeroed right on me. His expression is tense, but it’s not because of the room.
“What happened?” I ask, his somber face and irate gaze making eight-legged fear crawl down my spine and leave a chill in its wake.
“I just got word from the station. Your car’s been found.”
21
NOAH
Raindrops dance along the windshield of Ellery’s SUV, the sound mimicking the sad tap dance my heart’s doing inside my chest. Ellery starts the car to get the heat going, and we both sit and stare out at my Bronco as a man straps the mangled mess onto the long flatbed of a tow truck. I pick at a thread that’s bordering a hole in the knee of the artfully-distressed black jeans I’m wearing, and try not to cry.
“What happens now?” I ask, hating the ache that bleeds into every word.
Everything’s gone. My entire life, the things I’ve worked so hard for, are now at the bottom of a lake or destroyed by whatever or whoever used my car as a punching bag. The asshole that dumped it here didn’t push it far enough into the body of water for it to sink beneath the surface, and a fisherman happened to spot it. I don’t know if I’m grateful or sorry that he did.
“Our crime lab will process it,” Ellery answers. “They’ll run spells and other tests to see if there’s any evidence they can find pointing to who might have done this.”
The witches who magically pulled the SUV out of the lake stand together in a little huddle discussing something. The same spell they used to pull my car to shore now floats above their heads, keeping the rain from soaking them through.
Hollowly, I stare out the window, keenly aware of my reality and the blow I’ve just taken with the loss of my vehicle and things. As pissed and downhearted as I am, it doesn’t feel as catastrophic as it might have a week ago. I guess that’s what getting attacked and finding out that your entire life is a lie will do to you. It takes a lot more to land on the my life is over list now.
“I’m sorry,” Ellery somberly offers me, his eyes tracing over the broken pieces of my Bronco, like he wishes he could put it all back together for me and make it right.
I sigh and stop picking at the loose threads around my knee, smoothing the mint-green rain jacket that I’ve folded into my lap.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, because I know you’re doing everything you can and I appreciate it, but I’m just so fucking mad,” I snarl, fisting my hands in my coat. “I don’t know if I’ve ever felt this enraged in my life. I just want to find whoever did this to me and rip them apart the same way they tore my life into fucking tatters. And for what?” I demand as I turn to Ellery. “Why put me in the Hunt? Why pummel my car and dump it? Why break into my room? What’s the point of any of it?”