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Every single time I came back to this wretched place I felt like I was being sucked right back into my own living hell.
I was glad Rain had made Ariel stay at the cabin because it was more than enough to have one of us here reliving our trauma, we didn’t need for there to be two of us.
I didn’t even want to think of why Isobel would be here, but Rain was convinced that we needed to comb over every inch of the land here in search of her. If she was going to come out here for some bizarre reason she should have brought someone with her, dammit.
In the Range Rover on the way over here Finn had asked why we would come here in search of Isobel. Neither of us had wanted to answer him because if Isobel hadn’t told him about how Rain and Ariel had found her then we didn’t feel like it was our place to tell him. But at the same time, if we were in this for the long haul, then we had to trust each other with everything.
Rain bit that bullet, but he did it giving him the bare bones of the story and left the meat for Isobel to hand over to him later.
What he did learn though had royally fucked up Finn. He hadn’t spoken a word since. I wondered how much he knew about my own history at this place.
There was a large part of me that desperately wanted to crawl into the backseat beside him just so I could comfort him and let him know that he wasn’t alone. The smarter, less emotional side of me, knew that was the worst idea possible because I was holding onto my sanity by the skin of my teeth here.
“I thought we were supposed to be going to the motel,” Finn cut into the silence. “I get this is near there, but where exactly are we?”
Rain didn’t answer him, he was focused on the dirt road we were driving down and he was giving off a stranger than usual vibe.
“The last time I was on this road I ran over a Council member,” he murmured quietly.
Well, wasn’t that an interesting little piece of information.
Finn hummed under his breath and I had no idea what he was possibly thinking but he still looked uneasy. I think we all did.
“Fuck,” Rain hissed. My eyes snapped ahead and I finally stopped focusing on Finn so I could pay attention to our surroundings.
My heart sank down into my stomach. Fucking hell.
Off to the side of the road, parked on the grass, was Isobel’s SUV. Rain pulled up behind it and the three of us got out as soon as the Rover was in park.
I peered into the front passenger window as I tried the door handle. Locked. Not that it mattered, she wasn’t in the SUV. I didn’t see anything out of place.
Using his magic, Rain unlocked the front driver’s side door. He hit the button to unlock the rest of the doors and, with a click heard from the outside, they unlocked.
Rain started digging through the front of the vehicle while Finn immediately slid into the backseat to investigate.
I didn’t bother. She wasn’t here so I didn’t see the point. They were both wasting time and it honestly felt like an invasion of her privacy to be combing through her SUV like that.
They found nothing, proving my point that it had been a waste of time, and without a word Rain headed towards the woods. With a grimace, Finn stalked behind him.
I hesitated because this was another thing that almost felt like an invasion on her privacy to me. I never had any intention of taking her to the cell I’d spent so many years in and giving her the short tour of it. This was us making a journey to where she’d been tortured and lived out her worst nightmare.
It didn’t seem like it was fair to her to be here.
Then again, I couldn’t wrap my messed up head around why in the world she would ever come back to this place of her own violation.
What in the actual fuck had she been thinking? And why hadn’t she brought anyone out here with her?
None of this made any sense to me and the longer we were kept in the dark without finding her the angrier I became. My life wasn’t all about control and having it, but that did not mean I was not enraged at the unknown and what felt a lot like the sudden loss of control over my life.
I’d had too much of my life already stolen from me to not truly be terrified at Isobel’s sudden disappearance.
I followed the two of my coven members into the woods because my options here were limited and even though it didn’t feel right to follow them I didn’t want to be left behind. That had me putting one foot in front of the other and traipsing through the woods.
The woods were eerily still and the further we walked into them the louder the silence seemed to scream.
The forest was trying to tell us something. To turn around and get the fuck out of here before something bad could happen to us because, make no mistake, something bad had happened here and the woods had been silent ever since.
My heart, already in my stomach, threatened to escape through my asshole so it could run out of here and far the fuck away from me so it never had to experience this kind of bullshit again.
