Page 4 of The Villains of Winter

“There are catamounts that hunt the elk, and my teacher tracks the botany fossils in that dangerous part of the mountains.” Elliott pointed north of them. “He wouldn’t want me fighting here near the animals.”

The sudden sounds might attract predators.

Animal trails crisscrossed the lush canopy of spring leaves surrounding them.

James responded, mildly curious, as though he couldn’t understand an afternoon without exchanging blows and fracturing rib cages. “Then why are you here? To study the plants the deer eat?”

To study you. Elliott’s eyes widened, noticing James couldn’t decipher the feverish, hectic paintings of himself. Thankfully, Finch tossed the sketchbook aside. James retrieved a separate sketchbook, idly paging through it. “The mountains are a quarter of a billion years old. Sure, we are interested in elk herbivore patterns, but there are paleophytological–”

“You have watercolor eyes.” James centered his eyes on Elliott. He wasn’t interested in botany. Elliott had fox-brown eyes, one lighter than the other, watered through so deeply, it gave the effect of watercolor eyes as though he were one of the John Singer Sargent canvases. Elliott had been told that a million times before in his life. Somehow, it only mattered then. “We both have strange eyes. Maybe one day you could paint us together instead of plants.”

“You won’t hit me for it?” Elliott winced.

“Not unless you want us to.” James braced an arm around Elliott, his damp heat spreading like fire through Elliott’s skin. If Elliott thought James’s breath was warm, his skin was like fierce sunlight.

James’s fingers were sticky with Elliott’s paint. His scent filled every atom of the air. Elliott couldn’t focus, afraid to be caught looking anywhere else, but the magnitude of his golden eyes. James pressed his mouth against Elliott’s ear and whispered with conspiracy, “Finch wants to beat you up to see if you’re good enough for the hockey team next season. You don’t have the nerve for it, but you have the height for it. Are you sure you don’t want to uppercut him? He’s not looking.”

“Certain.” Finch may be slowly dying, but he was not dead. He’d crush Elliott.

“I’d fight alongside you. Two against one. It’d be a quick scuffle.”

It could be four against one, and Elliott would be pulverized. Finch had muscularity and brawn on his side.

“No, I can’t.”

James sounded disappointed. Elliott shivered beneath the grit of sand that grazed from James’s palm as he patted Elliott’s back. Elliott already missed his heat when he stood away from him.

James handed his sketchbook back. “We need someone else then.”

Only that morning, a previous boy had plummeted from the crag, cracking his skull. Another was in the emergency care after Finch Hudskin and Knox Pearson took turns breaking his spine in the woods.

Elliott knew by the hungry, violent glint of mischief in their eyes, in one way or another he’d be next. Elliott didn’t even notice Knox Pearson until it was far too late. On the edge of the rapids, Knox was turning over a knife.

Elliott felt his skin tingle with a sensation of being watched. He made the mistake of not running while he still could have.

​​ CHAPTER THREE

MAYBE ONE DAY YOU COULD paint us together instead of plants. Elliott’s mind couldn’t stop repeating their conversation over in his head like litany. He finally had his first friend in eighteen months. He couldn’t stay still from excitement. You have watercolor eyes.

He noticed.

A flutter of sprightly starling birds landed behind Elliott.

Knox stalked over to the triad, his trawler boots striding over sedges and overgrown ferns. The fledglings scattered from his path. One young starling was crushed underneath his heavy fishing boot. “Is he going to brawl for the keys?”

“The keys?” Elliott repeated, blinking. The swallows in the trees fled.

Even the far hummingbirds took flight.

As though nature itself were warning him.

“No. He let us take it.”

To Elliott’s terror, Finch handed over Mr. Newton’s truck keys that Mr. Newton entrusted to Elliott. Elliott always kept them in his backpack. He realized Finch wasn’t searching through his sketches or cassettes with intrigue at all, he was looking for the keys to Mr. Newton’s truck.

How did he even know Elliott kept keys in there?

Slowly…it dawned on him why James had been watching him for weeks.