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Part I: Red

Chapter 1: The Wolf

Surely this wasn’t the place. Amma always said Ferry Vale was a seaside town that had somehow not been gentrified all to hell by corporate developers, yeah. But she hadn’t said it’d be so… old-timey? Not in a bad way, just in a “this could be Disney’s Epcot idea of a seaside resort from an Agatha Christie story” way. The sign in front of the busiest building on the main street declared it the Hawthorne Tavern, and I was pretty sure Amma had mentioned the place, but it felt…

Eerie?

Okay, no. No, I was just letting my fragile, harried, useless fucking nervous system run the show. As usual.

Fuck.

I plopped down my bag, collapsed onto the nearest bench, and started flicking through my history in the maps app. Maybe I had the wrong place? Maybe I’d paid all that money for a rideshare from the airport just to get lost in a small town nightmare. My sense of direction was garbage. And why did I only have one bar of a signal out here when I was paying through the nose for this data plan? What the actual—

I stopped myself mid-thought. Set aside my phone and closed my eyes. Took a deep breath in through my nose. Tried to relax my jaw, my neck, my shoulders as I let it out slowly. My body felt electric, like all my nerves were at war with each other, firing endlessly. A cool breeze kicked up, carrying the smell of the sea and ruffling my hair and the red pashmina scarf Amma had brought back from Hyderabad last year.

What kind of thirty-year-old man had to run and find his granny because of a nightmare? I was a fucking disgrace.

“You lost?” asked someone with a very different accent from mine.

I opened my eyes, prepared to greet a mocking local, but instead he was smiling. He had bright blue eyes like the Caribbean and a lush, well-manicured beard so pale it could’ve been silver as easily as blond. Combined with the absurdly high cheekbones, he looked like he’d walked out of an Old Spice ad.

“I, uh.” I’d had the whole trip here to think how to ask this question and hadn’t once bothered. Of course. “I’m looking for the Greenwood?”

“Are you now?” His eyebrows went up, and he cocked his head at me curiously. “Not many people head out there.”

“Why?”

“Nothing to see, unless you’re out for a hike?”

I shook my head. “My grandmother’s working out there. There’s a ruin on a hilltop—and a little stone house beside it?”

Saying it aloud really drove home just how vague Amma’s working address was these days. Why hadn’t I been more concerned about that the first time she came out to Ferry Vale? Most people would’ve stayed here in the town, but no, not Amma and her army of eager archaeology grad students.

My idea of roughing it involved room service, but she loved me anyway, thankfully.

“I was gonna say, you won’t get far in those shoes,” said the handsome blond stranger.

I glanced down at my point-toed ankle boots. He was correct; I would not be getting much of anywhere in these things. And I hadn’t brought any others.

“I know the ruins,” he went on. “You’ll never find them alone, though. Better take you myself.”

“I wouldn’t want to trouble y—”

“No, no trouble. I like a stroll in the Greenwood. It’s quieter than the Thistles.”

“What’s the Thistles?”

“Another of our magical little forests. But come on, if you’re coming.” He turned on his heel, leaving me staring after him.

With a shake, I stood, slung my bag over my shoulder, and tried to catch up to him without making myself look like an idiot. “You walk fast,” I huffed as I scurried up beside him.

“I’ll slow down in the Greenwood. Promise.” He flashed me a grin that was all white teeth, the canines a little too long. “What’s in the bag?”

“Just a few things she likes. Her birthday’s next week.” And since there was apparently no signal at the dig site…

Okay, no. Really and truly, I’d come running to find her because I was having the nightmare again. And I couldn’t fucking stand not knowing if the scene I witnessed every single night in my sleep had really happened, or if it was something my liar of a brain invented. If it was the former, it sucked. If it was the latter, it sucked in a different way. Neither was going to bring me peace.

But I had to do something. I had to ask her. Finally. And seeing as she wasn’t planning on coming home for a full month this time…