Page 69 of The Lies We Conjure
“Wren—”
“Kidding. Kidding. There’s a hidden pocket.”
A half hour after we descend into a thick tangle of firs knitted together along a stream bed, I check the map on my phone, zoomingin to gauge the distance from the house to where we are now. Based on what I gathered in the discussion of potential locales in the study, the Field of Stars is a sort of moraine park carved between mountains by a glacier ages ago. What’s left is a low-lying oasis of knee-high grasses; soft, loamy soil; and a stiff swath of stream shallow enough for fly fishing.
I point to the flat red girth of a large boulder about thirty feet ahead. “The trees should end on the other side of that big fella.”
“Good. I was worried we were going to miss them.”
“Still might. There are four of them searching, and they had a head start.”
“And a car.”
“And a car.” I echo and pick up the pace, shutting off my phone in the process to conserve battery.
We skirt the boulder and, indeed, the trees begin to thin, a brightness rising in the distance—the promise of a wide-open destination. I can just make out the rolling golden green of wild grass when there’s the unmistakable sound of a door slamming shut and an engine revving, drowning out an exchange of words.
“Aw, shit,” Wren mutters, and we both start jogging.
But as we hit the trail’s end, I’m sure I hear anger in the nearing voices and my gut pings. I skid to a stop, cuffing Wren’s arm and pressing a finger to my lips before tucking us both behind a knot of spiny trunks. Her brow furrows, but she gets the hint and doesn’t say a word.
In the clearing is the black SUV. Hector is at the wheel, window rolled down. Clad in their matching tracksuits, the twins stand side by side and empty-handed. A small backpack is dumped at Ada’s feet. If Sanguine’s there, I don’t see her. Hector glares down at Hex with a look so cold I nearly shiver.
“You will, and that’s final, my son. End of discussion.”
“But Papa—”
Hex’s voice dies as Hector raises a hand. If there weren’t several feet between them, he might have slapped his son across the face. Even at their current distance, though, it’s clearly a threat.
This is not the debonair family man we’ve seen.
“That’s what I thought,” the patriarch growls at Hex, before turning the stern set of his jaw to his daughter. “Ada, I trust you will keep your brother on task for me, yes?” As he speaks he makes a point to tap his forearm—right in the location of the tattoos we saw Hex use for last night’s spell.
Ada’s fingers graze her own sleeve.
“Yes, Papa.”
Hector pats the car’s doorframe with a hollow clang, slips on a pair of aviator sunglasses, and the blacked-out window rolls up. The engine revs again, and the twins must take this as a sign. Hex shoulders the pack that had been at Ada’s feet, and she blinks at her phone before pointing at a trail that disappears into the trees away from the Field of Stars, and in a completely different direction from the other site the Cerises had planned to check first—Shadrack’s Lookout.
Hector reverses in an arc, turning the massive car around, and disappears down the service road in a cloud of beige dust and the creak of tires on packed-down ruts.
When they’re gone, Wren whispers, “I knew Hector’s father-of-the-year act was as fake as Sanguine’s dye job, but what a turd. How can you be that aggressively asshole-ish to your kids while wearing ridiculous matching outfits?”
“We can hardly judge anyone here for acting differently in private than in public,” I say, accent stripped away, leaving my flat, Midwestern pronunciation unabashed. “But I’m more interested in what he said. What does he want Hex to do?”
Wren bites her lip. “What is ‘Hex isn’t to be lugged out of Winter’s room for a second time’ for three hundred, Alex?”
“It’s a possibility,” I say slowly. “But I don’t think that’s it.”
I click on my phone, pull up the map, and tuck the display between us. With a finger, I pinpoint where we are now, and what’s around us. Whatever path Hex and Ada are on is unmarked, but much of the land is now. My finger stubs along the webbing of marked lines. “Look, if we head back up the trail, we can take thisconnector and we’ll be parallel to them. Maybe we can come across them farther down and pretend we ran into them by accident?”
Wren socks me on the shoulder and beams. “Aw, sis, look at you, setting up the exact scenario where I can use my strengths. How supportive.”
CHAPTER22
AUDEN
“You have a secret.”
