“Now, you’re going for a walk,” she said, gesturing to the door that lead outside.
“Are you out of your mind?” I jumped up and retreated toward the living room, regretting that I’d chosen Dad’s study for my research. I guess I should have run faster, but I couldn’t shake the image of her as just my bossy aunt. “Mom!”
Delia grabbed my arm again, her fingers iron clamps. “She can’t hear you.”
I twisted and writhed, my skin burning under her grasp. “What do you get out of this?”
“Oh, don’t tell me you’re that stupid.” Delia dragged me unceremoniously toward the French doors. I should have been able to escape from her grasp, but her body was wiry and unyielding beneath her pink velour armor. It reminded me of the endless Cops episodes I’d watched at Granna’s, where they’d said people on highs had inhuman strength. “You’ve put everything else together, haven’t you?”
And just like that, everything snapped neatly into place. The room in Granna’s house where Delia had nearly died. The wet feet on Mom’s bed. Rye, the faerie hound, who had been in the family before I was born. This had started a long, long time before me. “Your life. They saved your life.”
“Don’t forget the best part,” Delia said, and she sang a perfect scale in the pristine voice that had netted her a record deal. “Do you think this voice was mine?”
I whispered, “It was Mom’s, wasn’t it?”
She shoved me hard, reaching for the door handle, and I moved to brace myself against the glass. Too late, I saw that the glass door was already open, and that she’d been reaching for the screen door handle instead. She’d shoved me so hard that I felt the screen give way and tear beneath my weight. I crashed down onto the brick patio, my head striking the ground. My vision throbbed and I gasped, “What do you want from me?”
Delia stared down at me, her eyes hard and glittering. “I just want you gone.”
She slammed the glass door; I heard the lock snick shut. I groaned, sitting up slowly, pulling my bare feet close to my body. As I did, I saw a little metal plate by the door. A twisted bit of black lay on it, still smoking. Thyme! She’d burnt thyme and then she’d thrown me outside.
I barely had time to think my friggin’ aunt betrayed me when I saw a brown-and-gold-haired faerie striding up through the back yard. A hundred Rye-dogs milled about his ankles—some lean as greyhounds, some huge as mastiffs, but all the same color as Rye.
Casting no shadow in the afternoon sun, the faerie was curiously difficult to see with the trees as a backdrop. He wore odd, tight-fitting clothing in varying colors of green and brown. The body of the jerkin and his leggings were made of leather, and the sleeves were made of something like suede or moss. Dried braids of grass were tied on the outside of each leg and hung in loose bunches at the cuff of each sleeve, like the frills on a Victorian costume or stuffing hanging from a scarecrow. He looked as if he had been made from the earth and could return to it just as easily, but his features had the same fearful symmetry as Freckle Freak and Eleanor, lending him otherworldly beauty.
His head was turning from side to side—he hadn’t seen me yet. I could have tried the door to the house, but I saw Delia on the other side, a massive malevolent presence. I hesitated a bare moment, and then leapt up and began to run. As I bolted across the yard, legs pumping, I was reminded of something Granna had once said: dogs only chase cats that run. But it was a little late to change my mind now.
When I cut across our yard into our neighbors’, darting around the maze of terra-cotta pots that dotted their yard, I heard a long, thin wail. It was a terrible sound even without knowing that it meant the hounds had begun their chase. A second later, white bodies burst through the brush, and I heard the shattering of pots. By then I was already into the hayfield beyond our neighbors’ yard, cool blades of grass crushing beneath my feet, the sight of the tree-lined road beyond the field giving me newfound speed.
The sun burned me as I scrambled through the waist-high timothy grass, casting a shadow that was pursued by one hundred bodies with none. That high-pitched wail came again, long and reedy, more bird-like than hound-like, and the bigger mastiff hounds began to cry low and melodic behind it. I tore my sweater off as I ran, feeling faster because of it.
But the hounds were gaining on me. There was no way I was going to make it to the road, much less to the cow pasture, before they caught me. I heard hay being crushed to the ground, close behind me.
I’m faster, I thought fiercely. Hounds are fast, but I’m faster.
And I was. I cleared the tangled brush in the ditch by the field and leapt onto the dappled road on the other side. The hounds were still behind me, not on top of me. My breath was beginning to tear at my lungs, and my knees were aching. My feet slapped hard against the asphalt, and I stole glances over at the cow pasture on my right, looking for anything I’d recognize from Una’s glowing vision of Thomas Rhymer. Up ahead was where I’d found Luke in his car that day; it had to be somewhere along here.
I glanced behind me and wished I hadn’t; a wall of white dogs filled the width of the road like an oncoming wave, and behind them, walking calmly, was that green-clad Hunter with the two-toned hair.
Please be there. Thomas Rhymer, be there. There was nothing saying that things would be all right once I found him in the cow pasture, but they would be. They had to be. Because I’d seen how close Una could get to the key, and I didn’t want to think of what one hundred hounds could do with their newfound midsummer power.
Gasping, I ran to the edge of the cow pasture, hoping at least for some iron barbed wire that would slow the hounds down, but there was only a board fence. Damn our county codes for not allowing ugly fences. I clambered over the fence, more slowly than I would have liked, and suddenly, I saw the gentle slope of the cow pasture—the top of the hill from Una’s vision.
Behind me, hounds hit boards and some of the lighter ones cleared it in a single leap. In my head, I repeated again, firmly: I’m faster. I’m going to find Thomas. I’ll be safe then.
Up the hill I went, muscles groaning, and the hounds streamed after me. I just had time to see that there was a lumpy ring of mushrooms growing at the top of the hill before paws brushed against my leg. This is it.
I jumped into the ring, and there was silence.
No, not quite silence. It was as if I had just stuck a pair of earplugs in; the frustrated howl of the hounds had not gone away, it had just grown muffled and distant. I looked behind me, beyond the circle of mushrooms, and saw nothing but the broad field sloping gently down toward the road. If I squinted toward where I knew the hounds ought to be, I thought I could see vague smears of light and dark, imperfections in my vision.