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The bell tolls again. This time, the sound rolls beneath my feet. Then a shot cracks deeper in the forest.

West. Toward the circle. A cry follows. Too brief to recognize. My body stops.

Rosemary. Apples. Blood. The fog tears the scents apart before I can identify which one carries the iron.

Pepper. Ezra.

I turn toward the route.

Hammer laughs weakly beneath Wes’s hands. “Go on. Show me how different you are.”

For one terrible second, I see every path at once. Stay and make sure Hammer can’t get away. Run toward the gunshot. Follow the scent.

Wes looks up at me. “Go.”

“You have him?”

“I have Hammer, the shooter, and Roman is enroute with the sheriff’s units, less than five minutes out.”

Another sound moves through the fog. A woman crying out. Maybe Pepper. Maybe the cursed land.

Trust Pepper. Go to the circle.

Wes’s expression hardens. “Theo. Go protect the plan.”

I run. The true road home begins behind the ridge. Pepper said to ignore flowers unless the thread was tied low around a cypress knee. The first lilies I see hang at eye level. I pass them.

The next ribbon circles a branch with no knots. Not hers, so I keep moving.

The fog tries Ezra’s scent next. Apples to my left. Then behind me.

I follow elevation. The old channel stays low. The release route rides the higher edge before curving toward the circle.

My shoulder screams where the pipe struck, but I ignore it.

A cypress knee rises ahead. White thread tied low. Three knots like Pepper said. I touch it once and keep running.

Another shot echoes. Or the same shot repeats through the fog. I can’t tell. Everything is twisted. The ground shifts beneath my boots. Water spills over the path from nowhere, moving uphill for three feet before sinking into the soil. The bell rings close enough to shake my bones.

I see a figure through the fog. Small and running poorly. Another shape beside her, flickering in and out of sight.

Pepper and Ezra. Alive.

Then a third figure lifts a gun behind them.

I run harder.

The fog closes before I reach them.

Chapter 42

Pepper Vines

The gun fires behind us. Ezra yanks me sideways. The bullet cuts through the sleeve of my jacket and buries itself in a cypress trunk with a crack of splintering wood.

My right foot lands where the ground is not. The edge of the old channel crumbles beneath my shoe. For one weightless second, I’m still holding Ezra’s hand. Then my ankle folds, his fingers tear from mine, and I fall. My shoulder hits first before my head strikes something harder. White explodes across my vision. The fog, the trees, and Ezra’s terrified face turn sideways. I hear him scream my name from very far away.

Then everything snaps back at once. Pain burns through my ankle. My skull throbs with each beat of my heart. Something warm runs into my eyebrow and down the side of my face.