2
Melody stirred awake just as the long black sedan rolled to a stop. She didn’t even realize she’d been sleeping. Hell, she’d slept on the plane too.
She peered out the window… and saw nothing but green. Trees on both sides. Overgrowth. Undergrowth. The emerald heart of some thick, Louisiana jungle.
“Why are we stopping?”
There was a gentle whir as the partition window between herself and the driver slid down. The big man hadn’t spoken much since picking her up from the airport. He hardly turned his head to speak to her now.
“Because we’re here.”
Melody looked all around again, sure she missed something. Apparently she hadn’t.
“Here?” she asked. “Where’s the plantation?” In the thin rectangle of the rear-view mirror, the man was nothing but eyes. Melody squinted at him. “I thought you were taking me to the plantation?”
“I have,” he said over his shoulder. “Evermoore is right over there. Just down that path.”
He pointed, and she followed one thick finger. Cut through the trees was a tiny footpath… if it could even be called that at all. It looked more like an animal trail. Barely discernible. Almost invisible to the eye.
“You’re kidding.”
The driver shook his head, somehow without moving his neck. Apparently he wasn’t kidding.
“This is the spot. Ms. Magoro’s orders.”
Melody frowned. She opened the door… and was almost knocked back as a wave of heat and humidity washed over her. She stood up and a cacophony of insects buzzed in her ears. The precious air conditioning escaping from the car was a cool, but temporary breeze.
This is crazy!
She was wearing a gorgeous red silken dress. Shoes made for waltzing, not walking. She looked at the path again.
“Really?” Melody sighed.
The driver was already disinterested. With the car still running, he pulled out a newspaper and spread it across the steering wheel.
“I’ll be waiting here for when you get back,” he said.
Melody glanced at the digital display on the dash. It was a little past five O’clock. She had no idea when the ball would start, or when it would end. Or how long it would take her to find an ivory jeweled egg in a tremendous mansion that was probably full of stuff.
“But I don’t even know when that will be,” she said.
The driver licked one finger and turned a page. “I’ll be here,” the man repeated without looking up.
Melody shrugged and closed the door. Already she’d begun sweating. She pinched her dress up and took a few steps in the direction of the little path. The ground was soft and spongy beneath her feet.
Great, she thought to herself. I’ve got the only driver in the world who can’t even find a driveway.
She took another few squishy steps, shaking her head the whole time. The path wasn’t going to walk itself, and the sooner she got started the better.
It was slow going, especially at the thick parts.
What began as a tiny path had rapidly deteriorated into a squirrel’s run. Melody picked her way through the underbrush while using her hands to hold rogue branches at bay. Spanish moss hung everywhere. More than once her foot caught on a vine, almost tripping her up.
Xiomara’s orders my ass, she thought. This is stupid. I’m getting sweaty. Dirty. And I’m supposed to be at a cotillion in just—
She was about to turn around when she very abruptly bumped into something. Waist-high, stretching in both directions, was an elaborate silver gate.
Beyond the gate, the forest opened into a lavish green field. It stretched out hundreds of yards ahead of her — an immaculately-groomed landscape that sloped gently downward toward a breathtaking, three-story, pillared mansion.
Her shoulders slumped in relief.
Well at least the driver was right about something.
Evermoore manor was every bit as gorgeous as in the history books. Long Doric columns jutted up proudly on both sides of the antebellum mansion, capped at the top and bottom. Melody saw wrought-iron balconies. Large, reaching windows. A canopied path led up to a pair of magnificent white doors, lined on both sides by three-hundred year old oak trees.
She tried the gate. It was latched, but not locked. It took her a moment or two to figure out how to work the mechanism, but eventually she was able to swing it wide. She winced at the eerie high-pitched wailing of metal on metal.
Hurry up.
It was her thought for sure, only this time the little voice inside Melody’s head didn’t sound like her own. She shoved it aside. The humidity was stifling. Already it was getting difficult to breathe.
She continued forward, allowing the forest to spit her out into the field of lush, verdant grass. Everything was wide and spacious. Much less claustrophobic. Melody took five steps. Ten. Twenty. She felt immeasurably better already, even cooler, although something was still troubling her. Something nagging at the back of her mind.
Did you close the gate?
She wasn’t so sure. Melody whirled, and noticed the silver gate had somehow closed and latched itself behind her. Even though she couldn’t remember doing it…
Isn’t it further away, too?
As strange as it sounded, she wanted to say that it was. It’s not like she’d been counting her steps, but the gate seemed way more distant than it should be. She shrugged. There was nothing to do now but make the mansion before she utterly melted.
She focused on putting one foot in front of the other, while taking in the scenery. The road leading up to Evermoore was straight out of a storybook, shaded by magnificent, arching boughs of oak. She was walking parallel to it, having come in on one side of the property.
Silently she wondered what Xiomara’s plan was; why she’d been dropped off at such a strange angle to the rest of the grounds. Why she hadn’t been driven up to the front door. Maybe the old woman wanted Melody to see it. To walk the grounds herself, rather than—
The egg…
It suddenly occurred to her that she should probably be looking for it already. Melody scanned the property. On the other side of the path, a line of thatched stone houses ran in a thin, low-slung row. There was a carriage house too, and beside it a barn — big and weathered but fully restored to its former beauty. She supposed the egg could be anywhere. But she’d check the mansion first.
The grass swished against her dress as she walked. Melody turned her head back one last time to remember where the gate was. To imprint her exit point in her mind, so that when—
What the hell?
The gate was gone. Right where it used to be, a thick, rolling mist had enveloped the treeline.
“Great,” she thought. “Already I’m lost.”
She stopped walking and peered into the mist. It appeared to be moving, or maybe it was just a trick of the dying light. The treeline also seemed impossibly far, as if she’d been walking three times as long as she really had.
It didn’t make any sense.
Melody had run track, all throughout high school. She knew distances well, and the point at which she entered the field had to be at least a hundred and fifty yards away. The mist had swallowed the trees there and then seemingly stopped. But left and right…
She shivered, despite the heat. Left and right the mist ran the entire length of the property, on both sides of the path. It created a big semi-circle that hugged the entire plantation grounds.
Keep moving, her little voice told her. Her legs obeyed without being asked. Melody hiked her dress higher and started taking longer strides. The field which had been so beautiful only moments ago was creeping her out now.
She looked up about halfway to the house. Oddly it seemed to be staring back at her. An strange sense of intrusion stole over her, as if she were some kind of interloper — unwanted and uninvited. Someone who snuck onto the Evermoore’s grounds, like a thief. Someone who definitely shouldn’t be walking on the grass.
All of a sudden she wanted to be on the path. She could turn toward it — all she’d have to do was hang a right at a large woodpile and cut beneath the oaks. It would be easier walking for sure. And it would also—
Her head snapped to the left. She heard a noise. Saw movement.
What the—
Melody froze mid-step, her body going utterly still. An unmistakable sound reached her ears, gravelly and terrifying:
The low, angry growl of a very large dog.