CHAPTER ELEVEN

 

IT WAS ALMOST exactly a week after my last phone call from Clay before the phone rang again. Having survived the bulk of our separation relatively unscathed, I was more than ready to hear his voice again. I raced to the breakfast bar to answer the closest handset with a smile on my face.

Punctual as always.

I picked up the phone and said a cheery “hello” before waiting for Clay to confirm that he was headed home.

“Evie?” The wrong voice—Ethan’s voice—traveled down the line in response to my greeting.

My hand instantly closed around the receiver in a vice-like grip, as the room began to spin. Although I tried not to panic, it was impossible to ignore the voice in my head that warned that there wasn’t any good reason for Ethan to call me if they were both near the phone. Clay would have beaten him to it, which could only mean Clay wasn’t there.

There were only a few reasons why Ethan would be near a phone when Clay wasn’t, and not one of them was good.

“What’s wrong?” I asked in a blunt tone as my blood turned to ice in my veins and my heart struggled to move the sludgy mess around my body.

“Is Aiden there at the moment?” he asked quietly.

I ignored his question because the reason he was asking had nothing to do with him needing to speak to Aiden. Truthfully, I had no idea who was currently on guard, but Ethan had his own ways of contacting the court. If he’d genuinely just wanted to reach Aiden, he could have called them to find out where he was with less hassle than calling me. There must have been another reason he wanted to know, and it sent the worries in my mind spiraling, overtaking every conscious thought. Our daughter kicked sharply, and I pressed my hand against the spot to calm her, even though I was anything other than calm myself.

“Where’s Clay?” I countered.

“Evie,” his voice was strained and tight; my eyes naturally screwed closed as my mind considered the ramifications of his tone. “I need you to sit down,” he said quietly.

No, no, no, no, no. My breathing hitched as all of the worst case scenarios began to rush through my head again, flashing one after the other. All of the nightmares I’d had with Clay, battered and bleeding and me unable to help, ran though my head. I heard Ethan saying something else down the phone line, but I couldn’t hear it over the sound of my blood thundering in my ears as it pounded through my body. Please just tell me he’s okay, let this all be a stupid prank.

“What’s wrong?” I asked again in a breathless whisper. The two words were the best I could force through my sudden inability to form words.

“It’s Clay.”

“No,” I said as soon as Clay’s name left Ethan’s mouth.

Ethan sighed. “He’s . . . missing.”

I shook my head rapidly even though Ethan couldn’t see me. Tears pricked at my eyes, stinging and welling but refusing to fall. I thought about the consequences of Ethan’s words until the whole world was nothing more than a streaky blur of colors. Each breath I took was shallow and failed to provide me with the oxygen I needed to stay upright. The baby kicked my stomach again and brought everything into rapid focus. “No, he can’t be,” I said. “We . . . we need him here.”

Stuttered breathing came down the phone line until Ethan inhaled sharply and evened out his voice. He sounded as panicked and close to tears as I was. “He’s okay, Evie, I’m sure he’s okay.” Ethan’s words might have been exactly what I wanted to hear, but his voice lacked the confidence I needed to believe them. “He just . . . we just got separated.”

So many questions began to race each other around my rapidly shrinking sanity, but overarching all of them was a pledge, one that I was relying on to bring my husband home safely.

“You promised,” I hissed venomously as the reality of how terribly Ethan had failed me and my unborn child began to permeate my thoughts. “You swore you’d bring him home to me.”

“I know I did, and I still will. I promise. I thought he might have come back to base camp. That was our contingency for if we got separated, but he’s not here.”

A strangled sob rose in my throat.

“He’s not here yet,” Ethan continued carefully, but again I could tell the words were selected to inflict the least amount of pain, not because he genuinely believed them.

“Where is he then?” I asked quietly before I realized my near-silent voice was entirely inadequate. I needed to shout the question out to the gods and demand an answer from them. “Where is he?” I screamed at the world with all of the volume I could muster in my failing voice.

The front door banged open as someone came charging in. I lifted my eyes from the spot I’d been staring at on the kitchen counter—watching as it went from fuzzy to clear and back again as my eyes watered before the tears finally fell—to meet Aiden’s bright-blue eyes.

“What is the matter?” he asked, ignoring the fact that I was on the phone.

Seeing the concern in Aiden’s eyes was too much for me, it echoed the fear twisting itself around the sinew and muscle in my body. The hand holding the phone dropped to my side before the rest of my body followed behind, slumping down to the floor. I wrapped my arms around my legs as best as I could with the protruding bump in my way. Aiden continued his path to me and gently pried the receiver from my fingers, lifting it away from me to talk to Ethan as he turned his back on me and left the kitchen.

“Clay,” I sobbed into the now empty space. I threw my head back against the cabinets and began to wail loudly. “Where are you?”

A horrific shudder ripped through my body as I sobbed until eventually the baby gave another couple of choice kicks to my kidneys, and I shifted position so that I could rub soothing circles over my stomach.

“He can’t be gone,” I whispered to my bump. “We need him, don’t we, Ava?”

Realizing that not only did we need him, she needed me, I forced myself to calm the hysterics and pulled myself to my feet. Falling apart wasn’t going to do anyone any good.

What would Clay think if he came home to find you like this? I reprimanded myself. I tried to take solace in the fact that Ethan was certain Clay was still alive and disregard the fact that he was alone in an inhospitable wilderness. He was a fighter, a survivor, whatever happened, I was certain he would return home to Ava and me.

If he was able.

Following the sound of Aiden’s voice, I braced myself and went in search of answers.

“Why on earth would the two of you travel to that place?” When I found Aiden, he was in the middle of an angry rant. “If you had taken a single moment to gather some intelligence, which you clearly needed, I would have told you to send anyone else up there in your place. It is too—”

He stopped as soon as he realized I was behind him. I held out my hands for the phone now that he was no longer talking to Ethan.

“Lynnie would like to converse with you again,” Aiden murmured into the phone before passing it over to me without waiting for a response. As soon as I’d taken the phone back, he ran both of his hands through his long, dark hair before allowing it to fall back over his high cheekbones. “I shall be back momentarily,” he murmured before leaving.

“Tell me what happened,” I said, infusing my voice with a peace I didn’t feel. I knew Ethan well enough to know he wouldn’t tell me the truth if he didn’t think I was in a position to hear it, but he wouldn’t bullshit me if I appeared calm and in control when I asked.

“From the moment we arrived, we realized something was wrong. And not just the something we were investigating.”

I was right about one thing, he seemed to have more confidence dealing with me while I wasn’t hysterical, so I worked as hard as I could to remain calm—if only for my little girl—as he told his story.

“The thing is, once we were here and had interviewed the past victims, it was clear that the thing hunting tourists was a púca, the shapeshifter that Clay told you about. It was on the list of possibilities so we were prepared for it, but it was strange because they’re not usually found here. We found it fairly quickly and saw that it had taken the form of a massive black stallion. Clay saw its true form though and understood what it was immediately. When it looked at us, I saw the gold eyes and knew he was right.

“We hunted it deep into the valley, but it didn’t attack. Clay followed it without difficulty because of his sight and it just seemed to lead us further into the canyon. I didn’t think anything of it, neither of us did, we just followed it along as we tried to assess whether it was definitely the danger and not just an innocent caught in the crosshairs. Clay followed the thing like a bloodhound. To be honest, I think he was just desperate to find out what the hell was happening so that he could go home.”

Even as Ethan said the word, a pang of hysteria rush through me knowing that Clay wasn’t coming home.

He will. Just give him time! This time tomorrow, he’ll call to let me know he’s okay and we’ll both be able to laugh about this.

“Just before the Lethe River, it snared Clay and bolted away. About halfway across, it dumped him into the river before shifting back into human form and holding him under the murky water.”

A sudden dizzy spell that hit me reminded me that I needed to breathe regardless of how desperately I needed to know the rest of the story. I inhaled sharply. The air burned its way into my lungs. I had to keep reminding myself that Ethan had told me Clay was alive.

Despite what Ethan was saying, Clay hadn’t drowned.

He’s not dead.

“I ran as fast as I could to catch up to them, but as a horse, the púca had covered so much ground so swiftly. When I finally reached them, the púca had already run off and Clay was motionless on the side of the river. For a minute, I was worried he’d drowned, but when I offered him my hand, he smacked it away.”

Despite the horror that still raced through my body, a small chuckle escaped me as I pictured Clay fighting away his brother’s helping hand.

“But then . . . well, I don’t know. He pulled himself out of the river and stood slowly. When I asked him if he was okay, he just . . . looked at me for a moment and then . . . he ran.”

“Why?” I asked. “Did he go after the shapeshifter?”

“No,” Ethan said. “That’s what’s so weird about it. He just ran off in another direction. It was almost like he was running from me.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know, but, Evie, in those few seconds that he looked at me, it was almost like he didn’t recognize me.”

“Could that have something to do with the púca?”

“It’s not something they’re known for. They can be tricky little devils, and they can cause some damage if they want to, but they’re not known for causing amnesia.”

“Maybe he hit his head?” I asked. The words tasted wrong in my mouth, and I wanted to spit them out. If that had happened, if he’d hit it hard enough to cause amnesia, even temporarily, he must have surely done additional damage. If he’d run off alone into the wilderness with a concussion . . .

I couldn’t even consider the possibility.

Squeezing my eyes tight, I tried to force oxygen into my body. It took everything I had not to hyperventilate as panic rushed through me.

“I didn’t see him hit anything, but I don’t know. I just can’t explain it, and since then I haven’t been able to find him. I ran after him, but it’s like he’s covering his tracks and using all of his knowledge of moving around undetected on me. I think he might have even slipped onto the ethereal plane. And the weirdest thing is that the púca hasn’t attacked again either. None of it makes sense. I hoped that whatever had happened to him, he would recover and return to base camp. That’s why I came back here. Well, that and to let you know what happened. I know he’s still alive. I just know it. I’m sorry I let you down, but I promise you, Evie, I’ll fix this.”

The thought of Clay being out in the wild by himself terrified me. The fact that he’d fled from his brother like he didn’t know him twisted my stomach into sickening knots. What could have caused that?

The words Aiden had said before I interrupted the phone call came back into my mind. He’d told Ethan they were fools for going up there. Why? Does he know something?

“Eth, what did Aiden say to you?” I asked.

“He wanted to know what happened and exactly where we were, why?”

“I think he might know more than he’s said.”

“Ask him what he knows and call me back. I’m not leaving Alaska until I find Clay. If you can’t reach me here, leave a message with Terry. He’s a ranger up here and was the one who called in the trouble initially.”

“Okay,” I said quietly. “Just . . . take care.”

“Always. You too.”

“And Ethan?”

“Yeah?”

“Bring him home to us, please.”

I hung up the phone feeling bereft. There were thousands of miles between Clay and me, and I was completely unable to help. I wondered whether Aiden could help get me to Alaska via the fairy rings despite the ban. It wasn’t technically Rain use after all, not if it was to help out a member of their court. Surely Aiden could have a dozen fae up there to comb the area for Clay in an instant.

In fact, that’s probably why he left, to arrange a search party.

Feeling slightly buoyed by the fact that Aiden was no doubt already on the case, I held myself together even though I still wanted to fall apart. I waited for his promised return, pacing the living room again and again, wearing a path in the carpet in front of our small sofa. I couldn’t imagine the rest of my life in that space without Clay at my side.

He is going to come home. He has to.

Between Aiden and Ethan, they would make doubly sure that Clay found his way back to me. I was certain of it.