"Is there anything else you remember?" The deputy's voice was kind yet firm. "Even the smallest detail can help us find your sister and the others."

Alice shook her head, trying to remain calm while something scratched and screamed deep inside her, trapped behind her ribs like a second heart. Her head throbbed as she clutched at the styrofoam cup of coffee that had been given to her, and she could hear crying in the distance—family members of the missing riders.

If the deputy noticed them, she didn't show any sign of it. Despite her neat bun and crisp uniform, she already looked worn out and grim, rubbing at her temples as she said, "All right. Here's my card. Please call the number on it if you think of anything else. We'll let you know as soon as we learn anything."

Alice tried to smile. "Can I go?"

"Not yet." Then the deputy rose from her seat and reached for her hat. "I believe one of the search and rescue leaders had a few questions."

Alice nodded but didn't watch the other woman leave, instead dropping her gaze to the coffee to hide any hint of her true impatience. As soon as the door shut, she pushed away from the table, pacing as if she was still in her fur. She was in one of the staff-only areas of the hotel, the room hastily set up for one-on-one interviews away from the chaos of different organizations working together in a rush. The air smelled like burned coffee and stale cigarettes, and the lone window revealed nothing more than the staff parking lot, the glass pane vibrating from helicopters passing overhead.

Staff had apparently ignored the no-tech rule, for a small radio sat on a stack of cardboard boxes. After a few more heartbeats of pacing uneasily, hating the ticking of the clock, Alice turned it on and found it set to a local news station.

This morning, twelve people and their guide went missing while on a horseback riding tour that included trails into the Sierra National Forest. When the group failed to return on time, authorities were immediately notified. Several search parties have already been sent into the forest, but only one missing rider has been found. Officials haven't yet released her name, but we are told that she is being interviewed by the sheriff's department and other organizations in the hope that she can provide information on what exactly happened.

At that, Alice had to turn it off again, stomach churning for new reasons. She wasn't looking forward to another round of intrusion from the media, or how her name would be quickly recognized. Alice Corrigan, who had been lost in a forest once before, as a little girl abandoned by her mother. Alice Corrigan, who'd had strange things happen at her grandmother's cabin. Hers was a history of mysterious vanishings and grisly deaths, and this was simply one more notch to her name, permanent as a scar, a map to mark out how her future always seemed to circle back to her past.

The room seemed even smaller as she walked around it again, fighting with the growing sense of being trapped by walls seen and unseen. Then a flash of neon caught her eye, and she looked out the window to see several people in hiking gear milling in the parking lot. One man had a bloodhound, his free hand offering a piece of clothing to help the dog lock in on the scent. The hound's drooping ears and wrinkled face turned its expression into something mournful as it sniffed at the fabric.

When Alice realized it was one of Fleur's sweatshirts, the last of her patience finally snapped, and suddenly it was too much to wait for another interview, too much to hide behind the mask of a confused girl who didn't know why she had been the only one lucky enough to return from the woods and their gloom.

Compared to the oppressive smallness of the room, the hallway stretched like a gullet, packed full of people talking to each other or into their phones. Alice pushed through them as quickly as possible, badges winking at her until she felt dizzy. The noise thickened the very air, a frantic hum that hurt the ears, and she could smell fear in the sweat and breath of those around her. There were only a few more hours until dark, until those missing people had to survive night and the creatures that stalked through it. Alice's nose burned by the time she finally broke free, and she panted as if she'd been running.

The tea room waited before her, its ornately carved doors stretching all the way to the ceiling. Voices drifted through that sturdy oak, subdued, wavering. Thick with tears. All relatives of the missing riders had been invited in there while waiting for news or to be interviewed.

A fit of guilt then burst through Alice. She'd asked Colton to wait with Denise, had assured him that she was fine and her stepmother was the one who would need to cling to someone. That was true, but it was equally true that she wasn't sure she could face lying to Denise about what had happened, even though the truth was too bizarre to be believed.

After taking a deep breath, she opened the door as quietly as possible, trying to avoid attention. It was a massive room, with countless tables set up for high tea. Gold cherubs stared at her from every corner as she stepped inside, searching among the rose bouquets and plush chairs for her stepmother.

Denise was just as Alice had last seen her—crying into a napkin while a porcelain cup of tea and a sugar-crusted scone waited untouched. But instead of Colton sitting with her, it was Alice's father, still in his suit from work. He cradled his wife in his arms, tightening his grip when her face turned into his shoulder. At the sight of his expression, Alice's eyes blurred over with tears. They escaped in hot tracks down her cheeks as she stumbled back out into the hall, quickly closing the door behind her, and there in the dim light, with the brocade pattern of the wallpaper rising all around like a strange forest, memories flooded her full...

The stiff folds of the blanket were itchy, but whenever she tried to throw it off, the paramedic and police officer lingering close by coaxed at her to be a good girl and keep it on. She didn't like the way they looked at her, or the way those other people looked at her mother's car. And she didn't like that they kept asking where her mother was, as if the answer would change. As if she really knew.

It was hot, and the policemen going through her mother's car looked irritated while sweat ran down their necks. The sun glared from far above, bleaching the scrubby weeds into the color of straw. As Alice sat there, twitching every time a police radio squawked to life with voices, the oak trees past the yellow caution tape swayed in a sudden breeze, their gnarled branches heaving as if they were something alive, something that breathed. The gloom between their thick trunks looked like a sweet relief from the heat and noise, and she twitched again, now wanting to jump out from the back of the ambulance and run.

Then a car engine rumbled close, and everyone except Alice turned toward it. She only looked over when she heard a voice call her name, a familiar voice that she always connected with the smell of ink from a fountain pen, with stories read to her at night, with a big hand holding her own. Her father's voice.

He had never looked so scared, and that scared her. She remained quiet even when he swept her into a hug, the wrinkled collar of his suit pressing against her face as he held her tightly. Then he pulled back enough to look at her, and his voice cracked as he asked, "Where is she, Alice? What happened to your mother?"

Alice only shook her head, tongue feeling thick and useless.

The lines in his forehead deepened. "Try to remember."

"Sir..." said the officer.

But her father's tone only hardened, rising above Alice's hitch of breath as she began crying, too scared to do anything else. "You have to remember something, anything. Where is she?"

Where is she?

Hands caught her wrists as she clutched at her face. Then there was a rasp of a voice against her ear—not her father's, but instead one that chased the childhood terrors away, that was darker than the worst nightmares, that terrified the other monsters. "Easy. You're all right."

And then she realized she was back in the hallway of the hotel, all years of life since that soul-cracking day now settling in her head neat and normal, throbbing like a dislocated bone snapped back into place, and that Colton was there with her. When she finally let her hands drop, his thumbs stroked the inner skin of her wrists, right where her pulse beat hard and fast, before moving up to her face. His eyes were bright green and absolutely feral, but his touch remained feather light as he wiped the tears from her cheeks.

"Your father," he said. It wasn't a question.

She nodded. "We didn't talk. He didn't even see me. I just... I feel helpless and I hate it. Fleur might be dead by now and all I can do is lie to his face about it."

Colton shook his head. "She's not dead. And we're close to catching them. I wouldn't say these things if I had any doubt."

The words coaxed her into looking up, and their noses brushed as he added, "I found some things while you were being interviewed. Thought you might want to look at them, too."

She managed a flicker of a smile. "I do. I want anything that will help us find her."

He took her down a stairway away from the buzz of conversations and the vibration of helicopters, the purple carpet beneath their feet shifting into tile floor and then concrete. The final stair led to a plain door painted a dull red. The brass plate read STORAGE ROOM 5. As soon as they stepped inside, Alice gasped. Stacks of cardboard boxes had been thrown away from the back wall, and there was a gaping hole in it higher than her and three times as wide. "What..."

He kicked the larger pieces of rubble out of her way. "I noticed the floors of this place didn't line up like they should. It's a good sign of hidden rooms or passageways."

"You did this? It looks like a truck rammed through the wall," she said, staring at the ragged mouth of the hole. Beyond it, stone steps sank into darkness, although a faint, warm glow could be seen.

"It took two minutes with a sledgehammer. The bitch didn't even pay for wood paneling back here. It's just sheetrock and plaster." Then he handed her a flashlight. "I've already been down there. It's safe."

As they descended, the air turned damp and cool, and she thought she heard the scrabbling of a rat somewhere ahead. Their steps sounded hollow on the stairs, but once they reached the end, the ground turned powdery and firm. A quick scan with her flashlight revealed it was nothing more than packed dirt, as if they were in a root cellar. The room was equally modest, unfurnished and with a single overhead lamp for lighting. Wooden shelves marched from floor to ceiling on each wall, burdened by glass jars of every shape and size. Everything looked aged and forgotten, but not suspiciously so. Some of the things in her grandmother's cabin had looked far older.

Then Alice started, implications snapping into place. "Denise told me the hotel is hardly a year old. Portia must have built it over this room on purpose."

Colton's eyes held a strange gleam. "It's her larder."

Such simple words, yet they filled Alice with a gnawing dread even before her flashlight revealed the contents of the jar nearest to her. Eyeballs stared back at her, irises dulled by the yellow fluid surrounding them. Alice swallowed hard, and then swallowed again as she recognized mustard seeds and pepper flakes caught in the optic nerves. "She pickles people."

"Means she stays in this area. And with how old the dust smells, she's been here for years."

"What about that... That thing they shoved into my neck? Was that human?"

"No. Tasted like a buck's bone."

She aimed her flashlight away from the rest of the jars, not wanting to see what else waited in them. A horrible thought had occurred to her, and she turned to look at him. "They take what they want and then dump the remains in graves. We found cut marks on those bones, but that can't tell us whether they were dead when they were butchered. Is that why you're so sure Fleur and the others are alive? Are they being—"

"No." The steadiness of his voice calmed her even before he added, "I'll explain everything after we go through the trapdoor. You're miserable in here."

She hadn't even noticed the wooden ladder in the corner, or the faint outline of light in the ceiling above it. Colton went up first and then leaned back through to steady the ladder for her. This new room looked like a normal office, its centerpiece an antique desk covered with stacks of paper. As Colton shut the trapdoor, Alice glanced through a few of them and found bills, handwritten notes, and room registration cards.

One piece of paper was simply a list of names, and a chill ran through Alice as she saw hers, Fleur's, and Denise's. Her stepmother's had a line drawn through it. Her own had the brief note for Jacob written beside it, and she had to bite back a snarl. "There are twelve names if you don't count mine or Denise's. That's how many riders they kidnapped if you include the trail guide. Twelve people."

"Twelve points on a royal stag." When Alice glanced up at him, he grimaced. "I know that didn't make sense. It's easy to recognize patterns. Harder to describe them."

She managed a ghost of a smile. "And you hate explaining things."

He stepped close enough to wrap an arm around her waist, but his expression remained serious. "Sure. But you need to hear this one."

"Go on."

His hand smoothed up her spine, soothing despite his tone. "The witch that built this hotel is part of a coven. Fleur and the rest were kidnapped for a ritual they're going to perform tonight."

With those words, Portia's mocking voice echoed through Alice's mind. You're completely untaught, aren't you?

She bit back a wave of fresh anger and shame while admitting, "I don't know what that means outside of mythology books."

"Alice." His curt tone softened as he cupped her chin. "Don't be embarrassed. Not with me." His thumb traced along her mouth before he added, "A coven is a group of witches bound together in some way. It gives them more power than they'd have on their own. The oldest of them is the hag queen. Or mother crone. Whatever she decides to call herself. The words change, but the role is always the same. She's the leader of their rituals."

"But not of the coven?" said Alice, reading between the lines.

The look in his eyes changed, and suddenly there was nothing human about him. "Sometimes, a coven attaches itself to a warlock. He's known as the hag king. He's stronger than any of them. Hungrier. But warlocks are lazy fuckers, so they always tie themselves to covens, because it's easier to give up some power in return for being worshipped like a god and looked after like a baby."

"And Portia's coven has one?"

He nodded. "She slipped with her babble about the 'golden antler.' I remembered that phrase because it's as stupid as their fucking name. 'Consorts of the Golden Stag.' It's a coven that's been based in Europe for a few centuries. Seeing the age of the hidden room convinced me. Not many covens let their witches live away from their hag king."

"And that's what you meant about the royal stag having twelve points on its antlers. They're sacrificing those kidnapped riders in his name." Then she studied him, aware of how violence had seethed beneath his every word since the first mention of the hag king. "What made you so angry about them trying to take me as well?"

When he gave her a look that all but said, You know the answer to that, she shook her head. "No, I mean... I haven't seen you that furious since Magdalene. What were they going to do?"

His answer was very flat and steady. "A coven will always feed on humans. But sometimes they want more from a witch."

Before she insisted on a better explanation, footsteps sounded from somewhere outside the room. They both fell still, listening until whoever it was walked past.

The silence lasted for a heartbeat or two before she turned back to him and whispered, "We should probably get out of here."

He nodded, but tension lingered in the lines of his body as they slipped out and found their way to the staff parking lot. After the stuffiness of the rooms, the mist-tinged air felt crisp and alive, and she breathed in deeply while studying the edge of the forest. For all that the hotel loomed behind them, civilized life suddenly seemed very far away. The anger shoved away, restrained, and ignored now flared into that first thrill of bloodlust, and she looked over at Colton with a tension that matched his. "You said we're close to catching them."

In the late afternoon sunlight, his eyes looked more yellow than green as he reached inside his jacket. "Found the backup map from the search and rescue teams. It shows all the areas they're searching."

She looked at it with him, taking in the various markings and notes. "It seems like they're spread out from the trail pretty well."

"Except for here." He traced an area where the color changes marked a rise in elevation. "It's higher terrain. Lots of rocks and steep angles. There's also a river you have to cross to get there."

"So, basically, no one who's scared and injured from falling off a horse would ever end up there. Which makes it a perfect place for Portia to hide them. But she wasn't expecting us."

He nodded, but studied her instead of the map. The intensity of his attention drew a small laugh out of her. "What?"

He never showed much expression, this wolf hiding as a man, but something flickered in his eyes, hot as a wild howl, tender as a velvet tongue. "I like seeing you excited."

Coming from anyone else, such a statement would have sounded grudging, even half-hearted. But Alice recognized the reluctance that roughened his voice, the voice of this beast who hated using words instead of the honesty of his teeth, and found herself smiling as shyly as if she'd just been offered a lush bouquet.

The sound of her name broke the moment, and she looked over to find her father crossing the hotel grounds. Her heart bucked as she realized he'd already seen them.

"You want to do this?" murmured Colton.

"I have to." Then she sucked in a breath, searching for words in a mind that had tightened into a nasty knot of guilt both fresh and remembered.

When they were close enough to speak without shouting, her father repeated her name, looking a decade older than when she'd seen him the week before. He rubbed at the new grey in his hair while saying, "They told me you were being interviewed."

"I just finished."

He nodded, looking merely tired until he pulled her into a hug. It was then that she felt how fierce and desperate his grip was, as if he tried to make sure she was really there in his arms. His shoulder was still wet from Denise's tears.

When they separated again, he glanced at Colton without the usual dismissal in his eyes before refocusing on her. "I'd like to talk in private. Just the two of us."

Her stomach tightened. "All right. Where?"

"In the car. There are reporters everywhere, and some of them are starting to get inside the hotel." Then he headed for the guest parking lot, trusting her to follow.

She lingered long enough to give Colton a brief smile. "I'll be fine."

When he just shrugged, she knew that he would linger close by anyway. "It's going to be awhile before you let me wander out of sight again, isn't it?"

His kiss was answer enough, brief but devouring, and she could still feel the sweet, lingering pressure of his teeth as she started off after her father.

Once they settled in the car, neither of them spoke for several minutes. Helicopters whirred in the distance, small as birds. News crews packed up their bulky equipment. The frenzy was fading with the sun, and for the same reason: it would soon be night.

Sensations from Alice's memories seemed to dim her sight like a veil, figures from the past superimposed on the present. When her father spoke, it took her a moment to recognize where she was, and that his words were real breath and air instead of painful memory.

"The news stations reported all afternoon that only one missing rider was found. Nobody yet knows that it's you. As soon as that detail breaks, our family will be back under their microscopes." Her father sounded very calm and mechanical, as if he read from a how-to manual, yet a fresh wave of guilt rolled over her.

"I'm sorry."

He shook his head, looking straight ahead. "I didn't say that to draw an apology out of you, Alice. It's just very difficult to think about how this might end. Denise can't grasp that yet, but you and I both understand it bone-deep. That's why I... I need to say this."

When she nodded quietly, his hands flexed against the steering wheel. Then his eyes closed, as if the next words would be a physical struggle, things torn out with the same sheer will that had borne him through those early, unbearable months of losing his first wife.

When he looked up again, his gaze had fallen strangely distant. "I once saw something I've never been able to understand or explain away. I didn't tell anyone about it, and for years afterward tried to forget. It happened a few weeks after I married your mother. One day, I came home early from work to surprise her. She wasn't in the house, but as soon as I saw that the patio door had been left open, I knew she was out in the garden.

"I don't know if you can remember much about that place, but the backyard extended all the way to the national park. Whoever lived there before us had built it into a formal garden. Hedges that blocked the neighbors, flowering vines trained to cover archways... Your mother used to say that she felt like she was stepping into another world. She loved it."

Then her father paused, closing his eyes again. When Alice saw the pain on his face, she reached out to squeeze his arm, but her fingers faltered as he resumed speaking. "Anyway, I went into the garden to look for her. And she was there, singing to herself and dancing. Unaware that I was standing there. She looked happy, but something felt off. Wrong. It took me a moment to realize what it was—she was floating a few inches above the ground. And just as I decided that my eyes must be strained, that I was seeing things wrong, she floated higher. A foot in the air, then two. Then three. Laughing and spinning slowly in a circle, like when we went ballroom dancing. All the branches from the nearest trees and bushes reached toward her like they were alive. I'd never seen her that happy."

Her father finally looked over, embarrassment, exhaustion, and relief fighting each other in his eyes. "I thought I hallucinated it. There was no other rational explanation. There still isn't. Over the years, I came to realize that I simply can't... understand what happened that day. That there were things about your mother I'll never be able to comprehend. I've accepted it. What's always scared me, Alice, is recognizing that whatever your mother had, you have some of it as well."

Alice didn't know what to say. She didn't know what she could say. When her mouth started trembling, she bit her lip hard enough to make it stop, hard enough to taste the tang of blood.

Her father didn't seem to expect an answer as he continued to watch her with that distant expression, and she half-wondered whether part of him looked at her face and saw her mother's instead. "I don't know what happened in that forest today. I'm not sure if you do, either. But there was never a moment where you worried about getting lost, was there? Just like your mother. She disappeared because she wanted to. There was a lot I never knew about her, but that is one thing I'm sure about."

"I wanted to come back." Alice's voice shook, but she meant every word she forced out. "And I did."

"I know. I used to be terrified you wouldn't." Then her father rubbed at his face. "Fleur doesn't have any of that. She needs help. Please. Find her, Alice. Find your sister and bring her back home."

"I will." Then Alice licked her lips, tasting the salt of tears, the iron of blood. "I promise."