Paying the Piper

Twenty-Five: The Search Begins

I found myself wanting to call for Cale because, after all, wasn't it better to have a friend around when your world crumbled? Plus, if Hannah had somehow wound up in the In-between, Cale would need to be involved.

I had no idea if he could hear me or come to me while I was in my house. If I had to guess, I would've thought I had to be in the Potomah Forest. But then, our house was oddly in a portion of it.

So when Cale showed up in my room, looking completely uncomfortable and out of place, I was surprised but not entirely. He looked very odd indoors. I had never seen him within walls before.

"Thanks for coming." Now that he was here, I wasn't sure this had been wise. What if my mom poked her head in to tell me something randomly?

"What's the matter?"

I took a deep breath to explain, but I found myself choking up, unable to speak at that moment. The emotions were hitting too hard to speak of it. So instead, I flipped my phone over to him so he could read Rhia's text.

He stopped from shifting his weight from foot to foot, looking at the phone. "Ah." He glanced away then. "Faye, I can't read. At least, not much," he amended.

I gaped at him. A memory flashed through my mind—my concern that he had held my journal and may have read parts of it. Apparently, that had been an entirely baseless worry. "Wait, so you really can't read?"

Cale's body language was difficult to interpret, but he seemed embarrassed as he turned away from me and crossed his arms. "I can do a lot of other things," he said defensively.

And I realized how his parents had died—been murdered—right at the time he had probably been learning to read. And how any others left him completely alone, untrained fully even in the arts of passing through boundaries. How could reading have been a concern or passing thought? He was too busy trying to survive.

Truly, I had no understanding of his upbringing. Though I might have once.

Clearing my throat, I said, "My friend Hannah is missing. Probably since the bonfire last night. We think she might be in the Potomah woods. Can you help?"

He looked at me with fear evident in his eyes. "There was that gate that opened last night that shouldn't have. She could've been pulled into the In-between too," he muttered. "And I missed her."

I still didn't fully understand Cale's powers of navigating the In-between, but I was certain he was overburdening himself with guilt. "How would you know she was there?" I asked. "You can't always know when someone enters the In-between, right?"

Placing both hands on my windowsill, Cale stared out the pane. "It's my role, the reason for my existence. I am the watcher in the In-between. I find those souls who wander in and help them out again."

I sensed his anguish, but he hadn't answered my question. Which meant that no, he could not sense it. But he was determined to blame himself anyway. Not the most efficient of consciences.

And who would have assigned him such a role, anyway? Probably himself.

"Listen," I began, "I want to go with you to help look for her." If she had gotten dragged into the In-between, it had to be because of me. Which maybe wasn't the most efficient of my own conscience, but at least it made some sense. Dorian and his curse was after me. If Hannah was hurt or worse...it was because she had been mistaken for me, just like the other girls around my age that had gotten trapped there.

"Absolutely not," Cale snapped, whipping around from the window. "It'd be like offering yourself on a leash to him."

We both knew who "him" referred to.