By the time I reach the edge of the forest, my legs feel like they’re about to collapse beneath me.

I catch my breath for a moment under the shade of a huge oak tree, trying to process everything that just happened.

I ran into Bea. I tried to speak to her. Then she burst into flames and disappeared.

Impossible. Just… impossible.

It’s hard to accept the finality of what I saw. I need to know for sure whether or not that thing was really Bea. Even if it means I might be putting myself in danger.

I step out into the road, looking down Greenbriar Terrace. Bea lives just a short walk away, in Arlington Heights, neatly sandwiched between the forest and the Japanese Gardens. During the day, she’s usually one of two places – managing the Rose Inn, which is on the front of her property, or doing random hippy stuff at her cottage hidden away at the back.

I know the whole thing is pointless – even if she’s there, what then? How can I trust anything I see anymore?

But still, even if I’m stumbling around blindly in the darkness, I have to try.

I’m about to set off down the road when I realize that my route will take me past Zee’s house. Under normal circumstances, that would be fine, but I don’t want to risk running into Alix right now. I made a stupid impulse decision when I was explaining to Micah three weeks ago why I wouldn’t be able to do any band practices for Wild Blue Yonder over the summer. I told him I was staying in New York with my aunt for a few weeks. Luckily, he doesn’t seem to have realized that neither of my parents have siblings, and he seemed ok with the cover story. Alix, on the other hand, is still mad at me. The second he sees me walking past his house, my cover will be blown and he’s guaranteed to lose his shit.

That’s the problem with lies – big and small. They always come back to bite you.

Of course, the chances of him actually seeing me are practically nil, but I don’t want to take the risk.

So I backtrack and slip into the forest.

The Wildwood Track carries on all the way down to the Japanese Gardens. All I need to do is follow the path to Fairview Road, and I’ll be able to completely bypass Zee’s house.

But as I set off down the track, I feel an uneasy prickling on the back of my neck.

I’m being watched. I’m sure of it.

It’s still early afternoon, but the shadows seem longer; the trees whisper to each other in a faint rustle of emerald leaves. The image of Bea’s face melting away into black flame is burned onto my retinas, and I keep on imagining dark tendrils reaching out from the shadows behind me.

I quicken my pace, reminding myself that it’s only a few minutes walk until I come out onto a road again.

Still, the uneasy feeling won’t go away.

I’m on the outskirts of the woods, yet somehow it makes me more anxious than I felt standing at the forest’s dark heart with Bea. Maybe because civilization is so close, and the panic and adrenalin have set in, telling me I can make it, I should hurry, get out.

I break into a run, hurtling along the path without looking back.

The trees go by on either side of me in a flash, and I stumble out onto the sunlit road moments later.

The Rose Inn is at the end of the road, a spacious Edwardian style building with a formal rose garden at the front. It’s Portland’s best-kept secret – the place visiting celebs stay if they want to avoid the paparazzi and fans. I never thought much about how Bea came to own and manage it. The land itself must be worth a fortune, and I don’t know much about Bea’s life from before I was born.

Maybe I should look through some of gran’s old things in the attic. Photo albums, journals, hat boxes filled with trinkets. I might find something.

I walk up the Rose Inn’s long driveway, noticing that there aren’t any cars parked out front. That’s not so unusual at any other time of the year, but its mid summer. The Rose Inn is always fully booked at until the end of Autumn. And even in off season, the hotel staff is always here at least.

Where is everyone? Why is it so quiet?

As I near the front of the building, the reason becomes apparent.

The Rose Inn is in ruins.

Like Bea, the whole building seems to have melted away into the forest. Where the hotel once stood, there is a rotten wooden skeleton, the bare bones of the inn laid bare, wreathed in several centuries’ worth of moss and ivy. Grasses and colorful weeds sprout from the foundations like a gaudy living carpet. There’s a thirty-foot pine tree growing where the entrance hall once was.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

This is the place that won last year’s Oregon Boutique Hotel Awards. The hotel Fable stayed at just a few weeks ago during their WISH tour.

Even the rose garden at the front has gone wild – the bushes, as if neglected for ages, have formed a riotous tangle of thorns. A darkly scented red rose is doing especially well, dominating the huge thicket.

The red roses.

Every time I’ve seen something like this – something from the present that has been aged as if it’s stuck in some sort of time warp – it always seems to be in or on the edges of the forest, and these roses are everywhere.

They’re the same roses that blanket the front of the cabin. The same roses strangling Mia’s grave, pinning down the wreckage of my bicycle. And now they’ve cast their strange spell over the inn.

The rapid deterioration of Mia’s grave will probably go unnoticed for at least a few weeks, but this is going to get attention within a day or two. It’s right on the roadside, and people start asking questions when award-winning hotels suddenly turn into abandoned ruins overnight. In fact, it might have already been noticed.

I take my phone out of my pocket, silently thanking the Internet gods for the bars showing on my screen. I do a quick search for recent news related to the inn, and I find nothing.

A light, tinkling peal of laughter like little bells pulls me from my screen. I recognize the sound instantly. It’s unmistakable.

Bea’s laughter.

It came from the back of the property, in the direction of Bea’s cottage.

By now, I have no doubt at all that the cottage will be a sunken-in shell of rubble and vines. But as I approach it, I’m surprised to see that its still standing, well-kept and welcoming.

The little garden out front isn’t wildly overgrown (not more than usual, anyway) – a few weeds are poking out from between the neat rows of sunflowers, and there are some fallen red apples on the ground beneath the tree, but all in all it’s in good shape.

So whatever happened to the inn didn’t happen here.

I walk as quietly as possible down the path leading to Bea’s front door. Another peal of Bea’s laughter rings through the air, followed by a deeper, huskier laugh. A male voice.

It’s coming from the sunroom.

I crouch down to avoid getting spotted through any of the windows and I carefully make my way around the side of the cottage.

Sure enough, the voices get louder as I reach the sunroom’s large floor-to-ceiling windows. I stop just before reaching the room, hidden behind a thick hedge that runs around the outside of the house.

I can only hear bits and pieces of the conversation. The guy is too far away, but some of Bea’s words are loud enough to hear.

She says something about him continuing the family tradition. An art passed down through the years. She mentions a name, Charlotte Warden or Gordon.

Twisting my body carefully against the back of the hedge, I crawl on my hands and knees until I’m directly below the window. I slowly rise up, peeking up over the top of the greenery into the room.

The angle is terrible and half the room is cut off. All I can see is a large canvas on an easel. A fragile, withered hand holding a paintbrush applies a few strokes, but I can’t see anything past the upper forearm.

I’d know that hand anywhere. The large moonstone ring my gran gave Bea for her birthday five years ago glows with a faint yellow and blue opalescence, mirroring the colors of her painting.

It’s one of the most visually confusing things I’ve ever seen.

It’s both extremely realistic and extremely unrealistic at the same time. Like a photograph, but the photograph of dream. Or a sort of optical illusion based on mathematics, a code, a perfect melody. Or a shining window into another world. It makes my head spin.

The canvas is a wash of midnight blue. Bright white stars gleam like diamonds against velvet, somehow glowing with an eerie light which paint shouldn’t be able to create. The stars are hard, fixed, like silent sentinels holding the vast sky together. A million threads of translucent silver swirls through the constellations, linking the heavenly bodies in a perfect circle.

A silver circle.

I drop down again below the hedge and something flashes into my mind, slicing through my consciousness like a sword through flesh.

Every song is its own sort of spell, and every spell is like a broken circle. Don’t forget that. The magic is in the great lengths that the universe will go to in order to complete that circle. To achieve wholeness. Perfection. Infinity.

The words echo in my ears as if they were spoken just a moment ago. I shake my head, trying to clear it, before peeking once more over the hedge.

The hand is gone, and the male voice sounds a bit louder, though still muffled. He says something about needing to leave, and I see a lightly tanned hand reach out to the back of a chair next to the canvas, picking up a brown leather jacket embroidered with a single red rose on the sleeve.

I edge closer to the window, trying to get a better angle so I can see the guy’s face.

“I’d say it’s time to leave,” a voice growls softly in my ear. “Before he comes out and finds us.”

I almost scream as I whip my head around and come face to face with Felix, crouched down next to me with a dark smile playing across his beautiful face.

He lifts a single finger up, pressing it against my lips.

His own face is just inches from my own, close enough for me to see the gold flecks in his hazel eyes. His free hand reaches out and snakes around my waist, pulling me closer to him. Before I even realize what he’s doing, he’s undoing the collar on my skater dress. He gets down to the third button and I’m about to scream at him before realizing that Bea and her mystery visitor will hear us.

“What are you doing?” I whisper.

He pulls the fabric from my shoulder, until the area where he bit me last night is uncovered. Smooth and unblemished as if he’d never even touched it. His eyes narrow, and he reaches out, as if to stroke the spot, but before his fingertips reach the nape of my neck I grab his hand in my own.

“Stop,” I whisper.

Felix stares hard at me, before nodding and dropping his hand.

“What are you doing here?” I whisper. “Were you following me?”

“Not exactly,” he says. “I just know you have a knack for getting yourself into dangerous situations. It’s not like I was worried or anything. I just don’t think it’s a good idea for you to -”

A voice from inside the cottage interrupts him midsentence.

“See you Tuesday dear,” Bea says to her visitor, louder than before, as if she’s closer to the window. “I’ll see you out.”

“That’s our cue,” Felix says, suddenly taking my hand in his and pulling me to my feet.

“Run.”