Page 14 of The Staircase in the Woods

Owen followed.

“The Covenant!” Nick shouted at them from over Hamish’s shoulder, because he was already in a Hamish bear hug, lifted high, his legs dangling, his chin resting on the other man’s chest. He cackled andoofed as Hamish set him down, then slinked his way over to the other two, smirking.

“Hey, Nick,” Owen said. “It’s good to see you.” They hugged, too. But Nick and Owen, they hadn’t always had the tightest relationship, Lore knew. Every friendship group like theirs had little dyads and triads and shifting alliances—but those two, they had never been close. Nick scared Owen, she’d always thought.

“Nailbiter,” Nick said—his nickname for Owen, given Owen’s predilection for chewing his fingers down to the bloody quick. “I knew I could guilt your ass into coming.”

Then Nick turned his attention to Lore.

“Holy fuck,” he said. “Look at you. I think you’re the coolest person I know,Lauren.” She was about to protest but he cut her off, laughing. “Sorry, sorry.Lore. I was just fucking with you in the email, man, I’ll call you whatever you wanna be called. I’m just glad you could get away from yourwildly successful lifeto come hang out with us plebes and proles.”

Next to her, Owen seemed to…bristle a little. Didn’t he? Did she imagine that? Maybe not bristle. Buttwitch,at least.

“Hey, you know—the Covenant,” she said, though it felt false on her tongue—not quite a lie, but closer to a sales pitch.

“Of course we’d show up,” Owen said. “We all knew we had to. For you.” At that, it was Lore’s turn to bristle at what felt like competitiveness from Owen.Nick wasn’t talking to you, Zuikas.

She was about to say something—say what, she honestly didn’t even know, something about his cancer, maybe, about how sad she was, about howfucked upit was—when she heard the sounds of bags hitting gravel behind them. Roman was getting out their luggage. Here. In the middle of Assfuck, New Hampshire?

Jesus, were they eveninNew Hampshire?

“Hey!” she barked to Roman, who did not seem to acknowledge her yelling. She turned back to Nick. “Hey, uhh? What’s the deal here?”

But Nick was Nick. He just grinned like the same guy he always was, the kind of guy who would sneak acid into your iced tea. (Whichhe had done.) (More than once.) “Jeez, I dunno, Lore,” he said, but it was an act, just him being a cheeky dick.

“The fuck?” she said, then hurried over to Roman as he pulled out the last bag—hers, the backpack. She caught it before it hit the ground and tried to put it back into the SUV, but he was already closing it up. “Fuck, what, no. What. Hey—hey, driver guy, I don’t want to stay here.”

Roman shrugged. “This is destination.”

Then he headed back to the driver’s side.

Lore felt someone next to her. Owen, who seemed to be catching up to the situation and realizing what was up. “Lore, hey—wait. Are those our bags?”

“Uh,yeah,Zuikas. Yeah.”

“Why are they on the ground?”

She mimicked Roman’s Russian accent: “This is destination.” Then she dropped the backpack on the ground with a thud before fetching her phone out of her pocket. Hamish and Nick were walking up at this point.

Owen asked, “Nick, what is going on? This isn’t a hotel—”

“It’s cool,” Nick said. A very Nick answer. He loved knowing more than everyone. Loved holding all the cards. Lore, meanwhile, was pulling up the Lyft app with her phone. Aaaaaand, no signal. They were in a dead zone. She lifted her phone up in the air and waved it around as if she could somehow access a cloud of 5G just out of reach.

Roman drove off in the Escalade. Gravel kicked up behind his tires, and the SUV hit the highway and then was gone.

Lore watched it go as irritation flooded her veins.

“What the bedazzled fuck, Nick,” she said.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Hamish said. Just cool with it. That, too, was very Hamish—the old Hamish, anyway. Small favor, that.

“This is the woods,” Owen said. Like,duh,but he was right. Ahead of them was just trees. Trees here, trees there, a ribbon of cracked asphalt between them. “Where are we supposed to go?”

“I can’t even get a signal,” Lore complained, holding up her phone as if to demonstrate,Look, no signal, nada, nothing.

Nick just laughed it all off. “Jesus, you people. This isn’t fuckingDeliverance. It’s New Hampshire. Okay, fine, New Hampshire gets a little weird out here, but whatever. I’m just sayingtrust me,okay?”

“Famous last words,” Lore said. “Remember when he said we were going to see Luscious Jackson at the Troc?”

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