Page 38 of The Queen's Box

Willow’s heart contracted. “He died? Cole, I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah. Thanks,” he said, acknowledging and dispensing with Willow’s perfunctory sympathy the way he’d surely done withdozens of different people, dozens of different times. “He didn’t die, though. Well. We don’tknowthat he did.”

Mystified, Willow just looked at him.

“He disappeared,” Cole said. “Something happened to him, something bad. Or maybe someone took him.” A muscle jerked in his jaw. “One day he was there. One day he wasn’t.”

“I’m so sorry,” Willow said again, aware of how inadequate her words were. “That’s awful. I just... I wish...” She grimaced. “I don’t know what to say. Just, I’m sorry.”

He snorted, as if to say,Gee, thanks, princess. That makes everything sooo much better.But he said tersely, “Thanks.”

She remembered what he’d said about his parents:They think they’ve lost me, too.But she wasn’t about to go there. Too many cans of worms, and the worms, like all the squirming things beneath a lifted rock, were all so wiggly.

Her gaze moved to the window. A light drizzle fell from the sky, and condensation blurred the glass.

“Why Lost Souls?” she asked. “Why move there?”

He sighed.

“What?” she said.

“It’s not worth trying to explain. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Because I’m a city girl with a nice green lawn?” she asked. Now who was being judgy?

He fluttered his fingers on the steering wheel, a gesture that said,You want the truth? Fine.“Some people are driven to find the things others choose to forget. I guess I’m one of them. And if you’re looking for lost things, Lost Souls isn’t a bad place to start.”

“Okay, great, that clears everything up,” Willow said. His pretentiousness was as thick as the muck on his boots.

The trees thinned, and the road dipped into a crooked little valley. Squat houses sat far off from the dirt road. Street signs hung from dented poles, but their words had faded long ago. Inone lawn sat a crumpled car, its surface entirely covered in bottle caps. From the front porch of another house, wind chimes made from bent spoons and forks clinked gently in the breeze.

Willow felt as if she’d stepped backward into time. No, that wasn’t right. It was more like the township itself had turned back the clocks on purpose. Or gotten rid of them altogether.

Cole slowed the truck. “What about you? What are you seeking?”

What was she “seeking”?Pff.Not a country boy who used words likeseekin an attempt to sound fancy, that was for sure.

Her thoughts flew to Serrin and the world he lived in, a world without cruelty and deceit. Willow was seeking him. That. A passage out of this tainted mortal world and to the fae realm she’d dreamed of since she’d been seven, where goodness reigned and muddin’ wasn’t a thing.

“I’m looking for a woman named Amira,” she said distractedly. “Amira Greer.”

Cole went still—and that got Willow’s attention. “Do you know her?”

His mouth opened. Closed.

A spark caught fire in Willow’s chest. “What’s she like? Can you take me to her?”

Cole turned left onto a street that was even dustier and narrower than the one they’d been on. The moon, which had crept slowly over the mountains as they drove, illuminated a sign nailed to a tree.

“POSTED: NO TRESPASSING,” read the raised white letters on a piece of green metal the size of a license plate.

Cole pointed with his chin toward a squat clapboard house set about a hundred yards back. Yellow light glowed in the front window. “If you want to find Amira, this is where you start.”

CHAPTER TEN

COLE CUT THE engine and stepped out, stretching his arms above his head. He started for the dilapidated house, and Willow quickly slipped on her sandals and followed, grabbing her backpack from the duct-taped seat.

A hanging basket on the front porch swung in the breeze. It made a strange rattling sound, and when Willow peered closer, she saw that it was full of rusted keys. Cole pried off his mud-caked boots, set them to the side, and rapped on the door—a quick, sharp pattern. After a brief pause, the door swung open.

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