“Molly—” Wayne started.

But Molly leaned closer to whisper something in his ear.

25

The noises (over her shoulder, at her heels) had swelled to a symphony of high-pitched giggles, garbled grunts, half words, heavy breathing, and the horrible sound of rubber being torn apart. Whatever Margot was leading through the woods no longer looked like it did when they’d entered.

She knew this without looking.

She had visions of poor Wayne Sherman dying at the hands of these officers; the soft-spoken proprietor who asked her to give him a minute forty thousand years ago.

It’s the wife, she remembered the officer saying.

But it wasn’t his wife. It was the key to the city. And yet, was there a connection there? Did the key to Goblin somehow represent his wife? Or something like that?

Oh, what had she done? She thought she was sooooo smart. Sooooo brave. Soooo heroic. And now she was just a little mean girl. She wanted so badly to find Wayne Sherman and tell him, I hope I accomplish something as great as The Hedges when I grow up.

“Are…we…close…?”

The voice no longer resembled the voices from the station, from Wayne’s yellow house, from the entrance to the woods.

Margot took a deep breath. She heard something like bones snapping behind her. She felt something like wet fur against the back of her neck.

She didn’t scream.

But she ran.

She ran deep into the blackness of the path and quickly climbed one of the trunks of the brittle trees. It curved up and outward and up again, until she didn’t know if she was climbing up or down. She climbed fast, scraping her little legs on the way, and stopped where the trunk met another from an equally gnarled tree.

Her heartbeat was in her throat.

She could hear the officers approaching. The muffled, atonal voices grew louder and danced with the wind in the woods. She didn’t want to see them, she didn’t want to see them, she didn’t want to—

“Little…girl…?”

They were standing at the foot of the tree.

“Are…we…going…to…have…to…get…you…out…of…that…tree…?”

Margot closed her eyes tight.

Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!

She edged farther up the trunk and as she did, she felt something beside her.

Feathers, her mind told her.

She did not scream.

But she opened her eyes to look at it.

The darkness beside her started to move. Margot remained silent as a head turned to face her, an animal, two red dots in all this wet darkness.

She knew what it was.

A Great Owl.

“Here…we…come…” an officer said below.

In the blackness, the eyes of the owl were like candles. Margot followed them and, looking over the trunk, saw the faces that had been following her.

She caught her breath short.

It wasn’t a group of Goblin officers looking up at the tree, not anymore.