“Are you okay?” I ask, moving to the edge of the deck, but the words feel useless, sucked dry by the cold air as soon as they leave my lips.

“I needed the fresh air,” he says, shifting his weight in the snow. “I was hoping the sun might be out.” His gaze skips up to the sky, where the dark clouds have snuffed out the blue beyond. And I wonder if he thought the sunlight would warm him, heal him—a balm on his weary mind. That it might return his memories to him in one swift inhale.

His knuckles close around the pouch of herbs and he glances down at it, eyebrows drawn together, like he doesn’t remember holding it.

“I made it for you last night,” I explain, a twinge of embarrassment slicing through me. Witchy herbs gathered by a witchy girl. I am a Walker who has never wanted to be anything else, but I also don’t want him to look at me like the kids at school do, like the other boys at the camp do. Like I am a monster, strange and eerie with wickedness in my heart. I want him to see only a girl. “It will help to warm you,” I add, as if this makes it less odd. As if a sack of herbs were as common as a spoonful of strawberry cold syrup before bed.

But his eyes soften, unafraid, unfettered.

“You need to sleep with it for the next two nights,” I say, although I don’t expect him to really keep it—a strange bag of sharp-smelling herbs.

He nods, and when he speaks, his voice is raw and shredded by the cold. “Thank you.”

Fin plods down the steps and pushes his nose into the snow, trailing some scent through the low morning fog, past Oliver’s legs. “Another storm is coming,” I say just as an icy wind churns up off the lake, nasty and mean. It blows through the trees, stinging my face, and a feeling of déjà vu ripples through me so quickly I almost miss it. As if I’ve been here before, looking out at Oliver standing in the trees, his mouth pinched flat. Or maybe I will again—time slipping just barely forward and then back. I count the seconds, I blink, and when I open my eyes, the feeling is gone.

Oliver lowers his gaze, and I wish I could pull words from his throat—I wish I knew what he was thinking. But he’s as mute as the jackrabbits who sit on the porch in autumn, peering in through the windows, thinking their docile, unknowable thoughts.

When he still doesn’t reply, I clear my throat, preparing myself for the question I need to ask. The one that has simmered inside me all night, burning holes of doubt through my skin. “How did you end up in the Wicker Woods?”