“It’s great.” It was growing soggy from her wet hair and felt loose, but Keira wasn’t about to complain.
“Then I suppose we’d better figure out what we’re going to do with you.” Adage closed the first aid kit and nudged the bowl in Keira’s hands, encouraging her to continue eating. “Do you have any memories at all? A surname or a friend’s name, perhaps?”
Keira probed her mind. She made it as far back as waking up in the clearing, but everything beyond that was blank. C’mon, brain. You have one job. “Sorry.”
He shrugged as though the situation were no more complicated than choosing what to order for dinner. “In that case, you can spend the night here if you promise not to steal anything or murder me in my sleep. We’ll make you up a bed on one of the couches. Tomorrow, if you still can’t remember, I’ll ask around town.”
Keira looked from the bowl of stew at the warm fire, then at the pastor. Simple thanks seemed wholly inadequate in return for the unquestioning generosity he’d shown her, but it was all she had to offer. “Thank you so much.”
He waved away the gratitude as he crossed the room. “Really, tonight has become quite thrilling. It’s a nice change from the usual pace. Let me have a look for some spare blankets.”
Thunder cracked outside. The night was dark, but faint lights from the town created a mosaic on the wet glass. Anxiety tightened in her chest.
She had no actual memories of her life, but her subconscious kept feeding her tiny clues. Rain is good, it said. It will wash away your footprints. Being found is bad; you don’t want to know what those men are capable of.
She turned back to the pastor, who was hunting through a wardrobe and muttering as dead moths fell out from between the blankets. If they find me here, they’ll kill him.
Her appetite vanished and she dropped the spoon back into the bowl. Adage had shown her more kindness than she could have hoped for; she would never forgive herself if he were hurt—or worse—because of it. “Uh, do you have somewhere else I could stay? A barn or something a bit more remote?”
He looked over his shoulder and raised his eyebrows questioningly.
“Those men might come back. I’d feel safer if I was somewhere better hidden.” It was as close to the truth as she could get without letting him guess how dark her thoughts had become. He seemed to buy it, though, and pursed his lips in thought.
“The church has awful insulation. You’ll freeze to death if I put you there… Oh, I know. We have a groundskeeper’s cottage behind the graveyard. It’s been empty since Peterson passed on last year, bless him, but it has a bed and a fireplace, and there shouldn’t be more than the normal amount of rats. Would that do?”
Keira dearly wanted to know how many a “normal amount” of rats entailed, but she wasn’t in a position to be choosy. “Sounds perfect!”
“Finish your stew, then, and I’ll take you to it.”
Keira shoveled the warm stew into her mouth while Adage went back into the kitchen. She could hear him digging through drawers, and he returned holding a large, rusty ring with a single key hanging from it.
“Ready.” Keira put the bowl aside and snagged her still-wet jacket off the chair. The idea that her presence might be a threat to the older man had embedded itself. Something in her stomach said that the strange men would search the area quickly, and they wouldn’t give up easily.
Adage led her back to the hallway wardrobe and pulled out a pair of heavy coats and two umbrellas. “People leave them at the church,” he explained as he handed one of each to Keira. “I usually keep them until they’re claimed, but these have been waiting for their owners for the better part of a year, so I think it’s safe to borrow them. Ready?”
Keira felt a little ridiculous pulling the raincoat over her already-wet clothes, but she did so anyway. “Ready.”
The parsonage’s thick walls had done a good job of blocking out noise, but the storm’s intensity assaulted them as soon as the door was open. A heavy sheet of rain came across the threshold, buffeting them and making a mockery of their supposedly waterproof coats. Keira scanned the surrounding area as she waited for her companion to close the door. She looked for motion or for hulking, watching shapes, but the deluge made it impossible to see more than a dozen meters.
“This way.” Adage had to bellow to be heard through the rain.
Keira followed in his shadow, careful not to let the distance between them grow too great for fear of losing him. The spongy ground sucked at her boots, and the wind made them both stagger as they trudged across the field to reenter the graveyard she’d passed through less than an hour before. The gravestones, dark from rain, loomed out of thin mist. It seemed disorganized, an assortment of traditional headstones battling for space around elaborate sculptures of angels and tall, cowled figures. Keira couldn’t stop herself from staring at each passing face, searching for awareness in their eyes or a twitch of motion in their hands. The fog twisted and swirled about the grave markers, dancing in the rain. Chills ran over Keira as fingerlike tendrils brushed her cheeks.
“Just up ahead,” the pastor called, and Keira saw a small building near the edge of the forest. She thought she must have passed close to it when dashing to the parsonage.
The cottage didn’t seem large enough to hold more than two or three rooms. Dark, uneven slats covered a sharply peaked roof, and vines grew up one wall. The windows were cold and empty, and an atmosphere of neglect surrounded the hut. It struck Keira as a lonely building, hidden as far from civilization as possible, with a forest on one side and a garden of graves on the other.
Adage huddled close to the door as he fit the key into the lock and struggled to twist it. The door ground on its hinges as it opened, and they both shuffled into the relative comfort of a dry room.
“Like I said, an exciting night.” Adage closed the door and shed his coat. Keira couldn’t help but feel impressed that he’d maintained the note of warm optimism. “Let’s see…it should still have power… Ah.”
He’d found the switch, and golden light filled the space. Keira shrugged out of her coat as she stared around the cottage. Instead of dividing the tiny building into even tinier rooms, the bedroom, kitchen, dining, and lounge areas had all been combined. A door at the back led to what she guessed was a bathroom, but otherwise, the entire house was just one room.
She could have crossed the space in ten paces, but it had a comfortable, welcoming atmosphere. The single bed wedged against the left wall was covered in a colorful patchwork quilt, and a small kitchen offered the comfort of a kettle and stovetop.
“We’ll get a fire going so that you don’t freeze to death,” Adage said, weaving around the overstuffed lounge chair to reach the dark hearth. “There’s no heater, I’m afraid, but there should still be some spare blankets in the cupboard over there if you need them.”
“I’ll be okay from here.” Keira followed the pastor to the fire and eased the kindling bucket out of his hands. She was dripping on the large rug that took up the center of the room, so she shuffled back onto the wooden boards. “Thank you so much. For everything.”
“I’ll help you settle in,” he said happily. “I don’t mind, really.”