Chapter Five

There was a town called Walton in this direction, she knew. She was the twelfth of Gideon’s twelve women-servants, so she didn’t have the privilege of being driven to the store to do the food shopping, but she’d asked Marigold, Azalea and Posy about their trips out of the compound and she knew that the town was about forty-five minutes away by car, pretty much a straight shot down the road. She figured that she could walk it – keeping to the trees and with the slight obstacles of snow and some hilly mountain terrain – in three hours at most.

Walton had a bus station that ran buses all through the night and this was the part that gave her the most pause and worry: once her absence was discovered, Gideon and his Guardians would head straight to town, straight to the bus station, straight to asking questions. Iris would have been happiest just disappearing without a trace, vanishing in a puff of smoke and with no trail behind her whatsoever, but this was the reality that she was dealing with. There would be a bus ticket and there would be at least one person who’d see her get on the bus; she knew that she’d have to get off before whatever her actual ticket destination was, switch routes and directions, start throwing up dirt and causing confusion.

There was also the small matter of her appearance. A woman dressed in a nightgown and a baggy coat that hung to her knees and scarf legs and clown boots – she looked like a lunatic who had just escaped an asylum, and she knew it. It made her more memorable in some ways and the last thing that Iris wanted was to be remembered. By anyone.

This was the part of the plan that was a huge question mark, and she felt her anxiety spike as she trudged through the snow. She knew that she’d get on the first bus out of town – going anywhere – and she had to be ready to get off the bus at any time, buy jeans and boots and a sweater and another bus ticket, and keep going wherever the wind and bus schedules took her, as long as the money lasted.

She wondered when she’d be able to stop, to settle and rest. Stay.

Where will my new home actually be?

She'd been walking for about ninety minutes now and was so immersed in her thoughts and worries and watching her feet that she didn’t notice the fire flickering between the trees until she was about a hundred feet away. She stopped dead in her tracks and turned off the flashlight in a panic, praying like crazy that nobody was standing in the shadows observing her approach. Frozen, terrified, barely breathing, she stepped carefully behind a huge tree, wincing at every small crunch of snow under her ridiculous boots. She waited in the darkness.

After a minute, when nobody came and when she didn’t hear any footsteps, she peeked out from behind the tree. Now she saw movement, over by the dancing flames, deep in the woods and far away from the road.

A man. A huge man.

Jesus Christ. Are you serious right now? Just my damn luck to stumble across some random giant on my escape path.

Iris squinted, trying to figure out what he was doing, but the dense forest impeded her view almost completely. All she saw was a dark shape – a massive dark shape, God help me – moving back and forth between the fire and…

And what?

She leaned around the other side of the tree, to the side closest to the road, and that’s when she saw it by the glare of the man’s flashlight:

A van. Oh my God.

Suddenly a whole new opportunity presented itself; a whole new path opened up in front of her. She was so stunned at the possibility of what she might be able to do, she actually forgot to breathe for several seconds.

OK. OK. Calm down and think this through.

OK, so…her biggest concern about reaching town was that when Gideon and his goons showed up there, there would be clues about where Iris had gone. There would be witnesses to the crazy nightgown lady, evidence of her buying a ticket and getting on a bus, a destination where she was heading. Crumbs that Gideon could follow to track her down.

But what if…

What if I don’t get to Walton at all?

What if I just disappear into thin air?

She looked down and behind her: her bootprints were clearly visible in the deep snow and although it was cold and windy, the skies were clear. Iris didn’t think that it would snow again that night, which meant that she had literally left a path for Gideon to follow.

What if the path ended here?

If she climbed into that van, her footsteps would stop at the edge of the dark forest, all mixed in with the footprints left by the man walking back and forth from the road to the fire.

She’d be a ghost… or as close to one as she could be while still in human form.