Then the screaming stopped, abruptly, completely, leaving an echo that rang in her ears as she stood shocked and frozen amid the crowd and her friends.
“Pick?” she whispered into the silence he had left behind. Her hand groped blindly at the air before her. “Pick?”
Her friends were staring at her, eyes filled with uncertainty. “Nest, what’s wrong?” Cass asked urgently.
But Nest was already turning from her, beginning to run. “I have to go,” she shouted over her shoulder, and raced away into the night.
It was an act of instinct rather than of reason, a response to an overwhelming, terrifying fear .that another life precious to her was about to be lost. Nest did not hesitate as she bolted through the crowd. Of course the demon was drawing her out. Of course it was a trap. She didn’t have to think twice about it to know it was true. If she stayed where she was, safe within the crowd gathered on the slopes of Sinnissippi Park, he could not reach her so easily. But it was Pick who was at risk, her best friend in the whole world, and she would not abandon him even to save her own life.
She darted through the crowd as if become one of the wild children who waved their sparklers, dodging lawn chairs and coolers, avoiding blankets filled with people, seeking the open blackness of the woods beyond. She knew where to go, where the demon would be waiting, where Pick could be found; the sylvan’s frantic words had told her that much. The deep woods. The maentwrog’s prison. The aging oak from which, it seemed, the monster was threatening to break free. She thought she heard shouts trailing after her, calling her name, but she ignored them, burying them in her determination not to be slowed. She vaulted the last of the coolers that obstructed her passage and broke for the trees.
In the open, beyond the scattering of flashlights and sparklers, she slowed just enough to let her vision adjust to the change of light. Ahead, the trees rose in dark, vertical lines against the softer black of the night. She angled past picnic tables and cook stations, running toward the rolling hills that fronted the deep woods. The sounds of the crowd faded behind her, receding into the distance, leaving her alone with the huff of her breathing and the beat of her heart. She heard her name called clearly then, but she forced herself to go on, trying to ignore the unwelcome summons, trying to outdistance it. When it continued, and she determined with certainty its source, she slowed reluctantly and turned to face a hard-charging Robert Heppler,
“Wait up, Nest!” he shouted as he rushed up to her from out of the darkness, blond hair swept back from his angular face.
She shook her head in disbelief. “Robert, what are you doing? Go back!”
“Not a chance.” He came to a ragged halt before her, breathing hard. “I’m going with you.”
“You don’t even know what I’m doing!”
“Doesn’t matter. You’re not doing it alone.”
“Robert…”
“The last time I let you wander off by yourself,” he interrupted heatedly, “you ended up in the caves and I had to get your grandfather to come find you! I’m not going through that again!”
He brushed at his tousled hair, his mouth set, his eyes determined. He looked pugnacious and challenging. “You’re going out to that big oak, aren’t you? This has something to do with that tree, doesn’t it? What’s going on?”
“Robert!” she snapped at him, suddenly angry. “Get out of here!”
He stared back at her defiantly. “No way. I’m going with you. You’re stuck with me.”
“Robert, don’t argue with me! This is too dangerous! You don’t know what you’re …” She stopped in exasperation. “Turn around, Robert! Right now!”
But he refused to budge. She came toward him menacingly. “I’m not afraid of you, Nest,” he said quickly, clenching his fists. “I’m not Danny Abbott, either. You can’t make me do anything I don’t want to do. I don’t know what’s going on, but I…”
She locked his eyes with hers and struck out at him with her magic in a swift, hard attack. Robert Heppler went down like a stone, his muscles turned to jelly and his words became mush. He jerked once where he lay in the thinning forest grass, gave a long sigh, and blacked out.