Chapter 10: Dig

"You're not going alone," Bram said.

"The note said alone."

"The note was written by a woman who lied to your face in that cell."

"She looked sick, Bram. She couldn't meet my eyes. If I bring you, she'll run."

He was silent for a long moment.

"Then I'll be at the fence," he said. "Whistle once, and I'm over it."

I went at midnight.

I crossed the ice in wolf form and shifted in the pines behind the Ironbark graveyard, in the dark, with the cold biting my skin.

I dressed in the clothes I had carried in my teeth.

Bram's brown wolf lay down in the snow at the treeline, his ears up, and watched me go.

The graveyard sat quiet on its hill.

Starlight lay on the rows of headstones.

At the far end, by the new mound, a small figure stood with a lantern.

Hester.

She looked ten years older than she had on the dais.

"You came," she whispered.

"You asked."

"Is anyone with you?"

"No," I said, and it was only a half lie.

She let out a long, shaky breath.

"I can't tell you, child," she said. "I can't say it out loud. If I say it, they'll know, and they'll hurt someone I love."

"Who?"

"Please don't ask me."

She had a shovel leaning against the fence.

She pushed it into my hands.

"Dig," she said.

"Hester."

"Dig. And look. And see for yourself what I did not have the courage to say."