“What—”
Jeremy kissed him. Nothing but a quick kiss on his cheek, but still a kiss.
“It’s good luck to kiss a prince, remember?” Jeremy said. “Old wives’ tale here, but I am nothing if not willing to forgo logic and reason if I get to kiss somebody.” He looked into the Window. “And we need all the luck we can get.”
Rafe froze, overcome by a sudden wave of déjà vu, just like the sensation he’d felt walking into the Moonstone Palace for the first time. Except that wasn’t the first time he’d entered the palace. Jeremy’s kiss felt exactly like walking into the palace. Both felt like coming home. Both felt like they’d happened a thousand times before.
“Rafe?”
And this felt familiar too. The flush of warmth, of happiness, of courage. The courage from the kiss felt more familiar to him than his own name.
“Any benefits to kissing a knight?” Rafe asked.
“Several. Undying gratitude. Extra Christmas present. He’ll follow you anywhere.”
“Good to know.”
Before Jeremy could say anything more, Rafe climbed through the Angel Window and landed in a nightmare.
Storyteller CornerThe Ghost Town
In Shanandoah, there are two entrances to the Ghost Town—the one Rafe and Jeremy took through the Angel Windows and the stone gate at the Devil’s Tea Table, which Emilie and Skya were taking at about the same time.
In the Real World, for want of a better name, there is only one way to get into the Ghost Town, and that is to die with unfinished business.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Whatever Rafe had expected to find in the Ghost Town, it wasn’t this. Morgantown, West Virginia. Or the shadow of it. Rafe recognized the city the way you recognize a dinosaur at a museum, by the shape of its skeleton. The bones of the shops and the spine of the street were still there, but the flesh of the city was gone, eaten away by something.
There was no sun, only black clouds chasing one another across the bitter sky. Angry clouds but no rain. All was dust beneath his feet. No rain had ever fallen here. Nothing to wash the ash away.
He might have cried at the sight of it if he hadn’t been so scared by the sheer terrible wrongness. Seeing his hometown like this—he’d bought his favorite boots over there, had coffee with a girl once there, taken a job painting hotel rooms just down there—it was like seeing the body of a friend left for dead on the side of a road.
A faded billboard that once had read West Virginia had been defaced. The W and the E were blacked out, and other letters scrawled over them.
Now the sign read—
Lost Virginia.
“Jay,” Rafe breathed, but he wasn’t there. He turned around, looked back at the Angel Windows. They were empty and black. “Jeremy?”
Nothing. No answer. No Jeremy. Granny had warned them, and Rafe had already lost him.
Afraid to go but too afraid to stay, he slung his bow over his back and made his slow way down the broken hill that had once been High Street. He took what was left of the sidewalk, watching every step as he tried to avoid the black moss and sinister mold growing up through the cracks. He could hear the nearby rushing of the Monongahela River, too loud in the deep silence of this dead or dying city. And then, another sound. A rockslide somewhere and the unmistakable sound of something hitting the water. The river’s name meant “sliding banks,” but he’d never actually heard the bank slide into the water before.
And yet, he almost managed a smile at the sight of one familiar face. The statue of Don Knotts, Morgantown’s favorite son, sat in its place of honor outside the old theater. But when he reached it, he saw old Don’s face contorted into an open-mouthed scream.
Rafe stepped back.
A pile of gray leaves had gathered at the statue’s shoes. A woman’s face, dirty, sallow, rose out of the leaves. Not leaves but rags. A woman in rags.
Rafe backed away a few more steps, pity warring with terror. He could have sworn it was only leaves.
“Have you seen the moon?” she rasped, her voice like broken glass. “I lost the moon.”
“What? How do you lose the moon?” he asked.
She looked up at the angry, hateful sky.
“You lose the moon the same way you lose hope,” she said. “One day, you look up, and it’s gone.”
She sank into herself again, and when a foul-smelling wind blew past, she turned back into dead leaves and was scattered along the street.
The leaves crunched under Rafe’s boots as he walked away, all that was left of the woman who’d lost the moon.
Heart pounding, he touched his pockets and found the apples still there. One in each pocket. He wished he’d brought a peck.
Movement ahead caught his eye. Jeremy. He stood at the bottom of the hill, outside the hotel, before turning and running up a side street.
“Jay! I’m here! Up here!” The joy in his voice was probably the first time this place had heard anything like joy.
Heedless of leaves and the shattered street, Rafe ran as fast as he could, but by the time he reached the intersection, Jeremy had disappeared again.
Rafe turned circles, then ran up the block and around it, then returned to what was left of High Street. He stopped in front of the Hotel Morgan. From the top floor, he might be able to see where Jeremy had gone. He started forward.
The sidewalk cracked under his feet. Shifted sideways. He nearly fell, but he managed to race across the street. The sound grew louder, cracks like cannon fire, and when he stopped and turned, it was just in time to see the hotel crumble to rubble and slide into the river.
