Blood Bargain

Five: In Which We Walk to Boone

As the dirt road away from the village widened and moved farther into the woods between them and Boone, Kaz shifted from walking with his arm around Ellie's waist and instead moved to hold her hand. She still wasn't entirely happy about that development, but at least she could walk a little more freely now.

"Are we far enough away that you can let go of my hand?" Ellie asked approximately half a mile away from the village.

"I'd say so, at this point. I'm more concerned about your reaction to Ben than my explanation to Alice, though." Kaz dropped his hold with a sigh and Ellie immediately put distance between them.

"So what?"

"Seems like something I need to know if I'm going to help you solve this case," he said, his tone surprisingly gentle. "How did you know him? Be honest."

Ellie went silent. She kept walking down the road, boots squelching in the mud. The early morning bird calls echoed through the woods around them, and the sound of the wind seemed as loud as thunder.

She didn't want to talk about it. She'd talked about it enough that everyone thought she was crazy. Even Granny thought she was a little crazy, somewhere deep down, but... Kaz was right. If he was going to help her, he probably did need to know at least the bare bones of the story.

Ellie took a deep breath and steeled herself, rehearsing her words in a way that put them outside herself, outside her body, off into a place where it didn't hurt to say them.

"He was my fiancé," she finally whispered. "He was... so good. So genuinely, truly good."

She kept walking mechanically, the words coming from a place that was somehow her and not her all at once, a place just distant enough numb things.

"He always treated me well when we met in town. He never judged anyone based on their ancestry. His whole family runs a farm not too far away, and they're down to earth kinda people. Ben was the best of 'em all, though. He had a big heart."

Keep walking, she thought. Just keep walking. Ellie wasn't really sure where she went when she talked about Ben. It wasn't somewhere good, but it wasn't somewhere as bad as it could be, either.

"The morning of our wedding, he never showed up. At first I thought it was a fluke, maybe he just got caught in the rain and the mud and was running late, but then hours went by and the Sheriff found a body in the woods."

"Ellie," Kaz said.

One step after another. She could do this. It wouldn't take long to get through it.

"I guess I just—"

"Ellie, stop."

Kaz put a hand on her shoulder, literally stopping her in her tracks. She turned around to look at him, snapping back into her body from that vague somewhere else that kept the pain out.

"You don't have to relive that experience so I can understand," Kaz said firmly, grasping her hand. "Stay in the here and now. I don't need every detail if it hurts you."

Ellie frowned, narrowing her eyes at him. "Has anyone ever told you that you're kinda weird?"

"Is that... What does that mean?"

"It's a good thing," she mumbled, shaking herself. Ellie took a long, deep breath of cool mountain air before she continued. "Now, want to explain why tellin' people we're 'together' is a good cover and not a red flag to the whole world?"

"Admittedly, I said what I said in the moment because I wanted to explain two people in a house with one bed," Kaz said with a sigh, "but knowing that you live in a community of people who want Others in their midst not only legitimizes my presence, it makes them less likely to question me."