Friday, September 26. New, Swanky Subdivision

Gravel crunched beneath my tires as I pulled once more into the construction site. The stars from my last visit were gone, hidden behind low white clouds lit by the scattered glow of civilization. A soft, misting rain fell, the tiny drops beading on my windshield, never quite enough to leave the wipers on.

Outside. In the rain. At 5:00 am.

Exactly how I wanted to start my Friday after the week I’d had.

No workers were present yet, but if Wednesday had been any indication, I needed to be out of here in half an hour. If these meetings were going to become a regular thing, we were finding somewhere that didn't risk a trespassing charge.

I stepped out, quietly shutting the car door. I’d dressed appropriately this time—jeans, a flannel overshirt, old boots I’d unearthed in the back of my closet. Things I didn’t mind getting dirty. Even a light rain would turn all that bare earth to mud given enough time.

I had clothes for the office in the car.

My feet took me toward the woodline, a little east of where I’d first met her, as if I already knew she’d be there.

I really didn’t want to think about that this early.

She sat beneath a gnarled tree that looked more dead than alive, knees drawn to her chest.

The robes were gone. Today she wore jeans, a tee, and an oversized canvas jacket in muted earth tones. Odd suede boots completed the outfit.

On anyone else it would've looked like an influencer playing farm girl.

On Lusa, it looked as natural as breathing.

That familiar sorrow brushed against me.

Then she looked up, and it was gone.

“Mornin’,” I said. I caught myself as the words left my mouth. 

Ugh. 

I’d worked so hard since college to not sound southern. 

“Good morning,” she said.

What the heck—I was dressed to get dirty. I sat beside her.

Rain beaded in her hair. Across the shoulders of her jacket. How long had she been out here?

She said nothing, just looked skyward as the misting rain turned into a steady drizzle.

“You wanted to see me?” I said when the silence had stretched too long. 

“Much has changed since I last walked this land. I confess I do not know what to make of—“ She waved a hand at the construction site, the buildings of downtown that could be seen poking above the treeline.

“Yeah, Athens has grown a lot, just in the past decade. Lots of people moving in. Apartment complexes are going up everywhere.”

“Apartment—“ she said the word as if it were unfamiliar. “Is that like a tenement? Stacked housing for city dwellers?”

“Uh, sure. I’m sorry if this is rude, but I don’t have all morning. I’ve got to be at the office in a few hours. About this contra—“

“What is your profession?”

The question caught me off guard.

“I-I am an accountant. My firm handles financial records for local businesses.”

“You are a man of numbers.”

“Sure. You could say that.”

She nodded, as if something had clicked into place.

“Look, my boss is a pain. I’ve already had to be out of the office for three days this week because of the whole poison thing. If I stay out any longer, I could lose my job.”

“It seems to cause you anxiety. Why are you so desperate to keep it?”

I just stared at her. Of all the possibilities I had considered, this was not one of the ways I’d pictured this conversation growing.

“I don’t know where you’re from, but around here, jobs that pay the bills don’t just grow on trees. Sure, work sucks. My boss is a—“ I caught myself before I said something impolite in a lady’s presence “—an absolute pain. I feel like all I do is work so I can go home, go to sleep and get up and do it all over again. But that’s life. Most of us don’t get to grow up and do some great thing to save the world or make a difference. We just…show up. Every day. And that’s the best we can hope for.”

She stared at me, as if really considering those words. 

“Is that what you really want?”

I snorted a laugh. “It doesn’t matter what I want. If I have enough left over after bills to take my girlfriend out for a nice dinner every once in a while…”

It occurred to me that dinners out with Sarah might be problematic while I was stuck in this contract thing. All of our favorite old haunts were probably on the no-fly list with my built-in poison sensor.

How was I going to explain my sudden change in diet?

I shoved the problem aside. There was time enough to figure that out before our makeup date tomorrow.

I stood.

“The construction workers are going to start arriving soon. I need to leave. I don’t want to be here when they show up.”

“Why?”

“It’s trespassing. I could get in a lot of trouble.”

It was fortunate they didn’t seem to have anything like overnight security yet.

“Someone owns this now?”

“Yes. Did they not last time…you were in the area?”

“It was my home,” she said quietly.

That couldn't be right. It had been nothing but old woods and pasture for as long as Matt had lived out here. 

Either she had her location confused or…

…or I really didn’t want to consider other possibilities.

“I need your help,” she said. Her voice was soft. It sounded, on the surface, like a simple statement of fact. 

But it reached me anyway. A heartbeat of emotion that wasn't mine. 

Those words had cost her. And that knowledge wrecked me more than just a lady asking for help.

Halberg, you’re such a sucker.

But I sat back down beside her anyway.

Lusa took it for what it was, an invitation to continue. 

“All of this was mine to protect.” She swept a hand, the motion encompassing the site, the forest, beyond. “Dawnward where the river turns and the hills rise. Warmward until the land begins to settle. Coldward to the great valley where the mountains meet their kin. Duskward to the valley between their fingers. Many of your acres. Thousands…tens of thousands…your numbers blur together.”

I tried to make sense of what she said. What the heck was dawnward and—

—oh. East. 

Then did that make warmward south?

I didn’t need a map to know that was a massive chunk of land.

“So the upper regions of Georgia?” I asked. “Atlanta and the national forests and such?”

“Atlanta?”

She said the name like she had never heard of it.

“You know, the capital. West of here. Big city. Terrible traffic…”

She stared at me as if suddenly understanding something. “Much changed while I slept. So much forest—gone. So much life. I had wondered—“ 

She cut off. 

The bond stirred again. Something deep and heavy brushed against me. Sorrow, maybe. Pain. It was gone before I could pin it down. 

A vast nothing replaced it. As if a door had slammed shut. 

Getting yanked around by someone else’s emotions was beyond annoying. Managing my own had been hard enough these past few days, let alone someone else's.

“Is that the bond thing you mentioned?” I demanded. 

She didn’t answer. Just stared at Athens peeking over the trees.

“The land cries, can you not hear it?”

I rubbed my face and took a deep breath. “All I can hear right now is the clock ticking down the time until a site manager calls the cops on me.”

“It mourns,” she continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “It is in pain. The void stirs. Darkness festers.”

Great. That sounded straight out of a D&D campaign opening.

“You’ve seen it,” she said.

“Uh, what?”

“You fought them.”

“I…have?”

“What did you see, that night, when you agreed to ward me?”

Was coerced, you mean.

“A pair of kids. Late teens. Looked like they were on something.”

“Ah. Your sight has not completely awoken yet, then.”

“My sight—“

She leaned forward and took my face with both hands.

“Hey!” I tried to pull away, but either her grip was strong…or my body was refusing to cooperate again.

Her lips brushed my forehead.

“Look again, dear Warden.” 

She released me and I leaned away.

“Look, contract or not, don’t just touch me, okay? I’m not your property and I have a girl—“

I cut off as memory slammed into me once more—this time with the force of a truck.

The gangly kids that had been ridiculously tough to incapacitate, even if they were on something. They had seemed—wrong—even in my buzzed state. The way their features were smeared like wet clay. The blur to their edges.

I had written it off as poor lighting and adrenaline.

But the memory blurred and reformed. Instead of kids, I had fought…I don’t even know what I’d fought.

They seemed woven from oil and mist, wispy around the edges as if not quite there.

Not kids at all, but something lean, bipedal, with near-feline features. Claws longer than their fingers that dripped more of the oily dark…whatever they were.

The eyes were the worst.

Green. Not white sclera and green iris green. Solid, toxic, luminescent green.

I had fought that? With a chunk of rebar?

“Wh-what are they?”

“Willows,” Lusa said calmly. “They are hollows. Servants of Chaos. They slip through cracks in the world made by disease and decay. Their touch brings fester and rot.”

I brushed a hand across the still tender scratches on my side. She noted the motion.

“For normal humans, it would take a long time to heal from damage inflicted by a hollow,” Lusa continued. “Their reach is deep—to the soul itself, if given the chance.”

Normal humans. I did not like the sound of that.

I swallowed. “But why did I—“

“You are my warden. I would be a poor guardian indeed if I could not offer my warden protection against their touch.”

The way she said warden and guardian—clearly they were titles.

“I regret that I am too weak at present to shield you more fully.”

The words were matter-of-fact, but something else reached me through the bond before it vanished again.

The pattern finally clicked.

Every time something slipped through, it disappeared almost immediately.

I still couldn't name the emotions with any confidence.

But this one...

This one felt different.

Fear.

I thought.

Not of those hollow…things. Something else.

If those nightmare creatures were only servants...

What was this Chaos?

“So what do you need from me? Protect you from more of those hollows if they show up?”

I tried to sound as if that was no big deal, while praying she would say no. It was a relief they hadn’t actually been kids, but that didn’t mean I wanted to face them again in real life. They should crawl back into whatever video game they had spawned from.

“Yes—“

Cold nausea washed over me. I opened my mouth to argue.

“—but first,” she continued, giving me no chance to speak. “I need to anchor.”

“Anchor,” I repeated.

“A sacred place. A portion of earth that is cleansed of any taint. Somewhere I can renew my tie to the land.”

I rocked back, staring at her. Pieces tumbled into place.

She was old. I couldn’t explain how I knew that.

She understood the land in a way I didn’t. Could sense things I couldn’t.

And now she needed to be tied to it?

No way. No freaking way.

I mean, I was a nerd—anime ranked pretty high on my list of favorite past times—but that was all fantasy. Pretend. Stories dreamed up to escape how much life sucked.

I didn’t want to voice my suspicion. 

Didn’t want to sound crazy.

But I’d supposedly faced monsters made of shadow and had a magical contract inked on my skin so—

I inhaled, steeling myself.

“Are you a—a tochigami?”

“I do not know this word.”

“In Japanese mythology it’s a land god.” I hurried on, wincing at how stupid it sounded. “A spirit responsible for the cultivation and protection of an area.”

She paused, seeming to be seriously considering my words.

No. That was definitely worse.

“I am not divine,” she said finally. “But, I suppose this tochigami is close enough to the truth.”

I hazarded another guess, leaning, once again, on anime. “And this sacred place—you need a shrine?”

Her face lit with quiet delight. Warm approval brushed against the bond before it faded.

“You do understand.”

I stared at her.

“Holy—“