Siena

Siena clicked the stop button on the recorder, set it on the desk, and typed up a few notes on her laptop before closing out the word processor. Filling the desktop wallpaper, dressed in knee-high rubber boots and the dorkiest sun hat Siena had ever seen, Crystal Dupont candidly collected water samples from a marshy pond.

Like mother, like daughter.

Siena smiled before gazing upon the organized clutter atop the table. She'd taken over the lab room opposite the bunks. After returning the ham radio to its spot near the bay window, she'd rearranged some of the older equipment to free up space on the dual desks. Her phone, connected to its solar charger, rested in a beam of light at the table's far end.

Dr. Feyrer's original research team had been twice as large as hers. Siena couldn't imagine this tiny cabin buzzing with so much energy. Cam and Emmett were distracting enough as they ran in and out, organizing collected samples and analyzing data. Despite their constant presence, the space felt like hers. She even considered a wildflower hunt to fill an old liquor bottle she'd found in a kitchen cupboard. Maybe she'd scrub the handprint from the doorframe.

Siena shut her laptop lid and found behind it the deck of cards Isaac had been shuffling on their first night. He must have gotten distracted and forgotten them there.

She picked them up. The texture of the pack felt like parchment. Sketched on the front were songbirds perched on the antlers of a buck's skull, stylized like a tarot card.

She slid the crescent of her fingernail into the flap to open it.

Something crashed against the window.

Siena screamed, clutching her chest when Cam started laughing from the other side of the window, hand still in a fist from banging on the glass.

"Bitch," Siena yelled.

"Watch your mouth," Cam yelled back.

"You're not my mom."

"But I'm the PI."

Siena crossed her arms. "Is this my punishment for handing over my lead principal investigator title to you?"

Cam rolled her eyes. "Get your ass out here. You need to see this."

"Why?"

"Because I'm the PI," Cam and Siena said at the same time. Cam added, "And I said so."

"Now you sound like Emmett."

Cam pressed her hand to her chest and stumbled back in mock offense. "Harsh."

Siena sighed. "Fine." Dropping the deck of cards on the desk, she left the cabin and headed around back. When she arrived, she nodded at the dinged-up shovel Cam held. "Where'd you get that?"

"I have my sources." Cam pointed the shovel head to a hatchway next to the cabin. "Look what I found."

It was the first time Siena had noticed the entrance. Then again, she'd been distracted since they arrived. She approached the door and squatted, jangling the rusted chain wrapped around the handles. An equally ancient combination lock held the chain in place.

Siena brushed her thumb against one of the four dials. With a click, the number changed from 9 to 0; at least the whole thing wasn't rusted together. She rotated each dial until the visible sequence read 0824 and yanked on the lock. It didn't budge.

"Damn, I was sure that was going to work."

"What was it?" Cam asked.

"Tiffany's birthday."

"Tiffany?"

"Feyrer's daughter. He used it for everything, literally. Computers, file cabinets... I could have stolen everything he owned if I wanted to."

"But not the items in his secret, spooky cellar."

"He had seven other researchers with him. This isn't his cellar."

Cam tapped Siena's hip with the shovel. "Let me try."

Siena moved out of the way, and Cam brought the shovel down on the lock. It shattered on the fourth attempt.

"Is that how you steal things?" Siena asked.

Cam popped her hip and blew the bangs from her eyes. "It's how I steal hearts."

Siena snorted. "Yeah, sure. I've seen you with women."

"Hey, fuck off."

Siena shook her head and stooped to shake the rusty chain from the handles, and then she and Cam each hauled open one door.

A rickety staircase disappeared into the shadows. The entrance smelled earthy and rotten. Something chittered at them from the darkness. A bug, probably. A big bug. Siena rubbed the goose bumps on her arms.

"You got a flashlight?" Cam asked.

Cam nudged a moldering box with her foot. "It's all junk."

Siena held up their camp lantern, illuminating the cellar. All that kept the space from collapsing inward was cement, stacks of river rocks, and several persistent tree roots that had slithered through the cracks in the walls. It was no wonder the mountain of discolored boxes in the center of the room was about to disintegrate into mulch.

"Who hikes in a bunch of cardboard file boxes?" Siena squatted, lifting the top off the nearest one. Yellowing papers filled the box to the brim, similar to the papers she had found upstairs when they had first arrived. She picked up the top page and scrutinized it, but it was blank, just like all the others in the box.

"The research stays in the woods," Cam said, repeating words Feyrer once uttered to them.

Unease filled Siena's chest. "The papers are all blank."

"Unfortunate. Hey, check it out." Cam hopped over some boxes to a rusted safe as tall as she was. "Who hikes in one of these?" The door squealed open as she pulled on the handle.

Siena clambered over boxes to reach Cam. Something skittered across her bicep, and she slapped it away, wincing when her arm smarted.

Cam shoved open the door the rest of the way. Three rifles and a shotgun sat on their butts inside the safe, two pistols hanging from the safe door. A nasty-looking spiderweb covered a few stacks of ammo and a case of cigarettes on the top shelf.

"I can't tell you how many times I've read through the original study and its proposal." Siena poked one of the pistols. "I saw none of this in the equipment lists. What were they planning on shooting? Bears?" Dr. Feyrer had been a soft-spoken vegetarian, and she couldn't imagine him loading up this gun safe. Then again, she'd never met the other researchers. They'd all left academia after the study.

Siena should have sought them out after Feyrer had died. Asked if they knew of a good reason he would have suddenly wanted her to cancel the expedition. Perhaps then she would have been able to write off his dying wish.

Don't go.

Cam pulled out the shotgun and flipped it around. "Safety's off." She checked the chamber. "Not loaded."

"How do you know how to do that?" Siena asked with a flinch. She hated guns.

"The same way I know how to smoke those." Cam nodded toward the carton of cigarettes. "Finest woman I ever knew taught me both."

"A girlfriend?"

"My grandma. Wanna have a go?"

Siena made a face. "I'm sure your grandma was great and all, but hell no."

Fifteen minutes later, Cam had fetched whiskey from upstairs and returned, and they sat against the wall near the stairs with a wayward root and the bottle between them. Siena sucked on the worst thing she'd ever put in her mouth.

"This is terrible," she coughed.

"They're stale, darling." Cam inhaled, the cherry of her cigarette burning red. "Not too bad if you can get over the rotten aftertaste." She lifted her head and blew out smoke.

Siena dry heaved and stubbed out her cigarette on the cellar floor. She uncorked the bottle and drank, sloshing the whiskey around her mouth. She swallowed and cleared her throat. "So..."

"So," Cam repeated, resting the back of her head against the wall.

"You still seeing that chick... what's her name? Linda?"

Cam scoffed. "Linda? I'm not dating a fifty-year-old. Lauren."

"Lauren, right."

"And no, I stopped seeing her months ago. Jesus, you're my best friend."

"Don't blame me," Siena said with another cough. "The only way I can pry details of your love life from you is when you're drunk."

"Ah, well..." Cam shrugged. "I guess I need to work on my divulging skills."

"Sure do." Siena took a second swig of whiskey and winced. "What happened?"

"Your average dating bullshit. Stopped texting, and things fizzled out. Probably my fault... been feeling listless for a while."

They settled into an awkward silence. Cam scuffed her foot against the ground. It was time to follow through with their pinkie promise.

"Checking in. Are you okay?" Siena asked.

"Dandy. Time heals all casual-relationship wounds."

"I mean, are you okay, now? You know, with the glacier... and the Naomi thing."

"There is no Naomi thing." Cam stubbed her cigarette out next to Siena's. "The dead woman wasn't Naomi. My brain was trying to force closure on something that happened seven years ago."

"And yet every time I bring up the body, you change the subject." Siena rolled her head toward Cam. The camp lantern cast shadows across Cam's face, but didn't hide her hard expression. Cam was shutting her out—again—and Siena didn't know why.

"Don't you think we have a moral obligation to do something about it?" Siena asked.

"We are doing something about it," Cam snapped. "We both left the sheriff messages, and I reported the body to that dumbfuck ranger. You've been on the radio every damn night. I don't know what else we're supposed to do other than end the trip. I mean, we got our samples, so maybe that would be best at this point. Is that what you want?"

Siena didn't understand why she was getting so upset. "Are you mad at me?"

Cam rubbed her face and sighed. "I'm... No. I'm not. I just don't get why this is happening to us. Our map is wrong, we find a dead girl, we have shit luck calling out for help, and then she disappears, and then we have more shit luck with the radio. And now thirty-five acres of glacier has melted in the time it took us to hike this mountain. We're dealing with a bizarre string of events, or..." Cam hesitated.

Siena hated the way she hesitated, and hated even more that the same connections had been threading themselves together in her own brain. Everything they'd done so far on this trip had an asterisk next to it, but none of the annotations made any sense when pieced together.

"Or what?" Siena asked.

Cam turned toward Siena. "The universe is telling us to hike the hell off this mountain."

So that was it... Cam feared their misfortune. But she wasn't superstitious. "You don't believe in signs from the universe."

"I know." The corners of Cam's lips perked up. "And that's why I keep convincing myself we need to stay."

Something crawled up Siena's wrist, and she smacked at it.

Cam's smile vanished, her eyes widening.

Siena rubbed her wrist. "Don't look at me like that."

"Now it's my turn. Are you okay?" Cam asked.

"It was a spider or something. Stop acting like Emmett."

"Stop telling me I'm acting like Emmett, because you know very well that bastard and I are completely different."

Siena didn't want to admit she was only trying to deflect. Luckily, she didn't have to.

Siena pointed at the ground. A hairy spider skittered between the camp lantern and the whiskey.

Cam's shoulders sagged.

"I'm fine," said Siena. "I'd tell you if I wasn't."

Cam nodded, but she didn't look convinced.

Meet me in the briardark beneath the moon we will embark—

DON'T. GO.

Siena lifted her foot and brought it down again, smashing the spider with the heel of her boot.