Cameron

CAMERON

Cam never did well when she had free time. She always broke shit or got into trouble, even in her thirties, post-PhD, when she ran out of grant money. She wasted time, broke hearts, hurt feelings, made dumb decisions like trying to fix her own car and critically fucking it up. That kind of trouble.

Other than a few hours a day scraping moss and manning the clinic, Cam's residency at The Tooth had been responsibility free, and she'd had ample opportunities to break shit, like the lashings on the fence near her cabin. Plan A was available to her whenever she finally decided that fucking around The Tooth and finding out was no longer a viable option.

Cam had only called escaping Plan A because she'd never actually gone through with any of her Plan As at any point in her life. But with this journal of Siena's implying her death, things had changed. Now there was a strong reason to escape, if only to travel back to Ruby's and yell at her. Hopefully in return, Ruby would admit to slipping Siena's journal to Cam on purpose, and explain how she knew of Cam's connection to Siena.

There was also the small fact that Siena couldn't have died in the way this journal implied, because Cam had left Siena very much alive back on Agnes. She did not cause Siena's death. She'd left Siena behind for that very reason.

Hadn't she?

Siena's safety had always been more important to Cam than finding Avery.

She's so obsessed that she'll leave me to die.

Even the fake fucking journal knew.

Not fake . Couldn't be, not unless Siena had faked it herself. She'd learn more once she reached Ruby's tavern, The Other Backpack, three miles and a straight shot away. She could clear the distance in a couple of hours, even in the dark.

After giving her slop away to a newborn sitting around the bonfire, Cam returned to her cabin to eat as much mushroom soup as she could stomach before filtering water from the boiling pot into her bottle. She clipped the bottle to her belt, filled her rain shell pocket with her knife and flashlight, and tucked Siena's journal near her chest. She wouldn't call her light packing smart, but her very limited time and desire to not get caught meant she needed to hurry.

She doused her fire, pulled up her hood, and slipped out the cabin door.

The broken lashings were only a few paces from the back of her cabin. She'd cut them one day during scraping duty, fixing them to hide the loose boards. The damage was difficult to spot unless you knew what to look for, and the only reason she knew she hadn't been caught by the guards was because Tammy hadn't mentioned it—and Tammy mentioned everything.

The walkway between the back of Cam's cabin and the broken fencing was deserted. She soaked into the shadows beneath the eaves of her cabin while listening for any movement. The Tooth was lively after the shared meal. With it being the night before the feast, she'd have watchers.

Her eyes slid across the catwalk to the right, where two sets of feet faced each other. To the left was another guard, legs in her direction .

She leaned forward until she could see their head turned toward the gate.

Now or never.

Cam dashed across the walkway and beneath the catwalk, then pressed her back against the fence and listened. Conversation drifted from her left. No metal clang of footsteps to her right. She squatted and pushed the loose log aside, then ducked her head through the opening, releasing her breath as she squeezed through. The seam of her pants popped, snagging on the rough wood.

She swore beneath her breath. In the dark beyond the fence, she examined her pants the best she could without a light, hoping to shit they hadn't torn. Exposure brought more risks than waterlogged skin.

Her attention soon drifted to her surroundings. It was dark where she crouched, light from the torches casting a soft glow across the forest. As long as no one spotted her movement from above, she was golden.

Every rustle and snap rang louder than a smoke alarm as she slipped between the trees. When she was deep enough, she looked back. The guards hadn't noticed. She'd escaped unscathed.

Tonight could be one of those nights Tammy checked on her. Surely it would be, given tomorrow's events, but she hoped to be far from The Tooth by that point.

When it was safe, Cam slid the flashlight from her pocket and popped it on, navigating through the brush in a wide circle around The Tooth until she found the road, the village far behind her.

She ran. Or at least her version of running. Goddammit, she was out of shape—out of shape and malnourished. Before long, dizziness slowed her down.

Just three miles . You can handle this .

The trail was clear in her memory, a flat muddy path through the center of a valley almost as wide as a road. It remained that way until she needed to veer off toward Ruby's tavern, The Other Backpack. Easy.

Mist crowded her flashlight beam. The forest was quiet. So strange how a forest brimming with so many noises—crickets, water, wind, birdsong, skittering—could fall so utterly fucking silent all at once, as though it weren't made of many parts and plants and creatures, but the parts and plants and creatures were made of the forest.

They sensed something she didn't know.

The mist cleared, and then her flashlight beam caught the start of a thick sheet of rain. In seconds, Cam was soaked to the bone.

"Dammit," she hissed. Less than a quarter of a mile later, she could hardly see in front of her face.

No . This was a good thing. Once they realized she was gone, they'd come looking for her. The rain made her harder to track—not that any of those buffoons could track a person. They rarely left their safe little walls.

Maybe they would be too afraid to come looking for her.

The guards posed no threat, something she'd realized not long after Bert pulled her cards. The most he'd ever done was coordinate some tall people to block her way before she was selected as The Lover. She hadn't been shackled or confined to her cabin, and never strongly felt the need to escape.

Everything at The Tooth felt too easy.

That's why people don't leave.

But Cam differed from all the others at The Tooth. She knew her way around a mountain, a forest. She knew how to survive in the wild. The Tooth had been a means to find Avery, and a morbid curiosity.

A part of her deeply wanted to know what happened the night of the feast. She wanted to prove she wasn't a pawn in their game, that she was no sacrifice, that she could walk away from The Tooth free from the hold of this Mother . Prove she was better. Prove Tammy was nothing more than a fool .

Prove she could outsmart this whole damn Briardark.

The rain didn't let up for the whole three miles, and by the end, Cam was nearly swimming. She almost missed the offshoot to Ruby's, but eventually The Other Backpack's beer sign cast a neon glow across the trees.

The silky warmth of comfort washed over her. Did she actually miss seedy bars? Yes... she missed their familiarity. She missed their disgusting toilets and snarky bartenders and paying real money for greasy food and a cold beer. She missed how generational they were, how she saw no one younger than her, especially in country dive bars. Maybe that was why she'd always dated older women. If there were a lady patron in The Other Backpack right now, Cam would probably try to date her too.

Hell, Cam always enjoyed hurrying into casual relationships when she felt most shook up and vulnerable. That was what had happened with her and Lauren, when she met her at?—

Cam halted on the porch, peering through a rain-drizzled window. No one inside.

The second she yanked open the door of the tavern, the rotting stench of meat assaulted her.

Cam buried her nose and mouth in the crook of her elbow. It smelled like Ruby had left raw venison sitting on the counter for days. She blinked through watery eyes and looked around the place. Despite its wear and tear, the tavern was as spotless as when Cam was here two months ago.

Dread crept over her.

She dropped her bag and didn't bother taking off her shoes like Ruby would order. Cam ran, and skidded to a halt in front of the room with the first set of bunks, and then the second. Both empty.

She returned to the front of the tavern, slid behind the counter and into the kitchen. Not a single dirty dish or glass, and yet...

Cam slammed her eyes shut. The smell was worse than when she found Levi .

No .

When she heaved open the basement's trapdoor, the stench worsened. There was only one outcome waiting for her in the basement. She steeled herself and kept her face buried in the crook of her arm, slowly descending.

Nothing could prepare her for seeing Ruby, or what used to be Ruby, lying amid a scattering of homemade paper, corpse covered in little pink mushrooms, the ones Cam had been living on for the past two months.

Her stomach lurched and she leaned against the wall. Don't you do it. Don't you dare puke.

She took a few deep breaths, which weren't so bad. Somehow she was already getting used to the stench.

Ruby.

The damn woman had spent her entire life being dead careful, and it still didn't matter. An infection killed her anyway. Not like Cam would be able to tell if Ruby had died from anything other than infection. The fungus ate away most of the viscera, the rest gelatinous. Her eyes were gone, lips eaten away, skeletal smile wide and hideous.

Horrifying. And yet Cam made room inside her body for selfishness. To grieve the answers to Siena's journal she'd never learn.

She shouldn't stay here. She still didn't know for certain whether this infection spread from one body to another, but the way Ruby had been so careful around Levi made her think it could.

Cam's own breath was hot and wet. She spun toward the shelves packed with stories and journeys and secrets. Ruby had known who Cam was. Who Siena was. Was her knowledge an outcome of the time loop bullshit Cam still didn't understand?

She yanked a random journal from the shelf, skimmed a few pages, and then threw it to the ground. A stranger. Another, this one pink and covered in dried flowers. A few lines proved to be those of a much younger woman. Stranger. She threw it to the ground .

She searched for nothing other than familiarity. Siena, Avery, Isaac... fuck, even Emmett. One of them had to be here, to provide the answer of Siena's fate—that Cam hadn't left her to die. She tore through journal after journal, some of their delicate bindings breaking when she tossed them to the ground. It didn't matter. Ruby was dead, dead, fucking dead. No one to man The Other Backpack, to care for the lost. All the work she'd put in, the anxiety she'd borne to stay safe and clean didn't matter.

Cam choked back a sob and threw another journal on the ground.

She lost track of time, cleaning off one shelf after another. She searched by the armful, flipping open a page and then sliding the journal from the stack and letting it fall onto the cluttered floor. Every fucking nerve inside her body burned with adrenaline, and yet she'd never been so tired in her life.

She opened the next cover, and her fingers froze on the page. Surprised, she gasped and then choked on her own spit. Her arm that carried a fresh stack of journals fell, the books falling bent, broken, and open atop the heap. Cam took the only journal that mattered and sank to the floor.

She had the handwriting of a twelve-year-old boy whose hand was tired from copying sentences in detention. Doctors had nothing on her. On top of it, Cam was left-handed, the tilt of her letters uncomfortable to everyone who had to force their way through her scrawl. But she took pride in the fact that her words were illegible. No one ever tried copying her or asking her to write notes on the whiteboard. Her handwriting got her out of so much bullshit.

This was her handwriting, but this was not her.

No, it was her, just nothing she remembered writing.

So I'm supposed to be writing in this journal, not about what's happening but about my fucked-up childhood or whatever...

It was just like Ruby had said: write about home. In the journal, Cam described her childhood, though it wasn't that fucked up. At least, not compared to many people. She'd been chronically ignored by her parents in favor of her older brother Coulter, and the only person who'd paid attention to her, Grandma June, had died when she was twelve. If being ignored was abuse, then it was manageable abuse. It was easily survivable.

And then there was everything after childhood. Seventeen fucking years of it. Jesus, had she really been alive for so long?

Maybe she'd written this. No, maybe she would write it. In the future. Because that was what Siena had done, hadn't she? Siena's older self had written something Cam had read in the present.

Except this journal wasn't written by future Cam, because it began detailing a present that contradicted Cam's past.

Siena won't let go of her guilt, but that's typical. She's still worried about Emmett because she thinks he can't make it home without her. I keep reminding her he wanted to stay up on Mount Agnes anyway. He was trying to keep her there, trapped. But I guess she thinks he is helpless up on Agnes too. Imagine wanting to marry a guy who can't even survive in his own profession.

I am taking this out on Siena when I shouldn't. It isn't her fault. I'm just, I don't fucking know, irritable right now. Scared. I feel like we're trapped in some nightmare I can't get out of.

The next entry began several days later.

There's a weird fucking commune Ruby warned about. Siena and I traveled around the outskirts and continued north, but now she's wondering if we made the right choice not stopping by for a visit. Not because we should stay awhile or anything, but because there are people there. Lots of people. Which means we could learn more about this Briardark place, maybe ask around about Avery. But I don't know—something tells me to trust Ruby.

A world where Cam never visited The Tooth. Another timeline.

She didn't know why the hell she hadn't thought of it before. Maybe because the idea was crazy, but then again, she'd experienced enough wild shit since entering Deadswitch to last her the rest of her life. Teleportation, portals, rapid aging...

Holy fuck . Isaac .

Isaac hadn't traveled through a time loop or aged in a matter of hours. Older Isaac was another person.

The Isaac from The Tooth wasn't her Isaac either, because he'd been trapped in the woods for three years. Her Isaac could still be alive.

But what the hell had happened to him up at Agnes? Why had he disappeared, and why had older Isaac appeared a couple of hours later?

Just the thought of trying to figure it out gave her the hives. Siena was the one who was good at this brain-twisty shit, not Cam.

Then again, she'd read the other Siena's journal. Lots of hypotheses, no answers. Maybe this other Cam would be more helpful.

She read the next entry.

Siena wants to go back, return to Ruby's. Says she isn't feeling well. I never told her to come with me. I wanted to do this on my own. Avery isn't her obligation, but mine. Now she's slowing me down.

Another entry. All this one said was: She can't walk. I'll have to carry her back to Ruby.

Cam turned the page.

I fucked up, and now she's gone.

She glanced up at the mushroom-covered corpse in the corner, now used to the smell of its rot.

Why hadn't Ruby told her? Why hadn't Ruby let her know how easily Cam could turn into the worst version of herself when she became so obsessed?

No, she was the worst version of herself now. She'd abandoned not just her colleague, but her best friend in order to traipse through some haunted forest to find a woman she'd known for a year and had been deemed dead for over six. Sure, she'd found leads that Avery had existed in this place, too, and she'd risked her life chasing those leads. She'd probably risked Siena's life too when she left the research cabin without saying goodbye.

Isaac had told Siena that Cam and Emmett would only hold her back, but maybe Isaac had been speaking from his knowledge of whatever timeline he was from, not theirs.

A wave of panic rose inside her. Cam tried flipping the page, but two of them were stuck together. She carefully peeled them apart.

I went through Siena's things and found a deck of cards. All the cards are blank until I stack them and draw two from the top of the deck. No matter what, the first card I draw is a skeleton with the name of The Lover. The second is a lady with antlers named The Mother.

Cam barked a horrified laugh.

I try drawing more cards, and they're all blank. I shuffle the cards, and I get the same two, no matter what. What kind of fuckery is this, and why the hell was Siena carrying the deck?

This version of her—the one who had never been to The Tooth—was also The Lover. This version of her, as far as she knew, had never fulfilled her destiny .

Cam held her palm out. Her fingers trembled. She clenched them into a fist.

If this Mother was so desperate to have her as a Lover, then she'd have her.

Cam's body shook so much that it was hard to climb the stairs, but when she was back in the kitchen, she threw open cabinets and drawers. She found a skinning knife with a polished stone handle far sharper than her own and grabbed it, along with a cloth bag filled with venison jerky.

When The Mother failed to show up and take Cam—when Cam found out what really happened out in those woods after the feast, she'd tell everyone at The Tooth the scam they were falling for.

This was her real destiny.