Chapter Twenty-Three
Alice
“An opened gate is not always an invitation.”—Verruca
Vegas finally left the dusty road, the fields, and the on/off rain to arrive at a gate with no need to shut scribbled across it. The gate led to the Black Hills, known by many as the slag heaps.
Vegas had spent the last hour watching the gate and the hills behind it loom closer, all the time hoping that DBO would stop, intervene, and send her somewhere familiar. She didn’t.
Vegas could feel the eerie stillness as new to her as the infamous Black Hills. In fact, she couldn’t work out which was worse: the thought of speaking to Hilda or walking through the no need to shut gate. The Black Hills and the silence were as foreign to Vegas as the Argyll to Beryl and filled her with trepidation.
Women from the ci
