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My gaze returns to the scratches on the door and then to the dolls. I may not know my purpose anymore, but it’s not to be stuck here babysitting while my new mortal body withers away with age. The Six stole so much from me already. I can’t let them take my youth.
“Hey, Tinger,” I ask. “How do you feel about a little excursion?”
Chapter
Two
WILLOW
“What do you think, Ting?” I stare at my hastily built cage rigged to a bough over the gully dwarfed by poisonous trees. “It’s the perfect place for hunting monsters, right?”
My wolpertinger friend flutters down and sniffs the dirt beneath our trap. I toss down Hazel and Holly’s dolls so he can drag them into position beneath the cage.
Before I left home, I made sure the twins were fast asleep, surrounded by their toys. Knowing they’d be out for a few hours, it was the perfect time to duck into the forest outside the Order campus.
When Tinger excitedly binky-hops back to me, we set up a perimeter in the underbrush. I drop a manabee onto each proximity stone to activate it. A slight chemical smell tells me it’s worked, but I touch them to make sure. Fire and ants zip up my skin and I gasp, snatching my fingers back.
Definitely working. When a monster crosses this boundary, the matching stone in my hand will vibrate.
I toss a few chunks of fresh meat just inside the barrier as a sweetener, then return to where Tinger awaits by an oversized oak, half shrouded with ferns and taking his job very seriously. I don’t have the heart to tell him it could be a while beforea monster stumbles across us, even with the bait. An army of monster-hunting Guardians living nearby is a great deterrent.
Careful not to touch the poisonous foliage, I settle beside Tinger and cross my legs.
“If we don’t see action in an hour,” I say, “we’ll head home. The twins will be awake, and I’m sure they’ll be pissed I took their dolls as monster bait.”
The scent of innocent pups is all over them. One whiff, and a monster will come running for an easy dinner.
I take a stick of dried meat from my bag and raise it to my mouth, but the sound of licking stops me. Tinger has shuffled out from the shelter of his fern and now stares at the food with big, liquid eyes. His forked pink tongue darts out to lick his fangs, and my lips curve.
“I guess you earned some yum-yums.” I toss him half, pop the remainder into my mouth, and then draw my short, serrated bone sword from my baldric. “Nothing left to do now but wait.”
Having finished his mouthful, Tinger ruffles his feathers and puffs out his chest. He settles back into his shady spot beneath the fern and glares at the area beneath the cage. I hate to admit it, but signs of his aging are becoming obvious. White hairs blend with the creamy gray around his muzzle. His feathered wings are growing sparse. But his eyes are still shrewd.
Wolpertingers don’t have females of their kind, so they mate with females from other species. After luring a maiden in with their cuteness, they shift into a giant bipedal creature to complete the coupling, then protect their mate and unborn child with as much violence as any other fae. It doesn’t sound so bad, except for the part where the newborn wolpertinger eats its way out of the womb.
I scratch behind his floppy ears, silently glad he’s lost that ability to shift. He’d be on the monster-hunting squad’s mostwanted list, and I’d hate to lose my only friend. He gives me an annoyed side-eye as though I’m disturbing his work.
“Fine.” I show him my palm. “Don’t ask for a scratch later.”
Cracking my neck, I try to sit patiently, but the silence leaves me alone with my thoughts.
“What monster do you think we’ll lure?” I ask. “Will it be something newly sprung from the Well after the taint or an oldie but a goodie?”
He doesn’t answer.
“Shall we place a bet? Five strips of dried meat say it’s not even a monster. I’ll bet we lure a dumb warada.” He twitches, unwilling to engage. “Okay, fine, you drive a hard bargain. How about I write a number down, slide it across the dirt, and you tell me if you’re willing to pay it?”
I continue chatting for half an hour, and no sign of action. But I’m reluctant to leave. Something about the serenity here calls to me. Perhaps it’s my wolf DNA, wanting me to be free and to run wild. My dad and brother often shift and disappear into the woods to hunt. I never experienced that joy. Unwittingly, my mind drifts to the six reasons why.
That battle is still murky, but my memory of them is not. I shiver as I recall how hard it had been to look at their stunning faces without my stomach fluttering.
“No one should be that pretty, right?” I ask Tinger quietly. Only here, alone with him, do I dare approach the darkest thoughts circling my heart. “Their magnetism is obviously one of those evolutionary lures, kind of like your cute bunny form. I almost fell for their trap, too.” Maybe that’s what shames me the most. For a brief moment, before I lost all sense and commanded the corpses to rise, I locked eyes with one of them and felt a connection. Something sad and lonely in his eyes lifted when he looked at me. Had I imagined that? Or was it my brain’s way of excusing the things I did?
I’m just a halfling. I don’t even have magic anymore, so why would they have wanted me?
Maybe it was all just a dream. A fucking nightmare.
Glancing at the sun’s position through the leaves, I stand and dust my hands on my pants. “I think we need to call it a day and head home.”
