Page 53 of Heart of Mischief

“It’s not,” Charlie said without looking over. “The official event is called the OET—the annual Outdoor Education Trip. It’s meant to be twenty-four hours of exploratory research into the wildlife of coastal Michigan. They send five or six teachers along as chaperones, and during the day, we pick mushrooms and count flowers. But the minute the chaperones fall asleep, everyone sneaks off to a bay well out of earshot. That’s when the kegs come out.”

“Hmm.” Elias considered this. “Sounds difficult to sneak a keg past teachers in an overnight bag.”

Henry must have noticed that Charlie and Elias were headed to their first car, because he quickly materialized at their feet, running circles around their shoes.

“Oh, we don’t,” said Charlie. “Only half of the money from this fundraiser will actually go to buses and park passes. The other half will fund a booze run that Mason and his friends will do as soon as the wash is over. They’ll buy everything at a store a few towns over, then drive it up to the Gut. All illicit substances will be buried in the sand at, like, two a.m. tonight, and will wait there until we arrive.”

“What’s the Gut?”

“It’s what they call the little bay where we’ll hang out.”

“Interesting,” Elias said as they reached their car. Inside, the driver—a blond mother Charlie thought she recognized as a past school dance chaperone—was staring down at her phone, not paying even the slightest bit of attention to the people about to washher car. “Look at us, Charlotte. Having a normal conversation like two normal friends.”

“I amnotyour friend.” Charlie stopped at the closest bucket and dunked her rag into the sudsy water. Henry, with an excited squeak, proceeded to climb up the bucket’s side and dumphimselfinto the sudsy water. His head bobbed back up, red hat covered in white bubbles. “I am merely putting up with you until you finally reveal the sinister reason you’re actually here.”

Too late, she realized that she was supposed to be reining in the snappy remarks.

Whoops.

As usual, Elias took no offense. “Me?” He walked around to the other side of the car and bent over his own bucket. “With a sinister agenda? Never.”

She snorted.

Lifting his rag and twisting some water from its cloth, he glanced over at her. “So. Did you consider my offer? About training?”

Charlie slapped her rag onto the windshield and started to wipe it down, grateful that all the windows were closed and the driver couldn’t hear their conversation. “I did.”

“And?”

“And I’m considering accepting.”

“That’s great. We should start as soon as—”

“I’mconsideringaccepting,” she repeated, stopping him before he could go any further, “but there are two things you have to give me in return.”

Elias rolled his eyes, dropping the rag onto the car’s hood and turning it in slow circles. “This should be good.”

“First, you’re going to tell me what you saw in Loki’s memory. About him and my mom. Everything you saw, I want to know.”

He raised his eyebrows suggestively. “Everything?”

“Ew,” she said. “No. You know what I mean.”

“Fair enough. And the second condition?”

“Tell me why you became a mare.”

His rag froze midcircle. His face had gone eerily blank, like the calm before a storm. For a split second, Charlie thought that the storm might make it ashore. That Elias would transform into lightning and thunder and whipping rain and all the emotions that she secretly believed he was hiding under the surface.

Was itbelieved… or hoped?

Whichever foolish emotion it might have been, it didn’t last long. Elias’s rag resumed its circles. His face went from blank to wearing its normal sarcastic half smile. He looked like someone who’d been asked about the night’s homework, not about whatever undoubtedly traumatic event had led them to become a monster.

“Sure,” he said, voice light. “I’ll tell you.”

“Really?” Charlie probed. “I’m surprised. It must be a pretty sensitive subject, if it drove you to give up your humanity.”

“It was,” said Elias brightly. “Back when I actually felt human emotions. Now I couldn’t give a dwarf’s ass about telling you.”