Page 73 of Hummingbird and Kraken

It would have been a great day if worries about Geir weren’t nibbling at the back of his mind.

Now that they were gone, all of his fears came rushing back. He was reaching the end of the second day without Geir.

He got the sense that there was something else going on that Tier and Kayla didn’t want to tell him, too. He thought that the Chief might even be keeping Ro in the dark, since he wanted him to be safe. The incident at the grocery store flashed through his mind. Was someone watching him even now?

Declan looked around the cabin. It looked shadowy and empty without Geir in it. There wasn’t even a lock on the door, something that he’d found charming when he first moved in but now found a bit frightening.

He reminded himself that he had phone numbers, now. He’d put Tier, Ro, and Kayla’s numbers in both Geir’s phone and his own, even though it didn’t get reception out here.

Alright, he wasn’t going to sit around and be scared. He’d left all of the dishes everywhere when they were baking and cleaning up the dried batter wasn’t going to be easy. He kind of appreciated the mess, actually, because it gave him something to do. It turned out that four-year-olds were very messy.

He put his music back on, though he moved slowly around the kitchen. Maybe when everything was clean he could read something comforting. An old favorite.

How did the spies in those books stand all the stress?

He’d just put the last clean bowl back in the cabinet when he heard a knock at the door.

He froze, not sure whether he should answer it or do something brave and adult like hiding under the bed.

The knock came again. “Declan? Are you there?”

That was Tier’s voice, he was pretty sure.

He opened the door.

Tier’s eyes were wild, and he grabbed his arm, yanking him outside. “Where’s Rohahen?”

Chapter 26

Geir

Dark.

Slow.

Silt.

And water.

Geir’s world collapsed to the soft ooze of mud across his tentacles, the slight flicker of a fish as it disturbed the water above him.

The flickering sensation came again, a dim awareness at the edge of his mind.

Slowly, lazily, he stirred. There was no time. No hurry. But that niggling awareness bothered him. A thin suggestion of danger came with it.

He raised his head above the muck, but even with the scattered, hazy eyesight that was meant for the depths, it was too dark to make out a shape.

It must be night, because the water above was solid black instead of dappled with light. He didn’t know if a single day had passed or many, and even his hunger couldn’t help him because he had vague memories of eating fish that had been unlucky enough to swim by.

Why was he feeling on edge?

He slowly withdrew from the mud, his skin gaining sensitivity in the water. If anything were nearby he’d now be able to pinpoint its size, shape, and direction.

The sensation came again, like the water was displaced by some much larger boat or animal, but he couldn’t determine where it was coming from. He tensed his muscles, ready to protect himself from a predator.

But there was nothing there.

Memories slowly returned, filling in the gaps. This sense of invasion wasn’t a physical sense, but a magical one. In his long history, he’d only experienced this once or twice before.