Page 88 of The Wild Zone

“There,” Harper whispered.

I didn’t need to ask why he was keeping his voice down. I also didn’t need to ask why he hadn’t explored this area more when he’d seen it the night of the hazing. Just being here made me want to crawl inside Benny’s backpack and hide.

A low yellow mist clung to the ground. The air smelled as stale as a grandparent’s attic. Even the surrounding trees seemed to lean away from the clearing, as if they couldn’t stand living in this neighborhood. I remembered what the dryad had told Argus—that even nature spirits wouldn’t come into the Wild Zone.

In the center of the clearing, just as Harper had told us, was a gaping hole.

I was tempted to call it a cave entrance, because it was set in the side of a gently sloping stone ledge—an outcropping of rock like a frozen granite wave. But the hole didn’t strike me as a natural feature. It was almost perfectly round, the rim chipped and beveled as if fashioned with a hammer and chisel. Our fissure ran right up to the entrance, snaking straight through the dirt and into the stone.

“Whoa,” Benny whispered.

That about summed it up. Every nerve in my body told me to run.

The whole place radiated wrongness. This was not supposed to be here. And whatever that hole was, my instincts told me it definitely was not supposed to be open.

“That’s big enough to fit a person,” Zuri said.

“If Grant got away from the monster,” I said, “maybe he hid in there?”

As soon as I said it, though, I knew it wasn’t right. Nobody would go into that hole willingly. Not Grant. Not Silas. Not me.

“Hold my sword,” Harper told me, which sounded like the last words of someone about to die in a particularly idiotic way.

He lowered himself to his belly. He elbowed his way forward, just beyond the shadow of our boulder.

“What are you doing?” I hissed.

He kept crawling. What had happened to my skittish friend? He put a dark cap on and suddenly thought he was a ninja? He made it about ten feet, grabbed something out of the dirt, and scooted backward again.

In one hand, he held an old reed torch. Judging by the degree of decomposition, it hadn’t been lit in ages.

“Someone came through here before us,” Harper said. “But it was a long time ago.”

Zuri squinted. “What’s in your other hand?”

Harper smiled. “Treasure.”

He opened his hand, and the rest of the Wild Omada leaned in to see.

In Harper’s palm was a dark leather strap embedded with studs of polished ivory. It wasn’t as gaudy as my ring, and I’m not sure I would’ve called it treasure, but it was beautiful.

“Really?” I said. “I wouldn’t have pictured you as a leather-bracelet kind of guy.”

“I wasn’t before, but I think I am now. There’s just something about it….” Before I could stop him, Harper wrapped it around his wrist.

“Are you serious?” I hissed. “Remember cursed items?”

But nothing seemed to happen. Harper didn’t turn invisible, or try to kill us, or even spontaneously combust.

He held up his new bracelet for our inspection. “How do I look?”

Zuri smirked. “Like part of a very snooty biker gang. Now maybe take that off before it turns into a snake or something.”

“Hmph,” Harper said, but he untied the strap and stuck it in his pocket. “There’s more stuff out there, by the way. Just kind of littered on the ground.”

Benny gazed across the clearing. “I don’t like this at all…but we’ve come this far. I think we have to check out that cave.”

“Not me” was Harper’s instant reply.