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I hesitated. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I can always go into the woods and bring Beverly back out for a visit.”
Elliot kneeled next to Beverly, who stopped chewing bark off her tree to gaze up at him. “I’ll go to the hole for you any time, Beverly. You…” He sniffed. “You stay safe.” He hugged her, and she grunted happily.
My heart felt like one of those squishy stress balls.
Jag crouched next to Beverly and scratched her neck. She leaned into it like a dog. “If any of the other beavers or squirrels or fish or anyone gives you a hard time, you bite them. Hard. For me.”
Moe plopped onto the ground and rubbed Beverly’s lower back. “Beaver, beaver, beaver butt. Beeeeaver butt!”
Now my heart was one of those stress balls if it had been melted into a puddle of… whatever the hell they were made of. Silicon? Plastic?
As the men gave Beverly their final hugs and stepped away, Ram cleared his throat. “Umm… build the best beaver lodge on the river. I know you will.”
He sounded sincere. No fake friendly smiles or cheery voice, just sorrowful eyes and soft words.
Maybe he has changed.
Stop it, brain!This was Ram and it didn’t matter if he changed, because we had a long, toxic history that was best buried and set on fire and buried again.
I patted Beverly’s head. “Come on, the river isn’t far.”
I muttered the Gaelic word for light and held a purple fire in my palm as I picked our way through the woods. Beverly claimed a stick and chewed on its bark as we walked.
I kept my light turned low, just enough to illuminate the path ahead. I hadn’t told the men this, but Evanora, the woods witch, disliked me as much as she disliked men.
The last time I was here, I had been searching for Juniper’s stash of magical relics. Evanora had filled the forest with illusions to throw me off the trail.
She might try something like that again. I could be stuck wandering lost for days until the men came to search for me and she turned them into toadstools or some shit.
Better if she didn’t know I was here. She might look out for Beverly—it was said she loved the creatures of the forest—but me? It would be a disaster.
“I’ll visit,” I promised Beverly as we walked. “Assuming…” Assuming that saving Juniper didn’t get me killed or locked in a bubble dimension.
But I didn’t want to say that because Beverly seemed to understand a hell of a lot of what we said, and I didn’t want to worry her.
“What do you think happened to the people in Free Jinx?”
I glanced over my shoulder at her as she walked on her hind legs and nibbled a stick she held in her front paws. She didn’t even grunt in response to my question.
“I figured you wouldn’t know. I just… I just had to ask someone.” Why I decided to ask the beaver and not a human, I didn’t know.
The cool wind cut through my suit jacket, and I shivered, but fuck, it felt good to be outside again: to hear the crunch of dried leaves underfoot, to smell the crisp fall air, and to hear the rustle of animals in the darkness beyond my light.
I paused to stare through the shadows of tree branches and the few remaining leaves that clung to them like baby possums to their mother’s back. And I realized with a deep ache that I didn’t want to go back to prison.
I had intended to turn myself in after saving my friends. I’d finish my sentence, be rehabilitated, and all that.
But now that I was out in the forest with my magic flickering along my fingertips, I realized just how shrunken I had been. It was as though my limbs had been numbed and I hadn’t even noticed until the blood had rushed back into them.
I could stay on the run. Why should I walk free when I had done so many things wrong and others had served their time? Like Ri, who had only stolen to support his kid.
I pushed the thoughts aside for now. I had to look after my current problems first.
As I walked, I crunched dry leaves underfoot just to hear the sound. “So…” I said to Beverly. “You like those guys, huh?”
She munched, peeling the bark from her twig and eating it.
“They like you,” I added. “But you’re very likable.”
