Sloane nodded. “Not exactly legal to trap and hunt like this, unless it’s a private game reserve, and even with a thousand acres, you never know who’s about.” She tore through beef jerky with her teeth, her tone bland. “As a representative of the game community, I wish animal control would shut this place down.”
“But then they’d know you exist,” I said quietly.
“Exactly,” Sloane replied, equally quietly. Our gazes met. She knew why I was so sympathetic to her fear. I didn’t want to be hunted or tested, either. “They can’t know you know, Kia. Ever.”
“I figured.”
“No, you don’t understand,” Ethan said. “The Cabal has ways of dealing with the uninitiated finding out about them.”
“Like?” I just knew I wasn’t going to like this.
“Like my aunt Simone,” he replied. “She accidentally found out about Dad’s bestiary. He tried to train her for the Trials, to fix it before the Cabal found out.”
“But the Cabal always finds out,” Tobias said. “So be careful.”
Sloane slipped away between the trees. Tobias followed, going in the opposite direction, but he kept looking at her. I wondered if she noticed.
I curled my hot fingers into my palms and sat down hard on the ground. “Cabal, monsters, Sloane’s a werewolf, sinister plots afoot. Anything else?”
“Yeah,” Ethan said silkily. “How’d you start that fire?”
Chapter Twenty
Ethan
I could tell by the look on her face that she assumed I hadn’t noticed. She was probably really good at covering her tracks. But I was a tracker. She shoved her hands behind her back. “The fence must have shorted out.”
I arched an eyebrow. “The fence had some help.”
She rubbed her arms as if she was cold then stopped abruptly, wincing. I caught a glimpse of her palm, red and raw looking. I grabbed her wrist. “What the hell, Kia?”
She tugged free, frowning. “It’s nothing.”
“You’re burned.” It surprised me how angry those marks made me. She shouldn’t be hurt.
“It always does that,” she said. “It’ll be fine in a few hours.” She fished a small vial out of her pocket and sprinkled oil on the burns. The smell of lavender wafted around us.
“You should go back to the city,” I blurted out. Suave, Blackwood.
“That’s not exactly an option.”
“Why not?”
“Let’s just say I wore out my welcome.” Her tone was brittle. “The same way I’ve done here, apparently.”
“I didn’t mean that,” I said. I decided not to remember the feel of her lips under mine. Easier said than done. I could still taste her: fire and sugar. It was like mythical fairy food—one taste and suddenly you’d rather starve than try anything else. “Look, it’s not safe here.”
“You’ve said that already,” she pointed out. “It doesn’t matter. I can look after myself.” She paused. “Well, mostly. You saved me from that manticore. So thank you.”
I stepped closer to her because I couldn’t seem to help myself. She was so different from the other girls I knew. She wasn’t polished or elegant. She was fiery and raw and totally distracting. Summer had been focused, but also gentle, breakable. The quintessential obedient and good daughter.
Summer.
I stepped back, feeling suddenly guilty. “You saved me, too,” I admitted. I couldn’t remember the last time someone had saved me. “So take some advice, Alcott. Stay under the radar.”
She rubbed her face. “I’m still not convinced this isn’t some weird dream.”
“I wish I could tell you it was.”
Her smile was quick, but it was more powerful than any of the weapons currently concealed on my person. “So you guys just hang out and hunt monsters?” she asked dubiously. “Can’t you go to the movies like regular people?”
“Our parents are the ones who started it,” I said. “We’re the ones who have to clean it up. If we don’t keep the creatures contained, they can roam far enough to do real damage.”
“That hiker with the missing arm,” Kia said. “It was in the paper.”
“Exactly.”
She tilted her head, suddenly looking amused. “You’re like Bruce Wayne.” I blinked, confused. She blinked back. “That’s just sad,” she said when I didn’t look any more enlightened. “Batman,” she explained. “Millionaire hot guy by day, vigilante by night?”
“You think I’m hot?”
She blushed so deeply her cheeks matched her dyed streaks. “No.”
I knew I was smirking, but I couldn’t stop. “If it helps, I think you’re hot, too.”
She squirmed. It was cute as hell. “Can we focus?” she mumbled.
“But this is so much more fun.” For a moment it was just the two of us in a circle of trees with the last of the autumn sun sending golden arrows between the boughs. It was almost simple, a blush, a flirting smile. I could forget we were both covered in dirt and bruises. I could even forget about my dad’s obsession, about the monsters lurking everywhere around us.
Until her next words hit me like the flat of a sword.
“I guess I’m not quite as crazy as I thought,” she said. “That ice monster was real.” She shivered. “I’m not sure that’s comforting.”
I went cold, as if the ice monster had crept between us. The fairy-tale castle turned into my dad’s castle again. Arrows were arrows, not sunlight. The girl in front of me could die.
I grabbed her shoulders. “Ice monster? When? Where? Tell me!”
“Ethan?” She sounded calm.
“What?” I snapped. I needed to know every single thing she knew about the ice monster. I thought of Colt lying broken in the forest, of the tubes running into his nose and his braced legs.
“If you don’t let go of me, I’m going to kick you really hard.”
I released her so suddenly she stumbled back a step. “Sorry. What did you mean about an ice monster?”
“That night Colt got hurt,” she said quietly. “When you were in the woods smearing each other with blood.”
I was taken aback. “You saw that part, too?” She was better armed for our world, apparently. It was wrong to think about how hot that made her.
“Yes,” she said. “A little bit. I was kind of distracted.”
“Kia,” I said as patiently as I could. It still came out like a growl. “Tell me exactly what you saw.”
“A lot of white hair, black fingers and lips, like it was frostbitten. Or covered in old blood.” She grimaced. “Great, I hadn’t thought of that at the time. Could that have been blood?”
“Maybe. What else?”
“When it breathed, it was all ice and snow.” She shivered, remembering. “I was caught.”
Fear for her was sour in the back of my throat, jagged in my stomach. I hadn’t even known she was in trouble. I’d failed her, like I’d failed Summer. “How did you get away?”
“I burned it,” she said. “At least, I think that’s what happened. You saw it, too, didn’t you?”
I nodded jerkily. “Right after Colt was injured.”
“Colt didn’t just fall out of a tree, did he?”
“Not exactly.” She’d figured out fire could hurt it. We hadn’t known that before. It made sense, though. And now it would pay for Summer and for Colt. And for cornering Kia in the woods that night.
“Is this about Summer?” Kia asked, watching me carefully. “You think that thing killed her?”
She knew more than she should. “Maybe,” I said again, noncommittally.
“What is it?”
I slapped at a low-hanging branch, scattering pine needles. “We don’t know.” I pushed my temper down, shoved it aside for later. “Thanks to you, I finally know a little more. I can hunt it now.”
A foghorn pierced the air. Two short blasts, one long. Kia jumped. I reached for my cell phone before it had even started to vibrate. “Now what?” Kia muttered. “Dragons? Rabid unicorns? Leprechauns?”
r />
“It’s a warning about the compromised fence,” I told her. “If we used sirens or regular alarms, the cops might come.” I took a knife from the bag of extra weapons we had secured in one of the trees. “I have to go.” I brushed past her, stopped when we were shoulder to shoulder. “You have to be careful, Kia. Do you understand? Promise me you’ll be careful.”
She nodded. When I was nearly out of the grove, she spoke again.
“You be careful, too,” she said, softly enough that I wasn’t sure she meant for me to hear.
Chapter Twenty-One
Kia
Twilight made the light in the forest blue and dark, as if I was underwater. It smelled like leaf fires and frost. Ethan was already running into the woods, and behind him an ATV rumbled over the field. When I saw Abby perched on the back with one of her black veterinary bags, I ducked back down behind the wall. Guards trailed after them, shouting into walkie-talkies, rifles strapped across their backs. I headed back to the castle. I wasn’t stupid enough to go blundering into a forest full of mythical beasts and adrenaline-fueled guards with rifles.
Well, not twice in one night.
I was however, stupid enough to sneak into the museum.
With everyone else focused on electrocution and wounded manticores and whatnot, this was my best chance for more information. I was still trembling from the crash of adrenaline after tearing through the woods, fighting a monster, and setting fires, but I couldn’t pass it up. Even if I should probably just lie down or eat a hell of a lot of Sara’s pastries instead.
The gate was locked this time. I didn’t have a credit card, but I did have a plastic membership card to the comic book shop down the street from Dad’s apartment. I slid it between the door and the frame, horizontally, above the lock. I pushed it as hard as I could without snapping it, then shoved it down. It took a few tries, but eventually the door clicked open.
It still looked like a museum, but now the oddities made sense. What I had taken for affectation and irony were real. The wolf tooth Holden had given me might actually have belonged to a werewolf. To Sloane.
I stared at the stag and the horse/unicorn head and the spears and symbols on the wall, but none of it unraveled the growing mystery of this place. The second door was open, light spilling through. I eased closer, my mouth dry. The museum was bad enough. Whatever this was, it was much, much worse. The same mythical beasts that roamed the zoo were pinned to the wall with dead glassy eyes. A mermaid floated inside a glass tank, her skin peeling. I felt sick.
The light from the camera in the corner blinked red, reminding me it was there. I backed out hastily and tore up the stairs to my room. The last thing I needed was evidence of me skulking around.
Ethan knocked at my door a few hours later, when everyone was asleep. I held up one of my combat boots threateningly as I opened the door, before I realized it was him. He smiled his crooked smile. “I hear supernatural creatures fear the combat boot most of all.”
“Shut up,” I said, but I was smiling back. It felt strange to be smiling, after everything.
“Sloane assures me that chocolate is the only way to deal with werewolves and manticores.” He offered the tray he was holding, piled with Sara’s cookies and cakes and two cups of hot chocolate. I stepped aside to let him in. He sat on the floor in front of the woodstove, handing me a mug. I sipped it, coughing in surprise. “And peppermint schnapps,” he amended. “It helps the chocolate do its job.”
I sipped it carefully. “My dad measures the liquor bottle levels at home.”
“So does Abby,” Ethan admitted. “This is medicinal.”
“I guess I understand why Abby’s here now,” I said. Most grandmothers knitted sweaters and slipped you money for candy. Mine, apparently, stitched up creatures that shouldn’t even exist in the first place. “She must have gone all animal rights on your dad’s ass.”
“Yeah. It was a thing of beauty.” He watched me scoop chocolate icing onto a fork. “Are you okay?”
“Surprisingly, yes,” I replied. “Actual crazy things are better than the crazy things just being in my head. Plus, years of comic books have prepared me for this.” I shook my head. “Still, your dad couldn’t import rare albino bunnies?”
“We had a rare breed of ostrich,” Ethan said helpfully. “Dad was told by some shaman that he was getting dragon eggs.”
I had to laugh. “Instead he got ostrich?”
Ethan laughed, too. “Yeah, he was pissed. We ate a lot of ostrich that summer.”
He reached for my hand, turning it over gently. My skin tingled and it had nothing to do with fire. “These scars,” he added, looking at my comet sparks of burn scars. He had to be used to girls with pretty hands. I moved to pull away. “The house wards did this.”
I blinked. “What new thing are you trying to freak me out with now? Because I think I might be over my legal limit of weird.”
“There are magical wards on the house. They sense supernatural creatures. It’s meant to protect us, to warn us if there’s a breach.”
I caught my breath. “Fire responds differently to me here.” The wards must be the reason my palms itched here when I tried to summon fire. They didn’t do that anywhere else.
Ethan nodded grimly. He was still holding my hand. “You’ve never threatened us with fire, so if we’re lucky, Dad doesn’t know what’s triggering the wards’ response. It would be weak enough to assume it’s something in the museums, maybe. But magic is tricky. Ask my aunt Simone.”
“Is that how the Cabal dealt with her? Magic?”
“It was a memory spell,” he said. “But sometimes they backfire.” His fingers brushed over the scars gently. “Do they hurt?”
I shook my head. I had to clear my throat to speak. “So you were being a jerk on purpose that first day in the museum. And after that. Misdirection.” I sent him a wry glance. “You’re really good at that.”
“I’m really good at a lot of things.” He was so deadpan, it took me a moment to realize he was teasing me. He grinned when he saw me struggling not to laugh.
“What about the dead rabbit? That morning in the woods?”
“I think that was Sloane’s midnight snack.”
“Ew.”
He shrugged. “Wolves gotta eat. Fires gotta burn.”
I shook my head. “You and Sloane are taking this fire thing way too well.”
“Can you blame us? You don’t eat bunnies in the woods or shed on the furniture.” He winked. “I’d say Sloane’s a little jealous.”
The silence stretched. It wasn’t uncomfortable, but I was hyperaware of my hand lying in his. I wanted to turn my palm over and link my fingers through his. “Do you know what I am?”
“Mouthy. Brave. Beautiful.”
I felt a blush creeping over my cheeks. “That’s not what I meant.”
“It’s still true.”
“Are there fire monsters?” I asked, because I couldn’t let it go. Not even for a beautiful boy saying kind things. “Am I one?”
“You’re not a monster,” he said sharply. “Believe me, I know monsters.”
“Well, I’m not normal, either.”
He shrugged, unconcerned. “Who is, in this place?”
“Maybe I was cursed. Is that possible?”
“Curses exist,” he allowed. “But fire isn’t a curse. It’s just an ability.”
“You sound like Abby.” I fiddled with one of the pinecones in the basket by the fireplace. It was dipped in wax, with a little wick at the top. “She made these. She used to give them to me for Christmas. We didn’t have a fireplace, but I thought they were so cute.” I dropped it back into the basket. “She used to stare at me every time I picked one up. I never understood why.”
“But now you do? Did you have fire even when you were little?”
“No, but my mom did. Abby said that’s why she left. She was a firestarter, too.”
“See, not a curse—just a family thing.” He rubbed his thumb across my palm
. I wasn’t even sure if he realized he was doing it. “But she wasn’t as strong as you.”
“You’ve never met her.”
“Don’t have to,” he said. “She ran away. You didn’t.”
“No, I was kicked out. Twice.”
“Hot.”
I half smiled. “I guess it could have been worse. They could have charged me with arson. Instead, I was kicked out and my best friend stopped talking to me.”
He didn’t say anything, just waited. I guessed he’d been around enough wild creatures to know that you shouldn’t startle them when they started to come out into the open. And I felt as vulnerable as a deer, too aware of every sound and shift in light.
“I still don’t even really know what happened,” I said, surprising myself by speaking. The room was warm and dark, apart from the rest of the world. There were literally monsters outside, but it was safe here.
“It was a really hot day during that heat wave last June. Riley and I were hanging out by the parking lot. Riley was smoking, and she had matches in her hand. We got in an argument. I can’t even remember over what, something stupid. And the next thing I know the matchbox in her hand burst into flames. Even her shirt caught. I tried to put it out, but that made it worse. I threw the matches and they landed over the fence and set old lady Greyson’s rose garden on fire. I didn’t think about how a few matches shouldn’t have started a fire that big until later. Riley was screaming. I didn’t even feel my burns until the ambulance got there.” I rubbed my eyes fiercely, refusing to cry. “Riley’s okay, but she was badly burned, worse than me. She still won’t talk to me. She thinks I did it on purpose.”
“But you didn’t,” he said quietly.
“How can you be so sure?” That was the question I’d been too terrified to ask myself.
“When I was thirteen, I accidentally stabbed Sloane with a steak knife.”
“I can’t see Sloane letting you get away with that.”
He snorted. “She spent a whole day capturing hornets and released them in my bathroom while I was showering.”
My chuckle was watery, but at least I wasn’t crying. “Was this before or after she got turned?”