“Before. She spent that entire summer floating in a rowboat in the lake pretending to be the Lady of Shalott.”
“From the poem? Doesn’t she die?”
“Yeah. Sloane’s always been morbid. Anyway, I was on the other side of the lake in a scuba suit, trying to find the mermaid.”
“Wait. There’s another mermaid? Not just the one in the tank?”
“How do you know— Never mind. Who am I asking? Yes, there’s another mermaid, but you’ll never see her. She’s pathologically shy.” His jaw clenched. “Not to mention Dad had her tongue cut out so she couldn’t lure anyone to a drowning death in the lake with her singing.”
I remembered the animal sounds I’d heard and how they were a little like singing.
“Anyway, I saw Sloane’s hand and her hair trailing over the edge of the boat. Between the sun and the silt in the water, everything was murky. I thought she was the mermaid. I grabbed her hand. She shrieked and fell in. When she bit me, I still thought it was the mermaid.”
“So you stabbed her.”
“Afraid so.” He grimaced. “But she forgave me. She knew it was an accident. Riley should realize that, too.”
“Yeah, but you guys haven’t exactly had a normal upbringing. You were already used to weird shit.”
“Still.” He shrugged.
I ate a chocolate-strawberry truffle, mostly because my stomach felt raw. I wasn’t used to talking about fire. “I can’t picture Justine running through the woods with a spear.”
“Well, we don’t use spears. Generally.”
“So, what do you do? Observe monsters and take notes? Write papers?”
“Not exactly.” He looked disgusted. “Sometimes they’re studied, but mostly hunted. At least here.”
“That seems…”
“Cruel,” he finished for me. “Barbaric. Wrong.”
“Then why do it?”
“Because it’s too late now.” He lay on his back. His voice was raw. “We have fences and gates and magic, and thousands of acres in the middle of nowhere, but nothing is foolproof. If something gets out, we have to stop it.”
“And they’re all in cages?”
“No, not like the ones you saw. Those are for sick or injured creatures. Or new acquisitions. For everything else, the whole forest is a cage.” His mouth twisted. “This castle, too.”
“And you can’t leave?”
“You can,” he said. “My aunt did.”
I thought of her slack mouth and dead eyes. “Oh.” I lay beside him. Our shoulders touched slightly. “So why do they do it? Your parents?”
“My dad was a hunter,” Ethan said. “My grandfather was a hunter, too, but the normal kind. He took Dad all over the world, to Africa, Australia, Alaska. Mom had the bug, too. It always pissed Dad off that she was a better hunter than him.” His grin was lethal, and brief. “Once, in Tibet, he thought he saw something different. He became obsessed. So did my mom. She died trying to find it again.” I touched his hand this time. His fingers tangled with mine, holding tight.
“Then Dad took it that one step further and added a little cultastic cryptozoology when he joined the Cabal. He got tired of hunting regular animals, and he hired a shaman to do some ritual in a cave or something. I think it was revenge for a while, trying to find what killed my mother. But when he saw his first basilisk, he was hooked.” He rubbed his face. “The Cabal used to mean something, back in the Middle Ages. They were knights and warriors and they legitimately kept people safe from monsters. But now…it’s a power trip. In the castle, anyway. Dad makes the mess, and we have to contain it. I asked him once why we had to join the Cabal, too.”
“What did he say?”
“That they were protecting us. That we were in it now whether we liked it or not, so we had better learn how to survive. That the Cabal wasn’t to be crossed. I was six.” He held up his hand so the light glinted off his silver ring. “The thing is, the Cabal is more than this. It’s just my dad and his friends who are stuck on the hunting aspect. They usually only take in the most vicious monsters. But we could do so much better. The creatures can’t just roam free; I’m not an idiot. They’d kill people. But they need to be protected, too. Can you imagine what the scientists and governments would do to them if they found out?”
I could imagine it extremely well, actually. I’d been thinking about it constantly since I discovered what I could do with fire, after all.
“Some of the other Cabal bestiaries are nothing like ours. They study the creatures and take care of them. They don’t taunt them to see what they’re capable of, like some twisted bullfight. But with your grandmother’s help as a vet, we could start a kind of monster hospital, for the wounded.” He made a face. “You’ll think I’m stupid. Dad does.”
I thought he was kind of great, actually. But I hated the bleakness in his voice.
“I still want to punch Justine for nearly getting me expelled,” I said, mostly to distract him. Although it was true. “Are you telling me she’s like a monster ninja and could kick my ass?”
He turned his head, eyes meeting mine. “She was saving you, in her own way.”
I sat up. “That is harder to believe in than manticores and unicorns and shit.”
“She was trying to get you away from this place.”
“By getting me expelled.”
“Exactly. She’s good at making the hard decisions.”
The thought of Justine being noble made my head hurt. “Did you know she was going to do that?”
“No. I’d have warned you.” Ethan pushed to his feet. “I should go. It’s nearly dawn.”
I glanced out of the window, surprised. The sky above the treetops was faintly pink. I hadn’t slept, I’d been chased by a monster, and I’d gotten caught using my power, but I still felt better than I had in a long time. “Ethan?”
He paused in the doorway.
“You’re much nicer than I thought you were,” I said.
He smirked. “You, too.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Kia
When Ethan walked into the coffeehouse the next day, I almost couldn’t look at him.
“Snow’s coming,” he said as I was ordering myself not to be awkward.
“What? It’s not even officially November yet.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “Weather’s different up north than in the city.” He handed me a latte. “Want to sit outside where it’s private?”
Sitting outside in the cold was stupid. “Okay.”
There were bistro tables around the back, behind a trellis thick with red autumn ivy. The sky was low and pale, muting the light. Ethan sat down and pulled out his laptop while I sipped my drink, letting it warm my fingers. If the coffee boiled briefly, there was no one else to notice. And it was kind of nice not to have to worry about Ethan freaking out. “Handy talent,” was all he said, as unperturbed as Sloane had been the day I set those flyers on fire.
I sat next to him, leaning over to see what he was typing. “Why don’t you do that at home? Your dad’s equipment has to be better than the wifi here.”
“Yeah, but Dad’s stuff is a little too secure.”
I thought of the times I’d tried to search for Ethan’s name or about the ice monster and had been disconnected. “That’s why I keep getting booted off.”
“He’s nothing if not careful,” Ethan said. “Until he’s dealing with actual people.”
“How’s Colt?” I asked.
“They moved him to the city,” he replied, hitting the keyboard with a little more force than was strictly necessary. “He sounds okay. Considering.”
“Is he angry?” How could he not be angry? I’d be furious. Then again, according to Mr. Yang, anger was my default reaction.
“He wants to try again,” Ethan said bitterly. “Which isn’t even possible. But he wants his goddamn silver ring.”
The light glinted off his own ring. “Is that what that means?”
“It means you’ve h
ad your Trials. It means you’re a champion,” he said disdainfully. “That ice monster you saw had one of these in its hair. I think it was Summer’s.” I didn’t know what to say to that.
“I need your help,” he added. “You’re the only one who saw the thing that took her.”
I nodded. He started to type. “Ice, frostbite, forest, white hair,” he said without inflection.
I raised my eyebrows at the search engine results. “There’s a Care Bear named Frostbite? That’s a whole different kind of scary.”
His lips twitched into a reluctant smile. “Obviously, we need to be clearer in our description. So what else?”
“It was really skinny,” I added. “As if it was starving or something.”
“And fast,” he added.
“And its lips were gross. Black and mottled and chewed off.”
“Black lips,” he repeated, then hit enter. Thumbnails of various winter-related creatures filled the screen.
I scanned them, then pointed a trembling finger. “That one.”
He magnified it and the charcoal sketch of a white-haired skeletal creature with bloody lips and blackened frostbitten stumps for fingers made me shiver. Ethan went pale. “Son of a bitch,” he said in a hoarse whisper. His eyes had a near-feverish gleam. “We finally know what it is.”
I read over his shoulder. “What the hell’s a wendigo?”
“It’s a local creature,” he said, reading further on the website. “Algonquin, maybe. It has to be. That would be why we didn’t know what it was—it was already here. Dad didn’t bring it in. It happens sometimes. The magical wards keep the castle safe, but they also draw creatures in. Like attracts like, magic begets magic. Like you.”
“I don’t feel particularly magical,” I muttered.
Ethan kept reading. “The wendigo is the personification of winter and starvation. It has a heart of ice, can move at great speeds, and haunts its victims in the night.”
“Is it like a werewolf?” I tried not to be embarrassed that not too long ago I’d thought Ethan was a werewolf. It had seemed logical at the time. Nothing seemed logical now. “Does it change back and forth?”
“I don’t know. Good question.”
I grimaced at the screen. “And it eats people. Nice.” I shuddered. “What’s that word there?”
“The wendigo can be defeated using fire and the wiindigokaanzhimowin.”
“Which is?”
“A tribal ritual where you dance to a drum backward.”
“That’s all we have? A backward dance and fire? No offense, but we’re screwed.”
“But now I can really track it, hunt it. And I can warn the others. Thanks to you.” He kissed me hard, quick. We stared at each other, holding our breath. He’d clearly taken himself by surprise as well.
“Ethan,” Justine called from her car, just as I was leaning closer to explore that kiss a little more. “Let’s go.”
I might have to punch her again one day.
Instead, I decided to visit Sloane before going back to the castle. I considered it progress. Not only did I not start a fight, but I actually actively chose to be social. When you’ve decided you really want to kiss a guy you thought you hated, you go straight to your best friend. Even if you’ve only known her for a couple of weeks, and even if she’s a werewolf.
I’d never been inside the Havencrest dormitories. They were small, really more of an old house back behind the school and connected with a covered walkway. There was a calligraphy sign framed at the bottom of the wooden staircase explaining visiting hours and house rules. I called Sloane for her room number, and she was waiting in her doorway, the light from her room glowing red through her hair. She wore a long gray sweater coat over her usual long dress, and furry boots. It wasn’t hard to picture her turning into a wolf now, especially since she was currently gnawing on the head of a gingerbread man.
Her desk was covered in books, her lamps trailed glittery scarves, and there were posters of mournful, dead women on her walls. Ophelia drowned in a river of flowers above her pillow. “How is that restful exactly?” I asked.
Sloane shrugged. “It’s pretty.”
“I guess wolf girls don’t freak out easily.” I sat on the edge of her bed, looking around. There was nothing to suggest she knew how to take out a monster or change her shape under the moon. She was still just Sloane. “Ethan kissed me,” I blurted out.
“Dude, I saw. It was hot. Manticore or not.” She paused, registering my expression. “He kissed you again?”
“At Brontë’s.”
“In public?”
“Why are you shrieking?” I rubbed my ear. “Also? Ow.” An uncomfortable thought hit me like cold water. “Oh, God, you don’t have a crush on him, do you?”
“Ew. Not since I was twelve. It’s just unprecedented. He’s obsessively private about stuff like that, especially after what happened to Summer.”
“Well, we were in the back parking lot, not right in the coffeehouse,” I admitted. “But I can see why he’s like that.”
“So then what?” She waggled her eyebrows.
“Then Justine barged in,” I grumbled.
Sloane tilted her head. “You love him.”
I widened my eyes incredulously. “Dude, I only decided not to hate him like twenty-four hours ago. Slow that shit down.”
She shrugged, grinning. “I believe in true love.”
“And unicorns. Your perspective is skewed.”
She snorted. “So’s yours.” She ate three more gingerbread men.
“Are you sure you’re not a werepig?” I asked fondly.
“Oh, I’m getting backtalk from the little match girl.”
We grinned at each other. I felt better, better than I’d felt since Riley stopped talking to me. It was nice to have a good friend again, someone who made you laugh even when the world was falling to fiery pieces around you. I flopped on my back, sinking into her blankets. “How did it happen to you? When did you wolf out?”
She went to look out her half-open window, and I couldn’t tell what she was seeing, only that it wasn’t the lake and the school track field. “It was two years ago,” she said, her voice suddenly small. “I had my Trials. I found a werewolf in the woods. I was going to take an ear as a trophy.” She made a face. “But it was wounded and whining so pitifully. And its eyes were so human. I just couldn’t. I tried to help, but it got all panicked and bit me.” She blinked and I couldn’t tell if she was trying not to cry. “And then a month later, I turned into a wolf on the first night of the full moon.” She smiled slightly. “Scared the crap out of Justine. She screamed like a little girl and ran home.”
“Do you know who the werewolf was?” She nodded. I waited. “Well?”
“I can’t tell you. It’s not my secret. But it wasn’t supposed to be there in the forest. It wasn’t meant to be my Trial’s monster.” Her mouth twisted. “Just lucky, I guess.”
That was going to bug me. I got what she was saying, but curiosity still nibbled at me with cat teeth. “But it’s not Ethan.”
“No,” she confirmed. “Not him. But he keeps my secret. Even his dad doesn’t know I’m one of the monsters the Cabal hunts.”
“But it wasn’t your fault! You were infected or whatever.”
“Doesn’t matter.” She frowned at the glass. “You should go, Kia.” She sniffed once. “Storm’s coming.” Snowflakes drifted down, confirming her prediction.
As I took the highway out of town, the constant dance of flakes at the windshield was hypnotic, like stars falling out of the now-black sky. I was used to salt trucks and city plows. I slowed down even more, fishtailing slightly. By the time I turned down the country road leading to the Blackwood estate, my knuckles ached from being clamped around the steering wheel. The snow was thick under the tires and gathering under the frantic wipers.
It happened so suddenly, I barely had time to panic. I slammed my foot down on the brake and swerved even as a part of my brain remembered from
driver’s ed classes that I wasn’t supposed to do that.
Driver’s ed never had to deal with a wendigo.
One moment I was squinting through the snow, and the next a black shape hurled itself over the hood of the car. I shouted foul things at the top of my lungs as I struggled to get control of the car. It slid through the icy muck, toward the ditch.
The wendigo crouched, snarling at me through the windows, saliva dripping from its broken mouth. It scratched the glass with too-long arms. Worst of all were the eyes, glaring at me through the strands of white hair. They were human, hateful.
And it was as if they recognized me. Frost thickened over the glass until everything was a blur of white and gray. I could hear it moving, but I couldn’t see where it was. I’d literally never been so scared in my entire life, even ducking poisonous manticore quills.
I hit the gas, trying to dislodge the wendigo as its fingernails scraped through the ice. The tires spun uselessly. I fumbled for my phone, but before I could dial, the windshield cracked under the pressure of all that ice. It fell in over the dashboard in a spiderweb pattern of shards, held together with that special glue they use on car windows. I felt tiny cuts on my arms and the rush of frigid arctic wind. I could smell the foul iron-and-blood breath of the wendigo.
I yanked at my seat belt and launched myself out as it smashed through to the front seat, where I’d been pinned not two seconds ago. The car lights glinted off the collection of trinkets tangled in its matted hair: animal bones, feathers, a gold bead, what looked like a broken crystal earring. The snow hardened to ice pellets, stinging my cheeks, clinging to my eyelashes. And then it charged me, faster than any animal I’d ever seen in a documentary, faster than a cheetah, faster than a hawk diving for a mouse.
Faster than me.
Since I couldn’t outrun it, I stopped running altogether. I threw my arms up and imagined I was shooting off fireworks and launching grenades. Fire billowed through the air, melting the snow into rain and mist between us. It scrabbled back, growling with fear. Fire licked at its hair until I could smell it as it singed. The ice turned to water under my feet. Steam curled around me. I flicked my hands, picturing every comic book heroine who shot fireballs and fire arrows and fire bombs. The fire was so hot, and so hungry, I felt my own hair curling from the heat.