by Ellie Margot
“We need to look less like Elves,” Guy said. “That’s hard enough with us all having the height advantage we do. We don’t need to look the part too.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry about that,” said Mekhi.
Guy was wearing a rough blue material for pants and a dark shirt. His dark hair curled at his collar, and he had a jewel in his ear, something Riette had only heard about people doing.
Guy smirked. “You all, on the other hand, need all the additional help you can get. It’s rare for Elves to travel in packs without garnering attention.”
“I’m sure that’s shit,” said Riette.
“Look, I’d put a bag on your head for all the trouble your face is causing,” said Guy, “but I thought you’d be less likely to go with that.”
Her cheeks burned. She thanked her mother that her skin was just dark enough to hide it, but it didn’t help her feel less like punching Guy in the face.
Cassian spoke up. “Leave her alone.”
“You guys are immune or something,” said Guy.
“Or she’s my family, and you talking about her being hot every two seconds is going to cause my gag reflex to fully fucking malfunction,” said Mekhi.
“I’m not hiding anything,” said Riette.
“I knew you wouldn’t. But hiding the rest of it all,” Guy gestured to her clothing, “would help at least.”
Riette looked down. The cloak she had taken from Mekhi was still around her shoulders.
“I’m picking it out, and so help me, if you say anything about anything—”
“Duly noted,” said Guy, but he slapped his hands together like he had a plan entirely together.
Finding a place wasn’t easy. The next town was smaller than Gnatty Point. Guy told them it was the town of Grayson, and that calling it a town was generous because it had a cluster of houses and a shop. It was pushing dark by the time they reached it.
Guy stopped them in front of the town’s shop. It looked like a house, but it was still barely a building. A person was walking out of it when they arrived. He was short, hobbled over, and he glared at them. Hiding something under his coat, he walked off.
Riette eyes followed the man as he left, and Guy hit her arm softly. Cassian stepped in and pushed him back.
“I didn’t push her.”
“You don’t fucking touch her,” Cassian said. His voice was barely a growl.
“She was staring.”
“You’re not understanding the lack of fucks I have for what she was doing that would cause you to make contact,” said Cassian.
Riette pulled Cassian’s arm. It took a second to adjust to hearing Cassian cuss. He had only done it a handful of times before, most of them being in the last few days.
“I was staring.”
“Rule one,” said Guy. “Don’t look at anyone doing anything on their way to do something else. Point blank. Period.”
“I know,” said Riette. She hadn’t released Cassian’s hand. Mekhi found her eyes during the exchange and raised an eyebrow at her. She rolled hers.
“We’re good. Let’s go into this…”
“Shop,” Guy said. “The best one we’re coming across for another ten miles at least.”
“Twenty or more,” said a small woman from the doorframe. She was on the smaller side, barely to Riette’s shoulder, but Riette knew that probably made her average height in other species. She wasn’t sure what her species was. The woman had small features and even smaller hands. She was dressed in a faded apron, with light purple flowers drawn all over it and looked like a grandmother but two decades too young for the part.
Riette released Cassian’s arm.
“Hello, there,” the woman said. She smiled, and her eyes creased in the corners.
Riette liked her, but her eyes widened when she saw the woman’s teeth. Each one was razor sharp, as if each one was a fang. She looked away quickly, not because she was afraid, but because she didn’t want to stare at anyone again.
“You brought friends, Guy?” she asked softly.
“Acquaintances,” he said, but he smiled. “We’re still testing each other out.”
“And we’re finding him defective,” said Mekhi. He said it softly, but the woman heard. And laughed. She laughed harder still and hit her leg as she did.
“They’re good,” she said. “Keep them or I will.” She turned and entered the building.
When they didn’t immediately follow, she stuck her head back out.
“I’d bring everything out here to you all, but that’s not normally how the store works,” she said. “Come on.”
Riette led the pack, with Guy right behind her.
The shop was small, and each inch of it was the home for something Riette had never seen before. It was like a museum of things that were once wanted but had been abandoned. There were pots collected on one side of the room that took up the entire span of the wall. On the opposite corner were jars, each containing what looked like food or vegetables, but each jar was precariously perched on top of the other, like the whole thing would tumble if anything else in the room shifted. There were also clothes. Some were hung by hooks on the wall, with care to make them be on display, and yet others were crammed into any space they would fit into.
Riette’s eyes didn’t know where to land first. Candles were on every other surface to light the small space. There were a set of stairs to the far right, but they were almost too narrow to be used. Most things in the corners had noticeable dust, and Riette couldn’t take a breath without taking some of it in.
The woman noticed her looking. “You get used to it. Mary Beth, by the way.”
“Riette. This is Mekhi and Cassian.” They nodded in turn.
“It’s not often we see so many Elves at once. I need to have a higher ceiling to accommodate you all, but the trolls are normally much shorter. They’re my main business.”
“Trolls?”
“Of course, girlie. You’re looking at one. I didn’t get these little things after market.” Mary Beth ran her tongue over each tooth. She laughed at Riette’s eyes widening. “Honey, I’d bottle you up and sell you myself, just for the reactions you give.”
Cassian stood taller.
“You too, cuteness. I’d get a high price for you as well.” She winked at him.
“Not the best joke for this group,” said Guy.
No one said anything. Mary Beth stood up straighter. Her eyes flitted from one party to the next and got bigger every second.
“Oh, I didn’t mean any harm.”
“We—we know,” said Riette. She was quick to say it because Mary Beth’s face had fallen, and she was worrying her hands in front of her.
“I never know the right thing to say,” she went on. She pulled at the mousy brown hairs around her crown and yanked one strand.
“Our friend was sold,” said Riette. “We’re trying to get her back. Have you seen any other Elves lately? A girl with brown hair, slightly shorter than me? Her name is Corin.”
“No, no Elves in ages. It’s not normal to see one this way, not one who stops to linger. I’m sorry, dearie.” She clicked her tongue. “That’s just awful. What kind of—of terror,” she stuttered, “would sell another person?”
They all looked at Guy.
He scratched his chin. “We need to get some clothes, MB.”
“Guy, you didn’t?”
“She’s a women’s medium, maybe large up top. They’re both larges generally, small bottoms I’m guessing.”
“Fuck off,” said Mekhi, and he stood taller.
“No, you’re right. We’re too tall to fit in the smaller bottoms. Good point.”
Mary Beth took a breath looking at each of them. “Well, I’ll show you what I have. The last group about cleaned me out until I’m able to make more.”
She put her hands on her hips and looked Riette from top to bottom.
“I do have something that will make you sparkle from this town to the next, though.”
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“No sparkling,” said Cassian. He looked at Riette and shrugged as if he was apologizing for taking the words out of Guy’s mouth.
“That’s what cloaks are for,” said Riette, and she moved closer to Mary Beth. “Show me what you’ve got.”
They spent an hour in the shop, and the outfit Mary Beth had thought she would sparkle in worked. It was the only outfit that did, whether Cassian and Guy wanted it to or not.
Riette was in all black. The pants fit her like a second skin, and the top was something out of a man’s fantasy. If that man’s fantasy involved metal closures and more zippers than Riette had ever seen.
Cassian avoided looking at her when she came out, keeping his comments to himself, and Guy made a face like he bit off part of his own tongue.
When they walked outside, Riette pulled the cloak around her. The night air was cold, colder than Vitan had ever been at this hour, and the moon was full above them. They would sleep, but only when Guy had decided they’d made it far enough.
In the meantime, Riette kept an eye over her shoulder, sensing enough to know someone was there in the shadows, though not often enough for her to call attention to the others.
She would handle it if it came to that.
Chapter 22
Guy found them a place to stay miles farther up the road. It was still dark when they arrived, and the house looked small, the edges of it falling in like most of the structures Riette had seen on the road. She wasn’t surprised by the outside.
But she was tired. Her bones felt weary. Thinking, knowing, that something was behind her kept her on full alert with her tattoo tingling and her breath shallow. Mekhi didn’t comment on it, but he kept looking at her, and she knew he saw something on her face.
Cassian paid less attention. He talked with Guy for most of their walk. He seemed to be fascinated by the goings on of Esper, the world that existed so far outside of what they knew. Guy also had knowledge of other realms, not personally, but he had the broken, cast-off information that could only be gleaned from others who had been.
Guy stepped ahead of them toward the house, stopping shy of the door and facing them.
“Dire is... eccentric, but he’s a good man,” Guy started.
“I’m thinking all of your friends are,” said Mekhi.
“The best people are,” Guy continued, looking at Riette.
“Mary Beth was nice,” she said.
“Mary Beth is a fucking saint,” Guy said, and he said it with a harshness that surprised Riette.
“She takes a lot of shit from a lot of people who come into her store, but there’s no one better on this road or the next.”
“She is nice,” said Cassian. His voice was soft, as if trying to soothe someone on the brink of breaking. Perhaps Guy was.
He cracked his neck. “A night of sleep will make us all feel better,” he started, and then he turned and knocked. Nothing happened, but Riette’s ears strained against the sound of the wind rustling through the smattering of trees near the side of the road where they stood. She was trying to hear if there was movement in the house, if that was where her unease was coming from, if her body was tense because she was about to face someone or something on the other side of the door, or if there was something more sinister lurking outside of the house.
She turned while they waited, choosing to face the forest. Then she heard the clicking. It was soft, like crickets, with the noise carrying over the wind to where they stood. The noise ebbed and flowed with no consistency to it. But Riette knew all about crickets. They had them in Vitan. The bugs were never quiet, but they found a rhythm.
Whatever was in the woods didn’t. It was throwing her off. She took a step and then another toward the edge of the woods. She was feet away from the others and didn’t notice. She peered into the darkness and sought out a shape that didn’t belong. She knew something was out there.
Her tattoo burned. All of the skin on her shoulder was irritated. It was on high alert as if she would need her powers to flare to life with little advance notice.
But that was her life now.
“Riette,” said Cassian. He stood close behind her. She turned quickly, almost hitting him in the chest with the movement.
“They’re heading inside,” he said, but his eyes moved over her face. She turned to see that the door was open and everyone was walking inside. How much time had she lost? What was out there?
“What’s wrong?” Cassian asked.
“There’s something out there,” Riette said. She turned back to the outline of the trees. “I know there is.”
Cassian looked over her shoulder to where she stared. He didn’t see anything, but he was smart enough to know that if Riette had a feeling, it needed to be heeded.
“I thought someone had been following us,” she said.
“How long?”
“The last few miles. I thought I saw a shape, but there could be who knows what out here. Creatures. Things that shouldn’t exist. I shouldn’t think they’re out here for us, but—”
“There’s no reason to know they aren’t either. Everything in this place, it feels wrong.” He bit his lip. “Remember those books we read as children. The Red Horn? They talked about broken things walking the earth looking for new homes.”
“I remember.”
“That’s what I feel like here. I just don’t know if we’re the broken things or if the broken things are trying to find us.”
“The world’s a bit of both,” she said. “Besides, we’ve been broken for a while now. It’s our new look.”
The side of Cassian’s mouth tilted up, but he didn’t stop looking at the trees for another minute before turning back to face Riette. She had turned away to talk to him, and she didn’t want to look back. What if she was right? What if there was something hiding? She’d need to chew a lot more trees to feel up to facing it, not that she wouldn’t find a way.
Cassian ran his hand through his dark hair.
“Are you okay?” Riette asked.
He cleared his throat. “I always gave her shit, you know?”
“That’s what big brothers do.”
“I didn’t want her to run off, do something stupid like marry Mekhi.” He paused. Riette smiled at him. “And now, I wouldn’t care if she did marry him. I just want her safe. I want her home. I want all of us to not be here anymore.”
“I can’t relax here either.”
“No sane person could,” he said, and the ghost of a smile formed on his face before disappearing.
“You all coming in or forming a secret alliance outside?” Mekhi asked. He stood halfway out of the doorway, tilting his head toward the entrance.
Riette walked in first. She checked for Cassian, but he was looking where she had been. She didn’t know if he was just searching for whatever she thought she saw or if he was looking for answers that none of them had.
“Cassian,” she said, and he looked at her.
There was something in his eyes that made her chest ache. It made her breath shallow. They needed to find Corin before she lost Cassian altogether.
She also had the horrible feeling that the little time they had to make things right was quickly running out.
Dire was a big man. His house was small, and his shoulders seemed to fill the space. Their Elf bodies were also not clear fits in the small room. Riette hunched her shoulders to sit at the table where the rest sat. She didn’t think Dire had always lived in this place.
He watched her and winked, and Riette had the thought that he was like a crustacean she had read about in school, meaning Dire must have outgrown wherever he came from and found a new shell. The idea was to get one bigger, but he didn’t go that way.
Riette took him in while the others talked, and Dire’s eyes kept finding her face. She knew she shouldn’t be staring, but he looked like a puzzle put together with all the wrong pieces.
He wasn’t an Elf. He had blonde hair that was long on one side and buzzed to his skull on the othe
r. He was a large man, thick and wide but close to the ground, closer than they were, at least.
And the house? Riette glanced around. It was all delicate touches. China glasses. Pastel colors. This didn’t belong to Dire. It couldn’t. Who did the house belong to?
A glance at Guy told her not to say anything, but Mekhi and Cassian didn’t seem to notice. They were both eating from the collection of fruit on the table. Riette took a bite of her own, a half green and half red apple, and sat her bag down at her feet.
“You all must be tired,” Dire started, and his voice hitched in all of the wrong places.
His smile split his face into two sections, and Riette noticed, though it took her until that moment, that he didn’t have scars like everyone else she had seen on the road. Dire looked like all the things wrong with him were done on purpose.
“Fucking beat,” said Guy. He took a swig of something in a bottle. Riette guessed it was some kind of liquor. It smelled foul, even from where she was, not unlike piss. She grimaced.
“I have two rooms in the back. There’s a bed in each, but there’s enough blankets to make a makeshift bed if you all aren’t up for sharing.”
“It’s more than we need,” said Riette.
“You say that because you know you’re getting a bed,” said Mekhi, and Dire laughed. The noise of it shook the small table in front of them.
“We should get out of your hair, let you sleep too,” said Guy.
Dire stood to stretch, and the house creaked with him. His shirt rode up, revealing the edges of a tattoo with a swirling design, something that looked strangely like a dragon.
When Riette glanced up, Dire was staring at her face. He smiled, but he didn’t offer anything verbally, and her face burned again at the attention. She hated this new reaction.
She was still on high alert, though, and if she didn’t find sleep, her body would force it on her.
The rooms had everything they needed but enough space. Cassian stayed on the floor with Mekhi, and Riette took the bed by the window, even though she protested otherwise.
