Chapter Two
By lunchtime Hannah had received so many responses to her post on the forum that Nicholai had taken it away from her for being a nuisance and vibrating in her bag. He promised that she could have it back at the end of the day, but she really wished he’d give it to her now so that she could read all those messages while they ate the peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwiches Christopher made for them. The other kids in the class were giving her dirty looks, but she really didn’t care. Okay, maybe she cared a little. They were the only people she knew around her age, after all.
She handed Ippy a pretzel from the pile that had been placed in front of her and watched Christopher and Samson talking quietly in the corner of their large kitchen. She couldn’t hear them, but the way they both looked upset told her it was something serious.
“What are they talking about?” she asked Ippy in a hushed whisper, knowing that his hearing was much better than hers would ever be.
He answered without looking away from the sandwich in his hands. Your phone and the messages on it.
Hannah was out of her chair before he finished talking. “Did someone reply?” she asked them excitedly when she was close enough.
Christopher blinked up at her, appearing surprised by her appearance at this side. “How did you…”
“Phillip,” Samson answered for her before Hannah could tell him. She nodded, confirming his assumption.
“Was there a message?” she asked again, nearly bouncing on her toes as she struggled to hold still.
Samson frowned at her. “Nothing too important, a lot of wackos. Nicholai gave it to me, but I can’t figure out how to silence the damnable thing and it keeps going off and making it impossible for me to work so, if you can do it and keep it from being a distraction for the rest of the day, you can have it back.” He handed it to her and she quickly did as he asked, lowering the volume all the way before waving to them both and going back to her seat with Ippy. She nearly tripped over a younger kid that had his legs stretched out since she wasn’t looking up from her phone.
Anything? Ippy asked her when she was back in her seat.
She shook her head and kept reading. “A lot of the usual. People wanting to know where I was, what the boy looked like, how did I know he was different compared to normal people, that sort of thing.” She rolled her eyes. She couldn’t exactly say that it was because she could see him as he was, just like she could see the wolves around her as they were. The teens around her were harder to see than the adults. Like Ippy’s wolf, theirs were just shadowy forms around their heads because they couldn’t shift yet. Samson, though, was a massive fluffy wolf in the corner. His wolf was watching her, even if Samson wasn’t. She could feel his gaze like heat on the back of her neck, and she looked up to glare at him, letting him know that she saw him, too, and wasn’t the least bit challenged by him. He put his ears back and she went back to reading the dozens of messages she had received.
“Wow, Samson was right,” she said.
Ippy finished off his lunch. Huh?
Hannah put the phone aside as she read the last of the messages. None of them were helpful in the least and it frustrated her. “Lots of idiots. Wanna go for a walk before Nicholai comes to find us again?”
Ippy nodded, and after they cleaned up their trash and put their plates in the dishwasher, she led them out the back door to Samson’s expansive back yard. He had the largest house and the largest yard in the whole neighborhood. Daddy Liam said it was because he’d bought up all the other lots when they were starting to be developed. Whatever the reason was, she was happy that he had, since it meant the pack had somewhere to go and roam that was completely private. Hannah took off from the back deck and shivered, wishing she’d remembered to get her jacket before they left. They wouldn’t be out long, though, so she supposed it wasn’t a big deal.
Once they were in the yard she let Ippy lead. He liked the woods behind the house and they crunched through the leaves for a while until he plopped down in a big pile and she lay down next to him, her head resting on her forearms as she rolled over onto her belly.
Why do you want to find him? Ippy asked her.
Hannah shrugged. She’d been doing it for so long that it just felt right. “In a way because I want to know what he was. Don’t you? He wasn’t like you, and Daddy Liam said there weren’t any other kinds of shifters aside from werewolves. At least as far as he knew. Plus I’d like to make sure that he’s okay. When I saw him he wasn’t. Maybe he was just having a bad day, but something didn’t feel right to me.”
Ippy shrugged and pulled his knees up to his chest. Dangerous.
She nodded. “Probably. But once I know something, I’ll give it to Samson and he can send out a rescue party. Like he did two years ago when I thought I’d found him.” She hadn’t, obviously, and the guy that Samson had found had been a creep. But he’d still gone to check it out for her. She pulled out her phone, curious to see if there were any more messages. A weather warning popped up and she smiled down at it. “Snow storm coming tomorrow night.”
I like snow, Ippy said, lying down next to her to see it, too. He brought his feet back over his hips and she lifted hers as well, lightly touching his feet with hers.
“I know you do. I do, too.” She looked through her messages and, seeing that she had a private message, tapped on her phone to read it. “He’s fine. Stop looking,” she read aloud. Hannah frowned down at it. “What do you think that means?”
That he’s fine and you should stop looking.
Hannah chewed on her bottom lip before shaking her head. “No. I don’t think so. What if this is the guy he was with trying to get me to back off? What if the boy is hurt and needs me?” She copied the message and texted it to Samson and Daddy Liam.
Daddy Liam was the first one to call her. “Hannah, I know what you’re thinking, but I don’t think it’s him. It’s probably just someone messing with you,” Daddy Liam said before she could even respond.
She groaned. “I know that. But there’s a chance, right? I mean, it could be him.”
She heard him sigh through the phone and her stomach knotted. “Yes, there is always a chance. But Hannah, Samson isn’t going to want to rush off again on some wild goose chase. Let us look into it and we’ll see what can be done.”
She wanted to yell at him, wanted to tell him how important this was to her, and if it really was him then it was worth any kind of hassle he thought these chases caused. It was important that they go get him and rescue him. He could be in danger. He could be hurt. He could be dead, like in the crime show she saw over the weekend. But she said none of that because her Daddy Liam didn’t need to hear it all again. “How long will that take?” she demanded.
“A few weeks. Maybe a month. We’ve all got a lot of things going on right now with the finances and everything else. It is going to take some time, and you’ll need to be patient.”
Hannah groaned and put her head back down on her arms. She felt defeated and miserable. A month was a long time to wait—even a few weeks was too long. “Please, Daddy Liam? Please can you go out there tonight? Please, please, please.”
“Go where? You don’t even know where that person was when they wrote that,” Daddy Liam replied.
She rolled her eyes. Her Daddy Liam, for all his smarts, didn’t know about tracking IP addresses. “You can do an internet search for almost any IP address. It’ll tell you the general location. I bet if you got on the jet right now you could get him and get home for dinner.” She sounded desperate, and she was, but her dad refused to budge.
“No, Hannah. I’ll talk to Samson about this in the next few days. For right now, try not to think about it. Focus on what’s important. Like your schoolwork. Did you have lunch already?”
“Yes, Daddy Liam,” she replied miserably.
She could hear the smile in his voice. “Good. Are you still going over to Phillip’s house tonight or did you two want to stay o
ver here?”
She looked up at Ippy, forgetting that they’d made plans to hang out at his house tonight and watch the premier of a new comedy show. “Still okay with you?” she asked him. He nodded and she turned back to her phone. “Yeah, I’ll be at Ippy’s tonight.”
“Good. I’ll see you soon, little one. I love you.”
She smiled at the nickname he called her. “Love you, too. Bye.”
“Bye.”
By the time they were walking to his house after school, she hadn’t let it go at all. “They aren’t going to do anything,” she grumbled.
Ippy nodded. He knew it, too.
“So I need to do something.”
Like what?
Hannah didn’t have an answer for him. The swing set in the park was coming up and she walked faster to reach it. She sat down and starting swinging with Ippy next to her. “I have to save him, Ippy. If they aren’t going to, then I have to.”
He didn’t look convinced.
She put her feet down to stop the swing. “Think about it—if that was me out there, wouldn’t you want them to save me?” His expression turned fierce and she knew she was right. “You would. Because you care about me and because it’s the right thing. Same idea here. I can’t just sit by and let them do nothing. Not this time. Not when it’s really him that responded.”
Ippy ducked his head. You don’t know that.
“True. But I don’t know that it’s not him either.” She dug her phone out and looked at the message again. The forum attached IP addresses to each message and she typed his into the search bar. She had very little signal so it took longer than she would have liked, but about a minute later she was looking down at the name of a town. “Mohuntahk? Where’s that?” Ippy leaned over her screen as she looked it up. “Ah okay. So this says it’s a tiny town of only about twelve hundred people. And it’s only a few hours from us.”
More like four.
She shrugged. That was a minor detail. “Maybe when they see how close it is they’ll go.”
Ippy looked unconvinced, and she didn’t think it would be that easy either. An idea began forming in her mind, but she didn’t want to give it life. But still… “Does your mom still have that car in the front yard? The one that no one ever uses?”
Ippy nodded.
“Does it run?”
Again he nodded, but his expression was turning suspicious. And for good reason, too, if she continued along the line her thoughts were taking her.
She took a deep breath and looked up at him, hoping that telling him was the right thing to do. “Ippy, you’re my best friend and I know how much you hate lying, so I’m not going to. But I’m also not going to tell you everything, so that you don’t have to lie for me either. Okay?”
He frowned and shook his head. You can’t go after him.
“I have to. They’re not going to do it, and he needs me.”
Ippy made an unhappy sound in his throat and his shoulders grew tense. She hated to see him like this, but she couldn’t just let the boy go without knowing he was safe either.
“I’ll tell you before I go and I’ll be safe. Alright?” she offered, knowing it likely wouldn’t be, but needing to do this all the same.
He shook his head. Let Samson handle it. He’s the alpha.
“He won’t do it.”
You don’t know that!
Hannah shut her mouth. Having him scream into her mind hurt and she reached up to touch her temple where her head had started throbbing. When she looked up at him again she was surprised to see tears in his eyes. “Ippy…”
He spun and took off running. She went after him, catching up easily with her longer legs and lighter bag. She grabbed onto the sleeve of his jacket, but he pulled away from her. No! You can’t go! You said you’d never leave! You lied! He kept going, his feet stomping down on the sidewalk.
“Then come with me,” she called to him, hot, frustrated tears gathering in her eyes. She wiped at her cheeks, hating that they were fighting and that everyone was against her in this when all she was trying to do was help. Ippy stopped walking and turned around to face her. He held out his hand and she ran to catch up to him, taking his hand in hers. “Will you?” she whispered as she stood in front of him, his hand tightly clasped in hers.
He slowly nodded and she bent down to kiss his cheek. “Thank you, Ippy. I didn’t want to go alone. I’m glad you’ll be there with me. We’ll leave tomorrow morning. I’ll plan everything. We’ll be there and back before school lets out and your parents get back from work. They’ll think we ditched school. No one will wonder about the car or anything else. It’ll be great. You’ll see.”
You don’t have a license.
Hannah shrugged. “I’ve got a permit. And I look older than I am. Right? Maybe with some make up?” She put on her best adult expression, hoping he’d give her glowing praise, but he only stared at her some more. After a moment she relaxed and sighed. “So maybe this won’t go great. But what’s the worse that happens? Christopher is a cop. He’s been able to get members of the pack off for speeding tickets and such before. It can’t be that much worse to get caught without a license. This’ll be easy. Promise. We said we were going to take a road trip when we got older. Its the same thing.”
Ippy pursed his lips and they kept walking back to the house he shared with his parents. They weren’t home from work yet when he let her in, but that was pretty usual for them. He grabbed a bag of popcorn and she picked out a few sodas for them before they went upstairs to his room. They kept the door open because that was what his parents wanted, but Hannah didn’t really see the need for it. Ippy was her best friend. Just because they were a girl and a boy didn’t matter.
Chapter Three
By the next morning Hannah was convinced her way was right and she had mostly been able to make Ippy believe it, too. His parents left for work earlier than they had to go to school, so as they stood in the front yard saying goodbye to his mom and dad, Hannah had a moment to rethink her decision to go off and rescue the boy on her own. Only, she chose not to. Instead she looked at the unused car in their driveway and figured that it wasn’t so big that she couldn’t drive it. And since it was a plain beige old sedan, maybe the police wouldn’t pay attention to her. She’d pay Ippy’s parents back for the granola bars and sodas she’d taken from the pantry. Ippy’s sweats fit her well enough, so she didn’t need to worry about not having her own clothes to wear that morning. Besides, no one would even notice them being gone. Like she’d told Ippy, they’d be home before anyone even got home. Samson would let their parents know that they hadn’t come to class, but after yesterday she didn’t even know if they’d be going to class anymore or if someone else was going to take over their education for Ippy’s sake.
But really that wasn’t her biggest concern at the moment. She took Ippy’s hand as his parent’s car disappeared around the corner and gave him what she hoped was her most confident smile. “Ready?” she asked him as their hands swung back and forth between them.
He didn’t look so convinced. I don’t want to do this, Hannah.
She frowned and stopped swaying their arms. “Then don’t. I won’t mind and I’m not going to make you. Go to school like normal and I’ll be back tonight.”
What if you aren’t?
“No one’s gonna be able to get me. I’m fast and smart. And my dads will kick the butt of anyone that tries,” she told him, so sure of herself that she was starting to forget she ever had any doubts.
He frowned, but finally, after a few minutes gave her a small nod. Will four granola bars be enough?
“For both of us?” she asked him hopefully.
Yes. I don’t like the caramel ones.
Her smile spread into a wide grin. “Ippy, I’d like to hug you now. Can I?”
He looked hesitant, but slowly opened his arms anyway, giving her the invitation she wanted. Hannah hugged him quickly, making sure not to hold him too tight
ly or for too long before letting him go. “Perfect. Let’s go.” She dashed back inside, grabbed her backpack and the car keys his parents left hanging by the door, and locked it behind herself. Ippy was waiting for her by the car when she was through. She checked her backpack when she got to the driver’s side of the car to make sure they had everything. “Three sodas, your hoodie, my jacket, wallet, four granola bars, phone… Looks like everything.”
Ippy nodded and she unlocked the doors. “My dads will give your parents money for me renting the car, I’ll make sure of it,” she said as she checked the mirrors and positioned the seat like her dads had taught her during all their times driving together. She was so close to getting her license it wasn’t even like she didn’t have it now. She had all the hours and everything, just hadn’t gone to take the test at all. Yet.
She backed out, braked hard as she rolled, and Ippy made an unhappy noise. To quickly calm him down she started the radio and kept switching stations until he relaxed. “It’s okay. See? I’ve got this. I’m a great driver. Daddy Liam says so.” He didn’t look as certain, but after a few more unfortunate breaking issues she managed to get them out of the neighborhood and onto the main street, which made her a bit more nervous, since most of her driving had been inside the neighborhood where there wasn’t a lot of traffic or street lights. But she was doing well, even if she was driving five under the limit.
“I’m just going to pull into a gas station and fill up the tank so that we don’t have to stop again. And I’ll be getting some cash. Do you want anything?” Hannah asked him as she switched lanes. It wasn’t so bad driving without one of her dads in the car. Maybe it was even easier. Daddy Liam was pretty tense and her dad kept trying to convince her that she didn’t need to drive since they both could drive her wherever she needed to go.
She turned into the gas station and jerkily pulled into a stop along the pump. It took a few times of backing up to get it right, but once she was about a foot from the pump she called it a victory. He hadn’t answered her if she wanted anything so she decided to ask again. “Ippy? Anything you want?”
Irish Magic Page 3
