by Gabby Fawkes
From the corner of my eye, I saw Gus staring at me. His expression was priceless, his eyebrow quirked up like he was saying, “Really, girlfriend? What took you so damn long?”
The man with the headset stared at me. “What do you want?” he demanded, his voice coming through the only speaker still working.
I leapt down from the window ledge, landing lightly with my perfect Elkie grace, and strode into the room, bow still poised. “I want you to tell these kids they’re perfect just the way they are.”
“What?” the speaker replied, frowning with confusion.
I fired an arrow. Once again it seemed to burst out of the bow like a bullet from a gun. As if it had a mind of its own, the arrow whizzed way closer to his left ear than I’d intended. I saw his Adam’s apple bob up and down as he gulped.
I spoke through my teeth. “Tell them they’re perfect.”
“You’re perfect,” the man stammered quickly, his voice amplified by the second speaker.
“Just the way they are.”
“Just the way you are.”
I paced closer to the stage, the point of my arrow directed right between his eyes. “Tell them they can love whoever they want.”
The speaker hesitated again. I jerked the bow to the right an inch and fired. This time the arrow flew so close to his face it nicked his right ear.
He yelped and grabbed his ear. Blood started to drip down his fingers.
“You can love whoever you want,” he stammered, beads of sweat appearing on his brow.
A hubbub started in the crowd. The kids were clearly starting to enjoy seeing this asshole get his comeuppance.
I readied a final arrow — only slightly concerned that Juniper’s bow would force me to shoot him in the face. I was close enough now to aim between his eyes, so I did. He cowered on his knees and brought both his hands in the air.
“Now tell them their parents suck,” I said. “That things will be better once they leave home. Tell them to find their tribe, find people who love them, and leave the opinions of shitheads like you where they belong, in the past.”
Trembling with fear, the man repeated my words. As he spoke, a dark stain appeared on the front of his pants. He’d pissed himself. I couldn’t’ve hoped for a better finale.
The kids in the crowd started to cheer.
I lowered my weapon and turned to Gus. He was up and out of his seat in a second, lumbering over to me, at least a few pounds heavier than when I’d left him. So much for fat camp.
When he reached me, he pulled me into the tightest hug. “My badass babe,” he wailed. “God I’ve missed you!”
And for that brief second, everything in the world felt right.
28
As Retta gunned it back to the house, I filled Gus in on everything he’d missed. He seemed utterly stunned by what had been going on.
“And there was me thinking I was having a shit week,” he said.
When we made it back, we found Cora and Aaron awake sitting in the living room.
“What did you do with Nik?” I asked.
“We made him lie down,” Cora said. “He was looking pale. Where have you been? Is that Elliot?” Her quizzical gaze roved over to Gus. “You don’t look Vanpari to me.”
Gus started to chuckle.
“It’s a long story,” I explained. “We sort of split the mission in two. I had to get this guy first. Meet my friend Gus.”
Gus took Cora’s hand and shook it. “I like this,” he said, gesturing to her face, hair and outfit with his hands. “A punk Celestial. Are those feathers dyed?”
Cora flapped her neat wings and nodded.
“Love it.” Gus turned his attention to Aaron next, his eyes narrowing inquisitively. “What are you?”
“Uh… a Shapeshifter,” Aaron said, shyly, seeming to wilt under Gus’s extrovertism.
Gus smiled. “Fabulous. I’ve never met one of your kind.”
I was glad to see Gus behaving like his usual self. He seemed not to have suffered any ill effects from his time at Camp Crapola, though I wondered if he was hiding his pain beneath a façade of confidence.
“Okay, I still don’t understand what happened,” Cora said. “You guys haven’t been tracking Elliot?”
I shook my head. “My cousins went alone.” I peered out at the now dark sky. “Dammit. I was hoping they’d be back by now. You guys rested enough to head out after them?”
“Definitely,” Aaron said. “If they haven’t sniffed him out yet, then Cora can do her actual spell and we can hurry this thing along.”
Ouch. I couldn’t help but feel stung by his subtle diss at the inferiority of Elkie powers.
“Someone needs to stay with Nik,” Cora said.
“Someone who’s not Lucas, you mean,” Retta said with a crooked smile. “That meathead’s been sleeping like a baby for hours.”
Gus wiggled his fingers. “Lucas? Nik? Who are these boys?”
Retta answered. “Nik is a Vanpari-Mage that Theia’s inexplicably attracted to and Lucas is a Siren.”
“Stop,” Gus said, holding his hand up. “I’ll be the babysitter. Honestly, you had me at meathead.”
We headed into the forest and I guided my gang along the tracks that Juniper and Birch had made. It seemed like they’d been zig-zagging around quite a bit. Elkie sense of smell — despite Nik’s put-down — wasn’t anything like a dog’s. We weren’t as sensitive or as accurate.
“This way,” I said, heading toward the thick brush.
My friends staggered along. They weren’t used to the forest like I was, so were struggling to get through the dense undergrowth.
Before long, we came across a clearing. There sat Birch and Juniper, resting against a large tree.
I hurried over to them. “Guys? Is everything okay?”
“We’re fine,” Juniper said. “Bad-boy Birch got a blister.”
“No I didn’t!” Birch contested.
Juniper rolled his eyes. “How’s Gus?”
“Safe and back to his outlandish self,” I replied. I handed Juniper her bow. “That’s one heck of a weapon you’ve got there.”
Juniper wiggled her eyebrows as she took it from me. “Mom has weretiger blood somewhere down her ancestral line.”
“Neat.” I sat down on the crunchy leaves beside them. “So no sign of Elliot?”
“There have been plenty of signs of disturbance,” Juniper said. “Tracks going in and out. But it seems like he’s on the move a lot. He hasn’t settled down in any one place.”
Poor Elliot. He must be so terrified of being found, if he’d been on the move this whole time.
Cora stepped forward. “Let me do my tracking spell.”
We gathered in a circle and Juniper put the talisman in the center. Cora softened her focus then began to utter a Celtic incantation.
Just like at the séance, a swirling cloud of smoke began to surround us. I tensed, recalling my dad’s face bursting out of it. But instead of any scary gargoyle faces, the smoke turned into a long tendril that began to snake through the trees.
“Um, Cora,” I said. “Your spell’s getting away.”
Her eyes flew open and she quickly stood. “Quick. Come on.”
She tore off into the trees after the arrow of smoke. We followed.
The ground inclined upward and the trees grew denser the farther we went. Leaves and branches, and the occasional unwelcome vine, whipped and snapped and battered my face, my heart pounding as I ran.
“Man, he really wedged himself right in, didn’t he?” Retta said, fighting against the branches, her fragile wings pinned against her back to protect them from getting torn.
The smoke led us onward. Then, suddenly, it stopped dead.
I skidded to a halt, kicking a stone. It skipped along and plunged down a huge gaping crevasse.
The smoke tendril turned into a swirling cloud over the crevasse. Then, in a big poof, it dissipated into the air.
I looked down into the plunging darkne
ss. “Ah crap.”
29
“You don’t think he fell down there and died, do you?” Aaron asked.
We were all standing at the precipice of the crevasse, staring down into the all-consuming blackness.
Birch shook his head. “He doesn’t, you know, smell dead.”
My friends grimaced.
“What?” Birch said defensively. “He doesn’t.”
“And we know for sure he’s down there?” I asked Cora.
She nodded, definitively. “That’s what the tracking spell showed us. Celestial magic doesn’t lie.”
“Maybe he’s injured?” Juniper suggested.
“There’s only one way to find out,” I replied, crouching down and slinging my legs into the hole.
Retta grabbed me by the shoulders, stopping me in my tracks. “What the hell are you doing, numbskull?” she screeched.
“Going down to look,” I replied. “Elkie are like cats. We always land on our feet.”
“And, like cats,” Retta added, “you have a tendency to fling yourself into small spaces without thinking about how to get back out.”
I folded my arms. “What’s your brilliant idea then?”
Retta pointed to her shimmery dragonfly-like wings, then to Cora’s bright red feathered ones. “How about leave it to the people who can, you know, frickin’ fly to take a look?”
I felt my cheeks grow warm. “Well, yeah, I guess that could work too,” I said, feigning nonchalance as I clambered back from the crevasse’s edge.
Retta and Cora stepped forward and gave their wings a flap. Retta’s looked so fragile in comparison to Cora’s, and she flapped them about a thousand times faster. All Cora needed to do to take flight was pump her wings a couple of times, and coast on the powerful downdraft.
I held my breath as my two winged friends floated slowly into the crevasse. Then I paced back and forth, wringing my hands with anguish. I was much better at throwing myself into danger than waiting while people I cared about embarked on perilous activities.
When I couldn’t wait any longer, I peered down into the crevasse.
“Guys?” My voice echoed into the blackness. “What’s going on down there?”
“We’re fine,” came Retta’s brusque reply. “Stop micromanaging.”
I paced back away.
“We’ve found something!” Cora’s voice floated back up through the hole.
My heart began hammering as I raced back to the crevasse’s edge and looked down. “Is it him?”
“Either him or a dead demon-badger,” Retta exclaimed. “Talk about ripe.”
“We’re coming back up,” Cora called.
I waited on baited breath, more than a little concerned I was about to be exposed to a rotting badger carcass, when the tips of Retta and Cora’s wings emerged from the gap. Then they hovered all the way out of the crevasse. Between them, dangling like a rag doll, was a slumped figure. Definitely not a badger. Definitely Elliot.
Aaron and Birch hurried forward to take him from Cora and Retta so they could land, then lay Elliot down onto the mulchy earth.
“Is that him?” Juniper asked me.
I nodded. He was a mess. Thinner than when I’d last seen him, and streaked with dirt.
“Is he breathing?” Aaron asked in a worried voice.
I touched his skin. It was ice cold, but as a Vanpari, that told me practically nothing.
“He doesn’t look hurt,” Birch said curiously. “Just a bit hoboey.”
At that moment, Elliot’s eyes suddenly pinged open. It was like a horror movie. We all screamed and stumbled back with shock.
Quicker than my brain could comprehend, Elliot took off, becoming a black blur in the dark night.
“Jeez!” Retta screamed, clutching her heart.
“He was playing dead!” Birch exclaimed.
I didn’t waste a second. I couldn’t fly like the cool kids, but I could sure as hell run. I streaked off after Elliot, my Elkie speed proving to be well matched against that of a half-starved Vanpari.
“Elliot, stop!” I shouted into the trees, pounding along as fast as I could go. “We want to help you!”
“We know Nik!” Juniper’s voice came from somewhere beside me.
I looked to my left. She was running along beside me, following the path that the blur of Elliot was cutting between the shrubbery.
Suddenly, the bushes bounced back into place. He’d stopped running.
Juniper and I halted.
I scanned the treeline. Even with my Elkie sight tuned all the way up, it was hard to see anything. But then I picked out a shape crouched in the branches of one of the trees high above us.
“He’s listening,” I whispered to Juniper, gesturing with my head toward where Elliot was crouched.
“I’m going to call Nik,” Juniper announced to the trees. “Don’t go anywhere.”
She pressed some buttons on her cellphone. The sound of ringing came through the speakers.
Just then, footsteps came from behind us. It was Birch. He’d led the others to us.
“Put it on loud speaker,” he told Juniper, reaching for the phone.
“I know how to do it,” Juniper replied, slapping his hand away.
She hit the button and the sound of a ringing phone echoed through the woodlands. The call connected.
“Hello?” Nik croaked.
“Nik,” Juniper said. “We’ve found him. We’ve found Elliot.”
30
I could hear the emotion in Nik’s voice as he spoke. As furious as I was at him, I couldn’t help but feel overcome with compassion. Not that long ago, I’d been in the exact same position as him, reuniting with my best friend after he’d been through untold trauma. Only, unlike Nik, my best friend had wanted to be found.
“Elliot. Please. Just say something,” Nik pleaded for the umpteenth time through the phone.
Elliot stayed crouched high up in the trees. All I could really see of him were the whites of his wide eyes. The rest of us stood around looking uncomfortable, unable to meet one another’s gaze. This was a painful thing to witness. I couldn’t begin to imagine how bad Nik must be feeling right now.
“We need you,” Nik continued. “And we want to help you. You can’t stay in the mountains forever.”
Still, Elliot remained mute and motionless. He clearly had a pretty stubborn temperament, which might be a necessity, being a friend of Nik’s. Either that or he was so scared shitless he didn’t even believe his own ears.
“Keep talking,” I said to Nik on the other end of the phone.
Hopefully Nik could coax Elliot out of the trees somehow. Otherwise I sure as hell didn’t know what to do.
“Elliot, I’ve been hurt,” Nik said. “I was stabbed, man. I could really do with your support.”
My insides clenched. I knew Nik’s injury was worse than he was letting on. He needed hospitalization, not a goddamn ancient Elkie healing balm.
In the trees, something seemed to have shifted with Elliot.
“He’s moving,” Juniper whispered through the side of her mouth.
There was a soft thud that told us Elliot had jumped to the ground. But still, he held back, clearly not daring to come any closer.
“Tell him we want to help,” Juniper instructed Nik.
“My friends are there to help you,” Nik said. “Because I’m too sick to do it myself. Please, just come to the phone and tell me you’re okay.”
Finally, Elliot took a step toward us. There was a small amount of moonlight coming in through the trees. As Elliot took his next step forward, his face fully emerged.
Those wild, frightened eyes I’d seen before seemed even more hollow. His already pale skin looked entirely bloodless now. He’d visibly shrunk, clearly lacking the skills needed to kill enough demon-squirrels to maintain anything resembling a healthy body weight.
“Nik?” he croaked.
Through the phone, I heard Nik let out a long sigh of relief. “Hi, Elliot.”
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Juniper pressed the button to turn off the loud speaker and held the phone up to Elliot. “I think this should be a private call,” she told him.
Elliot hesitated. Then, reticently, he reached forward and plucked the phone out of her hands. He retreated into the darkness. All we could hear of him now were his hurried, hushed words.
The rest of us exchanged sad glances. What a sorry state of affairs this whole thing was. How many lives Geiser had ruined in his campaign for power.
“Now what?” Birch asked.
“I guess we wait,” I told him with a shrug.
“Wait?” he moaned, letting his bow drop with a disappointed sigh. “I should’ve gone on the Gus mission. You guys had way more fun.”
Juniper set up a fire. It was cold now that we’d stopped moving and we had no idea how long it would take Nik to appeal to Elliot to help us. Not that we had an abundance of time to waste. The election was fast approaching.
“Does anyone know the time?” I asked, hugging my knees to my chest beside the campfire.
“Four a.m.,” Aaron told me. “Aren’t you exhausted?”
I hadn’t slept properly for days. But somehow I’d kept going. Probably from adrenaline. I was going to have a hardcore crash once this was all over. My poor little adrenal glands.
“Yeah,” I replied. “But I won’t be able to sleep until this is over anyway.”
Retta squeezed my hand. “Do you think Nik will be able to convince Elliot to speak?” she asked. I could hear the lack of conviction in her voice.
I nodded but I felt less than confident. Elliot had been reluctant to even show his face to us. Hell, he’d played dead like a frickin’ opossum in an attempt to get us to give up on him. What were the chances that he’d agree to announce to the sun community of New York City that their golden boy William Geiser had framed him for murder?
