by Emery Belle
Sebastian narrowed his eyes. “What’s going on here?” His fingers tightened around the bouquet, as though he longed to bash Andrei over the head with it.
I cast a nervous glance at Andrei, whose face remained impassive. He had just shared an intensely private part of his life with me—one that obviously still caused him a considerable amount of pain—and there was no way I was going to betray his trust. So instead, I said to Sebastian, as casually as I could, “Absolutely nothing.”
Okay, maybe I could have come up with something a little more believable, but I’d never been able to think fast enough when put on the spot.
Sebastian’s eyes narrowed even further. “What’s going on here?” he repeated. This time, he was addressing the vampire, and his tone brooked no argument.
Andrei sneered at him, his lips curling over his fangs. “That’s none of your concern, little boy. Run along now.” He made a shooing motion with his long fingers, and Sebastian’s face purpled with rage. Stepping closer to the vampire, he whipped out his wand and aimed the tip underneath his chin.
“Stop!” I knocked Sebastian’s hand out of the way, narrowly avoiding the sparks that flew from his wand tip. “Nothing’s happening, Sebastian. I was upset about one of the patients, and Andrei was comforting me. End of story.” It wasn’t entirely a lie, either, I thought as I glanced at the man in black’s door.
Sebastian dropped his wand to his side and stepped back, though he kept his eyes glued to the vampire. When his gaze switched to me, it softened, and he ran his fingers through his thick brown hair and took a deep breath. “Okay, sorry. Sorry, Wren. Sorry… whoever you are.” He tipped his head to Andrei, who smirked.
“I don’t know why I lost my head there for a second. I just…” He picked up the bouquet of flowers from where they’d fallen on the floor and shoved them into my arms. “I just was feeling a little paranoid, I guess.”
Andrei inclined his head graciously. “Apology accepted. Although”—his eyes sparked with anger—“if you ever threaten me with your magic again, wizard, I will personally drain every drop of blood from your body until you are nothing more than a rag doll with a pretty-boy face.” With that, he turned on his heel and strode down the hospital corridor, his impeccable black shoes clipping against the linoleum.
“Well then.” Sebastian cleared his throat and gave me a sheepish smile. “I guess I had that coming, huh?”
I glared at him, then spun around on my heel and followed Andrei down the hall. When I reached the utility closet, I yanked open the door much harder than was necessary, grabbed my mop and bucket of cleaning potion, and stomped over to my first room of the day. Inside was an elderly dwarf who was snoring softly, his long handlebar mustache fluttering as his chest rose and fell. Where his nose should have been was a blackened, shriveled stub that was covered in thick purple goop.
Averting my eyes, I got to work, mopping the floor with ferocity and finishing in record time. When I left the room and closed the door behind me, Sebastian was gone, but the bouquet of flowers, now looking slightly worse for wear, was arranged in a vase on the nurses’ station.
Scowling at the vase, I set to work on the next room, and then the next, and by the time I made it down the entire corridor, my shift had come to an end. I returned my cleaning supplies to the closet, and then, with a backward glance at the nurses chatting away at their desks, I stepped up to Cole’s door and pressed my hand against it.
“Cole?” I called out softly. “It’s me… I mean, it’s Wren. Wren Winters. Are you awake?”
No response, as I’d expected. I pushed the door open a little further and made to step inside, but as soon as my foot touched the threshold, I was thrown backward, landing on the floor in a painful heap as the nurses shrieked in alarm. Wincing, I heaved myself back up to my feet, checking my body for injuries.
“I’m okay,” I said to Andrei, who had come running at the sound of the commotion. When he reached me, he was breathing hard, his normally perfect hair out of place on one side. Before he could stop me, I took a tentative step back toward Cole’s now-open door and waved my fingers in front of it. When nothing happened, I moved forward… and was once again thrown backward, only this time I smacked my head against the floor, hard enough to see stars.
Andrei knelt beside me, cradling my head in his large hands while the fairy nurses fluttered around me, waving a vial of bright pink potion under my nose until my vision cleared and the pain in my head receded.
“Wren?” Andrei was peering down at me in concern. He waggled his fingers in front of my face. “How many do you see?” He flashed his fangs, and the sight of fresh blood on the ends of them made me rear back. “She’s okay,” he said to the crowd of nurses. He straightened up, then hauled me to my feet.
“I don’t know what happened.” I rubbed my head, which was still feeling a bit fuzzy. “I tried to go in… and then the door… and I was thrown back.” I was babbling, but Andrei was listening intently, head cocked to one side as he surveyed the doorway to Cole’s room. He made to step inside, but I grabbed him by the arm to stop him. Shaking me off, he inched his foot past the door, then paused, shrugged, and stepped inside the rest of the way.
“What the…?” I surged forward, but Andrei threw out his arm, preventing me from coming any closer. Behind him, I could see Cole’s motionless form, still lying on the bed in the same position I’d last seen him, and my stomach dropped into my feet. At the very least, I’d been hoping for some kind of change, for some kind of progress, but there was… nothing. For all intents and purposes, he was still dead to the world.
But not to me.
I wrenched Andrei’s arm out of the way, but he knocked me back. “Stop.” He exited Cole’s room, joining me on the other side of the doorway. He pressed the tips of his fingers against the empty air, lips pursed, searching for something I couldn’t see. Finally, he nodded. “Just as I suspected.” He looked at me. “This room has been warded.”
“Warded?” I asked in bewilderment. “But you were able to go inside, and…” I frowned. I’d been positive I’d also seen the nurses fluttering in and out of Cole’s room all morning to check on him.
Andrei watched me carefully. “Warded,” he repeated, and then added, more slowly, “Against you, it seems.”
“Against me?” I stared at him. “Who would do such a thing?” But I didn’t have to wait for an answer; I knew.
The man with the silver eyes had struck again.
“Werewolf den? Wren, you can’t be serious. You aren’t going there. Do you have any idea how dangerous that would be?” Garnet rounded on Hunter, seated beside her. “Tell her she can’t go to the werewolf den.”
Hunter pushed his glasses up his nose and frowned at me. “It doesn’t really seem like the smartest idea. Isn’t there any other way for you to talk to this Harold guy?”
“No. And don’t bother trying to convince me otherwise.” I opened my mixology textbook and pretended to become totally engrossed in a chapter titled “Abscess Removal and Remedies.”
Garnet’s eyes blazed. “Hunter, tell her she’s an idiot. A reckless, impulsive idiot who’s going to get herself killed.”
“You kind of are.” Hunter gave me an apologetic smile. “Why don’t you just leave Auggie’s murder investigation to the proper authorities this time? After the manticores…” He and Garnet shared a look. “We thought you’d learned your lesson about just how dangerous this island can be.”
“Because,” I said through gritted teeth, accidentally tearing a corner off the page as I turned it angrily, “if I left it to the authorities, an innocent gnome would be spending the rest of his life in prison. Or worse. And I’m not going to stand by and watch that happen.”
“But Wren,” Garnet said in a gentle, placating tone, clearly deciding to try a different tactic, “if his case goes to trial, the High Court will look at all the facts, and since he’s innocent, they’ll let him go.”
“Right.” I snorted. “Lord Macon wo
uld probably have him beheaded right then and there, just to spite me.”
Hunter stared at me as though I’d lost my marbles. “Why in the world would he do that?”
Just then, the classroom door swung open and Glenn strode in. Grateful for the timely distraction, I pressed my lips together and faced the front of the room, but did a double-take when I saw Glenn’s face. Judging by Hunter’s and Garnet’s expressions, they’d noticed too.
“Uh, Professor Gulley?” Hunter asked tentatively.
Glenn beamed at him. “Yes, my boy?”
“Are you okay?”
“Never better!” Glenn’s voice boomed around the room. He shrugged off his lemon-yellow raincoat—the skies outside had never looked clearer—and then bustled over to the supply cabinet and began removing vials of ingredients. The three of us exchanged glances before Garnet piped up next.
“But what about your face?”
Glenn straightened up and frowned at her, then began patting his forehead. “Oh dear, did I leave my anti-age-spot potion on too long? It does come with the unfortunate side effect of melting your skin. Temporary, I assure you, but it can be quite unsettling for outside observers, especially on a hot day, which does, I’m afraid, exacerbate the problem.”
“No, your cheek.” I patted my own face to demonstrate. “It’s… what happened to it?”
“Oh, this little thing?” Glenn ran his fingers gently over his left cheek, which was covered in an angry purple welt that seemed to be pulsing. “It’s nothing, just a little wand accident. No need to worry, I assure you.”
As he was fingering the welt, I saw that his hand was sporting an angry-looking gash, and the inch or two of forearm that was exposed was bruised yellow and black. I jumped to my feet and, before he could stop me, grabbed his arm and pushed up the sleeve of his shirt to reveal the rest of the bruise. Garnet let out a gasp of horror as we saw that it ran all the way up past his elbow.
“Glenn, what happened?” I turned his arm over, inspecting the bruise, and he inhaled sharply and yanked his arm back.
“Nothing,” he snapped, shaking his sleeve back down over the bruise and scowling at each of us in turn. “May I remind you three that I am your teacher, and a senior member of the Sparrow Coven, and should be treated with some measure of respect? It is exceedingly rude of you to go around grabbing other people’s body parts, and I advise you not to make a habit of it. Now if I have your permission, I’d like to return to my lesson for today.”
He glared at me until I took my seat, then took a deep breath, composed himself, and closed his eyes for a few moments. When he opened them again, they had regained their trademark sparkle, and though the grin on his face looked genuine, I thought I could detect a hint of worry underneath. But he remained mum on the source of his injuries for the rest of the lesson, becoming temporarily deaf when any of us tried broaching the subject, though his injured hand visibly trembled as he tried chopping a sheep’s ear for the anti-anxiety potion we were learning to brew.
Between worrying about Glenn and trying to shrug off Garnet’s incessant warnings about werewolves—the most dire being that I would be boiled alive and served as an appetizer during their full moon feast—by the end of the lesson, I was so anxious that I’d drained my entire cauldron’s worth of practice potion, then started on Hunter’s when he wasn’t looking.
“Why do you have that weird smile on your face?” Garnet gave me a suspicious look as she packed up her vial of potion and performed a rinsing spell on her cauldron. When she caught sight of my empty cauldron, her eyebrows shot all the way up. “You didn’t drink all of that, did you? Didn’t you hear what Glenn said?” She was looking slightly panicky now. “Too much anti-anxiety potion, and you’ll lose all of your inhibitions, you’ll start making bad decisions, you’ll—”
But I never heard the rest of that sentence, because I was already marching toward the classroom door. I was on a mission, and nothing was going to stand in my way.
Chapter 11
Since moving to the island, I’d learned that the werewolves could be divided into two camps: those who assimilated into society, and those who did not. Bane, the muscle-bound wolf who taught the self-defense class for small magical creatures, fit squarely into the first camp. The rest, a small minority, were mainly outcasts and recluses who prowled the vast, untamed forests in a mostly forgotten corner of the island. Mostly forgotten by choice, that is—any islander who had the slightest hint of sanity wouldn’t dare to traverse these dark, dangerous lands.
“Well, we’re here!” I said brightly to Pierre, stopping at the edge of the forest and clapping my hands together gleefully. “Shall we go inside and find Harold?”
Pierre gave me a look of pure disbelief, then began backpedaling as fast as his stubby legs could carry him. He howled as I grabbed him around the waist and heaved him into my arms, stumbling slightly under his weight.
“Don’t think you’re getting out of this one,” I said to him with a stern wag of my finger. “You’re my familiar, and you’re supposed to be protecting me from danger.” Then I grinned at him. “But don’t worry! Nothing is going to go wrong today. I can feel it.”
A snarl from somewhere deep within the forest echoed around us, and Pierre’s whining grew to a fever pitch. He began writhing around, his rolls of belly fat sloshing over my arms, until finally he succeeded in breaking free of my grip. He tumbled to the grass, bounced a couple of times, then began run-waddling in the opposite direction, his tail tucked between his legs.
“Have it your way!” I called after him, then turned back to the forest edge and shrugged. “Guess it’s a table for one this time.” Then, without a backward glance, I marched inside.
The forest seemed to close in around me, and though the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, I pressed on, undeterred. “Harold!” I called, cupping my hands over my mouth to amplify my voice. “My name is Wren Winters, and I’m here to chat with you for a few minutes.”
I came to a halt and cocked my head, listening closely. When only the rustle of wind through the leaves answered me, I tried again, louder this time, “Harold? Harold Werewolf? Come out, come out, wherever you are!” At my last line, I dissolved into giggles, and had to bend over, hands on knees, until I caught my breath.
Wings fluttered overhead, and something crunched on the forest floor beside me, but I saw no flash of fur, of fangs, of a man-beast running wild and free. By now, the sky was beginning to darken as the last rays of the sun dipped below the horizon. The cloud cover was heavy tonight as fog rolled over the island, and an eerie white mist settled over the twisted, gnarled branches of the trees that concealed the forest’s inhabitants. Low hoots and squawks filled the air, and as I walked past a towering pine tree, a magnificent owl turned her head to follow my progress through scorching orange eyes.
The further I walked, the darker, denser, more remote the forest became, and at one point, I looked down at my feet only to realize I’d somehow managed to venture off the worn, dust-covered footpath I’d been following until then. “Well, shoot,” I said, squinting around me. “I could definitely use some light around here.”
The heavens must have been listening, for a few moments later the clouds shifted to reveal a yellow moon—perfectly bright… and perfectly round. For the first time, a tendril of fear wrapped itself around me, but thanks to the generous helping of anti-anxiety potion still sloshing around in my stomach, I immediately banished it. Nothing could touch me tonight.
A howl, low and ominous, split the air around me, and suddenly, the forest was lit up with the pounding of feet through leaves. I whipped my head toward the sound, and there, lurking behind a tree so big a giant couldn’t have wrapped his arms around it, were a pair of yellow wolf eyes.
“Hello!” I called, giving the wolf a jaunty wave. “You must be Harold. I’ve been looking all over for you.” I frowned down at my watch. “You’ve kept me waiting for hours now.”
Another growl, this one more deadly
, before the wolf sprang out from behind the tree and landed in front of me. He bared his teeth, which were dripping with saliva, as his hackles stood erect. He was beautiful, with a luxurious charcoal-colored coat, powerful haunches, and a lithe, muscular body. I reached out to touch him, but he reared up on his hind legs and let out a roar that caused the birds overhead to take flight.
“Stop that.” I glared at him, then gave his nose a sharp poke with my finger. “What are you trying to do, scare me?”
The wolf looked taken aback for a moment, but then rebounded, lunging forward and snarling low in his throat, stopping mere inches from me. Sighing, I pulled out my duct-taped wand.
“We can do this my way, or we can do this the hard way. Either way, you’re talking to me tonight. I didn’t come all the way out here for nothing.” I tapped my wand against my leg impatiently. “Your choice.”
The werewolf sat back on his haunches, his yellow eyes locked on mine, as if considering my proposition. My wand shuddered in my hand, excited at the prospect of being unbound, and the wolf took one last look at it before bowing his head low to the ground. As a cloud passed back over the moon, he arched his back and, with one last howl that split the night air, transformed back into a man, his fur receding and his eyes darkening to a deep amber.
“What do you want?” Harold said, his voice low and throaty.
Before responding, I took a few moments to study him; his clothes were tattered and dirty, his forehead was smeared with mud, and his shoulder-length hair, the same shade of charcoal as his fur had been, was matted and uncombed. He looked uncomfortable under my gaze and seemed to draw into himself, wrapping his arms around his slim waist and hunching his shoulders. Now that the wolf was gone, the man hardly looked threatening. Instead, he looked… sad.
“How long have you been living wild out here?” I asked, sweeping my arm around to indicate the gloomy forest. A bat swooped down from a nearby tree, his wings nearly clipping my ears before he landed on Harold’s shoulder. The werewolf stroked the bat’s head, which looked soft and silky, as the bat nestled in closer to his neck and regarded me through beady black eyes.
