PROLOGUE
FIFTEEN YEARS AGO
“What are we doing again?”
I frowned as Aunt Tillie rooted beneath a tree, a pillowcase clutched in her hand.
“We’re hunting for morels,” Aunt Tillie replied without looking at me.
I frowned. I, Bay Winchester, wasn’t buying it. Morels are considered a delicacy in Walkerville, the northern Lower Michigan town in which we live. People go nuts this time of year when hunting them in the woods.
No one ever hunted them at night, though. They were hard enough to find during the day.
“Um…” I glanced at my cousin Thistle. She’d plopped down in the middle of the small clearing and looked ready to take a nap.
“Don’t look at me,” Thistle replied. “I’m not hunting for mushrooms in the middle of the night.”
“Yeah, but I don’t think that’s what she’s doing,” I argued. “I mean, how can she see them?”
“I have the eyes of a hawk and the nose of a bloodhound,” Aunt Tillie replied. “I can find anything whenever I set my mind to it. If you’re marking things down, I also have the butt of a stripper.”
She sounded sure enough, but still. “What are we doing again?” I pressed.
When Aunt Tillie swiveled, I could just make out the look of disgust on her face thanks to the full moon overhead. It was a super moon, offering greater light than a normal moon. Since we were in the middle of nowhere, however, it still wasn’t much light to work with.
“We should go home,” my cousin Clove announced. She was hanging close to a tree—so close she was practically hugging it—and seemed ready to make a break for it at any moment. She wasn’t an outdoor girl on the best of days. Sure, she was happy to head to the lake to do a bit of swimming if the weather was nice enough. Traipsing around in the woods in the middle of the night was another thing entirely.
“We’re not going home,” Aunt Tillie fired back. “We’ve barely begun.”
“Begun what?” I demanded. “You still haven’t told us what we’re doing.”
“I most certainly did.” Aunt Tillie snapped. Her mood probably had something to do with the fact that we’d done nothing but whine since making our way into the woods an hour before. She hated when we whined. The solution would’ve been to leave us at home. The fact that she hadn’t meant she was up to something, and it was probably the sort of something that having three innocent-looking teenage alibis would help with.
“Let me see that pillowcase.” Thistle jerked the pillowcase from Aunt Tillie’s hand before our great-aunt realized what was happening. Since it was too dark to see inside, Thistle reachedinside. When she pulled out a bunch of weeds, she was instantly suspicious. “What is this?”
“None of your business.” Aunt Tillie made a grab for the weeds, but didn’t have the coordination necessary to overpower Thistle physically. She seemed to realize that right away, because she added some magic to the mix and knocked Thistle flat on her back.
“Hey!” Thistle let loose a guttural growl. “You can’t use magic on me that way. It’s illegal.”
Aunt Tillie snorted as she reclaimed her pillowcase, making sure to grab all the weeds Thistle had removed and shoving them back inside. “I’m an outlaw. What can I say?”
“Just tell us what you’re doing,” I ordered. “We can’t help if you don’t tell us what you came out here for.”
“I don’t want to help anyway,” Clove complained. “It’s far more likely Bigfoot attacks under the cover of darkness than during the day. He’s nocturnal. I’ve read books. We shouldn’t be out here.”
Thistle, who was still pinned to the ground because Aunt Tillie hadn’t allowed her up yet, shifted her gaze to Clove. “How many times do I have to tell you Bigfoot isn’t real?”
“Just because you say it doesn’t mean I believe it,” Clove sniffed. “I read more than you. I know things … and Bigfoot is totally real.” She lowered her voice. “So is the chupacabra.”
Thistle shot Aunt Tillie an incredulous look. “Will you do something about her?”
Aunt Tillie lifted one shoulder. “She’s not wrong. The chupacabra is real. It doesn’t hang around here, Clove. It likes warmer climates.”
“Bigfoot likes colder climates,” Clove argued. “It’s probably hiding in the trees right over there watching us.” She waved toward a clump of trees fifty feet away.
I didn’t believe Bigfoot was hanging out in the woods watching us—why would he care about Aunt Tillie’s obsessive weeding?—but once I looked in that direction all I could imagine was a big furry beast staring at us. In my imagination, it was hungry. “Maybe we should go,” I hedged.
Aunt Tillie pinned me with a derisive look. “Don’t you start.” Her gaze moved back to Thistle. “If I let you up, will you behave?”
