Hurrying over to my bag, I pull out a rolled-up paper. Unfurling it reveals a map of Folk Haven and Lake Galen. I draw the necessary symbols in the corners, speak the tracking spell, and mentally direct my power into the paper. After a moment, a small glowing dot appears.
I breathe a sigh of relief.
“The tracking spell is working.”
Now that I’ve activated it, it’s only good for a handful of hours. But this way, we can find Bo without hunting him through the woods.
“I’ll handle this,” I tell my siblings, grateful for their help up to this point, but feeling the urge to have as few people following Bo as possible.
“You shouldn’t do it on your own,” Ame says.
“I won’t. I’ve got some backup on standby.”
After the Ophelia incident—where she burst into a giant fiery bird and flew away across the lake—I thought it best to alert the Mythic Council and town police that I would be freeing another cursed mythic.
They’re all expecting me to check in tonight.
After disinfecting the cut on my hand and wrapping a quick bandage around the wound, I dig my phone out of my pocket, tapping on a familiar name in my Contacts list.
“How did it go?” Levi asks the moment we connect. He’s the monster council member and the most likely to have to oversee our new town resident.
“He’s upset. Confused. And he ran. But I didn’t sense violence.” I start jogging through the woods, trusting my siblings to clean up the spell site. “I’m tracking him. Are you with Samantha?” I name the Folk Haven chief of police.
“Yeah, you’re on speaker.”
“We’re in my cruiser.” Samantha speaks directly to me. “Half a mile from your driveway toward town.”
“I’m going to drive myself. Meet me on the road and follow.” I glance down at the map, surprised to see his dot in the water.
Is he part water mythic?
“Looks like he’s swimming now, but on his way toward the Of the Claw section.” Which you’d have to pass through to reach the Monster section. Not that I have to voice that for us all to know.
“Do you know his name?” Levi asks.
“Bo.” I climb into my truck and place the phone on the mount. “That’s all I got so far. Ring any bells?”
“No, but I’m sure Moira will know.” He names his mate, the only real estate agent in Folk Haven and from one of the founding families.
“That sounds familiar to me,” Samantha says just as I pull onto the road and spot her headlights behind mine. “But I can’t place it.”
“I think …” I swallow, feeling a sudden wave of worry for the mythic I shouldn’t feel responsible for. “I think he was trapped for a while.”
This is not the world Bo knows anymore.
4
Bo
I keepto the woods as I navigate from Of the Wing territory to Monster territory. Using roads and bridges would have added more than a mile onto my journey. Desperation to prove the witch wrong about how long I was gone spurs me to dive into the closest point of the lake and swim across.
One benefit of my webbed fingers is, they catch the water and propel me forward faster than most mythics in their human shapes. Soon enough, my bare feet dig into the steep red-clay bank, and I scramble from the water and break into a sprint. Twigs scrape at my bare skin, spiderwebs cling to my face, and dead leaves stick to my wet feet, but I don’t care.
I need to get back to the trailer. Need to find my father, even if our conversations never go anywhere. He’ll at least prove that I haven’t been trapped for … gone for …
Years.
I burst through a stand of trees and find myself in a yard with a house sitting not far off.
