Which, well, wasn’t exactly a lie. But it wasn’t just this place that was a Crossroad,shewas the Crossroads where magic, and information, and creatures came to sort things out.
Where we’d come to sort things out too.
“You’rethe Crossroads, right? Because that’s who we’re looking for.”
“And you are?”
“Right. Sorry. I’m Pamela Walch. This is my grandfather, Elmer Walch. We’re here to hunt the Hush.”
She pulled a necklace out from under her blue and white polka-dotted sweater, and I stiffened.
Hunters—monster hunters—were a loosely connected group of people who liked to put stakes in people like me.
That necklace stank of the hunter mark. It was everything I could do not to put myself in front of Lu and tell her to run.
“Hunter,” Ricky said smoothly, her voice a little deeper as she sucked in the magic of the house.
I thought, for a moment, every blade of grass shimmered gold. I thought, for a moment, the air shivered silver.
I thought, for a moment, Ricky would snap her fingers, and Pamela would evaporate on the spot.
“I don’t think you want to be here today,” Ricky said.
“We’re going to go find that girl tonight, right? Abbi?”
Ricky shrugged and lines of magic shimmered out from where she stood, traveling under the grass in colors I could barely sense, wrapping around Pamela’s feet.
If she felt the magic, Pamela didn’t show it.
The magic continued around to Elmer who was complaining under his breath while dragging a wooden box out of the trunk.
The magic pooled around his feet, and Elmer’s head came up. “Keep your slabber of gee haw magic off me, Crossroads. We are what we are. Right here in plain sight. We know you got werewolves roaming around.”
“Hunters don’t take kindly to werewolves,” Ricky said.
“Yeah, yeah. But this here is neutral ground. Finding that little girl is more important than making the Riggs’ or Kearneys’ lives messy.” He went back to shoving things around in the trunk. “Got enough mess, don’t I? Son-in-law went off and became the sheriff, damn fool.”
Ricky shifted her shoulder away from the column.
“Perfectly good store he coulda run. Except for all the werewolves scaring off business.”
Pamela rolled her eyes. “I’ve told you a million times. They don’t have anything to do with how many people stop in your shop, Gramps. You need to advertise. Some flyers, a web page. Something.”
“When you take over the shop, you can advertise.” He shuffled past her with a heavy crate in his arms. The crate was full of Mason jars, small ones that held things like jam, and they jangled as he set the crate on the bottom step.
“There you go,” he said. “All the Rooroo dust I could get on short notice. I expect to be informed the next time we poke the Hush in their holes, Crossroads.” He stomped up the stairs and past all three of us. “Is that waffles I smell? Hey, Rigg! Dish me up a three stack. I do my best rescuing on a full belly.”
I expected to hear snarling, arguing, some kind of push back. But someone said something, and half the place started chuckling.
“He’s got a big mouth,” Pamela said, “but a bigger heart. He told me Abbi was missing. From how worried all the wolves were, we figured it was supernatural. The Hush?”
“The Hush,” Ricky agreed. “Do you know what Abbi is?”
“Moon Rabbit, right?”
Ricky nodded.
Pamela grinned, and I could see the freckle-faced child she’d once been. “Gramps thought she was a moon goddess, but I was pretty sure she was the Rabbit. Just won me a dinner at Applebee’s.”
