“Oh?” She moved in closer, a predator ready to pounce. “Who are your friends, Brogan Gauge?” She wrapped her hands around me, sticking slim fingers just beneath the edge of my belt.
“You,” I said, breathy and hypnotized.
“No, I’m more than that. Who’s just a friend of yours?”
“Lorde.”
“Lorde is a dog.”
“Man’s best friend.”
“Valentine,” Lu said.
“I’ve heard of him.”
“He could be your friend. I think he wants to be.”
“I don’t like ghosts.” I wanted to capture the light flowing through her, the joy she was finding in just this moment, in an argument that I didn’t care if I won or lost.
“Ricky is your friend,” she said.
“No, she’s not.”
“She certainly the hell is,” Ricky said, breaking the moment.
I scowled at her. Most of the werewolves were watching Lu and I with heads tipped, like we were a double feature with free popcorn refill.
“Private conversation,” I growled. A wave of amusement rolled through the connections.
“Wrong time for privacy,” Ricky noted, “and wrong time for conversation. We need to hit while the magic’s hot. You have your weapons?”
Lu and I nodded. We hadn’t escaped the last trip into the caverns with the weapons she had given us, but Ricky had produced two more. For Lu, another dagger, for me, another lightning rod. Both a little different, but still wielding magic that should stop the Hush.
“You’re not going in with us are you, Ricky?” Lu asked.
“I’ll stay out here. The connections…” Her eyes flashed lavender, before going back to a warm brown. “…they are a lot for me to hold. Especially this far away from my house.”
“You don’t have to carry all of us,” Lu said. “Brogan and I—”
“It’s all or nothing, Lu-lala. Against the Hush that even the Moon Rabbit couldn’t escape? We stick together. Don’t worry,” she added with a grin. “I only plan on doing it once. So you’d better bring Abbi and Hado out of there.”
“Good thing we have such a bullet-proof plan,” I said.
Our plan had two steps. One: Find Abbi and her Shadow. Two: get out alive.
The sun sank toward the horizon, slow and warm as molasses. It wouldn’t be fully dark for at least two hours, but our connections wouldn’t last for much longer than that.
Now was the time to enter the cave. Now was the time to save Abbi.
I pulled Lu closer, threading my fingers up along her cheek and into the wild autumn of her hair. She came to me until we stood, forehead to forehead.
“I love you,” I said.
“I love you,” she replied.
Her words settled in me, and the roaring wave of noise, feelings, sensations bombarding me through the connections, eased.
Summer spoke in a low voice. “We go in packs of three. Riggs will take all the right branching tunnels, Kearneys, left.”
