Oh god.
I lean over and aim my flashlight under the camper again, then I sag in relief when I spot her still frozen beside the back wheels. “Okay. You’re okay. You’re—aaahh!”
She’s gone.
One minute she was there, and the next?—
“Got her,” Giselle says. “Get inside. I’m calling the fucking exterminator and then I’m calling fucking Levi and then I’m booking myself on a month-long cruise somewhere without rodents and campfires and all of you.”
Davis pulls me to my feet.
It’s dark, the only light coming off a small lamp outside the camper and the fire, but I can tell he’s so grim-faced that he might as well be the grim reaper.
Coming to herald the death of his hair.
His wet, soggy hair.
“Get in the camper.” His voice is low. Gravelly. Full of suppressed emotion.
He knows.
He knows his hair is toast.
“Cat,” Giselle says, handing me Peggy. “Get in the trailer.Now.”
My body obeys because authority. Of course it does. “I—thank you.”
“Apologies for the nerve pinch. Most effective way to get you to do what I needed you to do. How’s your head? Manbun—get a first aid kit.”
“Manbun?” I stutter.
“That’s what they call—” She pauses and looks at him as all three of us hustle inside the camper, and my heart drops to my toes. “Called him. How’s your head? Are you scratched? Good thing you have the doc on speed dial if you need rabies shots.”
Davis’s hair.
His hair.
It’s crispy on one side, sticking up maybe three or four inches. When he let it down last night, it came down past his collarbones, and now—now that part won’t even reach his chin.
The other side still has something stuck in it.
Something—is that a pine cone?
“Sloane.Your head. Sit.”
I obey Giselle’s orders and drop onto the bench at the table, still clutching Peggy, who hasn’t purred once, and I keep staring at Davis.
His shirt is soaked.
His pants are soaked.
And there’s a half-singed pine cone stuck in what’s left of his manbun.
I got gum in my hair once when I was a kid.
Forbidden gum, of course.
I got lectured about gum being the devil’s handiwork the whole time Grandma was rubbing peanut butter into my hair to loosen the gum so we could wash it all out.
