I nodded, confirming I knew of Bale’s secret without divulging my own.
Then, teasingly, I held up my injured hand and wiggled the fingers with a smirk. “You’re not so helpless yourself.” The fresh blood was still mapping small rivulets on both sides of my hand.
It seemed that her anger faltered momentarily as she struggled to find whatever words she had intended to say.
After a huff, she handed out her verdict, but it came out with less conviction than her verbal assault on Bale. “You enable him!”
Bale gave a mock wounded expression as he placed a hand to his chest. “It’s true, Corb. You spoil me. Always leading the girls to my field. I’m just a victim of poor circumstances.” He added a pout for extra theatrical flavor.
My eyes narrowed dangerously, unamused by his words, sarcastic or not.
“Give it a break, Bale,” I said through my teeth in warning. Then, I looked at Harlow and shook my head. “He’s being a bastard. Let me walk you home? We can talk if you want, or not. Your choice.”
She straightened up, squaring her shoulders. “I can find my own way. Besides, it seems like the two of you have some shit to work out amongst yourselves.”
Rolling my shoulders, it was a pathetic attempt to hide the way they had slumped in disappointment.
When no argument came from either of us, she curtly nodded and walked off toward the courtyard of festivities. I didn’t take my eyes off her.
Bale propped his elbow on my shoulder as he also took in the sight of her walking off.
“She loves us,” he stated confidently.
I made a sound that was half between a chuckle and a scoff. “Is that what you think? If so, you haven’t gotten any better at reading women in the last century.”
Purposely, I sidestepped so his elbow dropped from my shoulder. My hands patted my pockets, searching for my pack of cigarettes. Each pocket checked turned up empty.
“Oh, come on. Fucking curse magic can ensure my socks end up on the right feet, but can’t keep track of a pack of?—”
A low, two-note whistle came from Bale to hook my attention. When I looked up, he held the pack between his two fingers.
Grunting, I plucked the cardboard box from him, and he didn’t dare stop me. Didn’t bother preventing my blood from staining the paper of the cigarette I pulled out.
“Bad habit. It has a nasty reputation for starting fires it shouldn’t,” he remarked in clear disapproval.
“Yeah? Maybe this year the closingbonfire will actually burn instead of sitting pretty,” I mumbled around my cigarette as my lighter flared at the tip of it.
He chuckled. “When monkeys fly.”
Chapter
Eleven
The goddamn nerve of those two. I had spent almost a decade carefully guarding my secret ability to become a furball, only to have it exposed twice in one night.
Somehow Bale had sniffed out what I was. Was it part of his whole scarecrow persona? I knew that even in my human form, I possessed certain attributes that were a little beyond the human average.
It should have been a silver lining that Bale held his own twisted secret, making it unlikely for him to divulge mine. But then there was Corbin. What was to stop him from telling everyone in this rinky-dink town what I was?
The only thing that put me at ease and cut through my paranoia was that, clearly, he was reliable enough to protect Bale from being exposed. It still left me feeling vulnerable, a feeling I didn’t handle very well.
How does one even become a scarecrow shifter anyway? It was just one of many questions nagging at me without answers.
Each stomp of my foot on the path leading back to the lingering festivities in the courtyard was firmer than the last.
I could feel the start of a splitting headache pulsing at my temples. The taste of Corbin still lingered on my tongue.
Shit. I hadn’t meant to bite him. In my flight mode, all I knew was that a pair of large hands had grabbed me. The effort to think past the assumption of danger had been too little too late when survival was baked into my blood.
