Did I eat too much yesterday?she wondered as she stared at the broken chair legs in bewilderment.No, that’s ridiculous. And I can’t imagine the chairs here would be so flimsy – Sylvie really looks like she cares a lot about every aspect of this place. So what –
As if on cue, her phone buzzed in her bag.
Oh. Oh no. Really?!
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Henry asked her again as he slowly helped her to her feet. “No pain? You grimaced just then.”
“No, no, it’s not that, I promise I’m fine,” Luna said, shaking her head and trying to ignore the grim feeling that was welling up inside her. “I just… have a weird feeling I just got a text message. And Ialsohave a feeling I know what it’s going to be about.”
In amongst all the excitement of the morning, she’dalmostmanaged to forget the reason Henry had stayed over in her room last night to begin with.
Luna reached into her bag and pulled out her phone. Sure enough, there it was – a message from the sameUnknownnumber as usual.
“Wait,” Henry said, as he stared down at her phone. “Is that –”
“Yeah.” Luna nodded. “Let’s see what they have to say this time.”
She forced her hands not to shake as she unlocked the phone and pulled up the message, reading it over. Not that there was much point, since it was pretty much the same as all the others.
DO YOU HEED MY WRATH? NOW DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHY IT WAS WRONG TO IGNORE ME? TREMBLE AT MY POWER!
“I guess they’re talking about their power to make chair legs snap at will,” Luna said, trying to sound jovial, but the truth was she was more than alittlefreaked out. Sure, the text didn’tspecificallymention that, but wasn’t thismorethan a little bit of a coincidence in terms of timing?
Especially in combination with everything yesterday,Luna thought, swallowing.
“Whoever this guy is, he needs to be stopped,” Henry said darkly, and when Luna glanced across at him she could see his eyes were practically smoldering with anger. She placed a calming hand on his arm.
“It’s fine, I’m really not hurt,” she told him.
“But how much longer will this go on until youare?” Henry asked her, looking at her as if he wanted to sweep her up into his arms and carry her off somewhere – which Lunareallywould not have objected to, but she knew that wasn’t quite the point just now.
“I guess that’s true,” she said reluctantly. “But I still think thiscouldbe all just some weird coincidence. I mean, that’s justtooweird, right? Like, what is whoever this is doing?Makingmy chair break? Somehow fixing it so all the sweets I wanted get sold out the moment before I can buy them and then texting me about it? That’s just… well, doesn’t that sound ridiculous to you?” She laughed. “And you were the only person here with me – no onemadethe chair break. No one could have known I’d be sitting in it, so it’s not like they could have come by earlier and sabotaged it.”
As she spoke, Henry started to look just a little sheepish – but still, not entirely convinced.
“I know itsoundsridiculous,” he said. “But until it happened, I would have said being followed around by lovey-dovey animals was ridiculous as well. But itdidhappen, and if I’ve learnedanything from being a shifter, it’s that there’s more weirdness out there than you’d think.”
“Okay. That is… a very good point, actually,” Luna admitted. Henry just seemed so… sonormal, ability to turn into a hellhound and – apparently – phase through walls aside, that she had a hard time associating him with anything like creepy texts or mysteriously broken chairs. “I guess I just –”
“Whoa, what happened here?”
Luna jumped a little at the sound of the voice from behind her.
When she turned, she had to admit her eyebrows went up a bit – while, naturally, the man standing behind her, his arms filled with boxes of what looked like the reddest, juiciest strawberries she’d ever seen, couldn’t compare to Henry, hewasamazingly good-looking, with twinkling silver eyes and thick dark hair, graying at the temples, which gave him a very dashing look. It seemed like Natasha hadn’t been lying when she’d said there were good-looking men in Girdwood Springs!
Judging from the boxes of produce, Luna assumed this guy must work at the café – and he was probably therefore pretty curious as to why one of their chairs was lying on the floor, virtually destroyed.
But before she could begin to explain what had happened –And how exactly do I explain that anyway?!– she heard Henry suck in a quick, sharp breath through his teeth.
“Ah,” Henry said a moment later, a little frown on his lips. “Nowit all makes sense.”
Luna glanced at him, raising a quizzical eyebrow. What was Henry talking about?
“Wait a moment.” The man with the strawberries was frowning now too. “IknewI sensed something weird around here. You’re a hellhound.”
Luna blinked, surprise rippling through her. Was this… good? Or bad? Should this man be able totellapparently just by looking at him that Henry was a shifter? Why couldn’tshedo that?
“And you’re a unicorn,” Henry replied. “Ithoughtthat food tasted too good to be true. Now I get why.”
