A… a UNICORN?!
Luna turned, her mouth dropping open. She couldn’t help it –unicornswere real now, apparently?! Why hadn’t Henry mentioned this sooner?
If unicorns and hellhounds are real, then what else is real?she thought, her head spinning.Manticores? Pegasi? Griffins? DRAGONS?
Shaking her head, Luna tried to push the thought aside, worried that if she focused too much on it now she was just going to have some kind of mental breakdown. There’d be time for that later, once she’d figured out what was going on right in front of her.
“I’m not here to cause any trouble,” Henry said a moment later, lifting his hands. “The opposite, in fact. I really just wanted some peace and quiet – it was my plan just to spend my time out in the mountains. Being in town is kind of an accident.”
Luna bit her lip. The tension in the strawberry man’s shoulders was clear, and she wondered if there was some kind of… ancient magic grudge between unicorns and hellhounds. It’d make about as much sense as anything else she’d heard over the past couple of days.
Thankfully, after a moment the strawberry man seemed to relax. Perhaps he could hear the sincerity in Henry’s voice.
“I believe you.” Strawberry Man – Unicorn? – gave a quick smile. “Sorry, I was just a bit startled. I could sense…something,I just wasn’t expecting a hellhound.” A frown passed across hisface. “But having said that, I don’t think that’s theonlything I sense. And it doesn’t really explain the broken chair.”
“That was me,” Luna jumped in. “Sorry. I just… I, uh… well, you see…”
“No, no, actually… I think I can tell.” The man was staring at her now, his eyes narrowed, a look of concentration on his face. “You have a curse following you.”
Luna started at him, her heart hammering.A… a what?!
“Acurse?” she blurted, knowing her eyes were as round as saucers. “But there’s no such thing as –”
She snapped her mouth shut quickly.
Clearly, therewassuch a thing as curses.
Of course there is,Luna thought, resigning herself to it.If there’s such a thing as shifters and hellhounds and unicorns, then ofcoursethere’s such a thing as curses.
“How can you tell?” Henry asked, his voice a little wary.
“Unicorns can see these things,” the man said. “Not very well – we’re not like wyverns, we can’tseemagic – but there’s a little shimmering aura around you, and I can see it’s nothing good. But it doesn’t seem to be that strong either – it’s not deadly or anything like that. Justinconvenient.”
“You can say that again,” Luna muttered, looking down at the broken chair. Worrying about whether her chair was going to collapse under her every time she sat down for the rest of her life wasn’t exactly something she particularly felt like dealing with, dangerous or not. Although her stalker friend seemed to delight in doing something different every time, so maybe she never had to worry about it happening again?
Her head hurt.
“But you say she’s not in any danger?”
Henry’s voice was deadly serious, and Luna had to admit that it was flattering – not to mention comforting – to have someonebe that concerned with her welfare. She could definitely see how he had managed to make a living working in security.
Strawberry Man shook his head. “No danger at all, unless you count things like mild embarrassment and stubbed toes as dangerous.”
I do! I definitely do!
“But I can see why you’re concerned,” he continued. “I’d be worried, too, if my mate was under a curse.”
Luna blinked. “You… you can tell that we’re mates?”
The guy looked apologetic. “Sorry – I know it’s a bit strange. It’s just part of being a shifter. Oh. Wait.” He glanced at Henry, a look of horror crossing his face. “I didn’t just reveal anything I shouldn’t have, did I?”
Henry shook his head. “No – but if you’d arrived fifteen minutes ago, you might have.”
“Oh, gee.” The guy looked embarrassed. “I’m really sorry I ran my mouth. And if I was interrupting an important moment.”
“The chair pretty much took care of that already,” Henry said smoothly, a little smile quirking the corner of his mouth. “No harm done, and no need for an apology.”
Luna, however, wasn’t thinking about that.Wait, he saidhehad a mate too? Is there someone I could talk to about what all this means?
