“Crow?” he asked.
“Oh, yeah, sometimes a crow will come by. Really, that’s the only animal I dream of, and only since I got to be friends with the crows living near me. Sometimes a man in a black suit shows up, too, but he’s always been around.”
Crow cawed loudly, and I directed my attention to where she was looking.
Oh. There was a man standing in the distance. I knew it was the man from earlier that day, and I wasnothappy to see him. I frowned, and Corbin growled next to me.
Yep—he growled. It was sort of sexy.
Only then he wasn’t Corbin anymore; he was a big-ass beast that had glowing flames dancing along its dark fur. My hand was still on him, although it was resting on his back now and not holding his hand. (Because, you know, he didn’t have hands. Because he wasn’t human Corbin anymore.) The crow had taken flight, and she landed on a tree branch just to the side of us.
“Oh. You’re new. I like you,” I said, giving him a friendly pat. “I must be listening to Toby’s ramblings about his current series too much, because I’d totally say hellhound. I bet Toby makes you all cute and fluffy in his books, though, and you look ferocious as hell in my dream.”
The hellhound-thingy looked up and smiled at me. (Yes, dogs could smile.) Then he went back to growling at the man.
I sighed. Yeah, the man. I guess I needed to deal with that.
With a thought, my cloak was on and I was carrying my staff, although I went with a dark color to match my hellhound’s fur. I mean, I wasn’t really a dark-color person, but I bet I looked totally badass in the midnight cloak, carrying the shiny black staff, with a fire-covered hellhound walking next to me.
I started walking toward the man, and the hellhound growled, but he followed me, my hand resting on his back the whole time.
Yep,totallybadass. I bet I could be on the cover of one of Toby’s paranormal romances. I would make a super cool picture.
But I was stalling, and I sighed as I got to the guy.
He was sort of staring into space, like he wasn’t really with it, and I knew if I talked to him he’d snap into focus. I didn’t really want to talk to him, though. He was an asshole. He was, in fact, the asshole who had been dead on the floor of that house I’d been in. He’d been beating up his own father. He’d been about tokillhis dad, for goodness sake.
“I didn’t invite him,” I said, and I sounded like a whiny kid to my own ears.
I heard a chuckle behind me, and when I turned around, I wasn’t surprised to see the man in the black suit striding toward me.
I pointed my staff at the guy, looking back at the man in black at the same time. “Take him back. I don’t want him.”
The man in black approached me and nodded in greeting at the hellhound beside me. To my surprise, the hellhound bared his teeth in a snarl.
“I’ll not hurt your mate, Baiga-hound,” the man said.
I wasn’t sure what the first word was, which was cool. I loved learning new things from my subconscious.
The man in black smiled at me. “It’s a word for sorcerer or medicine man, and it stems from a human tribe with a deep connection to their land.”
The hellhound’s hair bristled underneath my hands, and the man in black kept back a respectable distance, although he seemed more amused than frightened.
“That’s cool.” I turned back toward the asshole. “It doesn’t solve this guy, though. I don’t want him.”
“So you’ve said,” the man replied. “Unfortunately, you don’t really have a choice. You’ve collected him, and now he’s yours.”
I sighed dramatically. “I didn’twantto collect him.”
“What did you want to do?” the man asked.
I thought about that, staring at the guy and thinking about the whole weird situation yesterday. “Well, someone was due in that house, and it seemed a shame for it to be the nice old man. This guy was an asshole. He was beating up hisdad. And I get that he was high on drugs and they were arguing, but either one could’ve gone.” I paused, surprised that I knew that much about the guy. “I didn’t know I’d have tokeephim,” I added, looking back over at the man in black.
He just smiled fondly at me, even when my hellhound growled at him. “Sebbie, you don’t have tokeephim. You do have to choose what to do with him, however. That’s what happens when you reap.”
It seemed a weird phrase, and I wasn’t quite sure what he meant. Reap? And choose what?
“Well, you can bring him across the river,” the man said.
