“I was already thinking about it earlier,” Baz said. “I just didn’t realize it was this urgent.”
A dark shape appeared from between two houses. Arden jumped, then realized it was Declan with a hood over his head. He was wearing a camo rain jacket—apparently the one person in the group who had thought to bring one.
“Fern wasn’t with Baz,” Lexie called. “Any luck?”
“Nope.” Declan strode swiftly across the water in the street, and Arden saw that it wasn’t deep enough to completely submerge his low-topped boots, but it was very muddy. By the time he reached their side and stepped out on the wet boardwalk, his boots were caked with mud. “I didn’t see any sign of her. One thing I do know, she’s been trying to find the wishing well everyone keeps going on about. And it’s supposedly over by Silver Creek somewhere.”
Baz cursed quietly. “I was afraid of that. Okay, everybody spread out. Lexie, you go upstream, Declan downstream, and Arden and I will take the middle section by the town. If anyone finds her, yell or something. Damn it, we gotta get cell service in this town soon.”
Lexie and Declan both stood looking at him.
“If you want to go somewhere else, do that,” Baz snapped. “I don’t care. Let’s just decide what quadrant of the creek we’re searching and get to it.”
Declan shrugged and went upstream, rather than downstream as instructed.
“We’ll meet at Fern’s place!” Baz called after him. To Lexie, he said, “Look, someone’s gotta be in charge.”
“I know,” Lexie said. She frowned at him. “Me, him, or you. We gotta hammer it out sooner or later. See you at Fern’s.”
With that, she slogged off through the mud and rain, headed downstream.
Baz groaned. “Like herding cats,” he said. He gave Arden a little jerk of his head and began walking. “You can go somewhere else if you like; you don’t have to stay with me. But I think it’s better for us to stay together.”
“Why not them?” Arden asked defensively. She wrapped her arms around herself. Even in the poncho, she was cold. She couldn’t imagine how Baz and his group were putting up with it; they were all soaked to the skin.
“Because you’re a human,” Baz said simply. “We can shift. If we get washed off our feet, our animals are strong swimmers.”
“Oh.” In truth, she had nearly forgotten that shifting came with some pretty big physical advantages. “What about Fern? Can’t she do that too? Or can she not shift? She told me she was a bear.”
“She can shift.” Baz jammed his hands into his pockets and looked at her through the rain. “You were right earlier when you pointed out that Fern is an adult and she can take care of herself. Probably a lot better than most people, because most people can’t shift into a grizzly bear.”
“Understatement,” Arden muttered. She tried to suppress a little shiver that snaked down her spine. She was safe with them, she reminded herself. Shifters were just regular people who turned into animals, not anything weird and scary and different.
“But Fern is ... Fern,” Baz went on. “I guess every friend group has the baby of the group, and Fern was always ours, even though technically, Declan and Maida are a few months younger. There’s just always been something kind of different about her. We all have wanted to protect her ever since we were little kids.”
“You know, that might be why she goes off on her own every chance she gets,” Arden said. “Maybe she doesn’t like that. Maybe she wants to figure out who she is without a bunch of big brothers and sisters hovering over her.”
It was the opposite of her own problem. But in some sense, it was related. She didn’t really know who she was yet, because she had nearly been crushed by the weight of other people’s expectations. In Fern’s case, it was more benign; they just wanted to protect her, not mold her into some sort of obedient knockoff version of themselves.
But it was similar.
“Maybe,” Baz began. Then he stopped walking with a low whistle. “Hoo-eee. Look at the creek!”
As they walked and chatted, Arden had been vaguely aware of the roar growing louder. Now they stood facing an expanse of rushing brown water that was at least thirty or forty feet across. The creek had completely filled the meadow surrounding it. Somewhere under there was the original streambed and the bathing pool where Arden had enjoyed her refreshing dips. But it was invisible beneath the roiling surface. The air smelled like rain and mud.
“You’re right,” Arden said. She had to pitch her voice louder to be heard over the floodwaters. “If Fern is on the other side, she couldn’t possibly get back.”
“You’re right too,” Baz pointed out. “As a grizzly bear, she could. But she might not try. If she went downstream, there’s a culvert at the road. She might cross there.”
“Lexie is searching downstream. In that case, they’ll find each other, maybe.” She looked at Baz curiously. “Do you have like ... extra sharp shifter senses? A sense of smell or something? Can you track her?”
For some reason, this made Baz blush lightly, a faint pink that rose to his cheekbones. “Yes, my sense of smell is better than a human’s, but this is very challenging for tracking. Heavy rain and flowing water make the worst conditions to try to follow a scent trail.”
The rain continued to pour down, sluicing off her poncho, flattening Baz’s hair and rendering it several shades darker than its usual sandy brown. Arden tucked her cold, wet hands up the sleeves of her poncho, warming them against her wrists like she remembered doing on sledding hills as a kid.
The roaring water was mesmerizing. She couldn’t get over how it had changed from the friendly, flowing creek where she had collected drinking water and bathed. How much deeper could it get? Already it had covered the meadow in shallow but fast-moving water, the tops of grasses dipping and bobbing as the water swirled around them. Nearer to the main channel, the grass had been flattened enough to vanish completely beneath the brown surface.
“If Fern is on the other side, how on earth can we find her?” she asked Baz.
