“Baz, what on earth was that?”
“What was what?” Baz asked, wearing the world’s least convincing innocent face.
“That—thatthing!” Arden was already struggling to make sense of what she’d seen. Maybe it really had been a large bird, an eagle or something. But surely no eagle was that huge. It was like a small airplane had passed overhead, except it had made no noise at all. A crashing airplane, after something had gone wrong with its engines? No, that made no sense either. She would have heard it hit the ground, or the engines start up again, orsomething.
“Look, let’s deal with this later,” Baz said, steering her with a hand in the small of her back. In spite of her confusion, she leaned into the touch. “We need to get in out of the wet and check on Fern. We can talk about this later.”
Arden recognized that tone of voice.Approximately as soon as I’m going to tell him about Grant.But she looked up repeatedly as Baz ushered her under the trees towards the backs of the houses.
There was something else in these woods, something other than feral shifters.
Something even scarier.
Arden heardthe low noise of a generator as they got closer to Lexie’s blacksmith shop, and light streamed out of the windows into the gray, rainy twilight of early evening. When Baz opened the door, welcome heat washed over them. There was a fire burning in the stove, and delicious food smells made Arden’s stomach growl.
“Oh good, we were just about to send out a search party!” Lexie called. “Or maybe launch an ark.”
She was stirring something on top of the stove. It sizzled and smelled good. Next to the stove, Declan was toweling his hair dry, as if he’d just come in from outside.
“Here,” Declan said. He tossed Baz a dry towel.
Baz handed it off to Arden. “Where’s Fern? How is she?”
Lexie pointed with her spatula. Fern was lying on a sleeping bag, wrapped in blankets. Her damp hair straggled across someone’s rolled-up shirt that had been pressed into service as a pillow.
“She’s all right,” Lexie said. “She keeps drifting in and out. We’re getting her warmed up. Do you guys want some hot coffee?”
Arden thought wistfully of their abandoned, unmade cocoa. Still, coffee sounded wonderful. Or anything hot. “Yes, please.”
Lexie offered a spare set of her own clothes to change into and gestured Arden into the back, where Arden found that there were attached living quarters, chilly but private. It looked like Lexie had started setting it up and unpacking. She had a surprisingly amount of stuff, tossed around without much concern for niceties like “folding.” A piece of rusty equipment (a lathe? Arden had no idea what that thing was) seemed to have been pressed into use as a nightstand.
Arden realized she was still carrying the toy horse, and set it carefully on the makeshift nightstand beside a toothbrush cup and an e-book reader.
The clothes Lexie had given her, a hoodie and a pair of jeans, were too large in some places and too tight in others; she had to roll up the sleeves of the sweatshirt and the cuffs of the jeans, and she could barely get them over her hips. But they were blessedly warm and dry, especially when paired with a set of fluffy knit socks that looked handmade.
She came out of the back to find Baz drying off next to the fire. Declan had disappeared, but showed up again a moment later, ducking through the door with a bundle of dry clothing tucked under his jacket.
“Here,” he said, thrusting it at Baz. “Appreciate my sacrifice, because now I’m wet again.”
Baz laughed, although his gaze kept going to Fern, quick worried glances in between his obvious pleasure at being reunited with his friends and clan-siblings again. He also noticed Arden come back in; she caught the quick flick of his hazel eyes, the pleased quirk of a smile.
Casually he began taking off his damp T-shirt (Arden swallowed) as he turned to ask Declan, “Is it still raining out there?”
“I told you I was going to build an ark,” Lexie said under her breath. She began setting out plastic bowls.
“I think it’s slackening some,” Declan said. He picked up one of the damp towels and began scrubbing it through his messy mop of black hair. “Creek’s still loud, but it doesn’t seem to be rising anymore.”
Arden cleared her throat, trying to look anywhere but at Baz, who was stripping in front of her for the second time in an hour. Life was either being wonderful to her today, or confronting her with torment. Her mind was full of the touch of him, the taste of him.
But Fern stirred and moaned before Arden could allow herself more than a few quick peeks at Baz’s bare chest. Immediately the conversation stopped. It was Lexie who reached Fern first, after shoving her spatula into Declan’s hands.
“Honey, are you okay?” she asked, laying her hand on Fern’s forehead with the brisk, businesslike touch of an experienced big sister.
Fern blinked at the ceiling. “Arden?” she whispered.
“Arden?” Lexie asked in surprise. By now the rest of Fern’s small family of age-mates—Baz and Declan—were clustered around her. Arden had taken a step back to stay out of the way of their reunion. Hearing her name surprised her.
“I’m here,” she said hesitantly, moving forward a little. “I’m, uh. I’m okay. Are you?”
