“Where the fuck is my daughter?”she asked, furious.
“Um.”
Will took an involuntary step back, the woman’s yelling making his anxiety spike with sudden force.
“Ma’am, your daughter isn’t here.”
Carl swooped in, pushing Will aside to face the woman head-on.Will recognized it as a protective move rather than a dick move, but he still didn’t like it.
“My younger daughter came home, telling me the young man who lives here told her to go home, because he was going after the man who asked my older daughter for directions?What is going on in this place?Do I need to call—”
Before she could finish her threat, screams from down the street made her turn and hurry down the steps to the front gate.Carl followed.So did Will.A teenage girl ran straight up to the woman and threw her arms around her mother’s neck.
“Mom!That guy, he said he just wanted to show me something in the woods.And then he said his friend was coming, and he needed me to run so—”
“Where?”Will asked.
The girl pointed.
“I think I know where.Let’s move,” Carl said.
“He was supposed to stay inside.”Will ran after Carl.
“Well, he’s not here, is he?”
They made it to a small playground, and Will could sense the remains of a spell there.
“He did magic here.Uh.Magic almost gone, reveal yourself, anon!”
The magic came to Will as a smell: sunshine and smiles.Sage’s smell.
With his jaw set, Will followed the disintegrating spell, and Carl followed him.It was almost as if they were pack.
22
Sage
Sageran.Thewoodswere doing their best to hide him in the wake of his spell, but the loup-garou was behind him, the huge beast crushing saplings and tearing at the soft ground with steel-sharp claws.
He can smell me.Sage’s fear ramped up.
“Rose and bluebell, peppermint and pine, hide this smell, this smell of mine.”
The magic worked its way all over Sage’s skin, but magic itself had a scent for some shifters, and there was nothing Sage could do to hide that.At best, the confusion would slow the beast down, or so Sage hoped.
He crossed a small stream and scrambled uphill over a fallen tree trunk from which he collected scratches, splinters, and mud all over his clothes.The fucking loup-garou was still behind him.
A sliver of light caught Sage’s attention from his left, and he turned his head.A glass charm had been placed against the bark of a tree, and with time, the charm had grown into the tree.It was an Elven marker.
“Thank fuck.”
Sage ran for the tree and slammed his palm onto the marker.With a small dash of magic, the marker activated and pointed Sage in the right direction, although where precisely it was pointing him to, Sage could only guess.
There were many places the Elves in the region visited, and there were also places where Elves and humans interacted.The section of woods Sage had explored as a kid during the Easter Egg Hunt was one such area, but he doubted he’d run in that direction by some lucky twist of fate.
The loup-garou behind him seemed to be enjoying himself, if the heavy breathing was any indication.The beast tore through the woods and dragged his claws over rough bark, just so the sound could add to the terror.And it worked.
“I’m not made for this kind of shit.”Sage crawled under a trunk that was too large to climb.“I should stick to spelling cushions to grope and rubber gloves to have a libido.This just sucks.”
