And once the creature was dealt with, everything else couldfinallybegin.
An idea took hold, my skin prickling with anticipation.
“Isadora?” I asked, keeping my voice low, careful not to stir her already-fraying temper.
She didn’t look at me, instead tilting her head slightly in silent permission to continue.
I cleared my throat. “I was thinking—”
“I don’t pay you to think,” she snapped.
Technically, she wasn’t paying me at all. The moment I’d met her, dazzled by her beauty, I’d offered myself freely—my time,my labor, my loyalty, and anything else she could ever want from me.
But that was neither here nor there, so I pressed on. “Of course,” I said quickly. “It’s only that I think I might be more useful to you if you allowed me to cross the wards.”
The look she gave me was thunderous. “Is this a trick?” she hissed. Before I could answer, her tone softened, smoothing into something almost melodic.
“Tell me the truth, Ambrose.”
I let out a long breath, a strange calm settling over me. My words seemed to spill from me before they’d even formed in my head. “No, Isadora. It’s not a trick. I just want to use my shadows to capture the hob and reason with it. To convince it to come back. Or to chase it off for good. So we can finally move forward.” I hesitated, then added, carefully, “I was even thinking... once it’s dealt with, maybe we could take a vacation?”
Isadora didn’t answer right away. She stared past me, lips pursed, fingers tapping once against the table.
“A vacation?” she said at last.
My heart swelled. This was it. If we could sort the creature out and escape for a romantic stay, maybe then we could finally move forward in our relationship. Or, at the very least, manage a trip to the grocers together. The depleting stock of mortal food was starting to worry me as I already was struggling to make a meal that she wouldn't balk at, but she refused to let me cross the wards and go into town.
“Yes,” I said, unable to stop the hope creeping into my voice. “Once the hob is dealt with, I’d love to go away with you. I think Headless Hollow is quite close to here? I’ve never been, but I hear it’s the perfect retreat for supernaturals. And maybe we could...” I trailed off again, my imagination racing far ahead of my courage.
A slow smile spread across Isadora’s face.
“If you can capture that creature,” she said smoothly, “rid it of whatever is preventing me from compelling it, and bring it to me—then I’llconsidergoing on a vacation.”
I couldn’t help the smile that etched itself into my face.
“But you won’t try to run away from me if I let you past the wards?” she said. It was said like a question, but it landed as a command. “Don’t leave me, Ambrose.”
Either way, it didn’t matter. Isadora was my everything. There was nowhere else I wanted to be.
“Of course not,” I said, lifting my hand instinctively—then stopping short as I remembered the no-touching rule. I let it fall back to my side. “Sorry,” I added, silently praying to Hades that she wouldn’t snap.
The God of the Underworld must have been listening, because Isadora only sighed.
“Fine, Ambrose,” she said at last, a deep melody lacing her voice. “You may leave the wards to capture the hob. But whatever you do—donotlet it touch you. Do not let it fill your head with its lies. It’s a grubby little creature at the best of times, and a few weeks living in the forest has only made it worse.” She wrinkled her nose, as if she could already smell it. “Hose it down before you bring it inside.”
“Of course,” I said, already on my feet. “You just rest, and”—I slid my phone across the table, the ScareBnB app already open—“take a look at where you’d like to stay for our vacation.”
***
The moment I neared the property boundary, the wards felt... different.
For the past week, the closer I’d come to them, the more it’d felt like invisible ropes were pulling me back to the house, as if Isadora’s magic was meant to keep meinjust as much as itkept the hob out. This evening, though, that pressure was gone. Whatever change she’d made to the incantation had loosened its grip, and no unseen force compelled me back toward the house.
My fingers closed around the garden gate. Magic rushed over my knuckles and up my forearm, potent enough to raise the hairs along my skin. It was powerful work and despite myself, a sliver of admiration stirred for the small, stubborn creature that had made it its mission to test these wards.
The second the gate clicked shut behind me, the forest fell unnaturally quiet, the sounds dulling as if wrapped in wool. All I could hear was the insistent thud of my own heartbeat, loud in my ears, and beneath it, Isadora’s faint, persistent whisper—Don’t leave me, Ambrose.
I steadied my breath, willing the pounding of my heart to slow as I listened for movement. My shadows rolled out from me, slipping between trees and underbrush, probing the darkened crevices where a hob might hide.
