“Why’d you ask, then?” I snapped, pacing toward one tunnel, then backtracking to the other, looking for clues. Maybe Rissa or Olive had dropped something.
Turning on the flashlight on my phone, I tried to pierce the darkness ahead, but it barely made a dent.
She shrugged. “You could’ve been referring to yesterday.”
I turned away, groaning under my breath.
Could I yell their names? If I dared, would they even answer?
As I swept my eyes across the dirt floor where the light reached, the lack of sticks or leaves or typical foresty things caught my attention. In fact, when I swung back around—yep, Ms. Lives Under a Tree but Doesn’t Notice Visitors stood on an actual rug. It was like one of those Persian designs, with blue-and-red patterns. She’d hung the lantern on a hook in the wall, casting warm light onto a soft mossy shelf beside it with... I squinted. Books? Either I’d hit my head harder than I’d realized, or these fae weren’t quite what I’d pictured.
“Please, miss, you have to help me,” a trembling voice said from the closest tunnel.
Fear coated the voice, returning me to myself. I searched for the owner.
It was a little boy.
I gasped in recognition—I’d babysat him a couple years ago, right before his family had moved out of town. Had the fae taken him too?
“Shoo,” the fox girl, Lore, said to the kid, unimpressed, waving a hand at him like he was a fly on the wall.
Okay, she was obviously in on the kidnapping scheme.
“Leave him alone,” I yelled, moving to stand between her and the kid. “Where’d you put the others?”
“Others?” Her brow furrowed as she glanced between me and the kid. “They tend to hunt solo.” Though her body language remained relaxed, I got the sense she was a little unhinged.
She reached into her pocket.
I tensed. Raising the metal weeder and shovel again, I braced myself for whatever she might do.
Lore pulled out something small and round. It looked like... a mirror?
Holding it up in our direction, she said, “Let’s see who you really are.”
“Me?” I squeaked, then realized she’d spoken to the boy. I glanced behind me, wondering what she expected him to do with a mirror, only to find him scuttling back with a hand over his face, making strange almost-growling noises.
“What the...” I muttered, turning back.
Catching a glimpse of the reflection, I gasped.
Whirling around, I expected to see the thing from the mirror with horns, hooves, and those beady red eyes, but it was still the little boy. He disappeared into the darkness of the tunnel.
“What was that?” I whispered, heart racing, jaw hanging open. I stared after the creepy thing. That was the second fae that I’d mistaken for a child.
“Just a boggart.” Lore shrugged again.
“A... what?”
“Don’t worry,” the fox girl said cheerfully. “That was a youngling. Nothing to be afraid of, unless there are others nearby.”
My brows whipped up. “Others?”
She glanced over my shoulder where it’d disappeared. “You make a good point.” She picked up the lantern, moving away from the stairs. Her shadow loomed large on the walls as she walked. “We should probably retire from the main tunnels, don’t you think?”
She stopped by the dirt wall across from the stairs, where the warm lantern light illuminated a round door. Its dark brown wood blended almost seamlessly into the dirt until she opened it.
Soft shuffling noises came from the tunnel behind me. I tensed, taking an unconscious step toward Lore.
