“You must open the pathway or make him do it!” Feta pointed to Bruce.
“I can’t promise that!” Laddin snapped back. “I’m just going to do research. That’s all I can do!”
Feta frowned, taking a long moment to think. Then he turned toward the other cheeses. “Research,” he said as he looked at his fellow cheeses. “Research?”
There was a moment of silence as all the cheeses looked at one another. And then, on the far side of Bruce, came a tinkling cry.
“Research! Research!”
The others took it up. In fact, the string cheese that bound his ankles abruptly unrolled and clapped its hands. “Research! Research!”
Laddin took a moment to breathe, but it did nothing to calm his racing heart. “So, we’re agreed, right?” he asked. “I promise to do research.”
“You promised to give us answers.”
“Answers?” he echoed. Fine. He’d give them answers. They might not like what he found out, but that’s what he’d give them. “Agreed.” Whatever it took to get the hell out of here.
“Agreed,” Feta said, and there was weight behind the word unequal to the stature of the tiny fey. In fact, the impact of that single word hit him as hard as if he’d taken a blow to the sternum from a sledge hammer. “Report back in seven minutes.”
“What?” Laddin gasped. “No! That’s not enough time.”
“It is the standard time frame.”
“Bullshit. It’s usually a day or a year. Didn’t Rumpelstiltskin give the miller’s daughter overnight to do that straw-into-gold thing?”
Behind him, Bruce snorted his disgust. Laddin couldn’t blame him—he didn’t think he got that fairytale even remotely right either. But it didn’t matter. Feta stomped his foot and created a noxious cloud.
“Agreed. Report here at dawn with your answers.”
Laddin didn’t like it, but his mind was frazzled, his heart beat a zillion times a minute, and he was clammy with sweat. At that moment, he’d agree to give over whatever answers they wanted, as long as it got them out of there without another damned piece of cheese attaching itself to his body. So he nodded. “Fine. Tomorrow at dawn, right back here.”
“Agreed!” Feta cried as he stomped his foot.
Laddin pushed to his feet, his knees barely strong enough to support him. He was shaking, he now realized, but as he took a tentative step, Bruce came to his side and used his large wolf body to brace him.
Thank God.
They began to walk away. They plodded steadily, carefully. It was a long way back to the house, and they both glanced behind often. Every time, the cheeses waved cheerily at them, but they didn’t follow and were soon lost to view.
If only the feeling of dread climbing into Laddin’s chest could disappear so easily. He hadn’t read the full history of Wulf, Inc. Hell, he hadn’t even read half. But he had read the parts where the message was always and forever,Never Bargain with Fairies. It was like a corporate motto or something. In fact, it had been etched into stone at Wulfric’s first home in America.
So what had Laddin done on his very first solo mission? He’d bargained with fairies.
“I think I screwed up,” Laddin finally said as the house came into view. “I don’t know how yet, but I have this lousy feeling that tells me I’m in trouble.”
Bruce responded with a snort that sounded very much like “Duh.”
Chapter 10
SITTING ON THE PORCH SINGING THE WEREWOLF BLUES
LADDIN WASscrewed. Bruce knew very little about all this fairy werewolf magic stuff, but he did know people. He knew that as much as Bitterroot tried to make nice with him, the fairy was trying to trap him. He could smell the stink of manipulation flowing off the elf. He could also tell that the little pixies were funny mischief-makers, but there was a real agenda behind their actions. It was like a fighting a fire. The element wasn’t evil, but it was implacable. And those damned pixies had an agenda and wouldn’t rest until they consumed everything in their path on their way to whatever goal they had.
Unfortunately, Laddin had landed himself smack-dab in the center of their crusade. And as much as Bruce wanted to tell the man to wise up, his wolf mouth wasn’t forming the words. So he padded along beside Laddin and tried every way he could think of to become human again.
No-go.
The best he could do was lean against the man’s leg, trying to tell him in an animal way that he would do what he could to help. But he was a big wolf, and Laddin wasn’t large enough to take his weight without stumbling. Worse, Laddin thought Bruce was the one who needed comfort.
