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After my big, tough jock got a sip of water to wash down some aspirin and a jerky stick and took a long pee in the fireplace, he made his way back to the center of the room.

He moved like Yeye on a cold winter morning.

Lowering himself down beside me, he tore into another jerky stick, the rich smell of meat and garlic permeating the cabin. All the while, something paced outside, clawing at the ratty boards on the broken windows and making wet gurgling noises that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. The rain pelted down in sheets, the room nearly as dark as it had been at night.

“How are you feeling?” I asked and got a shrug.

“Like I drank a few gallons of kerosene,” Phil answered and resumed chewing. “I’m sorry I got stupid last night.”

“It’s okay,” I replied and opened the hedge witch’s book to the pages I had marked with tiny strips of tissue from our bag. There was no way a person who spends all day with books would ever turn down a page. Sorry, but so NOT sorry.

“No, it was shitty. I’m a shitty boyfriend. I wrecked the truck, drank the monster repellent, and then passed out.” He heaved a sigh that would have blown over a small child.

“To be fair, the hidebehind leaped out in front of you, making you swerve, like a deer only with jagged teeth and a love of human flesh. So that was not your fault.”

He thought about that as he chewed and bobbed his gold head in agreement. “Right, sure, that tracks. The drinking the baijiu and then leaving you to face this asshole,” he jerked his chin at the western wall where Ugly McUglison was snorting at a small crack between two two-by-fours, “that was all on me.”

“Phil, baby, I don’t blame you for anything. Honestly. You got into the baijiu because your parents dropped down out of the blue like two bigoted buzzards, played on our weaknesses, and flew off to let you deal with the emotional trauma. Again. They seem to have a pattern of dropping shit on you then turning their backs on you when you need support the most. Can I say I don’t like them very much?” He nodded. “Cool. Also, I’m kind of sickened at how I hesitated at the offer of money.”

“It’s a lot of money, Arch.” He offered me a bite of his meat stick. I shook my head. I’d soon eat the small bag of nuts which lay in the bottom of our overnight bag. My stomach was not happy with the mere sight of that greasy jerky log. “Also, we’ll be giving it to Yeye, and that’s a good thing.”

I gave him a flimsy smile. It was a good thing, but I suspected once Yeye found out, he’d be madder than a wet chicken. As Monique liked to say, we’d cross that bayou when we got to it.

“Let’s not be hard on ourselves, okay?” I offered as I placed Elspeth’s book on my thigh. “I’ve been napping and reading all night, and I think I might have a plan. Sort of.”

He scooted closer, kissed my cheek, and then burped softly. “Oh, sorry. That was rude. I wanted to kiss you because you’re so smart and pretty. I love you.”

“I love you too.” And I did, with my whole heart, so I pressed my lips to his even though his were coated with whatever kind of meat they form into a stick. “Mm, you taste good.” He didn’t. He tasted of garlic, which was better than what his breath would have been. Hangover breath would melt bricks. “So, now that we’re mostly here in mind and body, I have a plan.”

“Cool.” The eastern window rattled. From wind or creature, I couldn’t be sure. “What’s the plan?”

“We’re going to use some of the entries in this book of Elspeth’s to drive the monster into a circle where we’re going to set things on fire and roast him.”

Phil looked stunned. “Really? I mean…that seems a little drastic. Can’t we just catch him in a net? Oh! Or with an anti-personnel mine. Like they did in Predator!”

“First off, do you have an anti-personnel mine?”

“No,” he sheepishly answered.

“Me either. Also, do you remember how well those traps they built to catch that alien worked?”

“Dutch did a number on him at the end,” he pointed out.

“Fair, but we’re not Dutch. And we don’t have the tools required to make counterweight logs and sharpened spikes.”

“Yeah, I guess. We could do the mud trick though! It’s raining really hard.”

Bless his heart, he did love Arnold movies. “We could, but that was proven to not be a good method of blocking body heat on MythBusters.”

“Really? Man, that sucks. Well, okay, we’ll skip the mud and shit. What do you have planned?”

“Okay, so here’s my thoughts.” I began leafing through Elspeth’s tome, stopping at a page midway through—skipping the first half, which was solely dedicated to getting rid of cheating lovers in unique and rather terrifying ways—to the monster section. “She talks of making smudges, which we could do easily enough. The smudges would drive it away long enough for us to set up the second phase. Then she goes on to break down how to set up a ceremonial ring with hunks of meat as lure. She claims she used lamp oil and wicker trinkets at the perimeter, and once the monster stepped in, she cast a blazing volley to light it.”

“No shit!? She really cast a flame spell?”

“Not really. She threw a torch at it.”

“Oh man, a blazing volley spell would have been epic!”