by Nova Nelson
“You’re the first he’s been interested in, for what it’s worth, which is part of the reason I don’t understand why you two are hiding it from everyone.”
“To be fair, it’s mostly me that’s hiding it. Tanner doesn’t care if people know.”
He chuckled. “I figured. So, why don’t you want people to know?”
“It complicates things.”
“And takes you off the market.”
I jerked my head around to glare at him. “That doesn’t matter to me.”
“You said yourself, you were a self-sabotaging masochist in your past life. Maybe some of Old Nora stuck around, and she is interested in other people.”
“Not a chance,” I said. “You’re just projecting your own issues onto me.”
He shrugged. “Very likely. I have enough to go around.”
“And why is that? I hear your family is highly respected. As we accidentally established, you’re hot. Why don’t you have a girlfriend? Or do you? Ooh, maybe a secret one? Maybe that’s why it bothers you that Tanner has one, too.”
“You’re so right,” he said dramatically. “What have I been thinking all this time? I’m not an orphan, so I shouldn’t have any issues.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You basically did. But that’s fine. You want to know what my problem is? Tanner. Tanner is my problem. He’s my best friend, and he’s the biggest problem in my life.”
I didn’t understand, but then I remembered how nicely decorated Donovan’s home was. Ugh. Grim was probably right. “You’re in love with him,” I said.
Donovan froze then slowly turned his entire body to face me. “No. I’m not in love with him. Wait, you think I’m gay?”
I winced. “Maybe?”
He rolled his eyes. “No, Nora. I’m not gay and I’m not in love with Tanner. It’s more complicated than that. I shouldn’t have said anything about it.”
“No,” I said, jogging to catch him as he set forward again. “Explain, please. I’m sorry I made assumptions.”
“You wouldn’t understand anyway.”
“Try me.”
He adjusted the heavy canvas bag on his shoulder and sighed. “I’m single because I can’t get anyone to stick around.”
I bit my tongue to stay silent and let him continue.
“Tanner’s always been there for me, and we’ve been friends since we were little. I even knew his parents before they were killed. He’s the best guy I know. And that’s the problem. Growing up, I could always snag the girl I wanted, but eventually she would get to know Tanner and fall head over heels for him. I couldn’t compete. He was either oblivious to the girl’s feelings for him or knew but showed no interest. Because he’s so nice, it always took the girls a while to catch on. Sometimes they would come crawling back to me, but mostly they would move on.
“I’m just not made like him. I can’t connect with people that easily. I don’t know how to express my emotions like he does. I can’t make friends the way he can. I’m not going to stop being friends with him because he’s a better person than I am, but I get a little tired of him always being the standard I’m compared to.
“So, of course, if he’s your first contact in Eastwind, and then you meet me, yeah, you’re going to hate me. I expected that from the start.”
“I don’t hate you.”
“Right.”
“What? I don’t. Even though you’ve been a complete jerk to me since I first set foot in Franco’s Pizza. You’re just projecting again. If anyone here hates anyone else, it’s you hating me.”
He tilted his head back, shutting his eyes tight. “Are you kidding me?” He turned to me. “I don’t hate you, Nora. How do you not understand? You have the same walls, too.” He rested a hand on my shoulder. “I can feel it. You’re just like me.”
“The hell I am,” I said sharply, shrugging his hand off of me and hurrying after Grim who was, smartly, remaining far enough ahead to ignore the conversation taking place behind him.
“Nora!” he called after me.
“Hush!” came Grim’s voice in my head.
“Hush!” I said, relaying the message to Donovan.
My familiar had paused, one paw pointing as he scented the air.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Get behind me. Close,” he insisted.
I turned to Donovan and waved him over impatiently as I hurried to catch up to Grim. The two of us waited, and I strained through the silence, listening for what had raised Grim’s hackles.
“Something there?” Donovan whispered.
I shot him a fierce glare, putting my finger to my lips before mouthing wand. I nodded down at his waistband, and he quickly complied, holding it out at arm’s length as he turned in a slow circle, scanning the woods behind us. It was good thinking. Hidebehinds tended to sneak up from the rear, and it wouldn’t surprise me if that were the preferred method of attack for most of the innumerable predators in these woods.
“It’s coming this way,” Grim said. “I can smell it.”
“What is it?”
“Not sure yet. We’ll know soon enough.”
A moment that felt like a lifetime later, something massive rustled in the bushes ahead and to the left. Grim growled low, and Donovan put his wand at the ready. I’d never felt so useless in my life. No wand, no fangs, only a few half-hearted self-defense classes when I first moved to downtown Austin. A lot of good that would do against whatever unmentionable thing was stalking us now.
Then it burst from the shadows in a quick, clumsy leap and paused only a handful of yards off, staring at us with dumb recognition.
“It’s just an elk,” Donovan said, starting to lower his wand.
I reached forward and pushed his hand back up again. “Don’t be fooled. I had a friend who was almost killed by an elk. They’re dumb and dangerous.” Although, admittedly, I was relieved it was an animal I recognized instead of one I didn’t have a name for. But then I started to doubt myself. “Wait, that is just a regular elk, right? It’s not going to shoot fireballs out of its antlers or anything?”
Donovan stared down at me like I was crazy. “That’s not a thing.”
“It’s not a regular elk,” said Grim. “It’s a were-elk. And if the lingering smell of coffee and pie on its breath is any indication …”
“Deputy Manchester?” I said, taking a step forward.
“No kidding?” said Donovan, lowering his wand again.
The elk exhaled in a huff and nodded politely. Then a second later, he galloped off into the darkness.
“After the day he had, I don’t blame him for wanting to blow off a little steam,” Donovan said. “Since Eastwind is so uptight about shifted forms, werewolves and shifters have to come out here to let loose. I’ve heard Friday nights are quite the free-for-all out here.”
“Every night is a free-for-all out here, pretty boy,” Grim groused.
“We’ll probably owe him an explanation for why we’re out here,” Donovan said, “but if running into Stu Manchester is the worst that happens out here, we should consider ourselves lu—”
He disappeared in a flash, and were it not for the snarling and his yell, I would have thought he’d vanished into thin air.
The dark thing obscured Donovan’s body almost entirely from view. Was that Ba? Had it been waiting for us?
But Ba had maintained a smoke-like form in the vision, the one I was accustomed to seeing in spirits. Whatever was on top of Donovan, who kicked and fought from his position on the ground, was solid as the trees around us.
Grim attacked, fangs bared, and were I not so confused and terrified, I might have been impressed. For all the talk Grim had done about being a dangerous beast, I’d only once before seen any hint of it.
He crashed into the beast from the side, sending it tumbling across the crunchy forest floor. Donovan scrambled to his feet, searching around for something on the ground. “My wand! Where is my—”
Another figu
re tackled him from the other side, and his yelp was muffled by a ton of black fur I could only just make out.
Grim? But, no, Grim was still tussling with the original beast that had tackled Donovan.
“Hellhounds!” Grim shouted. “There’ll be a third on the way, Nora! Keep a look out!”
“And do what?” If the third showed up, I didn’t exactly have a way to defend myself.
A howl rose up behind me, turning my blood to ice. The other two hellhounds froze, climbing off of Grim and Donovan to stand tall and reply with their own howl.
“Oh poop,” Grim said.
“What? What is it?!”
“I know these jerks. Hold on, give me a second.”
As he strode toward the new arrival—the largest of the pack by about a foot in every direction—I hurried over to help Donovan back to his feet. “You okay?” I whispered, grabbing him under his armpits to get him up.
He stared wide-eyed at Grim and the hellhounds, saying nothing as the canines barked and growled back and forth. So I checked him for any injuries and found only a few raised claw marks down his arms. We’d need to wash those off for sure, but the beast hadn’t drawn blood. As I wiped the leaves and twigs off his back, he whispered, “What’s happening?”
“I think Grim knows them,” I said.
“Is that good?”
“I have no idea. They stopped attacking, didn’t they?”
“True. I can’t complain.”
When Grim trotted over to us again (the fact that he was willing to turn his back to them seemed a good sign), he said, “Looks like it’s our lucky day.”
“Meaning?”
“First of all, Donovan bore the brunt of the attack rather than you or me. Also, they’ve offered to guard us the rest of the way.”
“What? How did you manage that?”
“What’s he saying?” Donovan demanded. I waved at him to shut up for a second.
“Ba has been making their life difficult,” Grim explained. “Acher Lake is the main water source in their pack’s territory, and that thirsty demon drank it up. I told them we were going to stop it and if we did, the water would come back.”
“We don’t know the water will come back.”
“Sure, but they don’t know that we don’t know that. They’re just a bunch of dumb hounds. Only speak in barks and growls. Very limiting language means very limited understanding of how things work. To be honest, I almost forgot how to speak it.”
“What happens if we defeat the entity and the water doesn’t come back?”
Grim snapped at a fly that buzzed around his snout, his eye crossing and teeth clacking as he missed. “Then we lie and tell them it takes a day. And we hustle out of the Deadwoods and don’t come back until they forget all about it.”
“You said you knew them. Did they used to be your pack?” He certainly looked almost identical, though he would be the runt of the litter.
“Pfft. No way. Yes, I was technically a hellhound before I became a grim, but I never would’ve run with those idiots. Hellhounds travel in packs of three, so they’re all set anyway.”
“What happened to your pack when you died? Did they get a third member?”
Grim reared up, tilting his head back to stare down at me. “You sure right now, in the middle of the Deadwoods, is the best moment to suddenly take an interest in my life?”
“Good point. But on the other hand, we might die soon, so this could be my only chance.”
“That’s what I like about you, Nora. You’re an optimist.”
I filled Donovan in on the new development as we approached the three hellhounds ahead of us in the drought path. If his fist gripping his wand was any indication, he was not entirely sure he trusted the hounds to keep their word.
Grim took the lead, and when I glanced over my shoulder, the two smaller hounds went off in either direction to flank us, disappearing into the darkness. The giant alpha remained behind, planted where it was as we continued forward. I turned my attention ahead to keep from running into something, and the next time I looked behind me, the alpha was nowhere to be seen.
Chapter Twelve
“Quiet now, unless you want to spend the rest of the night playing bridge and having night veil tea pushed on you,” said Grim as we approached the shack where Ted lived. It looked exactly the same as in the vision with the birdhouses (which I happened to know were fireproof) hanging from the trees surrounding it. I did not, in fact, want to play bridge with Death, so I did as Grim suggested and tiptoed past Ted’s house, giving it a wide berth.
I’d once read that humans used to be nocturnal, as evidenced by the rods in our eyes that help us see at night. I didn’t know if the same held for witches—or really where I stood on the evolutionary map, to be honest—but it sure felt like I was accessing some long-dormant ability as I managed to avoid falling flat on my face, despite how little moonlight made it in through the thick treetops.
The Deadwoods also held a darkness to them that wasn’t precisely visual. No, I’m not talking metaphorically here. I’m still being literal. But it wasn’t like normal darkness. It was just a cloud of black that seemed present in every square inch of the space, smothering the possibility of more light.
The trail of drought-withered plants sloped downward sharply into a ditch, and I paused to assess the feasibility of walking into it.
“They weren’t kidding,” Grim muttered, standing beside me.
“Who wasn’t kidding?”
“The hellhounds. This ditch used to be Acher Lake. But it looks like someone got thirsty.” He strolled down the steep bank without trouble, flaunting the versatility of having four legs.
“Are we getting close?” Donovan asked once we were down into the empty ditch.
“He’s awfully impatient to get himself killed,” said Grim.
“I think we’re getting close,” I replied, ignoring my familiar.
Speaking of getting oneself killed, that was exactly what was waiting for me if I didn’t get my head on straight. I should’ve been concentrating on the complex incantation ahead, clearing my mind, honing my focus, maybe keeping some semblance of situational awareness so I didn’t get dragged off by a hidebehind or shifted werewolf. Sure, the hellhounds said they would prowl the perimeter around us, but I didn’t know how capable they were or even that we could trust them to stick to their word.
Instead, I kept thinking about the conversation with Donovan, the one I’d put an abrupt end to when it started to get too real.
Oh boy, I was a cliche. I’m not closed off! You’re closed off! End of story! I certainly wouldn’t be winning an award for introspection anytime soon. Not like that, at least. As much as I’d wanted the old me to die when I did, I knew deep down that it didn’t work that way. I woke up in Eastwind with the same memories, same fears, and same issues as I’d always had. I couldn’t quit me cold turkey. And maybe I couldn’t quit me at all.
What if I wanted to be the kind of girl who Tanner would fall for, but I just wasn’t? Donovan’s struggles resonated, as little as I liked to admit it. I had never been warm. I’d earned people’s respect, but rarely their admiration or friendship. No one had ever rooted for me like everyone did Tanner. Generosity and consideration of others wasn’t a natural instinct. I’d learned it, sure, and was glad I had, but it took more effort than I thought it should.
Maybe I’d always gone for guys like Donovan because they were like me, because they would understand all those things and not expect more from me than I could give, not push me to be something other than what came naturally. And maybe that was okay. It was entirely possible I hadn’t found the right guy not because I went for the wrong type, but because of any number of other factors—they worked different hours, they lived too far away, they were already in love with someone else. Anything.
“Hey,” I said, breaking the silence. “You sure you’re okay?”
He nodded.
“You got tackled pretty good back there.”
“I was worried about you, I thought you might—”
His head whipped around and he shot me an ice-cold glare that made the words fall dead in my throat. Okay, maybe I deserved that. But I also needed him to listen. We couldn’t keep moving forward on our mission if we weren’t on good terms.
And maybe I felt guilty.
So I pressed on. “I want to apologize for what I said back there. I didn’t mean to make you feel like … I don’t know.”
He kept his eyes ahead of us now, purposefully avoiding my gaze. “Like there was something wrong with me?”
“Yeesh, is that what I did?”
“Pretty much.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I did sort of prove your point about how I haven’t changed.”
He laughed in a heavy exhale before reining it in. “I hadn’t thought about it like that.”
“I’m surprised. You’re usually so quick to pinpoint my faults.”
He shot me a side glance and nudged me with his elbow. “You mean like how you’re all up in the Deadwoods wanting to talk about your feelings rather than focusing on the task at hand?”
“Ahh, there it is. Phew, I was worried you were losing your touch.” I met his eyes and grinned.
He chuckled, shaking his head. “You’re something else, Nora Ashcroft.”
“We’re here,” said Grim.
I held out my arm to stop Donovan. “There it is.”
The dark tunnel of trees stood ahead of us, beckoning us to enter. But what lay beyond was a mystery not even our magical visions had divulged.
“And you say you don’t know what’s on the other side?” I asked Grim again.
“Nope. There’s an entire forest for me to explore, so why would I choose to enter through the terrifying and obviously cursed tunnel of doom?”
“No need to be so ominous.”
“Did you just tell a walking death omen to stop being ominous? That’s like asking you to stop pushing people away.”
“Don’t you start with me.”
“True. We should get on good terms quick since we’re both about to die. There’s a good chance I’ll come back as King of the Grims or something, but you’ll probably just be dead dead.”