by Angie Fox
“You can’t be serious,” I said, stepping back, nearly bumping into Frieda.
“Dimitri,” my overly friendly griffin said, moving in between us as Neal pumped Dimitri’s hand up and down.
“Isn’t Neal dreamy?” Frieda whispered into my ear, passing us by.
“Oh, go eat green soup.”
Truly, the man was fondling my Grandma. He could be the pope’s brother and I wouldn’t like him.
Besides, we had important work to do. Max was missing. We had killer beasts on our tail. I couldn’t let Grandma get distracted.
Decision made. We’d be out of here faster than Neal could say Woodstock.
“Thanks for the welcome,” I said, “but we need to go. Now.”
“Oh, we’re staying.” Grandma nudged mister grabby with her hip.
“Lizzie’s right,” Dimitri said. “We need to track a demon by way of a demon hunter. As much as we’d enjoy your company, we can’t guarantee your safety, Neal.”
It wasn’t necessarily the goodbye and good riddance I’d been shooting for, but it was true. So far, when we’d had evil creatures ambushing us, we’d stayed in enchanted hotels or in hideouts far, far away from innocent people. Yes, this was partly about getting away from annoying Neal, but it was also about keeping him or any of his people from getting caught up in the trouble we’d brought with us.
“I’m in charge of this gang,” Grandma said, through gritted teeth. “And I say we stay.”
“I’m in charge of this mission,” I countered.
Neal didn’t look convinced. Neither did Grandma.
Okay, fine. “If a rogue demon hunter isn’t dangerous enough for you,” I added, “you should know we’re being chased by banshees.”
Neal didn’t even flinch. He nodded, earnest to a fault. “My brother Bob explained all that to me.”
Of course he did. I threw my arms up. I couldn’t help it.
“Lizzie…” Grandma warned.
“I’m giving him fair warning,” I said, ignoring Frieda as she popped her head out the door of the cabin.
Neal stood firm. “I know all about demons and banshees.” He ran a hand down Grandma’s back. “Not to mention this young lady’s powers.”
Was Grandma blushing?
I needed to learn some spells. Then I could thwack Neal with a jelly jar.
“It’s exactly why you must stay here,” he concluded.
“Wrong answer.” This man should be a politician. He was taking the truth and turning it sideways.
“This commune has been soaked in love since 1962.” He zapped Grandma a heated look. “I can’t think of anything more powerful.”
Just shoot me now.
Time to bring out the big guns. Bob might have briefed him on the bad guys, but what about the creatures?
“You see that?” I asked, pointing to Flappy, who had stopped flying majestically and was instead chasing Pirate across the field like an overgrown ostrich.
Neal shaded his eyes with his head and craned his neck at the field. “See what?”
“Neal isn’t magical, Lizzie,” Grandma said, running a hand along his chest. “He’s something else entirely.”
Okay. Code Red.
“Dimitri?” I needed backup here.
He shrugged. “We need to track Max before the trail goes cold. Neal is willing to lend us his support, his land.”
I gaped at him. “Not you, too.”
But Dimitri didn’t back down. “He seems to understand the risks, Lizzie.”
Did he? Well, this should put a twist in old Neal’s boxers. “I have a zombie rope.” I untied the jar and presented it to him.
Ha!
Naturally, the rope was asleep.
Neal gave me the kind of smile you save for small children and puppies.
Hells bells. I jostled the bottom of the jar.
“It really is alive,” I insisted.
“Of course it is.” He started toward the field. “Follow me,” he said, raising his voice to be heard by everyone. “We only ask that you live by two rules while you try us out: love and tolerance. That’s how we flow here. We are the Rucksack Wanderers and we’re thankful to have you.”
I sighed, knowing I was reaching now. “Have the Rucksack Wanderers even voted on this?” Maybe some of them would be a bit touchier about demons, banshees and zombie ropes.
Come to think of it – where was the rest of the commune?
We trudged through the poppies, their prickly fronds grabbing at my ankles.
“Er, where are the other Wanderers?” I asked.
Neal threw out his arms. “Why, wandering of course.”
“Since when?”
“The last one left in 1972,” he said, turning to walk backwards, facing us. “Until they return, it’s just me and Rain. She’d be here, but she needs to weave her purple rocks into the fields by sundown.”
No wonder he didn’t think my zombie rope was weird.
“I’ve aired out the buses,” he said, stopping in front of a series of school buses parked near the woods. “There’s fresh bedding and lanterns. And I dug you a new outhouse.” He trudged ten feet into the woods. “Right here behind this tree.”
This was definitely going to be a short stay.
“Come on.” Pirate zigzagged between us. “Let’s get the red bus. It has a dragon painted on the side.” He ran a circle around the red bus. “It has a lemon and a star and a round thing and I don’t know what that squiggle is…”
I put a foot on the bottom step and the whole bus shifted.
“Can I room with Flappy?”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him they didn’t make buses big enough for dragons. “You’re with me.”
The inside of the bus was stuffy, but it seemed to hold everything we needed. I pushed back a gauzy embroidered curtain at the top of the steps. They’d removed the seats. A platform in the back held a large mattress covered in tie-dyed sheets and colorful homemade quilts. Red and silver lanterns hung from hooks in the ceiling and pillows lined the walls. A small metal table had been welded into the wall behind the driver’s seat. Four homemade stools clustered around it.
Not bad.
Evidently, some of the buses had stereos. “Black Magic Woman” blared across the field, the low beats vibrating the metal walls.
Pirate dashed from the front of the long aisle to the back and up front again. He skidded to a stop just below my left knee. “Can Flappy spend the night?”
A dragon? In a bus? “You can help him build a nest outside.”
Pirate scratched is belly with his back leg. “A nest? Like for a bird? Flappy’s not a bird.”
“See? Look.” Outside the bus window, we could already see the dragon hauling broken tree limbs from the forest.
“Okay, Flappy,” Pirate hollered, dashing past me and down the stairs. “We can build it here at the back. I’ll go get you Lizzie’s sheets.”
“Pirate,” I warned.
“I mean some nice, soft grass.”
Good luck with that.
I held the curtain back as Dimitri took the bus steps two at a time. He’d rolled his sleeves up to reveal his muscled forearms.
The bus lurched under his weight. “I just talked to your Grandma. She’s going to get a tracking spell going.”
“What about Neal?”
He shot me a heated look. “Give the man a chance, Lizzie. Besides, your grandma has a job for us.”
“Are you sure she’s not trying to get rid of us?”
A smile touched his lips. “I don’t think your grandma could even make this up. We need to locate a three-pronged stick from a tree that leans to the north.”
Good point.
I leaned into him and felt his arms close around me. “I’m glad you’re here.”
His arms tightened. “Where else would I be?”
Well it seemed like he had griffins hounding him, if the one in the desert was any indication. “Nowhere.” I didn’t feel like fighting. Not
when I was about to go on a nature walk with a drool-worthy griffin.
Not quite a real date, but I’d take what I could get at this point.
The sun blazed in the west as Dimitri and I headed for the woods, passing Pirate and Flappy on the way. We still had a few hours before sunset. So far, the dragon had managed to drag four logs into a haphazard frame. Pirate had his back to the whole thing and was busy kicking grass into it while sniffing whatever it was dogs sniff.
“Remember,” I said as I passed him, “don’t go into the bus for nest supplies.”
Pirate’s head shot up. “Can we use the tires?”
“No.”
His ears fell.
Poor doggie. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that he’d have a hard time using a tire jack.
Instead, I opted for logic. “Dragons have gotten along for centuries without bus tires.”
Pirate glanced at Flappy, who had taken a break and was busy gnawing at the end of a log. “Yeah, well dogs used to get along without Pup-per-roni Bites, but that’s not a good idea, either.”
We left Pirate and Flappy to earn the nest building merit badge and walked deeper into the woods, until even the sounds of the biker witches were drowned out by the natural sounds of the forest.
Dimitri held back a sprawling evergreen as I slipped past. “Lizzie, I know you wish you could to control everything.”
“Such as?”
“Biker witches, banshees and demons.” He let the branch fall back behind us.
I let out an unladylike snort. “You see how that’s working out.”
“You might want to lay off Neal.”
I stopped and turned around to face him. “Would you stand by and let an old hippie hit on your grandma?” I asked, hands on my hips.
“If it made her happy, then yes.”
“Well, you’re a better man than I am.”
He leaned close. “I hope so.”
It would have been so easy to let him kiss me. But I had a valid argument when it came to Neal. “He’s a distraction and we just met him.”
“He’s Bob’s brother.”
“He could be a demon spy for all I know.”
Dimitri moved away. “He’s not. And it’s obvious your grandma knows him very well.”
“Ick. Thanks for that mental image.”
We began walking again.
“We’re here to find Max and save your dad from a demon, not to decide who your grandma spends time with.”
Touché. “Speaking of how we spend our time, what was going on with you and that griffin?”
“I already told you,” he said, shutting me down.
“I heard there was one outside my dad’s house too.”
He kept walking.
“Pirate says he gave you something.”
“Look, Lizzie,” he said, turning. “I explained before. It’s griffin business. You don’t need to worry about it. What is that demon-slayer truth of yours? Accept the Universe.”
“That doesn’t apply to demon-slayer dating, so you might as well tell me and get it out of the way.”
“Or else you’ll keep hounding me?” he asked, resigned.
“Like Pirate teaching tricks.”
“All right,” he relented. Dimitri narrowed the space between us. “He gifted me with weaponry.”
I felt my eyes widen.
“Does this look familiar?” He hitched one leg against the tree and drew a long bronze knife from a holster in his boot. The thing was ancient, with strange carvings and green gemstones wrapped around the hilt. The polished blade gleamed razor sharp.
“Heck, yes. It looks like the one you had when I first met you.” He’d dashed into a possessed biker bar in a blaze of glory and left me tied to a walnut tree.
“That one I lost to a demon. This is another, almost as old and equally blessed.”
“Oh sure.” That made sense. “Why?”
An intense expression passed over his features, and was gone as soon as I saw it. “Griffin politics. He’s trying to gain my favor.”
“And the griffin in the desert?”
“He put his armies at my disposal.”
“Of course.”
Dimitri towered over me, brave strong – and no doubt hiding something. “Lizzie, I’m here. I’m on your side one hundred percent. Now you have to allow me to conduct my clan’s business as I see fit. We are at a crossroads. Alliances are necessary. It is our way.”
We’d left his family in a bad position. I knew that. Most griffin clans had hundreds of members, made up of extended families, loyal to the death. Dimitri’s clan was down to him and his two sisters.
I’d watched enough Survivor to know what happens when one group gets too small.
“Okay. Fine,” I said - which was a lie because it wasn’t fine by a long shot. It burned me that he didn’t trust me with this. We both knew he had another place to be, another life entirely.
Refusing to talk about it didn’t change things.
Even so, there was no way to force him. The more I pushed, the less he’d tell.
It felt like a giant grinding hole between us.
I wiped at a trickle of sweat on my back. “Let’s just find a three-pronged stick from a tree that leans to the north.”
It turned out that was the easy part. We spotted one halfway up a beat-up pine. Thanks to my kick-ass demon slayer powers, I didn’t have to climb, which was good because the thing looked scraggly, like it would break. And I did not want to be heavy enough to break a tree. Not in front of my boyfriend at least.
I let my power flow through me and as quick as you can say “think light,” I levitated up and used Dimitri’s knife to help break it off.
We brought it back to Grandma, and I was thankful to see her outside of a psychedelic yellow school bus – alone.
Neal sat with a guitar by the main building, doing a decent version of “Bad Moon Rising” with biker witches sprawled out on the ground around him.
Grandma hurried toward us. “You find it?”
I held up our prized stick.
“Now that’s a beaut,” she said, ushering us over to a flattened circle of dirt behind her bus.
“Flappy finally learn how to sit?” It was about the size of a dragon tush.
“No. But he knows how to eat an entire jar of wolf spiders. I was saving those.”
“Where are they now?” I asked, doing a quick sweep of the strawberry field across the road from us for my dog and his dragon.
“Playing in the poppies. I gave them two thermoses of water and told them to make a thousand mud pies for my spell.”
“With just two thermoses -”
“Doesn’t matter. They’ll be busy until next Tuesday. And they like to help.”
Good plan. “You’d better actually need this stick,” I said with a newfound suspicion for her motives.
“Ohh…that’s nice,” she said, taking it from me and weighing it with both hands.
Yes, I had to admit it was a lovely stick. “What exactly are we doing here?”
“Luckily, I found some spiders on my bus.”
I shuddered.
She pointed to the center of the circle. “I’ve got dirt from the last spot we saw Max. Mixed that with some muddy water I found at that old prison.”
“You were collecting water?”
She winked. “Aren’t you glad I did? Besides, you were too busy to do it.”
I can honestly say I never would have thought to drain water from a demonic prison. The water and the dirt made a nasty looking sludge.
Grandma clucked her tongue in approval as she placed the piece of wood in the center of the circle. “Add the spiders,” she mused to herself, shaking a baggy full of bubble-butted spiders out onto the wood. As the smart spiders began to escape, Grandma placed five mirrored crystals around the clearing.
My cell phone vibrated in my back pocket as “Electric Avenue” blared across the field.
Hillary.
I reached
behind me and clicked it to voicemail.
“You really should call her,” Grandma mused.
“What? And tell her I’m helping work up a spell to find a missing half-demon at a hippie commune?” My adoptive mother’s version of flower power consisted of her heirloom roses. She thought her milk delivery man was a beatnik because he drank bubble tea.
Grandma stood, admiring her handiwork. “Beautiful.” She glanced up at me. “Now take off your shirt.”
“I like this spell.” Dimitri grinned.
Not that I wasn’t all for spells, as well as inappropriate flashing of skin to Dimitri but, “Why?”
Couldn’t Grandma have a spell that didn’t involve dead things, insects or semi-nudity?
Grandma huffed as if I was the one causing trouble. “You question everything.”
“It’s kept me alive,” I said.
Grandma shot me The Look. “Your shirt touched Max. I need something for the Bloodhound Spell to track. Unless you’d rather use your pants.”
“Shirt is okay,” I said, reaching for the zipper on the side of my bustier while my mind scrambled to think of anything else Max had touched that wasn’t bolted down to my bike.
I slipped the silken garment over my head. I was probably going to regret this.
At least I was wearing a nice bra.
And, yes, I know a bustier is technically a bra too, but what can I say, I’ve never been able to wear one without, well, added insurance.
“Here.” I handed it over. “Use it well.” Or this wouldn’t be happening again.
She inspected it. “You should be wearing leather anyway.”
“Yes, well now that you have it, you want to tell me what you plan to do with it?” I glanced back at Dimitri, to confirm just how much Grandma was demanding from me. Naturally he was completely distracted by my pink bra.
I didn’t miss the way his eyes trailed over me. In fact, I couldn’t wait to explore that thought further once we made it back to our bus.
Grandma spread my lavender bustier over the three-pronged stick and sprinkled the entire thing with an herb mixture that smelled like smoked wood and cinnamon.
“Locos veloxio,” she chanted, low under her breath.
Okay, maybe I didn’t mind this spell too much.
“Locos veloxio.” She raised her hands to the sky.
Nearly a year ago, I would have worried, but in that time, I’d seen for myself how Grandma’s spells made a difference. Sure it was my only shirt, but I trusted her. She’d use it right. She’d track Max.