And I’m glad for it.
Because again: it’s what I should be focusing on.
I shouldn’t be sitting here thinking about how Liam and Soren have kept as much distance as two people traveling together could possibly manage to keep. Or how, every time they have gotten too close to each other, the end result has been clenched fists and threats that Carys and I have just barely managed to deescalate in time.
“If you’re waiting for me to stop being concerned about you, you’re going to be waiting for a lot longer than three days,” Liam says without opening his eyes.
“He helped me that night, you know. Like I told you before. Like twelve times before, I think it’s been now?”
“I don’t like him messing with your mind. Even if he claims it was to heal you. I don’t trust his brand of healing.”
I sink a little deeper into my chair.
“I’m accepting the fact that he’s a necessary evil,” he says, eyes blinking open but still avoiding mine. “I’m accepting that he knows more about the keys and how they work than we do, and so we need him to help possibly cure you or whatever—which I want so badly that I’m willing to put up with the little twerp for as long as I have to. But I don’t like the way he looks at you. Because I swear, he constantly looks like he’s plotting something.”
“Did it ever occur to you that you might feel that way just because you’ve been raised to feel that way? The entire pack has done nothing but fill your head with terrible things about the Blackwood sorcerers, but what if they aren’t all like that? What if we’d all really tried working together a long time ago?”
“The pack has its reasons for the things they’ve said. And maybe you should have been paying attention to what they had to say—they’re your pack too, you know.”
“Are they?” The words snap out of my mouth before I can stop them, leaving us both stunned and silent for a minute.
I should try to take them back, maybe.
But I can’t seem to get myself to do that.
He starts to get up.
“Liam, I didn’t mean that you—”
“I’ll see you back at the inn,” he says, abruptly dropping his credit card beside my plate, leaving me with nothing for company except the electronic, slightly static beat of foreign pop music.
I do go back to the rustic little inn we stayed in last night. But not so I can meet up with Liam again. Not yet. Not feeling like I really belong with most of my own pack…that I was used to, even if he didn’t want to hear me say that. But I’m not sure how to handle feeling like I can’t be comfortable next to my best friend, either.
I feel weak admitting it, but I desperately need to be somewhere where I feel like I belong. So the first thing I do when I reach the inn is find Carys. Hopefully I’ll have better luck with her than Liam, conversation-wise, since she’s the more level-headed of the two of them. And she’s been in a particularly good mood today, since she actually got to sleep in a real bed last night—after using every argument in her arsenal to convince us to risk staying in an actual inn.
She’s in a predictable place: the little fireplace room off the lobby, with its squishy armchairs and weathered wooden table that she’s covered in books. This is where she camped out most of yesterday evening, too, pouring over those books that the innkeeper lent her, and occasionally dragging that innkeeper into her research as well. I witnessed a few of their conversations— Carys attempting to use the few Romanian phrases she’s managed to learn, and the innkeeper’s daughter trying her best to interpret Cary’s enthusiastically quick questions. That innkeeper seems to be steering clear of her study room today. I doubt she’s noticed, though. She barely notices me until I’m hanging right over her, and even then, she doesn’t look up from her book.
“Liam came back a half hour ago, and then left again in a hurry,” she says as she flags a page with a bright green post-it note. “I thought you two were having breakfast together?”
“We walked back separately.”
“You fought again?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” I flop onto the couch in as dramatic a fashion as I can manage. “Quick: distract me with random facts about Romanian mythological creatures.”
She looks thoughtful for a moment, sighs, and then dutifully recites: “The furat-diavol are also referred to as changelings or body-snatchers. They’re a legend known mostly just in this village—tiny little devil things with the ability to take the souls of weak-willed, lost people who wander too deep into the forest.”
“Weak-willed?”
“Mmhm. So basically, anytime someone around here does something bad—something that weakens their soul or whatever, they’re said to be making themselves furat-bait.”
“I’ll try to refrain from soul-compromising activities while I’m here, then.”
“You probably should. But it wouldn’t save you from the balaur— a creature in Romanian mythology that’s similar to a European dragon. It has three heads in most stories, but there are some stories that say it has as many as twelve.”
“Ooh, that sounds fun,” I deadpan. “I hope we get to fight that.”
“It could be worse.”
“Am I imagining this, or do you sound way too enthusiastic about the fact that there are even worse creatures that might be awaiting us?”
She holds up the page she’s just flagged, tapping an entry headed Giants of Romania with all the excitement of a kid showing off an award she’s just won.
“Go on,” I say with a bemused smile.
“Novaci,” she says. “A designation for the giants specific to this region of the Carpathians. They’re known to skin their victims alive and use their bones to build shrines that they horde treasures in.”
“Well that sounds terrifying.”
“I know, but shrines. And treasures. Exactly what we’re looking for, right?”
“Maybe. No mention of any giants by any of the locals we’ve talked to, though. Seems like they would have mentioned something that big when we asked them about local stories and legends.”
“Maybe they just don’t want to scare away the tourists? Or there could be some sort of magic at work, hiding them from humans.” She shrugs, but goes back to her book, flipping through pages and assumedly searching for a backup answer in case her first guess really is wrong.
“Skinning their victims alive…geez.”
“I know,” she says. “Kind of puts the little fight you had into perspective, huh?”
“I don’t know. I might consider being skinned alive if it means I don’t have to talk to Liam again anytime soon.”
“Oh, come on. Fights between you two never last long. This time won’t be any different.”
“Circumstances are a little different.”
An extra player has entered the game, I think to myself. Or I meant for it to be to myself, anyway. But I’m picturing Soren so strongly in my mind now that I apparently don’t manage to keep this—or the rush of emotions it causes me—from Carys’s attention.
“Yeah, he’s not a fan of that guy. But…it isn’t just Soren that’s bothering him, you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“Haven’t you noticed? He’s been weird ever since Ireland. We came too close to the place it all happened, I think. And then you practically drowned there too, which didn’t make the visit anymore pleasant, and I think he’s just struggling with all of that.”
She means the place where our parents fought that otherworldly evil, of course— where my mother was poisoned by the Canath monsters that escaped that portal, and Liam’s father was killed by them.
And I’d already thought about his aversion to being there, but then I’d gotten distracted by Soren and everything else, and so I’ve yet to find the right moment—or the right courage—to actually bring it up with Liam.
“I’m kind of a terrible friend,” I say, picking up the stack of post-it notes and absently sticking a trail of them along my arm. They look kind of
like feathers. I’m tempted to see if they can help me fly away from all this craziness.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself.” She snatches the post-it notes, muttering something about wasteful. “You’re a little distracted by other things, right?” she says. “I don’t think he expects you to have a therapy session with him about any of this. Just give him time. He’ll be back to his usual self after we get a little more distance from that first guardian battle. Focusing on the next battle would probably help.”
“Aye-aye, captain.” I sigh wistfully. “I’m glad I have you to keep me in line, at least.” My tone is a bit teasing, but I mean what I say. She’s younger than all of us, but she’s still basically the adult chaperone on this crazy field trip.
“Someone has to,” she says, echoing my sigh.
“So where to next?”
She flips through the dog-eared notebook in her lap for a moment, finds a page with a bulleted list, and then presents it to me. “I’ve narrowed down promising locations for us to check out, based on these books and a conversation I had with the innkeeper’s daughter. She mentioned the Cambio Forest—that’s the one at the bottom of list there, the one that I starred. Said hardly anyone goes in there at night, because of weird things like lights and music that apparently come from nowhere. The locals apparently put mirrors around the edges of the forest to confuse evil spirits, to keep them lost in the trees so they can’t reach the villages and people outside. So, you know, that’s creepy.”
“Sounds like exactly the sort of place we should find some more trouble— slash otherworldly artifacts.”
“Exactly.”
“Well, perfect. I say we head there first. Also, you’re a godsend.”
“I know.”
“I’m going to go start packing up.”
“I’ll catch up. I need to call home first and let them know we’re all still alive.”
“And also so you can nerd out with your dad about Romanian giants and dragons?”
“Obviously.”
I’ve always thought it was kind of adorable, the way the only person that out-dorks Carys is her own father. Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree and all that.
I feel a twang of homesickness myself as I watch her pull out her phone and flip through her contacts. It’s been two days since I last called home; when I did, I’d only talked to my dad, and it had been a brief conversation. Mom had been gone, on her way to meet with the alphas of two other local packs. Still doing damage control thanks to all the trouble I’ve caused, I think— though Dad only kept insisting that things were fine.
He always says that, though.
Particularly when things are not fine.
I consider suggesting Carys ask her dad for more details about what’s happening back home—Uncle Eli has always been the type to offer up straight facts without holding back for fear of frightening or upsetting people.
But in the end, I decide that maybe I don’t want to know all the details this time. I can only focus on fighting so many battles at once, you know? So instead I just give Carys a weak smile. “Tell him I said hello,” I say, and then I leave her and head for our room.
Back in the room the four of us shared, I find Soren neatly folding blankets and stacking pillows on the pull-out sofa he slept on last night.
“You know housekeeping is just going to unfold those so they can wash them, right?”
He shrugs. “I’m in the habit of keeping things tidy. My dad was essentially a drill sergeant about chores.”
“Fold on, then.” I move to the corner, where I’ve stacked all my things in a decidedly less neat fashion, including my trusty sword. That sword has lost the illusion Soren casted over it when we arrived. We thought we might raise some eyebrows by carrying weapons and stuff in here. And my weapon doesn’t fit very easily into my suitcase, so for these past twenty-four hours or so, it’s appeared to all the world as a harmless guitar that I could sling onto my back.
Seeing the blade back to its normal appearance and sharpness settles some of the unease that had started rolling around in my stomach once I started thinking about home. There’s something reassuring about this reminder that I’m out here to fight.
The first key to Canath is in the small lockbox the inn provided in addition to a floor safe, and the literal key to that lockbox is in the zippered pocket of my jacket. I reach for it now. Aside from my weapons, it should be the first thing I pack and secure. That’s what I decided on the way up here. Honestly, I probably shouldn’t have let it out of my sight in the first place—and I wouldn’t have, if not for the weird feeling it gives me whenever I hold on to it for too long.
Even with the neutralizing sealing spell Soren used still at work, I swear it’s like I can feel the energy of the otherworld every time I touch the tiny, unassuming little stone. I seriously thought it was going to electrocute me the first time I accidently brushed my fingers across that actual mark of Canath that appeared on the object’s surface. And even just being near it creates a pulling sensation in that matching mark that I carry on my wrist, as it’s trying to pull me into it, same as it somehow did with that first guardian.
Which is why I wanted to destroy this first key immediately. But all of Soren’s research suggests that all three of the keys need to be in contact with each other when we perform the final spell to destroy them, or else the energy of them might just end up slipping away and manifesting in some other object. And then we would get to play ‘find-the-key’ all over again.
So obviously, key number one is still intact, despite my love-hate relationship with it.
My hand rests on the lockbox. I sense Soren watching me, and I divert my attention to him so I can avoid touching the key for a little bit longer.
He glances from the door back to my questioning eyes, and then he explains his staring: “I couldn’t help but notice that you came in alone. After you—”
“Left with Liam. Yes. I know. Everybody is apparently really interested in how we decided to walk back from that dumb café separately. Which is kind of crazy when you consider how many more actually interesting things we’re dealing with—you know, guardians and fissures and the possible destruction of life as we know it—things that you all could be focusing on instead.”
“You seem upset.”
“Well I have this really annoying character flaw,” I grumble, “where for some reason I can’t help but care about what my friends think of me.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
I snort out a laugh. I’m far from amused. But there’s just…something about the way that he’s casually made me realize that I’m more exhausted and upset about Liam than I thought, and that something makes me feel too helpless to do anything except laugh about it all.
“It is,” I sigh.
He smiles. It’s a bit softer, a bit more hesitant than his usual one. And I can’t help but fall a little in love with it. Even though I’m trying not to, same as I was trying not to three days ago. I don’t want to deal with these butterflies that feel like they’re going to war in my stomach over him. I don’t need the extra distraction.
But he isn’t exactly helping me win my battle.
He’s folded his hands behind his head and is leaning back against the wall with a thoughtful look on his face. The stretched pose puts every bit of his lean muscle on display, and it lifts his shirt a little higher than his low-slung sweatpants, revealing a strip of his bare, tanned skin. I force my gaze up to his face instead. His eyes are still green—the color he said was as genuine as that softer smile he just gave me.
I’d told him I liked them that color.
I can’t help but wonder if that’s why they haven’t changed again; this is the longest they’ve stayed one color since the night we met.
“I’m sorry,” he says after a moment of silence. The apology catches me off guard. My confusion must be obvious on my face, too, because he follows up with: “I didn’t mean to cause problems between the two of you.”
&nbs
p; “It’s okay. You’re far from our only problem.”
“I’ve been thinking, though.”
“Not about me again, I hope?” I say with a wry smile. “That’s what got us into trouble last time, if you remember.”
“I know.” He pushes away from the wall. For a minute he looks as if what he’s thinking about is closing the space between us and maybe picking up where we left off the other night. He hesitates, though, and in the end he just throws an almost frustrated look out the window instead. “But I can’t seem to help myself.”
The low tone of his voice sends heat sneaking up the back of my neck.
“We’re business partners,” I say quietly. “That’s all.”
He nods. “That’s all I wanted.”
“Me too,” I reply.
But I sound really, really unconvincing.
It’s like when you write a word over and over, repeating it so many times that it doesn’t seem real anymore.
He turns away from the window. Studies me for a moment. Then he takes a deep breath, shakes his head, grabs his backpack from the couch and slings it over his shoulder. “We’re leaving soon, right?”
“We’ve more or less decided on our next destination, so yeah. I was coming up to get my stuff.”
His eyes fall on the lockbox next to my hand. “Is it still bothering you? The key’s energy?”
“I wish I could say it wasn’t. But I can feel it through the box, even….and I’m sort of afraid to open it. Wonder if they’d notice if we just stole the whole box? It’s not that big. I could fit it in my backpack.”
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