Sunshowers - Part Four
This episode is part of a larger story, Soft Touch. If you haven’t yet, you can go back and read it from the beginning right here.
The falling darkness deepens gradually, but becomes complete all at once. The pitch-blackness of night abruptly claims the forest, pulling everything into shapeless obscurity, bringing our visibility all the way down. Ralph and Aiden, who are leading the way, switch on their flashlights. The glowing beams cut paths of bright yellow light through the silhouettes of the massive trees all around us.
The forest is quiet, aside from the constant whisper of the leaves and the soft sounds of our footsteps. Above us is a sheet of clouds, torn open here and there to let through brilliant windows of star-studded, black velvet sky. The distant mountains are deep blue, dusted with white snow at their higher slopes.
But all eyes in our group are firmly focused on our immediate surroundings. Watching for any sign of movement, illusion or hunter.
“What’s the plan?” Kasey asks softly, breaking the extended spell of silence.
I put the question to Ralph for her, and he slows down so we can keep the conversation quiet. We shouldn’t be near the hunt just yet, but there’s no reason to take the risk of being overheard.
“Ideally,” he murmurs, roving the beam of his flashlight over a slope in the forest floor, “It’ll be just like this afternoon. We’ll keep an eye on the hunters, make sure they don’t hurt themselves or each other. If we see the Witch we try to lead her away from the action, to somewhere we can face her without worrying about who sees. If we’re really lucky she’ll bide her time, won’t show up at all tonight. It’s a three-day weekend, but I’m hoping most of the hunters aren’t committed enough to stick around that long. Given they’re already spooked, and still empty-handed.”
“Do you really think they’ll just give up and go home, Ralph?” Kasey asks doubtfully. “It sounded like the reward was pretty compelling.”
“I said I hope so. It would be better if most of them were long gone before magic actually starts flying in this forest. We can’t have people seeing what Aiden can do. Or seeing the Witch, for that matter. At the very least we need to limit how many of them see anything.”
“Yeah, true…” Kasey gives that some consideration, then shrugs her shoulders. “Well, hey, maybe the Witch won’t make any moves tonight, not with Aiden and all the hunters around. That’s a lot for her to take on at once.”
“We can hope. If everything goes to plan we’ll just have to keep the hunters from doing anything stupid, at least for tonight.” Ralph looks over his shoulder to give us firm, soft-spoken instructions. “We stay quiet, out of the way, unseen as much as we can be. Only talk to people if you have to. No going off-plan, no wandering off to get into trouble. When the hunters go home we go back to our camp, without incident. Might be a long night, but we’ll keep things under control. Okay?”
“Minimum chaos!” I whisper encouragingly.
“Minimum chaos!” the rest of the group whisper-chants back, except for Ralph, who stops for a moment and closes his eyes, pressing two fingertips to his temple.
“And no chanting, you dumb fucks,” he sighs wearily, leading us down a steep slope in the forest floor. “That falls under the category of things that attract attention. Kasey’s the only one allowed, since no one outside of our group can hear her.”
“Why does the Witch even keep coming back to the hotel?” Noah whispers, pulling his beanie down over his long black hair as the cold starts to grow deeper. “What’s she want from that dismal-ass place? Not the sculptures from the Bratton Collection, I’m guessing. Since they suck.”
“I’ve been wondering that, too,” I chime in. “And why is she tampering with the electricity at the ranger’s station? Unless we all think it’s a coincidence that their power went out and the batteries in all their radios died.”
“Ralph, how come?” Noah asks, with the tone of fully expecting him to have the answer.
“I’ve got a theory, but I’m not sure yet, and I don’t want to distract us with wrong guesses. It doesn’t matter right now, anyways. Stay focused on the task at hand.”
“I’m going to distract us for one more second,” Kasey says, to a soft noise of exasperation from Ralph when I repeat it. “Is it possible that the Sorcerer and the Witch are working together, if both of them have gone, um - sour? To use Jamie’s phrasing, since we don’t have a better term?”
“Kasey,” Ralph murmurs over his shoulder. “The task. At hand.”
“I’m bringing it up because what if the Sorcerer broke out of his territory, too? Like - is there any chance they’re both here?”
Ralph jolts to a stop and turns around sharply once I repeat that troubling question, but Aiden shakes his head.
“No chance,” he says, with firm certainty in his deep voice. “I’m sensing one illusion around here, not two.”
Ralph closes his eyes and briefly turns his face aside in relief, then shoots an appreciative glance in Kasey’s approximate direction.
“Okay,” he says, setting off again. “Slight adjustment to what I said before. Everyone focus on the task at hand except Kasey. She’s allowed to think ahead and bring potential problems to the team’s attention.”
“Wow, chanting privileges and thinking privileges? Thank you, Ralph.”
“Alright, enough. Everyone be quiet. We’re almost there.”
Right as he says it, my eyes catch on a light through the trees.
The cafe attached to the hotel is closed and empty, but still brightly illuminated. Someone is in there cleaning up, stacking the chairs inside on the tables. The rest of the hotel has fallen dark aside from one light on upstairs, just above the check-in desk. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was Wendy. I’d call it a safe guess that she lives at the hotel.
Despite the silent darkness of the hotel, the glow of the cafe and the close proximity to the hunting grounds means this place seems to have remained the base camp. People are still gathered around the picnic tables in little groups. Hunters taking a break, and friends of hunters waiting for them to come back. Hanging out, chatting, passing around beer bottles from coolers.
It’s not nearly as big of a group as there was here before, but I’m certain that’s only because most of the hunters have spread themselves out through the forest at the back of the hotel.
“Let’s start there,” Ralph says softly, with a nod at the people by the picnic tables. “Those guys should know what’s been happening since we left. Aiden, Noah, you guys go talk to them, catch us up. Kasey, you check out the forest, get an idea of what’s going on out there. Jamie, you’re with me.”
Silent nods, and we all split off into our groups. I steal a quick squeeze of Aiden’s hand, anxious to let him go out of my sight, but it seems that Ralph doesn’t intend to take us too far away. He leads me around to the back side of the hotel, the one facing the forest. The light from the cafe doesn’t reach too much around the back, and it’s dark out here.
“What are we doing?” I whisper.
“While we’ve got reception you’re gonna call Gabby, see if she came up with any way to stop this. There’s a chance, knowing her. While you do that I’m gonna call Calla.”
“Oh, good, is she coming to help us?”
“Shit, I wish she could.” Ralph breathes out a soft laugh. “She’d be a huge help. But nah, I actually just want to talk to her for a sec and make sure she got to her hotel. One of her software clients flew her out to Munich for a few days for work. She should’ve landed like two hours ago.”
I pause in surprise, taking a close look at the expression on Ralph’s face. He said that all casually, but I thought I heard the faintest undercurrent of anxiety beneath his voice.
From what Aiden has told me, I know that Ralph used to get inexplicably pissed off at Noah when he would leave in the summer to visit his family in France. That he’d always try to talk him out of going.
“I’ll be two seconds,” Ralph insists, with that same, barely perceptible note of strain in his voice. “Honestly.”
Something tells me Ralph doesn’t like it one bit when his people go far out of his reach. Especially Calla, probably. But he’s clearly making a forceful effort to be cool about it, so I give him an encouraging smile.
“Yeah, man, no worries! We can’t have the commander distracted, can we? Go call her. I’ll see if I can get a hold of Gabby.”
Ralph nods and walks further off down the back of the hotel, gesturing for me not to go out of his sight.
I don’t intend to go anywhere, especially not alone. As soon as we reached the forest around the hotel, the cold of the night changed completely. This is the unnatural cold that was hanging over the place earlier, and it puts a deep chill down my spine.
I keep my back pressed to the wall of the hotel and my eyes intent on the forest as I dial Gabby.
I’m kind of surprised when it rings out and I get sent through to her voicemail. It’s not like her to miss my call, given what I told her earlier. Maybe she just didn’t notice her phone ringing? I hesitate with my thumb hovering over my phone, debating calling her back.
A text from her pops up on my screen before I can decide. Working on something Jamie, hang on! And keep your phone on you!
I stare down at the text with a little rush of hope, then quickly respond that it’s no problem, and I will.
I want to go straight to Ralph with this sign of potential good news, but I feel like I should give him a minute with Calla first. May as well make full use of temporarily having reception again, anyways.
I text back my mom, who wanted to know if we made it to our campsite safely, and Destinee, who wanted to know if there’s anything special she needs to do for the healing linden and sugar maple saplings that have been added to my plant-care rotation.
When I’m all done I walk along the back of the hotel to meet Ralph. He’s gazing down at his phone, where a video chat with Calla is open on the screen, turned to a soft volume.
She’s in pajama shorts and a soft t-shirt that’s too big on her, stretched out on a fancy hotel bed. Pink-cheeked from a recent shower. Looking drowsy and jetlagged, but smiling.
“-the hotel room?” Ralph is asking.
“It’s nice! Can’t really complain about the client making me come out here if they’re gonna put me up in style. But I miss you already.” Calla makes a pouty face, her fingers fidgeting with one of the many piercings in her ear. “It’s gonna make me sound soft, but… I don’t like us being this far apart.”
Ralph breaks into a warm smile that seems to come from the very deepest depths of his eyes. He opens his mouth to answer, then notices me coming over to join him.
“Okay, I won’t make you stay awake any longer,” he says hastily, as I stop beside him. “Just glad you made it there safe.”
Calla breathes out a sleepy laugh, resting her cheek on the pillows. “How are you the one worried about me, after everything you just told me about what you’re up to?”
Ralph makes a puzzled face, tilting his head to the side. “What about that makes you worried about me?”
“I don’t know? The magical dangers? The non-magical dangers? The armed people everywhere? The cops that already hate you? The fact that Noah is jonesing to fight those cops?”
Ralph gives his shoulders an unconcerned shrug. “None of that sounds too out of the ordinary to me.”
“Can’t you be serious for one second?” Calla says, trying her hardest to pout irritably at him, failing to suppress a wave of giggles.
“I am,” Ralph says gravely, as if it’s a very routine, tiresome business. “I’ve had nights like this before. On a Tuesday, no less. Not the magic stuff, maybe, but the Noah jonesing to fight the cops who we’ve already pissed off thing-”
“Ugh, Ralph-” Calla scrunches her face up, trying not to laugh again. “Don’t make me tell you what an idiot you are!”
Ralph watches her with dreamy eyes as she struggles against her laughter. “You can tell me about anything you like, baby.”
Calla makes a despairing sound, but it’s undercut by the irrepressible smile turning up her lips. “Ralph!”
“Okay, go to sleep, Hellcat,” Ralph murmurs, smiling warmly at her. “Any messages you’d like me to pass along to anyone here?”
“Mhm,” Calla yawns. “I’ve got one for Wendy.”
Ralph’s eyebrows lift in surprise. “For Wendy? Really?”
“Yeah. Tell her to watch out for her fancy old hotel.”
“What? Why?”
“Because castles fall when the Warlord comes to town,” Calla laughs drowsily, her eyes fluttering shut.
Ralph smiles silently down at her for a moment, his grey-green eyes practically glowing, then abruptly seems to remember that I’m here.
He clears his throat, his voice growing more flat and neutral. “Alright, I gotta go. Jamie just came over.”
“Okay,” Calla yawns. She rolls onto her back, revealing her too-big t-shirt to be Ralph’s faded old Budweiser shirt. “I love you.”
Ralph glances uneasily at me, shifting from foot to foot.
“I - love you too,” he says gruffly.
Calla dissolves into laughter when she hears how hard he rushed through it with me right there. Ralph tries to look irritated, but he’s obviously happy to hear her laughing.
“Goodnight,” he growls, glaring at her.
“Goodnight,” she giggles adoringly. “Happy hunting.”
Ralph ends the call, lowers his phone, and stabs a warning finger at me. “Say nothing about any of that. What did you hear from Gabby?”
I have a great deal of things I wanted to say about all of that, but the expression on Ralph’s face suggests it would be infinitely better for my health if I shut up instead, so I silently hold up my phone to show him Gabby’s text.
His eyes brighten once he reads it.
“Sounds like that could be something,” he murmurs. “Maybe we can avoid the chaos after all. C’mon, let’s get back to the others.”
Noah and Aiden come around the side of the hotel right as we stop in the light thrown off by the cafe. Now that we’re closer, I’m realizing that there actually are some lights switched on inside the hotel. Their glow was too dim and muffled by the curtains to be noticeable from afar. I wonder where Wendy is in there. Hopefully she’s not in the mood to come outside and talk. The mere idea makes me anxious.
I’m made even more anxious when I catch the grim expressions on Noah and Aiden’s faces. Ralph catches them, too, and speeds up a little to reach them.
“This isn’t good,” Aiden whispers, as our group clusters up together. “The hunters are seriously spooked. Even their friends waiting around for them seem freaked out. If the ones outside of the forest are this edgy, I can’t think how the ones still out there are feeling.”
I’m not totally surprised to hear this. The cold is strange and unsettling, the night is very dark under this much cloud cover, and the descriptions of the mysterious, terrifying creature that were passed around more lightly this morning have probably taken on a much more chilling presence in everyone’s minds.
“On the other hand, we’ve got a few who are way too confident,” Noah murmurs, glancing uneasily over his shoulder. “That one in particular is altogether too impressed with himself. Big man syndrome.”
Ralph and I lean around Noah to have a look at who he’s talking about. There’s a huge, brawny hunter in a blue trucker hat standing at one of the picnic tables, holding his rifle way too casually, laughing as he loudly says something to one of the guys he’s with.
As we watch, he crumples a beer can, drops it onto the picnic table, and beckons for his friends. They set off striding for the trailhead, disappearing together back into the treeline.
“Fuck,” Ralph murmurs softly.
“That’s not all,” Aiden goes on, his deep voice full of worry. “Hanely and Grimm are definitely still around. We saw them talking to Wendy.”
“They were telling her they’ll be here tonight until the last hunters go home,” Noah says grimly. “Sounds like they’re the two who have this assignment all weekend long. They weren’t lying about that. They already noticed me and Aiden, too, and asked us what we were doing here.”
“Fuck,” Ralph murmurs again, a little more forcefully.
“We said we just came to hang out and see if anything happens,” Aiden adds, wincing. “They said fine, but that they’d be keeping a close eye on us, for our safety. So… yeah, the cops are gonna be all over us, I think.”
“Ralph?” Noah looks uncertainly at him. “You okay? Your eye is twitching a lot. You kinda look like the guy in the music video for Mexican Radio.”
Kasey appears before Ralph can answer, her dark eyes wide with worry.
“You guys… there are a lot of hunters out there, and they are really bunched up, like - I don’t know the first fucking thing about hunting, but this can’t be right. Are you even supposed to drink and hunt? Because - a lot of them seem to think it’s okay. No one seems drunk, though, everyone seems freaked out and nervous.”
Ralph closes his eyes, tilts his head back. “Fuck.”
Anxious silence falls over the group, but Ralph suddenly straightens up, the calm resolve already back in his eyes.
“Okay. Forget what I said about trying to manage the situation all night. This situation isn’t manageable.” Ralph sets off swiftly towards the treeline, and we all fall into step at his back. “We need to get everyone to go home before anything happens.”
“We might be able to persuade the nervous ones,” Noah says doubtfully. “The overconfident ones aren’t gonna budge, though.”
“Thunder and lightning should be starting any minute,” I add nervously, checking my watch.
“We need to put a stop to this right now.” Ralph’s voice is quiet and calm, but the gravity of it leaves no questions about how quickly the situation is escalating. “Before things can get out of contr-”
“Do you guys hear that?” I cut in.
We’ve only gone a few strides into the forest, but we all stop where we are, listening intently. Faintly, from somewhere off through the trees, I can just make out a distant buzzing sound. It started very suddenly, but it’s growing a little louder. It’s not a sound that belongs to the forest, that much is clear. It’s strikingly out of place.
“What is that?” Noah whispers, clearing up my fear that the Witch was putting fake sounds in my mind. “Sounds like it’s above us.”
Ralph has been listening with his head slightly to the side, and he must have caught the direction the noise is coming from, because he sets off striding through the trees, leading all of us in his wake.
“We need to get to whatever that is before the others notice it,” he whispers urgently to us, starting to break into a run. “The situation is too precarious, anything could set off-”
He’s cut off by a sharp, forceful cracking sound. One that shatters the silence of the forest and briefly makes my heart come to a complete stop. A single gunshot.
Before the echoes have even died out, Aiden has flattened me to the ground, and Noah has caught Ralph’s shirt and wrenched him down, too. All of us are suddenly flat on our stomachs on the forest floor, except for Kasey, who lets out a jagged gasp and bounds up the little hill before us, peering off into the trees.
For a split-second, I’m just trembling beneath Aiden. There’s some distant shouting as we all lift our heads, the sound of dogs barking, and then a faint crashing sound.
“What-?” Noah begins, panting, then breaks off as a second, much louder crash explodes the quiet of the forest a second time.
Before anyone can so much as move, two more sharp cracks split the air, from completely different directions. Two more shots.
“Oh, no,” I whisper.
Kasey’s frantic voice reaches us from up the hill. “I think people are panic shooting!”
“Ralph!” Aiden gasps. “We have to do someth-”
Before he can finish, Ralph rises to one knee, drawing in a breath that swells his chest. He cups his hands around his mouth, and roars at the top of his lungs -
“HOLD YOUR FIRE!”
Ralph’s voice tears through the forest more effectively than all the previous sounds to come before it. It seemed to drop two full octaves and simultaneously rise to an impossible volume. It goes across the woodlands around us like a peal of thunder, powerful and forceful enough to cut through a battlefield.
The forest instantly falls completely, utterly silent. There was something so authoritative in the roared command that no one out there seems to see fit to question it. Even the barking dogs stop.
“NOBODY SHOOT!” Ralph bellows, then stops with a startled flinch when Aiden catches his wrist and his voice rises to a volume that really, truly shouldn’t be humanly possible. Loud enough to resound through the forest. Ralph is thrown off only for a second, though. He recovers quickly enough when he sees the blue glow in Aiden’s eyes and understands what happened. “EVERYONE BACK TO THE HOTEL! NOW, RIGHT NOW!”
Silence for a second, and then some murmured voices start to reach us, the sounds of people slowly standing up out in the darkness. Aiden releases my wrist, letting the connection fall closed, then shakily lets go of Ralph.
Ralph rises to his feet, spins on his heel, and sets off swiftly in the direction of the crash we heard.
The rest of us remain frozen in silent shock for a second, then collectively scramble upright and rush after him. He’s clearly not one hundred percent sure where we’re going, but as we get closer there are new sounds to lead us. An excited tangle of voices, a few people rushing through the trees towards the same place we’re headed.
“I got it!” someone is shouting eagerly. “I got the fucking thing, I got it! Shot it right out of the sky! You guys hear it fall through the trees? Where’d it go?”
“I found it, man! It’s over here!”
Ralph immediately veers course to follow the second voice, and we emerge from the forest onto the hotel grounds, where something is laying in a smoking heap on the elegantly-manicured grass.
Ralph sets off directly for it. We cross the lawn right around the same time as the supposedly victorious hunter, who - oh, no. It’s the swaggering guy in the trucker hat, his face lit up with an eager grin as he bounds over to join his friends and claim his prize.
He stops still when he gets there, taken aback.
“Aw, what?” he groans, poking the smoldering pile with the tip of his gun. “C’mon, what the fuck is this?”
I’m honestly not sure, either. It’s some mechanical thing, and it must have been fragile originally. The gunshot that took it down blew it right in half.
It’s clearly not a person or an animal, though. Ralph closes his eyes with relief as Noah braces his arm, and I slump back against Aiden, who grips my fingers tightly, his powerful shoulders sinking as he finally lets out a breath.
“What is it?” Kasey stammers, still with one hand pressed to her chest.
“Hey!” shouts an angry voice.
Someone else comes bounding out of the trees. Another hunter, this one a little younger, gripping a controller in one hand.
“What the hell, dude? That was my drone! You owe me money for that, and for the camera I had on it! And you owe me all the fucking prize money, because I was gonna use the drone to find the monster!”
“Oh, whatever, dipshit,” shouts the hunter who shot it down. “Shouldn’t have gotten it in my way.”
The owner of the drone, who just dropped to his knees in front of the ruined mess, looks up in disbelief. “Are you serious?”
“What are you gonna do about it?” the hunter snaps, and turns around to storm off.
Instead he finds himself face to face with Ralph, who’s standing there with a white-hot glare burning in his grey-green eyes.
The hunter balks for a second. He’s tall enough to stand at eye height with Ralph, and twice as muscular, but clearly he saw something in Ralph’s gaze that threw him off his stride.
“You’re in my way, pal,” he says, recovering quickly.
“Had a question I wanted to ask you,” Ralph says icily, without moving. “Do you always fire blind at night, without a starlight scope on your gun, with no fucking idea of what you’re shooting at? When there are a whole shitload of other people around? Or is that just what you do when you’re too drunk to aim straight?”
The hunter draws back in stunned disbelief, then lets out a scoffing sound. “Get out of my way.”
He reaches out to push Ralph aside. Ralph doesn’t move, only drops his gaze to the hunter’s hand, but the hunter sees something in his expression that makes him take his hand back very sharply, then take an involuntary step backwards.
He’s obviously irritated with himself for doing that, because he immediately steps back up to Ralph. But Ralph doesn’t give him any ground. He stays right where he is, not even blinking.
The hunter seems surprised to suddenly find himself all up in Ralph’s face. He hesitates for a second, then swells up angrily, narrowing his eyes.
“Again, I suggest you get out of my way. No one’s gonna stop me hunting tonight, I’ll tell you that.”
“I suggest you go home,” Ralph says, in that calm, mocking way he has. “Before you hurt someone, or yourself.”
“You trying to fuck with me, man?” The hunter stabs a finger at Ralph, who doesn’t bother to break his gaze away to look down at it. “Because you don’t want to. I got friends with me, and I know how to fight.”
Ralph breaks into a small, cold smile as Noah and Aiden move to stand at his back, glowering at the hunter. “I’ve got my friends with me, too. Some of ‘em have been hoping for an opportunity like this all night.”
The hunter blanches as his eyes go from Noah, grinning maniacally and bouncing on his heels, to Aiden with his silent, incendiary blue glare, then back to Ralph again.
“I could take you fuckers,” he snaps, struggling to get the sneer back into his voice. He gestures to his friends, who didn’t step up to join him, their uneasy eyes taking in the lineup they’d be facing. “I don’t even need these morons. I got the Lord on my side.”
Ralph’s grey-green eyes grow so cold they could shatter glass.
“God would drop you and run if he knew I was after you,” he says softly, smiling at the hunter.
The hunter freezes, blinking hard. He’s a powerfully-built man, but he seems to shrink beneath Ralph’s gaze, shivering a little, going pale. All of a sudden it feels like Ralph is towering over him. His shocked eyes have gone very wide, taking in the smile on Ralph’s face.
A sudden roar of thunder shakes the sky overhead, echoing over the forest with a resounding crack, bringing an accompanying flash of lightning.
Ralph doesn’t move. He stands there like a rock, his burning eyes locked on the hunter’s. The hunter startles, though, then flinches deeply once his eyes meet Ralph’s again. He starts slowly backing away, his rifle hanging loosely from his fingers.
“Jesus,” his friend sputters, catching his sleeve. “Forget this, man! Let’s just get the fuck out of here, before someone makes you pay for the kid’s drone.”
“Don’t come back,” Ralph says softly, when the two of them turn to walk away.
The hunter shivers, doesn’t say anything. His friends all start to move faster, looking like they’d really like to run.
“Drunk asshole!” the drone-owner shouts, as the hunter’s friends lead their silent, pale-faced comrade away. “You owe me a new one!”
Ralph turns back to the rest of us, lets out a heavy breath. He silently takes a cigarette from his pack, puts it in his mouth, and lights it as Wendy comes charging down the sloping grounds towards us. Moving at a startlingly fast clip, bringing Hanely and Grimm in her wake.
“Oh, what did you do?” She flashes us a furious look, then turns to face the crashed drone, whose miserable owner is trying to stamp out the smoldering grass. “Oh, oh! Do you know how much it costs to keep our lawns so beautiful? I knew you boys were trouble, I said so the moment you set foot on my property!”
“It wasn’t us,” Ralph answers calmly.
“That idiot shot it down,” the younger hunter groans, pointing to the hunters walking back up towards the road. “Hey, you guys are cops, are you gonna make him pay for it?”
Hanely and Grimm stop to stare at the drone, out of breath, then draw back in alarm when Wendy suddenly rounds on them, pointing down at the singed lawn.
“You! You two were supposed to prevent any damage to my hotel in the course of the hunt! We just discussed this! That does include the grass!”
“We’re more concerned with all the gunshots,” Hanely says urgently. “Someone may have gotten the animal!”
“I’m pretty sure I heard some from over there!” Grimm shouts, running straight for the forest. “Come on!”
“What?” Ralph stares in disbelief as Hanely rushes to join Grimm. “No, everyone is coming back, you guys are already too late-”
He breaks off and widens his eyes like he doesn’t know why he’s trying to help them. They’re not listening, anyways.
We all watch in amazement as the two cops go running off pell-mell in the wrong direction. Wendy goes storming back towards the hotel, shouting something about getting a camera to take pictures of the grass to show Chief Sieler later.
The remaining hunters are emerging from the trees all around us. Murmurs immediately break out at the sight of the crashed drone.
Ralph turns around to face the gathering crowd. “Who fired a shot out there? Show of hands.”
His voice, though not raised to a shouting pitch anymore, coolly and authoritatively cuts through all the noise. There’s a pause, and then two slightly abashed hands go up in the air, from different parts of the crowd.
“Did you check if you hit anything?”
They both nod. Ralph opens his mouth to ask, but since both of the hunters only look a little shaken the answer is easy to guess. He skips that question and goes right to the next one.
“Everyone got their friends accounted for?” His gaze drops uneasily to the non-human members of the crowd. “Dogs, too?”
Nods all around.
“Then we narrowly avoided a real disaster,” Ralph says, and raises his voice to be sure that everyone can hear. “Everyone needs to go home. Make sure you have everyone you came here with, then leave. The hunt is over for the night.”
“Says who?” someone calls out.
I miss Ralph’s answer, because my phone just started buzzing. I open up the text from Gabby, speed-read it, and nearly let out a gasp of relief.
Ralph glances down at me when I tug on his sleeve and hold out my phone. He reads the text much faster than I did, then closes his eyes for a moment. He turns back to the hunters, but before he can say anything, Grimm comes hurrying back over with his radio in his hand. Hanely is behind him, so I guess they didn’t make it too far into the forest.
“Oh, everyone’s here,” Grimm manages, all out of breath. “Listen up, boys! Boys! Gents! Over here!”
All of the hunters turn to face him, including the obviously irritated women among them.
“We’ve just gotten word through the radio that the local government over in Ketterbridge is using its authority to shut down the hunt for the night.”
There’s a tangled sound of general complaint from the gathered people. Grimm raises his hands, like he gets it.
“How come they can do that?” someone calls, to an irritable shrug from Grimm.
“We can’t stop them meddling in things, can we? Apparently there’s some bylaw that says if Ketterbridge hunters join a hunt this size, Ketterbridge City Hall can refuse to approve their participation until someone reviews those hunter’s permits and signs off on it. If we keep going before we do that, we’re in trouble. As someone from their City Hall just told Chief Sieler on the phone.”
“Who here is from Ketterbridge?” someone complains. “Just send ‘em home and we’re good.”
“Who is it?” someone else echoes.
A suspicious pair of eyes lands on me. “This one looks pretty soft. Ketterbridge-like.”
I spread my hands indignantly, but Ralph answers for me with an easy, effortless lie.
“We’re not part of the hunt.”
“Someone else, then,” another voice calls. “Who’s here from Ketterbridge?”
Accusatory looks go all around, but no one stands up to face the charges.
“Alright, since no one will step forward, we have to stop until the permits are checked,” Grimm says, swiping the back of his hand over his forehead. “But the hunt will resume in the morning, boys. Count on that. We’ll see you all here bright and early.”
There’s some grumbling and complaining, but the hunters all set off up the sloping grounds towards the hotel.
“How are you going to get word out to anyone who might still be in the forest?” Ralph asks Hanely, who’s just stopped beside him. “Further out?”
“Oh, it’s fine,” Grimm answers for him, gesturing vaguely to the retreating crowd of hunters heading up to the road. “That looked like everybody.”
Ralph draws his head back, then stiffly asks - “And the gunshots you heard? You guys gonna go make sure there’s no-?”
“It’s a hunt, son,” Hanely cuts in exasperatedly. “There’s gonna be gunshots. Doesn’t sound to us like anyone was hurt.”
Ralph stares at him in disbelief as he and Grimm follow after the hunters, apparently all done here.
“Wow.” Ralph turns around to face us, taking an angry drag of his cigarette. “Un-fucking-believable.”
“Ralph!” Kasey grins widely, letting out a laugh. “Holy shit! That was amazing! You’re so scary.”
“Isn’t he?” Aiden laughs fondly, then lets out a shaky breath. “Holy fuck, though. Everyone okay?”
Ralph is looking around at us with worry in his eyes, clearly wondering the same thing. He blinks in surprise when this search is met with admiring grins from all of us.
“Man,” Noah laughs, slapping Ralph’s shoulder. “I’m sure as hell okay, I’m actually more revved up than I was before! Shit, you never really get used to seeing the Warlord come out. Speaking from experience.”
“It’s definitely something,” Kasey laughs, sounding dazed.
“I’m just glad he’s on our side,” I stammer, retrieving my inhaler and giving it a shake.
All this is apparently a little too much for Ralph. He’s kind of got a startled, pleased smile on his face, but he blushes uncomfortably and turns away.
“Alright, everyone stop with - stop,” he says hurriedly, rolling his cigarette between his fingertips. “We have to figure out a good way to search the forest for anyone who’s left. Maybe we should grab a few of the guys with dogs, ask if they could do a sweep…”
He trails off, glancing at the dogs unhappily.
“I’m on it,” Aiden murmurs, clasping Ralph’s shoulder. “Kasey, you could do a sweep of the forest pretty quick, too.”
“I’m all over it!”
My phone starts buzzing in my pocket as Kasey vanishes. I fall back from the group to get a little space, numbly answer it, then put it to my ear.
“Gabby.” I breathe out her name on a sigh of pure gratitude. “You champion.”
“I’ve been reading hunting bylaws all day,” she says, her soft, low voice very tired. “Please tell me it worked before anyone got hurt.”
“It did, just in time! Although - I’m sorry, it definitely didn’t win Ketterbridge or City Hall any friends.”
“It’s okay. I knew it wouldn’t. Sometimes that’s worth it.”
“Oh. Okay.” My heart warms with fierce affection for Gabby. “How did you know that Ketterbridge hunters were participating in the hunt, by the way? We didn’t meet them.”
“You’re participating, aren’t you?”
“Oh, I mean - not in an official capacity, no,” I answer slowly, confused that Gabby didn’t realize that. “We didn’t actually sign up.”
“Oh,” she says lightly. “Then it sounds like no Ketterbridge hunters are participating, but I truthfully had a reason to believe some were. A simple mistake, no one’s fault.”
I close my eyes in amazement. “Gabby, you’re a powerhouse.”
“That means I’ve only bought you some time, though,” she says warningly. “I’m sure that Chief Sieler will have everyone back out there by the morning.”
“Yeah, the cops he has on the scene were practically telling everyone to come back and recreate this whole mess again tomorrow.”
“I’m sorry, Jamie, I wish I could do more.”
“Are you kidding? You have no idea how much you’ve done! And on the weekend, too - we love you!”
Gabby lets out a warm, sleepy laugh. “I love you, too. Can I go to sleep now? I know it’s not that late, but bylaws drain a person’s energy faster than any other thing in the world. I know that now.”
“Yes you can, and I’m buying you five million croissants when we get back. The cheesy ones from Mugshot.”
“Make it ten million, and chocolate. Buenas noches.”
I hang up, start to turn around to go back to the group - and freeze to the spot.
Some of the hunters are still hanging out by the picnic tables. Taking their time packing up, emptying out their coolers, finishing off whatever they already had open. Two of the ones with dogs are standing aside, listening as Aiden and Noah talk to them.
The hotel beside them is still silent and empty-looking, but…
I could have sworn I just saw a figure move past one of the windows on the first floor. Very dimly silhouetted against the muffled glow coming through the curtains.
Not Wendy. Too tall to be her, and moving too swiftly, as if trying to avoid being seen.
I hesitate for a split second, my heart pounding in my ears. I badly want to go back and get the rest of the team, but I’m standing much closer to the hotel than anyone else. I’d lose precious time going back, I’m losing time right now, trying to make a decision…
I set off for the hotel, moving as fast as I can without attracting attention. It only takes me half a minute to get to the window where I saw someone, but the curtains are almost completely blocking my view. There’s the barest gap between them, and I lean up close to the glass to peek through it.
In the half-light of the lobby, I catch a glimpse of someone in movement. The quickest flash of their back, right before they disappear up the stairs to the second floor.
My breath catches in my throat, my eyes widening in dismay.
Again, I’m sorely tempted to go get the others, but there’s no time for that. I need to do something right now.
I spin around and steal a glance at the cafe. The lights are still on, but the door is locked. No way in through there, and I’m sure the front doors to the hotel are locked, too.
My eyes land on what looks like a basement window. It’s about half the height of the others, but just as wide. It’s been left open, just a crack.
There’s only darkness beyond it, suggesting that no one is inside.
Cursing beneath my breath, I glance around, then drop to a crouch and quietly push the window the rest of the way open. It’s not breaking and entering if you don’t actually break something, is it? I’ll have to remember to ask Ralph later, but hopefully it won’t matter, because I won’t be seen. All I can do is hope that Wendy isn’t somewhere nearby, and Hanely and Grimm aren’t, either.
I squirm through the window, and end up dropping a short way down to reach the floor. I stop there and straighten up, catching my breath, blinking in the gloom. With the lights off it’s hard to make anything out, but the shapes around me suggest I’m in some sort of food storage area. Makes sense. Based on the location of the window, I’m probably somewhere beneath the cafe.
I set off across the room, moving slowly to avoid any hidden obstacles.
“Okay,” I whisper to myself, over the roar of my racing heartbeat. “It’s all good, this is fine, just don’t get caught-”
With an electrical buzz, the lights are all switched on at once. I gasp and take a sharp step backwards, the sudden brightness stinging my eyes.
The guy in the doorway of the cellar is understandably startled, too. He staggers a step backwards, clutching a crate of apples to his chest, then freezes, staring at me with wide eyes.
“Shit, man, you scared me!” he sputters, getting his breath back. “What are you doing down here?”
Come on, Jamie. You can do this. One lie, that’s all it is. Say anything besides the truth, literally anything -
“I… broke in,” I answer, then make sort of an oops face. “I’m sorry.”
Oh, no. Oh, fuck.
“Well - why, man?” The guy comes into the cellar and sets the crate aside, then stretches his arms up over his head, casting me a baffled look. “If you wanted some food you could’ve asked me upstairs. Cafe’s closed, but it’s always open for friends. So long as I’m the one working, and no one tells Wendy.”
I stare at him in total confusion, struggling to understand.
“I - I’m sorry, do we know each other?” I finally manage.
The guy pauses in organizing some of the boxes and looks up at me, startled.
“What…? You don’t remember me, Jamie? Really?” He looks a little hurt when I wince and shake my head. “Oh. We talked for kind of a while the last time you were here. You really heard me out about the issues I’ve been having with my ex-girlfriend…? It was nice of you. I know it was probably an earful, but I - I thought you were listening.”
Oh, my god. Wait a second. Didn’t Aiden tell me about the guy who cooks for the cafe? Wendy assumed he only spoke Spanish, but it turned out that wasn’t true at all, and apparently he and I had a nice long chat once we found that out.
“Oh - you’re Eduardo!” I snap my fingers as his name suddenly shakes itself loose from my muddled memories. “Yeah, of course! God, I’m so sorry, dude! It’s gonna sound wild, but I fell down a hill in the forest, and I, um - messed up some of my memories in the process.”
Eduardo gives me a doubtful look, but his gaze catches on the half-healed scrapes and bruises on my arms, and his eyes widen.
“Holy shit, seriously? Damn, that’s crazy, glad you’re okay!”
“Thanks, man! And hey, I do remember that your food is really good. We’re definitely gonna come back tomorrow to get some. We love your cafe just as much as we hate this hotel.”
Eduardo breaks into a pleased smile. “Well, after the solid advice you gave me, you eat here free, dude.”
“Aw, really? Thanks, man!” I take a second to wonder what advice I gave him, then decide that’s not the most important at the moment. I lean to glance around him at the steps. “Hey, look - it’s a long story, but I actually broke in for a reason, and I need to get upstairs. Do you, um… have to stop me?”
“I get paid to make food,” Eduardo says firmly. “Not to do security. But if you get caught, I didn’t never see you in here.”
“Appreciate you, man!” I give his shoulder a slap, hurrying past. “Is Wendy up there?”
“Maybe, I dunno. She’s probably gonna come down soon to tell me the cafe doesn’t look clean enough, if she’s not done yelling about the grass that got burned up on the lawn. Can’t believe that happened. Nothing like that ever happens around here.”
Eduardo’s grin tells me he likes very much that the immaculate lawn took a scorching, however small.
“Okay. I’ll be careful. Thank you!”
I hurry up the stairs, let myself out into the hallway, and stop to get my bearings. I’ve come out in a hallway near the cafe. The figure I saw was in the lobby, heading up the stairs.
I take a deep breath, then steal down the hallway as quietly as I can, hugging the wall, keeping an eye out for Wendy.
The lights are those electric ones shaped to look like candles, set in iron fittings on the walls. They do very little to lighten the infinite gloom of the place, and it’s hard to make too much out in the murky light. I call on my Vision just a little bit, so I don’t knock anything over by accident. My eyesight is generally a little sharper when I use my charged-up Vision, even on non-ghostly things. I step carefully around an umbrella stand at the end of the hallway, my gaze roaming the darkness.
A distant roll of thunder rumbles through the night air outside as I slip back out into the lobby. Pausing to listen for a moment, I hear the soft patter of raindrops on the windows, just beginning to start up.
I turn around to look for the stairs, then gasp and nearly fall over. For a second I thought someone was in the room with me, but what my eyes landed on was a painted portrait.
I stare at the portrait with knitted eyebrows. I don’t know how I missed it before, because it’s proudly located in a showspace across from the check-in desk. Given the placement, I’d say it’s probably a painting of M.N. Morden.
He’s wearing an ornate, impeccable black jacket, with so much pomade in his hair that it looks rigidly stiff even in the painting. He’s arranged in a pose I would call - dramatic, with his face tilted up as if he’s gazing off into some field of war. He’s got an extremely unpleasant smile that reminds me very much of Wendy.
I take a step back from the portrait, shuddering as I briefly meet its cold eyes.
I begin to hurry up the grandiose staircase, then stop again. It’s difficult to discern the quiet sounds I just heard from the light pattering rain, but in the midst of my uncertainty I have a very clear, strong intuition telling me that someone is up at the top of the landing, and that they stopped when they heard me coming.
I take a deep breath, then rush the rest of the way up the steps.
The person on the landing turns to sprint away, but I catch a handful of his shirt before he can get too far. He gasps and spins around again, then lets out a choke of relief when he realizes it’s me.
“Nolan!” I whisper anxiously, catching his wrist and dragging him closer. “I thought it was you! What are you doing?”
He’s got a heavy backpack slung over his shoulder, and an armful of books clasped tightly to his chest.
“Please don’t make me explain,” he whispers back, hugging the books to himself. “Can we just get out of here? How’d you find me?”
“I saw you through the window! How did you even get in here-?”
We both shut up and go perfectly still, hearing footsteps downstairs. Swift, clicking footsteps that can only be Wendy’s, followed by two sets of heavier ones.
“-repeat again what I said about you making sure nothing happens to my hotel,” she’s saying coldly. “Isn’t that what the police are for?”
“Is this still about the grass?” Hanely asks, starting to sound a bit weary of it.
“Yes, it’s still about the grass!” Wendy snaps.
“Alright, alright,” Grimm answers in alarm. “Rest assured, ma’am, we won’t let any other damage come to the hotel.”
“Seriously, what are you doing here?” I whisper to Nolan, once the voices have faded out behind the click of a door closing. “Are you stealing something? Why the backpack?”
“No, I’m not stealing! I-” Nolan flinches, then hangs his head, struggling over his words. “It’s - look, I-”
Nolan and I both spin around with a gasp as someone else silently joins us on the landing.
“Noah!” I whisper, pressing a trembling hand to my chest. “Holy shit, where did you just come from?”
“Saw you break in, Jamie,” he whispers, taking another bite of the molasses cookie in his hand. “Thought I’d come see what was up. What’s going on, we sneaking around?”
“Oh, god,” I whisper, closing my eyes.
“You see that creepy portrait of Morden downstairs, dude? How’d he manage to look so punchable in a painting?” Noah’s grey eyes flit from me to Nolan with obvious curiosity. “What’s good, Nolan? What are you doing here?”
“I - I-” Nolan looks like he’d rather die than explain. An agonized blush is crawling up his cheeks. “I just thought… while everyone was distracted with the hunt, it would be a good time to come back and get some of the stuff I left here, without anyone noticing me. I’m probably gonna try to sell most of my old books…”
He trails off, struggling for a way to explain further. Noah stuffs the rest of his cookie into his mouth, plucks the topmost book out of the stack, then lifts his eyebrows when he reads the title.
“The Love Poems and Sonnets of William Shakespeare, huh?”
Nolan blushes defensively. “It’s not - I - I’m gonna sell it.”
Noah considers for a moment, then lets out a huge sigh, tucking the book under his arm. “How much for this one?”
Nolan pauses, taken aback. “What?”
“You said it’s for sale, right?” Noah is working his wallet out of his pocket. “How much is it?”
“I dunno, I guess five dollars…?” Nolan answers, looking like he’s completely out at sea.
He stares in disbelief at the five-dollar bill Noah pushes into his hand. I’m staring at Noah in disbelief, too, and he casts me a look like he can’t even believe himself.
“Is this what being married does to you?” he sighs regretfully, slipping his wallet back into his pocket. “Raj has got me out here buying a book. Willingly. I mean, as a present, I’m not gonna read it, but still. My nerd-smashing instincts are activating on my own self.”
“Oh, my god.” I make a thin, strained sound, then turn back to Nolan. “Nolan, why are you selling your stuff?”
He swallows hard, shrugging his shoulders. “To get enough to pay you guys.”
“Wh-? I told you there’s no fee!”
“I thought maybe it was the kind of thing where it seems like there’s no fee, but then there’s actually a fee afterwards and then you’re on the hook…?”
“What? No!”
“Well - then-” Nolan glances between me and Noah helplessly, suddenly on the brink of bewildered tears. “Then I don’t get it. Why would you help me for nothing? Why are you guys being so nice to me? What’s the catch?”
“Wh-? There’s no - aw, Nolan-” I break off and take a steadying breath. “Okay, look, we can talk later. Why is your stuff even here, what’s-? No, forget it. We need to get out of here first. What’s the quickest way?”
“The fire exit door by the cafe,” Nolan whispers. “Eduardo keeps the door alarm switched off, he goes out there for his smoke breaks.”
“Then let’s go.”
“Go?” Nolan whispers, taking an alarmed step back. “No, I - I think we should hide until Hanely and Grimm are gone, just in case-”
“Come on, man.” Noah catches Nolan’s wrist and sets off back down the stairs, ignoring a whimper of protest. “No time for that. Sounds like none of us can afford to be caught in here. We gotta get you to safety.”
“Yeah, before anything else can happen,” I add, hurrying after them down the stairs. “There’s already been too much-”
I break off, having nearly walked into Noah. He just stopped suddenly on the stairs, his gaze caught on a very large hunting horn on display on the wall.
“Oh, yes,” he says eagerly, reaching for it. “What have we here? We gotta try this thing. Nolan, help me get it down.”
“Noah, no!” I push him back into movement, swatting his hand away from the horn. “We passed the point of minimum chaos a while ago, okay? No more chaos allowed tonight!”
Noah lets out a little laugh, pulling Nolan back into movement on the stairs.
“We’ll see,” he says.
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