Chapter 15
Noah should’ve known as soon as he said those words, the afternoon would be anything but dull. They’d barely turned the corner, and all the werewolves started sniffing the air.
Noah’s heart sank. “What is it?”
“I smell minotaur,” Jarot said.
“Minotaur?” Web asked.
Jarot mimed having horns. “Minotaur.”
“I know what a minotaur is.” Web rolled his eyes.
“Isn’t that a bit unusual in Beita?” From everything Noah had gleaned from Pan and the vampires, minotaurs came for trade, but few lived there.
Jarot nodded. “It is.”
One of the werewolves walked up the street. “Strega house.”
This is the first place Pan had wanted to check. Her house was right on the edge of the sinkhole. Should they have come here first? It hadn’t made sense to start in a badly damaged area so far from the rec center, especially not when Pan’s prayers were supposed to bring the Strega to them.
To Noah, the house looked like all the other houses.
After the damage of the previous street, this one didn’t look too bad.
There were clusters of mytho houses that were mostly upright and clusters of human houses that also seemed mostly upright, but past the Strega house, the road also stopped, or the human road did; two meters down, a cobbled road continued.
On the other side of the hole, about a hundred meters away, the ground sloped up.
This was the giant sinkhole that had caused the area to be closed off, and they were on the wrong side to get down there.
“Why is this the Strega house? And isn’t that some kind of witch?” Liam asked, staring at the house.
“All the plants are poison. Also smells like magic.” Jarot walked up the path to knock on the door.
Noah stared down at the cobble street, resisting the urge to jump down and explore the few standing mytho buildings. He cupped his hands around his mouth and called out. “Is anyone down there?”
The werewolf next to him sniffed.
From one of the perfect mytho houses below, a woman dressed in black appeared. “Yes, I am here. Who asks?” She said in perfect English.
“She’s not alone,” the werewolf next to Noah whispered.
“It’s not that far, we can jump down,” Web said, eyeing up the drop.
“I’m not jumping anywhere,” Liam said.
“I do,” Noah called.
“And who are you?” She asked.
He was a no one, so it didn’t really matter. “Who are you?”
“I asked first,” the woman said.
Of course this had to be the day that Pan wasn’t with them. “I am Noah. I am assisting Silas Wilde with searching for survivors.” He put emphasis on Pan’s other name, hoping that it meant something to her.
She paused, head tilted as if listening to something no one else could hear. “Silas Wilde is there?”
“Not today, he had other work to do.” Something turned in his gut. Pan had been praying for the Strega, and they were near the Strega house. “You’re the Strega?”
Had she been waiting for them for days? Should he have come sooner?
No, she would not have waited in the ruins after traveling from a different city. Unless she was supposed to wait and be greeted. Were there rules about this kind of thing?
“Not of this city…is my sister missing?”
Noah glanced at Jarot, who’d been into the house, and he shook his head.
“We have not found her,” Noah said.
The woman crossed her arms. “I’m from Calla, but I had the strongest urge to be here. I’m guessing it’s because of Silas. I brought some friends. One of them said he used to work in this human town before appearing in Calla six months ago.”
“Do you want a hand up?” Jarot called.
“No, I think we should be able to manage,” she said as a human stepped out of the house holding the hand of what had to be a minotaur.
Holy shit! The minotaur was huge, and not just tall. Noah doubted his shoulders even fit through a doorway. They had, even as the minotaur had ducked his head to avoid hitting the lintel with his horns. The human man barely reached his shoulder.
The three of them walked over to the drop, and the minotaur picked up the Strega as if she weighed nothing. Before she reached for the broken edge of the road, Jarot and one of the other werewolves extended their hands and pulled her up and over the lip. They did the same for the human man.
“Do you need a hand?” Jarot asked the minotaur.
The minotaur shook his head and grabbed the edge before easily pulling himself up and over. The three of them didn’t appear to be injured, but they all seemed tired and in need of a wash.
“Did you walk here from Calla?” Noah wasn’t sure where Calla was in Wales. Was it now the next town over? Or had it arrived in a national park?
Were there perfectly preserved mythological cities?
He remembered the island and the oil platform and once again vowed to make the time to watch what was unfolding there, even though he had so far failed to do anything more than worry about his own town.
The Strega glanced at the minotaur and was nominated as spokesperson without a single word being said. “Yes, there wasn’t much for us to do there. Rohan’s brother is managing, so when I was called to come here, he told me to go. This is Prince Rohan and his husband, Nate.”
Nate, the human who used to work here.
Noah stared at the dark-haired human. “Oh my god, you’re the teacher who went missing six months ago on the hike. It was all over the news. Everyone thought you were dead.”
Nate nodded and smiled up at Rohan. “I thought I was too.”
“You were there, and now you’re here. My uncle David is the principal of the school you taught at…it’s closed at the moment. People are staying there because their houses were damaged. How bad is it in Calla?”
“Wait, you lived in the mythological world?” Liam asked. “What was it like?”
The Strega lifted her hands. “I’m sure there will be a time to discuss everything. But standing here is not it. We have been traveling at night because some people are afraid of minotaurs. Several were…run over by cars?”
The werewolves gasped in horror.
“The police put a stop to it, with warnings about not harming any of the mythological people. The guys doing it claimed they were hunting demons.”
“Oh.” Noah had heard something about the church whipping up a bit of hysteria about mythological people being demons, but he thought that belief was held only by a few weirdos.
One church had led its followers to their death.
Clearly, stupidity spread fast. “We haven’t had any of that here,” and he hoped that no one got any ideas.
“But human houses and needs have been put first. Which is why we’re doing a search of all the mytho houses looking for survivors and supplies. ”
“And your Strega is dead,” The Strega said.
“Her house is empty.” Jarot pointed at the house with all the poisonous plants out front. “And no one has seen or heard from her.”
The woman drew in a deep breath. “Fine, hopefully she’s left me something to make tea with. Coming?”
Noah glanced at the werewolves and then at Web and Liam.
It appeared they were going to have tea in the poison house—Pan had warned him about accepting food and drink from the Strega, but refusing felt rude, and the werewolves weren’t bothered.
The house was dim on the inside, and aside from a few things that had fallen off the walls or shelves, it seemed to be in perfect condition, which was kind of odd after the devastation and destruction he’d spent the better part of a week crawling through.
It didn’t take long for the Strega to open the window shutters and let some light in, but when she went to make the tea, she paused at the tap. “Huh…no water. And I can’t light the fire with magic.”
“I have a lighter,” Web offered, pulling it out of his pocket.
“And we all have bottles of water,” Liam added.
“Great. I really need some tea.” She opened a few cupboards and sniffed the contents of small containers before finding one she was happy with, then continued going through the kitchen until she pulled out a large pottery container.
She lifted the lid and smiled. “And biscuits.” She picked one out of the container and gave it a sniff.
“Oh, good, these are regular rose biscuits. You don’t want to accidentally eat ones that put you to sleep or make you tell the truth.
” She smiled as if the possibility of eating magic-laced cookies was funny.
“Don’t just stand in the kitchen watching me.
Get the fire going, leave me some water, and then go and check the house for anything useful.
” She shooed them out with a flick of her fingers.
“She’s not going to mind you going through her stuff?”
“My sister is dead. Like many others, she clearly didn’t make it through the collapse. She would not begrudge me taking over her house and making use of her supplies.”
She seemed very calm for someone who’d lost her sister. Noah wasn’t sure what to say. “I’m sorry you found out like this.”
“They are sisters by magic, not by blood,” Nate said as if that explained anything. Was the ability to explain things and un-explain them at the same time a skill that came from living on Tariko?
“Which makes us closer. We went through the same training, and we gave up our names when we took on the magic and responsibility of being a Strega. Give me a moment while I make tea, boys. Go and help the werewolves search the house.”
Noah didn’t know what he was looking for, but he also knew he wasn’t welcome in the kitchen.
Was she planning on poisoning them all? It seemed unlikely…
of course, everything these days was unlikely.
He was sleeping with—dating?—a god, he was working with werewolves, he was feeding dragons, and he was also a part-time seal.
He walked out the front and pulled his phone out of his pocket to give Pan an update, and he hoped that Pan would be able to provide one too.
You’ll never guess what I found.
Noah didn’t wait for Pan to start guessing, as Pan would take the question literally.