Chapter 14 #2
“Of course I don’t.” She was certain of that point, at least. “It’s true that we’ve got some rather odd reports from the kids. But I’m sure it will turn out to be something completely nor-”
A flicker of light caught her eye.
“Catbutt? Hey, can you hear me? You’ve frozen.”
She raised her phone, still staring out the window. “Birdbrain, I’m going to have to call you back.”
She ended the call, cutting off her sister’s half-formed protest. Then she just stared, trying to make sense of what she was seeing.
An indistinct, diaphanous shape floated at the edge of the woods, framed between two trees. If it was aware of her presence, it didn’t seem alarmed. In fact, it bobbed a little higher, glow brightening as if to make sure she’d noticed it.
Then it disappeared.
“Okay,” Leonie said out loud, after a long, frozen moment. “There is a logical explanation for this.”
Someone knocked on her door. “Leonie?” Shan called from outside, his voice oddly sharp. “Is all well?”
“Good question.” Blinking to clear her vision, she opened the door. “I might be losing my mind. Did you see that?”
From the baffled look Shan gave her, he hadn’t. “See what?”
“I’m pretty sure I just saw our ghost.” She ducked under his arm. “Come on. Let’s check it out. ”
Shan followed her as she headed for the woods. “Which ghost, though?”
“I’m betting it was the fake one.” She glanced back at him, something else occurring to her. “Why did you come to my cabin, anyway? I thought you were working on the search plan.”
Shan hesitated. “I—”
He stopped dead, staring past her. Pale, shimmering light reflected from his sunglasses.
Leonie whirled, but Shan was faster. A wall of striped orange fur surged past her, charging for the woods.
Too startled to call up her own animal, she pounded after him.
Through the trees, she caught a glimpse of a glowing, fluttering shape, hovering between two trunks.
As Shan tore through the undergrowth, it dropped like a puppet with cut strings, vanishing in a flash of light.
At the same time, something small and white burst out of a bush like a startled deer, dashing away at top speed.
And she abruptly knew exactly how the kids were faking the ghost sightings.
“SHAN, NO!” she yelled.
The tiger was already leaping at the fleeing shape. At her shout, he twisted in mid-air, spreading his wings to turn his pounce into a spinning tumble. He crashed into a tree, leaves showering over his fur.
She rushed to his side, ghost temporarily forgotten. “Are you okay?”
The tiger pushed itself up, shaking its head groggily. It turned toward her—and Shan was back, sunglasses askew.
“I am fine.” He straightened his glasses, adjusting the strap. “Did you see where it went?”
“Not it. They.” She raised her voice. “Flash! Leaf! Come here, please.”
There was a long pause. Just as she was beginning to think they must have teleported away, two small, glimmering figures pushed through the undergrowth.
Next to her, Shan inhaled sharply. She put a hand on his chest, silently willing him to stay silent.
“It’s all right,” she said to the pair of young unicorns, keeping her tone soft and reassuring. “You’re not in trouble. I just want to talk. You two are behind all the recent ‘ghost sightings,’ aren’t you?”
The two sisters hung their heads guiltily.
Flash, the older and taller of the pair, had a king-sized bedsheet caught on her horn.
The thin white fabric draped over her back and flanks like a Halloween ghost costume.
Someone had even cut two holes for the eyes.
Since it was hard to use scissors with hooves, it wasn’t hard to work out who.
Leonie sighed. “Did Estelle put you up to this?”
Whether they ran about on two legs or four, kids were still kids. The two unicorns exchanged the universal worried glances of youngsters caught between adult authority and the unspoken rules of friendship. They both shook their heads.
Leonie felt Shan’s chest lift under her palm, but he let the breath out again, unused. That was all the confirmation she needed.
She dropped her hand, briefly touching his arm to show that she’d understood.
Trusting him to leave the talking to her, she crouched to put herself on eye-level with the wild unicorns.
They were much smaller than their shifter counterparts—not that there were many unicorn shifters.
She only knew of three, and that was including Estelle.
Though they couldn’t take human form, the wild unicorns were intelligent, sentient beings.
Unfortunately, their mental language made mythic shifter telepathy seem like someone burping the alphabet.
While Flash and Leaf understood spoken words perfectly well, without a translator, she would only be able to grasp the barest outline of anything they attempted to communicate in return.
“I’m sure you didn’t mean to worry anyone,” she said to the unicorns, and got fervent head-nods in response. “Though you certainly had us all fooled. Can you show me how you did it?”
The two unicorns looked at each other again. Leonie caught the edge of a brief flicker of telepathic communication, like light dancing on the surface of a lake.
Then both unicorns’ horns started to glow.
Without anyone touching it, the sheet drew itself up over Flash’s head, until she was completely hidden.
Leaf seemed to concentrate, and Flash rose into the air.
With the fluttering sheet lit from within by her horn, the overall effect was definitely ghostlike.
The glow around Leaf’s horn started to flicker, as if the effort of levitating her sister was draining her strength. Flash whinnied in alarm as she lurched sideways. In a sudden flash of light, she vanished, reappearing six feet from where she’d started, hooves back on the ground.
Shan stared at the two unicorns. “What just happened?”
Leonie blinked purple after-images out of her vision. “All unicorns have special powers. Flash can teleport, and Leaf can move things with her mind. Though I didn’t know you could do that with living things, Leaf.”
The younger unicorn pranced a bit, neck arching in pride. Flash flattened her ears at her little sister. Leonie didn’t need to understand unicorn telepathy to be able to interpret that look: Stop showing off, idiot! We’re still in trouble!
“I’m not angry,” she reassured the pair. “It’s a clever trick. But you’ve been scaring some of the kids at camp. I need you to promise to stop, okay?”
Two silky white tails drooped. Both unicorns nodded, hangdog.
Shan cleared his throat. “Have you pranked campers like this before? In previous summers?”
From the puzzled looks, the unicorns were somewhat confused by the question. They both shook their heads.
Leonie glanced at Shan, and he nodded slightly in confirmation. They were telling the truth.
Shoot. A couple of bored unicorns deciding to spook the two-legs would have explained everything. But evidently, solving the mystery wasn’t going to be that simple.
“Have any of the other unicorns been hanging around the public hiking trails?” she asked hopefully. “Or mentioned guiding a lost kid back to camp, perhaps?”
More blank stares. More head-shakes.
Before she could ask the foals any more questions, Shan gripped her arm. He was staring past the unicorns, his whole body abruptly tense. Following his gaze, she saw a pale, silvery light filtering through the trees.
“Uh-oh.” She caught Shan’s shirt as he started to move, holding him back. “No, don’t. Kids, you’d better get out of here.”
The unicorns didn’t need telling twice. Leaf snuggled up to her sister, flank to flank. In another flash of light, they both disappeared.
Shan was poised on the balls of his feet, all his attention fixed on the approaching light. “Stay behind me.”
“No need. That’s not our ghost either.” She sighed. “Let me do the talking, okay?”
Sure enough, the light resolved into a figure she knew only too well. The tall unicorn pushed his way through the undergrowth, gray flanks shining like polished silver. He glanced around as if searching for something, then looked down his long nose at them.
Leonie sighed. “Hi, Alder. I assume you’re looking for Flash and Leaf again.”
*An all-too-common occurrence.* The stallion’s telepathic voice was crisply masculine, every syllable ringing in her mind with crystal precision. His ears flattened in mild irritation. *And my name is Alder-in-Winter. As you should know by now, Lioness.*
Shan started slightly. “You talk.”
*So do you,* Alder replied, with much more sarcasm. *Amazing.*
“Alder-in-Winter is the herd’s translator,” Leonie said to Shan, putting a slight emphasis on the unicorn’s full name.
She wasn’t sure why the stallion was so touchy about that, given that he never called anyone else by their actual name, but it wouldn’t help to antagonize him.
“His magic lets him talk to all creatures. Including us.”
*Unfortunately,* Alder muttered under the telepathic equivalent of his breath.
“Alder-in-Winter, this is Special Agent Shan Zhao,” Leonie said. “He’s part of a group dedicated to protecting shifters. There have been some odd reports from our campers, and he’s helping us to investigate.”
Alder’s nostrils flared. *What kind of odd reports?*
“A weird floating light, mostly. The kids think it’s a ghost, silly as that may sound.” A thought struck her. Alder and his people did live in the forest, though not close to the camp. “Have you seen anything like that? Or encountered anything strange out in the woods?”
Alder flicked his tail. *Certainly not. Neither have any of the other unicorns, nor any of the forest creatures. If they had, I would know. Whatever your children claim to have seen, they must be mistaken.*
“They are not lying,” Shan rumbled.
*The forest contains no threats to your camp,* Alder snapped. *I am certain of that. If that is the only reason you are here, you may as well return to wherever you call home, Mountain.*
“Mountain?” Shan said blankly.
“He means you,” Leonie murmured to him. “His translation magic seems to be rather literal when it comes to personal names. In general, Alder-in-Winter says what he means.”
Shan nodded slowly, not taking his gaze from the stallion. “And means what he says.”
Which was a coded way of letting her know the unicorn was telling the truth.
Not that she’d thought otherwise. For all Alder’s faults—and that was a long list, in her private opinion—he took the safety of his people seriously.
If he’d had any concerns about something in the local area, he would have been down at the camp straight away.
“Well, if you see anything, let us know,” she said to Alder. A thought struck her. “Actually, maybe you can help us. You know the mountain better than anyone else. Have you seen a really big dead tree? One with only two branches, reaching up like human arms?”
*A tree?* Alder’s ears flattened. *Why do you ask?*
“It’s where one of our campers saw this strange light. She said it came out of the trunk somehow. We thought we’d better check it out, but we don’t know exactly where she was. Do you have any idea where it could be?”
*No.* Alder stamped a front hoof, impatient to be off. *I do not.*
Shan coughed.
Alder did recognize Hetta’s tree? Leonie couldn’t imagine what possible reason the unicorn could have for lying, but it was clear he wasn’t about to say anything more. If they revealed they knew he wasn’t telling the truth, he would only gallop away.
Maybe there was an indirect way to find out what he knew.
She kept her tone polite and friendly, as if she had no idea the unicorn had just lied to her face.
“Well, just to let you know, we’re organizing a search for this tree.
We’re going to divide the forest into areas and assign a couple of counselors to each one. Shan, do you have that map?”
She had the distinct impression that Shan had absolutely no idea what she was doing. Still, he went along with it. He took the map from his back pocket, passing it to her. Unfolding it, she found he’d already annotated it with faint pencil lines, dividing the search area into a neat grid.
She held up the map for Alder’s inspection.
“We’re going to assign a pair of counselors to each of these squares.
Maybe you or some of the other unicorns could give us a hand—uh, hoof?
We might not find anything, but the more eyes we can get on this, the better.
And I expect there are areas of the forest you’d prefer to search yourself, rather than having us clumsy two-legs blundering around disturbing the wildlife. ”
As she’d hoped, Alder took the bait. He studied the map for a moment, pale gray eyes narrowing.
*I will take this area.* He pointed at a square with his horn. *A mother bear is denning there with her newborn cubs. You should not approach them.*
“I’ll tell the staff to stay well clear.” Leonie gave the unicorn a bright, friendly smile. “Thanks, Alder-in-Winter.”
*You may repay the favor by sending Flash and Leaf back home, should you see them.* Alder faded back into the forest, moving with the soundless grace that only a unicorn could manage. *Keep the members of your herd in your own territory, Lioness. I shall endeavor to do the same.*
“That,” Shan murmured, when the unicorn’s light had vanished into the distance, “was very clever.”
She grinned up at him. “Thanks, I thought so too. Though I couldn’t have done it without you. So, is there really a bear den in that particular area?”
The corner of Shan’s mouth lifted. “No.”
“In that case…” She tapped her finger on the square Alder had indicated. “Let’s go find Hetta’s tree.”