Chapter 10
Periwinkle
It’d be a lot easier to avoid humans if they weren’t so curious all the time. When they came up with that saying about curiosity killing cats, I think they must have been projecting.
Raze, Hail, Mirage, and I purposefully went to the quietest edge of the city we could find so I could aim more loving vibes at the shadow sludge.
We were hoping no one would be around to notice me glowing up the place and the three shadowkind men dealing with any strange beasts that pop out of the darkness while we’re here.
But I’ve barely managed to summon enough tender concern to bring a soft glow to my palms when a voice rings out from behind me.
“Hey, what are you guys doing?”
Raze very smoothly rolls behind a trash bin with the snarling creature he’d just pounced on.
Hail jerks the angle of his hand casting out an icy bolt at another beast in front of him so his power won’t be visible to our new audience.
When the scaly hippo whose legs he froze topples over, Mirage leaps in and leans casually against it as if it’s actually a modern art fixture, not a living being.
I will my glow back under my skin and turn around.
A couple of teenaged humans are sauntering over to us, the guy with his hands shoved in the pockets of his baggy jeans and the girl nibbling on the tip of her long braid.
Does she have tasty hair? That’s a meal I have trouble imagining as appealing.
She keeps nibbling as they come to a stop. The boy cocks his head to one side. “You really think you should be messing with that stuff? It makes things pretty freaky.”
They believe we’re humans like them, not monsters. We’re still okay!
I smile brightly. “We’re just surveying the problem. We’re, ah, professional surveyors. It’s totally safe. For us—you should be careful not to get too close to the shadowy areas.”
“Yes!” Mirage adds in a cheerful tone. “Gotta have the knowhow to make sure the shadows don’t gulp you down!”
Raze straightens up from where the creature he tackled is now a haze of essence wisping away into the air and scowls at Mirage. I’m not sure talking that way is going to set the humans at ease.
The girl removes her braid from her mouth long enough to ask, “If you’re professionals, shouldn’t you be wearing, like, uniforms or something?”
I can come up with an answer to that. “Well, you see, to survey properly, we can’t disturb the natural environment too much. So we need to look like any regular person passing by.”
That makes sense, doesn’t it? The teens still look skeptical, but neither of them tells me I’m wrong.
Unfortunately, a two-legged lizard as tall as I am chooses that moment to burst out of the gloom and screech at the humans.
The girl nearly chokes on her braid before shrieking. The boy grabs her—I can’t tell whether to protect her or to use her as a human shield.
“There really are monsters! Fuck!” He scrambles backward, dragging her with him. “What are we going to do?”
The lizard tilts its head in a birdlike way, which seems fitting because right then I notice the line of feathers poking out along its spine all the way down its back. It opens its mouth to reveal double rows of impressive fangs, but it doesn’t charge forward.
I think this one might be friendly. Is that expression supposed to be a grin?
I wave to the retreating teens. “It’s okay! It doesn’t seem angry. If it gets dangerous, we can deal with it!”
The boy just sputters out a longer string of curses. Panic rolls off both him and the girl in a stomach-turningly briny wave.
The urge wells up inside me to comfort them—to summon the fond light I know I can gather within me and show them that not everything that comes out of the shadows is scary.
But what if Rollick’s right? What if I only scare them more with my powers rather than reassuring them?
In a matter of seconds, it doesn’t matter anyway. The two teens bolt off between the scattered houses of the fringes. The pounding of their footsteps fades away.
The feathered lizard blinks and then trots back into the shadows. Apparently it was only looking for a quick glimpse of the world outside.
Raze offers me a crooked smile. “I guess you might as well get back to work?”
Well, there’s no one around to freak out about my glow now.
I reach for the affectionate feelings inside me again, but it’s harder to unearth them from beneath the new heap of discomfort and uncertainty. As I concentrate on welcoming the shadows and encouraging them to settle down, my men stalk along the edge of the gloom around me.
They each dispatch one more creature while I work. Most of the warped beasts still have rampaging on the mind.
My glow spreads into the murky haze. The murkiness retreats, leaving only filmier shadows. But they’re still shadowy, not the full sunlight that’s beaming down on me here just a few steps away.
Why can’t I convince the gloom to let go completely? Why is it so convinced it needs to be here?
What’s so amazing about this city anyway that even the shadow realm itself wants a piece?
I extend my supernatural light as far as I can until my legs wobble under me. The old aches splinter up through my ankles. When I adjust my stance, my head swims with dizziness.
Mirage grasps my shoulder. “Hey, Rainbow. No crashing on us.”
“She’s tired,” Raze says, and slashes through a flying horned beetle that’s about ten times bigger than any insect has a right to be. “She’s putting all her energy into calming the shadows. So many of these warped creatures are still coming through, though.”
Hail peers past the lightened patch of city to the thicker sludge beyond. “You’d think the rift would run out eventually.”
“Not if it’s making more.” My stomach knots, and I draw myself up straighter. “I can keep going.”
Raze pushes right in front of me with a fierce expression. “No, you can’t. You’re going to collapse if you push yourself any harder. You need a break before you do any more work.”
The winter fae scowls. “If this stuff wasn’t so tough to budge…”
In his frustration, he whips out a lance of ice aimed at nothing but the clotted shadows. It pierces through the darkness—and my bonds with my men shudder.
My posture goes rigid. “What was that? Did you all feel it?”
All three of the men around me are frowning now. Hail looks down at his hands. “I didn’t know—I didn’t mean to do anything that would hurt us.”
I peer into the murk. “We don’t want it to attack us. I guess we’d better not attack it either. Something about doing that rattles our own powers.” Or at least whatever power binds us together.
We felt similar effects before—when one or another of us reacted to the rift’s energies in a more aggressive way. It doesn’t like being forcefully rejected, and the backlash shakes us up too.
The growl of an engine distracts me from my pondering with a hitch of my nerves, but the vehicle that pulls into view is familiar. Jonah parks the van at the curb and gets out, taking in our stances—and my emotional state through our connection. “Is Peri all right?”
“I’m just a little tired,” I mutter, though his concern sends a warm flutter through my belly. “Are you finished working with the other sorcerer?”
Jonah’s grimace matches the grapefruit-sour tang of his emotions. “Yes. Today’s meeting wasn’t all that productive, but… hopefully we’ll get somewhere eventually.”
He doesn’t really want to talk about it, which maybe Mirage can pick up too even though he isn’t tied to Jonah directly. The fox shifter bounds toward the van. “This is perfect! We can all take a ride. Peri needs a mini vacation.”
Hail’s eyes gleam. “Didn’t you mention you found a nice spot nearby in case we wanted some privacy?”
Mirage laughs. “Yes. It’ll be perfect!”
“Wait,” I protest. “We can’t go off vacationing when the city is still such a mess.”
Raze gives me a firm look. “You can’t fix the mess when you’re exhausted. You’ve been doing more than anyone.” He pauses, and his expression turns slightly sly. “If you let us pamper you, maybe you’ll recover faster.”
He does know how to make an argument.
As I waver, Mirage tugs me toward the van. “You need to take care of yourself first. Put on your bicycle helmet before securing anyone else’s, isn’t that what they say?”
Jonah chuckles. “The saying is for oxygen masks, not bike helmets, but the principle is the same. Come on, Peri. I’d like to see this special place Mirage found.”
“Oh, all right.”
I let them escort me into the van. I end up cuddled up on the bench between Raze and Hail while Mirage gives directions to Jonah from the front passenger seat. “Turn left here. No, more left.”
“That’s not a road, Mirage.”
“It’ll take longer following the roads. But if we have to…”
It doesn’t feel like very long before we pull to a stop near a patch of forest bordered by farmer’s fields. The nearest buildings are at least a mile distant.
With a spring in his step, Mirage leads the way between the trees. He points out the babbling stream and the flowers blooming on bushes here and there in the underbrush. Then he stops at the edge of a grassy clearing that borders the stream with a wall of densely packed saplings all around it.
He spreads his arms. “Look at it. Like a room just for us.”
Jonah considers the scene. “Very comfortable. And I think we can make it even more so. Just a minute…”
He lopes back to the van and returns with a rolled blanket that he spreads on the ground. “So our mate doesn’t get her clothes dirty.”
As I sit in the middle of the blanket, a giggle slips out of me. Jonah knows perfectly well that if the dress and leather jacket I’m wearing did get mussed, I could fix them as easily as blinking in and out of the shadows. But there’s something sweet about being taken care of this way all the same.
Raze hums. “She could use a foot and ankle massage. All those sore spots she shouldn’t have to deal with.” A hint of a growl comes into his voice with the reference to my former captor’s torments.