Chapter 46
PANDORA’S DIARY
New, unidentified horrible monsters: Too many to count
Leo strode from the woods like a wounded gladiator. While I’d traipsed ahead, he’d lugged a semi-conscious Shrig along, getting jabbed by every sharp branch and sliced by every needle to protect Shrig. Without complaining, without hesitating.
The sight of him warmed me. I gave him credit for that. He might not fully love me, but he was good in a crisis of monstrous proportions. Not sure I’d want anyone else with me.
Which was a shame, because I refused to be with a man who only conditionally loved me. I’d seen true love—my parents’ love, and Leo’s parents’ love—and that was what I wanted. That was what I needed. Nothing less.
Still, he looked good, so it’s possible I spent a few seconds eyeing him before the sorrow struck.
We’d never be together, and that broke my heart.
Hm. Maybe that was why I’d never been good at romance—and why I thought that friends-with-benefits was a perfectly reasonable arrangement.
Because unless I could love fully and forever, I wouldn’t love at all.
Leo caught my eye and the moment was about to turn awkward when Shrig spoke up.
“My knight in shining armor,” he said, giving Leo a flirtatious look.
Which was particularly effective as Shrig happened to be draped in Leo’s arms at that moment, the perfect picture of a male damsel in distress. A mansel in distress.
“You settle down, Vu Shrigley!” I told him. “We’re not safe yet.”
Leo peered at him. “Your real name is ‘Vu’?”
“Deja was born first,” Shrig explained. “My parents had a terrible sense of humor.”
I snorted a laugh and Leo laughed at my snort, which I enjoyed so much that I stopped laughing.
“C’mon,” I grumbled. “Let’s head inside.”
“All hail our triumphant return!” Shrig said, and a bone-deep feeling of relief almost made me faint.
We’d survived. We’d lived. We’d beaten whatever evil had hunted us through the woods, and emerged victorious.
Though we still hadn’t found Daffodil. When my knees stopped wobbling I took a breath.
I smiled as Violet fluttered around us, then we turned toward the Inn.
Sure, everything was turning to shit, but we’d survived the haunted forest!
Leo frowned. “How long were we in there?”
“Twenty minutes? Why, how long do…” I frowned at the early evening light slanting across the meadow. “What the hell?”
“We lost hours,” Leo said.
“Like the old stories,” Shrig said. “A villager spends a night with the fae and returns home to discover he’s been gone for fifty years.”
“Well, we were only gone for a few hours,” I said. “Check out my dad’s garden. The tomatoes are still dying. And Camp faerie-kin looks exactly as screwed as it was this morning.”
“Unlike me,” Shrig said, as we started for the front door of the Inn. “I’m so much less screwed now.”
“You still look like shit.” I climbed the stairs to the front porch. “And you smell, but you’ll be back in Shrig shape in no time.”
“I want cold lemonade and a hot bath,” he said, following me onto the porch. “And a whole pot of Sheila’s pasta. That was brutal.”
“You’re safe now,” Leo said from the bottom of the stairs. “We—”
The front door of the Inn slammed open so loudly that I flinched, and two green, hairless creatures snarled at us from within. They stood three or four feet tall, with scaly heads bisected by shark mouths. They giggled maniacally when they saw us and flexed their claw-tipped fingers.
“Goblins!” Leo gasped.
“Not again,” Shrig groaned.
A crash sounded from farther in the house, and the closer goblin shrieked and leaped at my face.
I shrieked, too, but Leo sprang forward and punched the goblin in its big round head, sending it slamming into the wall. He shook his bruised knuckles as the other goblin opened its jaws waaaaay too wide, and I heard someone snarl, “Take a bite outta this.”
I realized it was me as I lashed out with my foot. I kicked hard enough to send the goblin careening against the porch railing—then I yelped at the painful impact.
As the first goblin scrabbled to its hands and feet, Shrig said, “Inside, get inside, lock the doors!”
A moment after we crammed ourselves through the front door, I heard my mom shouting, “I’ll shove your teeth so far up your ass you’ll floss with a toilet brush!”
Glass shattered deeper in the Inn. There was a thump, and another goblin hurtled into sight from around the hallway corner. It slammed a dent in the wall beside the map of Beane Isle, and thudded to the floor in a tangle of scaly limbs.
It giggled viciously despite the bruises on its face—then an avenging fury descended upon it.
My mother stalked from the hallway, wearing an old T-shirt and a skort, with two necktie bandages tied around her arms and one around her leg.
There was blood at her mouth and violence in her eyes as she pulled back her bat for another blow.
Yeah, she was wielding a bat—but for some reason, a plastic wiffle bat. Still, she beat the hell out of that goblin, whacking it over and over as it scurried along the hallway, ripping parallel lines along the fleur-de-lis wallpaper with its claws.
“You little bastard, that wallpaper is special order,” Mom snarled, chasing it past us and through the door, which she then slammed and locked.
Finally, she lowered her bat and took me in a fierce hug and began to sniffle. “We were so worried about you, Pandora! You’ve been gone for hours and those things showed up and—I’m so glad you’re all right, thank the Dames you’re all right.”