Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
A rumbly voice calls my name, and when I open my eyes and turn my head, I see Soren outside the bedroom door. He stands there glaring at me and then glaring at the ward. “I wish you’d get your charms under control. As your bodyguard, I should be able to enter your room.”
“Well, if no one else can, I’m safe, right?” Oh, the snark. My pep talk before and a proper nap—unconscious, poorly sleeping for four days doesn’t count as rest—has done me a world of good. I stretch and yawn. “What time is it?”
“It’s just after eight o’clock. I wanted to let you sleep, but you need to come and meet your other guards as we’ll be moving locations early tomorrow.”
“Okay, sure. Have I got time to use the bathroom?”
The stressed gargoyle nods.
“Okay. I’ll be down in a minute.”
“I mean it, Kricket. This ward—you’ve got to stop your magic from interfering with my job.”
I groan. “I know, I know. Before you repeat it, it’s weird.
My magic is weird”—I wiggle my fingers in the air—“and I can’t help it when I’m unconscious.
I’m exhausted, Soren, and my magic is worried about me.
At least the ward only stays within the confines of the room.
It just protects me. It can be a hell of a lot worse.
Crikey, it could have warded the entire street. ”
So the gargoyle needs to give the charm more credit. Plus he can get lost if he thinks he can burst in here whenever he likes. I know it’s his home, but I should have some privacy.
“You’ll have to live with it for a little while until I’m back to full strength.”
The gargoyle makes a humph sound under his breath and quietly disappears down the hall. I listen intently and shake my head. I’ve got to learn to do that. No noise, not a floorboard creak or anything. It’s a skill. And he calls my magic freaky when he moves like a ghost.
Gosh, he’s mad this evening, or back to his usual grumpy self. I’m betting he doesn’t like strangers in the house. My being here and all these dangerous people downstairs must make the gargoyle uncomfortable.
I don’t know much about gargoyles, and I’ve tried to pick his brain, but he’s not one for talking.
Do they have territories? I’m not sure, but having all these people in your home and messing around with your stuff must be unpleasant.
I’ll try my best not to do anything to wind him up until we leave.
I jump in the shower and get changed using the sock charm.
I need to get some clothes soon. There’s a scary thought in the back of my mind that if my magic fails or something happens, I’ll be naked in public.
Not that the charm doesn’t produce fabric—it’s fabric, and it doesn’t disappear when I take it off. But you never know.
I think about the chalk circle and the cube and remember that the entire area was a magic wasteland. I wasn’t naked then, so perhaps I’m worrying for nothing.
Heck, I’m going to save a fortune! I can conjure one up if I want to prance in a ball gown. It’s so cool. I grin as I head down the stairs.
My hair is wet, so I quickly separate the strands and pull them into a messy plait.
This time I follow the voices to the living room.
I stand at the door, finishing the plait.
I have no hair tie, so I leave it. Hopefully the length will keep it tied up, and if it doesn’t, it’ll slowly unravel, and I can do it all over again.
Then I remember the sock charm. I ask for a hair bobble, and it lands in my hand.
Yep, that’s so cool.
Like the rest of the house, the living room is nice. The walls are soft grey, which makes them warmer than white, and the navy sofa looks comfortable.
A group of creatures takes up most of the room, chatting away.
Owen’s there, and another gargoyle I recognise from the multi-storey car park—the one that flashed his teeth at me, and I knocked him out with a well-timed sleep spell and slapped a null band on his wrist. I internally smirk. I enjoyed that way too much.
There’s also a woman—a wolf shifter. Female shifters are a rarity, and when I say rare, I mean incredibly, treated like princesses and locked up in castles and encouraged to be baby-making machines. I can only imagine how stifling it would be.
No, I don’t need to imagine anything. I know how stifling that would be. I cross my arms and lean against the doorframe.
To see a female shifter here in Soren’s home is unexpected. But what is interesting is that she’s so petite.
Shifters are born—sometimes they can be bitten, but it’s not the same, and the bitten men never shift or last long. Women always die from a bite. That’s what makes shifters so dangerous.
Shifters are always enormous creatures. They’re usually well over six feet.
Even the women. They’re warrior huge. And yet here is a beautiful female shifter with a mass of pale pink hair that must be past her waist when it’s out of the simple plait she’s wearing, and she’s around five feet tall.
She turns and looks at me, and her eyes are an odd shade of yellow, with one having a splash of green at the bottom.
It’s as if a wolf is staring back at me.
I realise then that her hair and small stature are a disguise. She could easily appear young, pretty, and perhaps a bit dense if she flutters those long pink lashes. Look at me with my pink hair. Aren’t I sweet?
She is tiny and delicate.
And the most dangerous person in the room.
I can feel her magic and stop touching anything or analysing it further. She’s got… yeah, I’m not going to go there. I’ve promised myself that I won’t poke around with scary magic. Knowing too much can be problematic, and she must be the most terrifying person I’ve ever met.
Oh, she looks friendly enough, and I don’t feel she’s going to leap across the room and break my neck, but fear prickles up and down my spine and my heart rate increases. I have to concentrate on keeping calm.
Before I drop my eyes to the floor, I see the corner of her mouth tip up, and her eyes sparkle when she notices me standing here.
“Hey, dragon girl.”
I wince. Her rough, broken voice doesn’t match her face, but it matches her power. Here I was, worried she’d have a little girl’s voice, but she doesn’t. She sounds like someone ripped her throat out and it’s healed wrong.
What did she say? Oh, she called me a dragon. “Oh, no, no, no. I’m not a dragon.” I twist my hands. “I just have some of their blood, some latent DNA.”
“Sure, sure.” She waves her hand and grins at me.
“Why did he send you?” Soren grumbles, coming into the room from behind me and handing me a mug of tea.
“Thank you.”
“We don’t need shit blown up.” He rests a heavy hand on my shoulder and steers me into the room.
“Oh hush, rock boy. He sent the best.” She holds her hands out to present herself and grins.
Soren shakes his head, and the car park gargoyle grins. “He sent us a pain in the arse.” The he they’re talking about must be the general, aka the silver dragon. They grin at each other.
“Kricket, this is Forrest. Forrest, meet Kricket. Owen and Jeff, who you’ve met before.”
Jeff is the car park gargoyle. “Pleased to meet you,” I mumble. I hope he won’t hold a grudge.
“This is the main team that is going to keep you alive. We have others, but you won’t spend time with them. It’ll be just us.”
“No one will hurt you,” growls Owen, the giant, grey-eyed hellhound who had been quiet until now.
“And while we are waiting for things to kick off,” Forrest says with a grin.
“We are going to teach you to fight,” Owen finishes.
Forrest claps her hands.
Ah, look at that. I didn’t even have to say anything. This is brilliant. I knew I liked Owen, and Forrest isn’t scary. She’s awesome!
Soren shakes his head. “No. Absolutely not. She’s not learning to fight with you two.”
I grip my tea and return Forrest’s smile. “Please, Soren, I’d like to learn.”
The gargoyle takes in my fluttering eyelashes, beaming expression, and groans in defeat.
“But just to warn you guys, I’m not that coordinated.”
“That’s okay. We can work at your pace,” Owen says.
“You’ve got your work cut out. A tree almost killed her,” Soren grumbles.
I scowl at the gargoyle, and Forrest wrinkles her nose. “Killed by a tree? Like a tree monster? Is that a fae creature? Like a bad dryad? Where can I see this monster tree?” She bounces on her toes like an excited puppy.
“No, not a monster. A normal, bog-standard tree. She fell out of it and decided to hit every single branch on the way down. A broken arm and an infection bad enough to cause sepsis.”
“I didn’t fall out of the tree. I was dragged out of the tree by some bad guys.”
“Her heart stopped.”
“Oh,” Forrest says, tilting her head to the side. She gives me a thumbs-up. “Oh well, we can work on that.”
“We will take things slow. Oh, and Tues…” Owen pauses with a shake of his head, “…the host of your parents’ realm has asked you to call your mum. I have set up a datapad for you to use.” He nods at the new datapad on the table.
They’ve already left for the pocket realm.
I rub my face and groan. “I don’t want to speak to them.
” The conversation we still have to have will not be fun.
“My mum’s not happy about what happened with my brothers, and then on top of that, telling them that everyone they know has been murdered is not in my skill set.
Aren’t there people better trained for that? ”
“What?” Owen looks completely confused.
Ah, perhaps he doesn’t know. “Everyone’s dead. Everyone was killed in our warded town. The Claw Brotherhood killed them, and the Creature Council covered it up.”
Everybody looks at me as if I’m talking in tongues.
“They all died, right?”
“No. The host made a new pocket realm to contain the people who lived in your town. She made an exact magical copy and moved everyone via portals when they woke up. She can make them out of thin air. We evacuated everyone who wanted to come, and they are safe. Apart from the deaths in the initial attacks, they are all safe, Kricket. Your family joined that realm. They’re staying in a replica of your house, and for now, people are discussing their options.
They will be given time and a budget and treated like refugees.
They can go anywhere or stay in the pocket realm indefinitely. ”
I wobble and find myself sitting on the sofa, unaware of how I got there. The mug of tea is no longer in my hand. I see Soren place it on a side table.
“Shit, Soren, did she think they were all dead? Why didn’t you tell her?” growls Forrest.
“I didn’t realise. I thought Emma had told her. I didn’t realise she didn’t know. I would never let her think that.”
Whoa, I’ve let my imagination run wild this time.
I never said to anyone that I’d believed the entire town, the whole town, was dead.
I must have implied it, right? I go over all the conversations in my head and realise I went on about a cover-up, but that could have been construed in many ways.
I never even asked; I’d just presumed everyone was dead.
Soren must have thought I was talking about my time in the Perspex cage when I went on about telling my parents.
I’ve been very internal—all that internal guilt has been impossible to voice.
The woe is me; my actions have killed everybody.
The deaths of so many people have been a weight on my soul, and now I feel stupid I didn’t ask questions.
I didn’t ask the crucial questions, and I wrongly assumed everyone knew.
You know what they say about assuming: you make an ass out of yourself.
I groan.
But most of all, I feel so relieved.
They’re not all dead.
“I’m sorry,” Soren tells me. He’s sorry that he didn’t mention that everyone had moved to another realm, a realm I’m not invited to. I should have said something. I was just so… I stare at the lights on the ceiling.
I was just so ashamed.
“It’s not your fault.” I drop my eyes and blink at Owen. “They’re all in a pocket realm?” Alive. Safe. My parents, brothers, and nan joined them. “The host saved them?”
She made an entire realm for them. Wow, that’s real power, and I’ve been worried about my little charms. I’m surprised I can fit through doors with my big ego-inflated head.
“What are you leaking for?” Forrest tries to hand me a clean, fancy, monogrammed handkerchief.
“No, thank you.” I wave it away and wipe my face on my sleeve. “I’m not leaking,” I say in a rough voice.
Gosh, I feel so relieved.