Ivy
The scream that rips out of me is inhuman, surprising even me. I scramble away from the looming figures around me before I realize who they are. The mayor, Laz, Amy from my shop, and Conall. I keep inching away from Conall. He looks human now.
Amy hovers near the edge of the desk, eyes wide and purple.
Laz stands holding a small pile of books, looking both smug and guilty. My attention swings back to Conall. My stalker. My monstrous creature.
My hand misses the edge of the desk and finds air. I tip, and before I can fall, Conall’s hand snaps out and wraps around my upper arm, pulling me back.
“Easy, Freckles,” he breathes.
His scent surrounds me. It’s forest and rain and the sharp, clean smell of ozone after a thunderstorm. I can’t stop myself from leaning in just a little.
Then I remember the sounds of snapping and grinding as he transformed, and I pull myself back. He lets me go, but a muscle in his jaw ticks, like he’s stopping himself from stepping closer.
“Miss Smith. How are you feeling?” Laz asks.
“He—I—” I start, pointing at Conall. Amy drops into a chair, and my finger swings to her. “Her eyes!” I nearly screech. Blue bleeds into the purple of her gaze, like food dye into water, mixing until the purple is completely gone.
I rip my gaze away. The room is softly lit by a few reading lamps and a purple fire burning under a cauldron.
I feel around my scalp. Did I hit my head? Nothing feels tender except the cut on my arm.
Someone is talking to me, but I can’t follow. I can’t be here. That thing could come back.
My breathing comes in quick bursts, my lungs burning. I can only stare at the floor. My body won’t obey me.
A pair of green eyes drops into my line of sight, soft and concerned. Conall. Despite the pointed ears and the tail, I don’t flinch away.
“Follow me, Freckles.” He takes a slow, deep breath in.
I try to mirror him, but my breath is shorter and harder to find.
He breathes out. Mine is smaller still. But I follow his lead.
My mind feels numb, and resisting feels monumentally impossible right now.
After a few minutes, the air comes easier, longer.
The burning ebbs, and my thoughts begin to clear.
“You okay?” he asks, his eyes never leaving mine.
I tilt my hand back and forth in a so-so gesture, and he gruffs out an unwilling laugh. I bite my lip. I will not smile in this insane situation.
“Good. I think it’s time we had a discussion,” Laz says.
Amy groans from her chair. “Do we really have to do the big expositional story?”
“How else do you wanna do it, Amy?” Conall sighs.
“Listen, you’ve clearly realized things are weird around here,” she says, focusing on me.
“Completely fucked up? Sure,” I agree.
“It’s because this island is a haven for monsters.”
The word lands like a duck in a crowd of peacocks.
“Monsters? You’re all—?” I let it hang.
“Yeah. I’m a shapeshifter,” she goes on. “Conall’s a faehound. Laz is a wizard.”
I eye Conall, remembering how his body popped and shrank from its large, dog-like form.
“Your aunt was a witch,” Amy finishes.
A witch. My great aunt was a— “Wait, I’m not a witch. If she were, shouldn’t I have powers too?” Conall rolls his eyes, and I have the childish urge to stick my tongue out at him.
Laz clears his throat. “Ursula Shipton wasn’t your great aunt. She was your ancestor from over five hundred years ago. The eldest witch on this planet until she passed.”
I gape. A few odd things here and there was one thing. This is something else entirely.
Laz goes on, seemingly oblivious to my inability to absorb any of this. “And with five hundred years of descendants, there are many people with a tenuous or direct connection to Shipton. But she chose you.”
“If she could choose anyone, why on earth would she name me?"
“We don’t know. What we know is that before she passed, she cast two spells.” Laz’s eyes flick to Conall, who’s still standing in front of me, staring at the edge of the desk, hands balled into fists.
“Spells?” I’m not sure I can take any more of this. I’m glad I’m still sitting on the edge of the desk, feet dangling, while they explain.
“The first,” Laz says, still watching Conall like he might snap, “was a transfer of contract from Shipton to her chosen successor. It was an unexpected move.”
“That one was pretty rude,” Amy chips in, sifting through books at her feet.
“It was more than fucking rude,” Conall growls.
My eyes catch his, and all the softness from before is gone.
“Faehounds protect a family line. But my forbearers traded that protection to Ursula Shipton alone in exchange for a magical favor. The contract was supposed to be severed upon her passing, but she found a loophole. One I’m sure she’d built in from the beginning.
” He grits his teeth. His eyes flick from the desk to me, and what I find in them is a complicated mess of heat, anger, and resentment.
“A loophole she used to pass the contract onto you,” Amy finishes. I look from Amy to Laz and back to Conall, who has a muscle ticking in his jaw and is staring at the desk again as if he might flip it.
“What is the contract?” I ask.
“Protection,” Conall snaps, and I flinch. He eyes me, and some of the earlier softness comes back.
“Protection from what?”
“From her second spell,” Laz says. Not what I was expecting. “Ursula Shipton’s last act was a blood magic spell that disrupted the wards protecting this island, allowing in creatures that were never meant to be here. We're still not entirely sure what she did."
I reach automatically for my right arm, where the cut from the snake still sits. Conall’s eyes track the movement. “Why would she do that?”
“There were issues with the wards,” Conall admits, and Laz cuts him a sharp look.
“But this was not the way to handle them.” Laz says, voice strained.
“No, but it’s definitely what she was doing,” Amy says, turning to me. “She was vocal about adjusting the wards to make it easier for monsters in need to come here. She was also worried about the dwindling population. It didn’t make complete sense, though. She wasn’t very coherent at the end.”
“The point is,” Laz cuts in, steering us back to the main topic, “as her named successor, your blood is the only thing that might undo her spell. The monsters getting through don’t want that, so they’re hunting you. Which your aunt knew would happen. Ergo, the faehound protection.”
I stop myself from looking around the room just to make sure they couldn’t possibly be talking about someone else. “Monsters are hunting me?” I point to my chest, just in case it’s somehow unclear.
“Yes,” they all say, in disgusting unison.
“Weird things started happening when I got here, but I was fine before I came to this island. Maybe I should just leave.” Even as I say it, I know it isn’t true. There’d been that mysterious fire at the hotel with no explanation, and a rabid animal that almost bit me.
Laz confirms it with a shake of his head. “The monsters getting through our wards are dangerous. Some monsters never got past their feral roots and behave more like animals. They don’t even have human forms to change into. But outside the wards there’s no way to keep anyone safe from them.”
“So what’s the plan?” I look around at the three of them. The lumberjack wizard. The sarcastic shapeshifter. The grumpy hound. A ragtag group of heroes, but I guess I have to work with what I’ve got. I don't want to be monster food.
They look at each other with trepidation. My heart sinks. “There is a plan, right?”
Laz clears his throat. “The plan is that Conall keeps a closer eye on you. He thought he could do it from a distance, a perimeter, but that’s proved nearly deadly. I continue looking for the exact spell Shipton used. Once I find it, we use your blood to undo it.”
“Wait.” I hold up a hand. “Rewind. What do you mean by a closer eye? How close?”