Page 77 of Wild Wolf

“I’ll be back in five minutes,” I said then climbed out my open window and went swaggering up onto the porch in front of my house.

There was a tea cup turned over by the door and I flipped it up, finding a slug hanging out with my key. I tipped him a salute for protecting my property and tossed the teacup back over him before heading inside.

It was just as I’d left it. With my favourite wooden chair sitting by the window, the extra legs I’d screwed onto it giving it the look of a bug, especially with the horns I’d added to the back. I patted it in greeting and took stock of my things. My sack of bottle caps sat proudly by the fireplace and the collection of hats I’d taken from all kinds of fair folk were hanging on the walls alongside a selection of photographs I’d snapped of interesting things. Like an array of cakes, a man with a half-burnt eyebrow, a donkey eating a shoe, a crab in a handbag, and all other kinds of amazing stuff.

My odd shoe selection was lined up by the door and – holy shit! “Ganderstein,” I said excitedly, kneeling down to wave at the spider I’d befriended years ago. “You’ve gotten bigger, and browner and more gangly.”

“Sin, what is this about?” Ethan stepped through the front door with Max a pace behind him, the two of them looking around my living room curiously.

I left Ganderstein to his ganders, standing up and feeling suddenly exposed with my little brother’s gaze picking apart my house. Ethan was cool with weird stuff, but Maximus? I didn’t know what he saw when he looked at my less than usual possessions. Was he going to do what most people did and cringe away from my oddness?

“Where are my manners?” I said, a little jittery as I grabbed some napkins from a basket hanging from a hook by the kitchen door, doing a little twirl and tossing them out at their feet. “Welcome to my abode.”

I bowed, then twirled some more and was pretty sure that was enough etiquette. I’d brew them tea and put on one of my fancier hats or some shit when I was finished with my business.

“And in answer to your earlier question, it’s about a lot of things, Wolf boy,” I purred. “I have a lot of valuable things in my house and I’m here to collect them. I didn’t know the Hellion Hunt was held so close to my pad, but here we are.” I swept over to my sack of bottle caps, picking it up and tossing it to him.

He caught it, looking inside with a frown. “How are these valuable?”

“How are they not?” I tsked and headed into the kitchen where a toy bat was floating in a bucket, still paying the price for the reason I’d put him there. “Alright Batticus, you’ve paid your dues.” I took him out the bucket and placed him by the pile of gloves I’d stuck googly eyes on.

I picked up a flowerpot and tipped out the tape recorder which I’d used to give myself reminders.

Max took the device with a curious look and played the last recording. “Don’t forget to climb that tree in that place where that judgemental shrub is.”

“Oh yeah!” I said excitedly, throwing a few precious things into my flower pot – like bubble gum and un-popped popcorn – then I raced for the back door. I threw it open, running up the garden path that was lined with gnomes – all of which had been planted face down in the ground – then I raced away into the woods.

“Sin!” Ethan called as he followed and I felt the magic linking me to Max yanking him after me too.

I didn’t have to go far to find the judgemental shrub in question, though it had grown a whole bunch since I’d last been here, the judgemental vibe it gave off more of a welcoming uncertainty now.

“Someone humbled you,” I said, nodding to it then walking up to the big oak tree beside it, looking for a foothold. My gaze fell on an old shovel beside it and I gasped with my remberings, quickly sticking it in the ground and starting to dig. My stashed wooden box wasn’t too far down and it wasn’t long before I yanked it from the ground and tossed it at Ethan. “Look after that. Go put it in the car, flitwit.”

“We should really get back to the hunt, Rosa will be looking for us,” Ethan pressed.

“Nahhh she’s probably being boned by the Vamp patrol right now, she’s not missing us,” I said, waving a hand at him.

“They’d hardly have sex down in that pit,” Ethan dismissed me, but I knew my wild girl liked a danger dong when it came dinging.

“Nah, I think we have time.” Max swept past me, nudging me aside and started climbing the damn tree, finding a foothold with ease. He went up and up and I stared after him with the biggest smile on my face.

Ethan sighed and headed back to the car with my box while I followed Max up the tree, moving in his footsteps as he taunted me about being too slow to keep up. He made it to the very top and swung his legs over a branch, sitting there and gesturing to the place beside him.

I pulled myself up, taking in the view over the valley, the trees rolling away for miles and miles beneath the luscious moon.

I exhaled a breath, reminded that I was free. Gloriously, endlessly free. “I used to dream of views like this down in Darkmore. Sometimes it would feel like you’re choking down there. The air isn’t pure like it is out here.” I inhaled deep and tasted the pines and the summer breeze. “Oh to be a bird, I’d think. Fluttering its wings and sailing into the eternal sky.”

I felt Max’s eyes on me and turned to him, finding a frown creasing his brow.

“How long were you in there?”

“Too long, little bro. Too damn long.”

“I don’t know what to make of you,” he admitted in a low voice.

“Most Fae don’t.” I shrugged. “Most don’t hang around long enough to find out either. Will you stay or will you go, I wonder?”

“I’m undecided,” he murmured. “But I think I’d like time to know you outside of what the world says about you.”

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