Page 45 of Mud

Huh.

Sound came back to me all at once and my heart about stopped again—for good this time. Agents were all around me, and others wearing those white suits with the transparent helmets on were everywhere as well. So many of them, and not a one was holding a gun or a wand or a piece of bone that I could see. Everybody was talking as if it was the most natural thing in the world to be loud, as if therewere no catfairies hiding in these trees about to tear us apart with their claws and eat us.

Memories came back to me in a rush despite my surroundings not making even a little bit of sense. Wasn’t I just about to die at the hands of a giant catfairie who’d killed two grown, powerful Iridians with ease? Hadn’t he been leaning right over me, his breath on my face, big blue cat-eyes looking down at me?

No sense.

“There she is.”

I would have jumped if I was capable of moving my body fast enough. As it was, I tried to lean my head back, to use my hands to push myself up, hold onto the raised roots of the tree near me—and I managed. I managed to sit up halfway, pain free.

Then I saw.

The scream came from the deepest part of me, and I instinctively brought both hands in front of my mouth to catch it before the entire state of Maryland heard it.

The seven-foot catfairie that had been about to cut me to pieces was on the ground two feet away from me, eyes open, lifeless, staring at the sky, his chest unmoving, a big chunk of it missing. A transparent bag lay over his body, so I saw every single detail.

“You okay, Agent La Rouge?”

I must have blinked a dozen times before I was able to make out the face of the man who was squatting near the catfairie’s legs, watching me, brown brows narrowed in concern. I knew him—Philip was his name, and he was a crime scene investigator. He wore a black suit and came out in the fieldafterwe were done with whatever assignment was givento us.

And now he was here with a few others of his department, along with Forensics.

Something is off here…

“What…what…where…” I looked around, farther ahead, expecting to find the others—allof them, until I saw the black plastic bags on the ground and I remembered that Erid and Michael were underneath them in pieces. They were dead.

Dead.

But the twins were alive. Jim and Jam were standing to the side, far enough away that I could barely see their faces, talking to a woman who was taking notes on a pad and a guy who was typing on a tablet.

What the actual fuck.

“It’s normal to be disoriented. You’ve been shot, lost a lot of blood,” Philip said, but I couldn’t look away from the twins and the catfairie, dead on the ground.So close.

“How?” I choked because the last time I was awake, I’d been sure I was going to die.

“You tell me, I guess,” Philip said, his warm brown eyes on my leg which was pulsating. Still bleeding a little bit. Not healed.

Which was almost funny because if all of these people were here, someone would have called a healing spell on me by now.

“The agents McMurray told us how you killed the big one. He was the reason why this bunch managed to live for as long as they did here in hiding. We still need to run tests and perform an autopsy on this fella, but so far we think he was born with a genetic mutation that made him, er…you know,smarter.” Again, Philip smiled like that and turned his eyes to the ground, like he was nervous. Like he was very uncomfortable in his skin right now.

“The catfairies,” I said, sitting up straighter just to realize how much my leg still hurt. How long had I even been out? Because it was still daylight, but it felt like I’d been unconscious for a whole day.

“All dead,” Philip said and nodded at my leg. “We’ll have to wrap that up when we get to Headquarters. If I’m not mistaken, it looks a bit infected.” He stood up.

So many questions. So many things on my mind, yet I couldn’t seem to get my mouth to move fast enough to speak all of them.

Why haven’t you healed me yet? How many catfairies were there? How many agents died?

But the most important one was, “I didn’t kill this catfairie.” The big one whose body was right there by my feet. I was five foot seven myself, so not so short that everyone looked enormous—except hewas.He really was.

“That’s not what the agents McMurray say,” said Philip with his hands in his pockets, nodding his head toward where the twins were still talking to one of the agents. The other with the pad in her hands was making her way toward us.

“But I didn’t.” I hadn’t killed the catfairie—I was sure of it. I hadn’t had the strength to even move my limbs or raise my head after being shot and exposed to all that magic—Whitefire and Bluefire at the same time. By both Michael and Erid.

And they hadn’t stopped until…

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