Page 45 of Muzzled

Shaking his head, he caught Micah’s eye and motioned toward the park. “Stay there,” he mouthed, brows lifting when she stuck her tongue out at him.

“She’s remarkably disrespectful,” Seph huffed, leading the walk. “And I suspect she has ulterior motives for helping you.”

“I’d say eliminating a shade from tracking her is a pretty understandable ulterior motive,” he replied, slowing his pace to avoid being beside her. “I don’t ask for much, Seph, but I’m asking you now to back off Micah. Just stay away from her.”

Her chin tilted up, her bright eyes darkening as they approached a secluded patch of trees. “Being up here has made you forget your place. Pets don’t get to make requests, honey,” she stated. “Your place is at my heel. And now, thanks to Bo and his indiscretions, your fate ties you there quite nicely for eternity, doesn’t it?”

There was a faint ripple in the air. The ground beneath her feet flashed open and shut tight behind her, leaving no evidence of her disappearance.

Giving the grass a quick stomp, he jogged back to the main street, dodging cars as he approached Micah. “I am so sorry,” he groaned, gripping his shoulders and digging his thumbs into the knots in his neck. “If I’d thought she’d pull something like that—”

“Aside from Logan’s forty-text lecture and two reaming phone calls, I just polished off half a bottle of four-hundred-dollar champagne.” She smiled. “Sorry we didn’t save you any, but thanks for paying.”

He leaned against the wall beside her and closed his eyes. “We’ll be discussing what Logan told me later, once I shake off this stupidity. How are you holding up?”

“With what?”

*

“Your dad. Theshade. The not sleeping. The not telling me you’re not sleeping. Seph. Hades. The whole hound thing. Take your pick.”

She slid her phone into her purse and dropped her head to his shoulder. “I’m surviving. You?”

“Surviving,” he parroted with a smile, resting his chin on the top of her head. “Got any kibble laying around?”

He could feel her grin against him. “I’m not a pet store. If you’re hungry, you need to find another tree to bark up. This is strictly business, mister.”

*

Ryan pushed hisback flush with the wall and picked up the next sketchbook, glancing over at Micah to ensure she was still out cold.

Logan had left them shortly after his concerned rant, making punctuated comments about staying in touch while he was out for the evening. Micah had shooed him out the door with a string of apologies and assurances, mumbling about how Ryan could just go through some of her work if he was bored while she collapsed on her bed to “decompress.”

It had been three hours.

Three hours and eleven sketchbooks.

The first few he’d flipped through had been laying in the center of the room, collections of pencil drawings of flowers and cartoons, a few caricatures of Logan and a handful of abstract linear pieces decorated with meticulous patterns and shadings. Everything showcasing her talent in even the barest of works, but nothing that stood out.

Until he started working his way through the pile he’d pulled from beside her bed.

Loopy handwriting dated every book, the images inside sinking his stomach with every turn of the page.

These papers were more crumpled, their edges ratted and torn. The once-delicate pencil lines etched the sheets beneath, creating ghosted visuals on every piece save the first. Flowers and caricatures were replaced by detailed close-ups of the markings of a feral Pirithous.

Each gnarled finger bent backward at the knuckle earned its own page in the sketchbook, the intricate swirls of the fingerprints different for every one.

The arch of the spine.

The curve of the legs.

The prominence of the shoulder blades.

She had captured, bit by bit, the telltale signs of a feral Pirithous. Details only the most seasoned hunters would have noticed, from the faint vein lines running the length of each limb to the inverted crescent of the fingernails.

But disturbing as the images had been, they’d been nothing next to her most recent books, the ones done since he’d dropped her at her door days earlier.

She was no longer sketching the Pirithous from afar. The visuals had taken a more urgent turn, the images on the page coming from the blackened eyes of his target. The violent takedown at Joshua Tree a year earlier took up a whole book, snapshots of their last kill detailed in tiny snippets as though placed under a microscope, the edges of each page shaded until the paper was tattered and ripped.

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