Page 44 of Monster's Mystery

“Oh no,” I said, squeezing his hand. “When did you have it? What were we talking about?”

He shook his head, defeated. “I have no idea. Don’t you hate that?”

“Do you think it was relevant?”

“Maybe?” Aiden rolled his eyes. “But it could also have been something like, ‘ooh, they have a dessert table’.”

“They do?” I asked, whipping my head around.

Aiden laughed and kissed the top of my head. “The other side of the kitchen door.”

“Maybe sweets will help your memory,” I suggested, eyeing the chocolate fountain. “And then we can try to gain access to the well.”

“Sounds good to me,” Bruce said, tipping his mead back, draining the glass, and then smacking his lips together with a satisfied “ah”.

We made our way to the table, which was stacked high with mini tartlets, cake pops, and cookies, not to mention the bowls of fruit ready to be dipped in the chocolate fountain.

“You know...” Paige said, selecting a tart topped with a strawberry. “We should split up. Bruce and I can go check out the well, and you two can go into the forest to see if you can find a pond.”

My eyes widened. “Is that safe? The forest is full of dangerous creatures! What if we get lost?”

Aiden wrapped his arms around my shoulders. “If we lose sight of this bonfire, I think we’ll have bigger problems, like hearing loss or deafness.”

I shook my head, biting back a smile. “You know what I mean. It’s totally different in there. The forest has its own magic.”

“Magic that is demonstrably decaying, especially at the edge,” Aiden pointed out. “We don’t have to go in very far, just try to see if there’s an obvious path that the kidnapper might be taking.”

“Yeah, okay. That makes me feel a little better,” I said. I ate my last bite of cookie. “Okay, let’s get this over with before I lose my nerve.”

We walked past a group of students loudly screaming a sports cheer. They were all dressed in the school colors and hanging off one another as if extremely drunk.

“You know, it’s a good thing that we all know magic,” Paige observed. “Otherwise our team would seriously suck during tomorrow’s game.”

“Why?” Bruce asked.

“Have you ever seen someone play Dragon Polo while drunk?” Paige asked, raising one eyebrow. “I rest my case.”

A little further away from the bonfire, there were less people and the noise level was less oppressive.

“See you two later,” I said in parting. “Don’t fall down the well!”

“You’ll have to send Lassie to rescue us,” Paige said with a chuckle.

“I think Brom is busy right now,” I joked about the wolf shifter. I took Aiden’s arm and we entered the forest when no one was watching us.

“Meet you back here in half an hour!” Bruce called after us.

Not even two steps into the forest, the darkness felt like it was pressing in on me. The pep rally behind us could still be heard, but it was much quieter than I thought it would be.

“What kind of trace would someone leave?” I asked Aiden in a whisper.

“Bent or broken branches, disturbed undergrowth, that sort of thing,” Aiden replied, distracted. He was squinting at the ground. “This is ridiculous. I can barely see a thing!”

He lifted his hand to call a light into existence, but I stopped him with a hand on his wrist. “What’s that?” I hissed, pointing ahead of us, deeper in the forest. “It looks like a lantern!”

There was a yellow-orange light bobbing and weaving between the trees.

“Let’s see what it is!” Aiden whispered back, and we headed toward it.

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