Page 48 of Monster's Pet

“There’s a bounty,” Lilia whispered.

The words didn’t make sense at first. “What’s a bounty?”

“A bounty on who?” Aiden asked, sitting up, his fist smoking.

“I think you know,” Lilia said quietly.

Suddenly it made sense. “They’ve put a bounty on manducares?” I gasped.

“It came in this morning,” Lilia said, nodding in confirmation. “Officially stamped by the United Kingdom Ministry themselves. They’re paying a hundred thousand pounds for every manducare brought in, dead or alive.”

“A hundredthousand?” I squeaked. That was alotof money. I could feel my face whitening. “Who knows we have her here?”

“None of us would ever do that to her,” Lilia said firmly.

It was nice to have confirmation that my friends were good people who weren’t swayed by that much money.

“Anyone else?”

Lilia shook her head. “I don’t think so. There’s always a chance that someone might suspect that you kept her, though.”

Aiden bit his lip, staring at the ceiling, lost in thought. “We’ll have to be extra careful.”

“Hang on, if there’s a bounty here, does that mean that the Dark Forest is open season?” I asked, feeling sick.

Lilia wrinkled her nose. “Headmistress Blackthorn lifted the ban at breakfast. There are rules, of course, but…” she trailed off.

“What kind of rules?” Aiden asked, his voice quiet.

“The kind that protects the students, not the animals,” Lilia said, scratching behind Moonbeam’s ears. “One fourth year student or tutoring assistant per group, you have to register the time you enter and exit the forest. That sort of thing. Oh,” she snapped her fingers, “a mirror. In case you get lost, I guess.”

“That’s disgusting,” I whispered. I searched for Aiden’s hand without looking, gripping it tightly when I found it. His skin was cold, colder than I’d ever felt it. “And people are going along with this?”

“It’s a lot of money,” Lilia said quietly. “There are people protesting, of course. But they’re —we’re—definitely in the minority.”

“Aiden, what if Moonbeam is found?” I said, a tear trickling down my cheek.

“She won’t be,” Aiden said grimly. “We won’t let her be.”

“You shouldn’t join the protest,” Lilia said suddenly.

“Why not?” I asked, my head whipping around to her. “This is despicable!”

“Well…” Lilia hesitated. “Maybe you can. You don’t want to seem too eager. We don’t want anyone to suspect anything.”

“Because having all our friends protest, but not us, isn’t a dead giveaway?” I said, and then winced at my choice of words.

“We’re not marching around with signs or anything,” Lilia said with a chuckle. “We signed a missive.”

“We should definitely sign it, too,” I said. “The more signatures the better, right?”

“I suppose.”

“We should join a hunt,” Aiden said suddenly.

“What?” I asked incredulously. “Why would we do that?”

“Everyone would assume that we are going to try to find Moonbeam in the forest if we let her go. Try to protect her. But if we don’t go, then they’ll assume we kept her.” Aiden’s eyes flared with fire. “And if our groupdoeshappen across a manducare, we can prevent it from being killed.”

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