Page 38 of The Tree of Spirits
I glanced around the waiting room, but it was pretty bare bones, dominated by a pair of twin sofas that were lumpy, lopsided, and lime-green. They made the orange-and-purple sofa bed back in my cottage seem classy by comparison.
The only other piece of furniture in the room was the small end table covered in a messy pile of muscle-building magazines. I’d been waiting here so long that I’d already flipped through all of them. None of the articles were particularly interesting. At least not to me. The crew of Raytan’s Removals probably gobbled up those tips as greedily as they did protein bars after a long, hard workout.
The door to the back room opened—finally—and out stepped a muscular man dressed in a dirty t-shirt and a pair of frayed jeans. He wasn’t just wide, though. He was tall. So tall that his head nearly bumped into the ceiling fan. Now that would have done a lot more damage than a flimsy cookie cutter star.
“Raytan?” I guessed as he sat down on the sofa opposite mine.
“And you’re Savannah Winters, the Apprentice Knight.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “I’ve heard of you.”
At this point, I was starting to think that there wasn’t anyone here who hadn’t. Apparently, I’d made just as big of an impression on the supernaturals in the Emporium as I had on the General.
I sat up a little taller. “I’m here on behalf of my friend Rane and her dead tree.”
His mouth dipped into a frown. “I’ve already told your friend that until I get my trucks back, I can’t deal with her tree.”
“That’s why I’m here.” I chanced a smile. “To help you get back your trucks.”
He looked me up and down, clearly unimpressed. “You’re just a teenager.”
“I’m an Apprentice Knight.”
“Congratulations, do you want a cookie?” he replied with a wry smile. “I already had to talk to the Watchers, kid. I don’t want to talk to you too. And I don’t need your help.”
“But—”
“Mind your own business,” he cut me off. He ran his hand over his stubbled chin. “We have the situation completely under control.”
“If that were true, your trucks would be parked in your garage. They wouldn’t be in the hands of unknown thieves.”
“They won’t stay unknown for long.” When his oversized hands gripped the sofa’s armrests, the wood groaned in protest.“I put trackers on all my trucks. I’m no novice. And this isn’t the first time some idiot has tried to steal from me.” He rose smoothly to his feet, too smoothly for a man his size. “Now get lost, kid.”
Then he made a show of thumping back across the room in his heavy boots and slamming the door shut with a bang.
Get lost? Me? I snorted. Obviously, he hadn’t been listening closely enough to all the terrible rumors about me.Your business is my business.That was kind of my motto. I tiptoed into the big warehouse garage next to the waiting room.
Raytan was already gathering his employees around him, every one of those men just as big and buff as he was. A crew of perfect Metamorphs.
Raytan held up a tablet and declared, “Move out, boys! We’ve got a location on Big Bob.”
That must have been the name of one of his trucks. No doubt the others had similar names. Like Titan Tom. And Large Larry.
One of the perks of being small was people tended to overlook me. And underestimate me. Yeah, most especially that last one.
I trailed Raytan and his crew as they followed the tracker’s signal to an old abandoned warehouse at the edge of the Emporium. There they found Big Bob, surrounded by stacks of crates. I peeked inside one and found debris. And not just any debris. Chunks of chainlink fence and shattered bricks. There was even a box of some very familiar black uniforms. The same uniforms I’d seen on the commandos in the Park yesterday. The Watchers must have hired Raytan to clean up the battlefield.
And then someone had hijacked the truck. But why? What would anyone want with a bunch of broken parts and other random junk?
I needed to get a closer look at the rest of those crates. I crept forward, slow and easy.
“Take cover!” one of the Metamorphs shouted, just before all of the crates exploded.
The blast knocked me back.
When I peeled myself off the asphalt ground, my body cried out in misery. I almost lost my footing again. My ears were still ringing like someone was using my head as a bell.
“What are you doing here?” a gruff voice demanded.
Raytan limped toward me, clearly favoring his left leg. His t-shirt was shredded. His body was coated in dust. Most of the other Metamorphs still lay on the ground. And some of them weren’t moving.
