Page 102 of Misfit Monsters
I tasted my former captor’s emotions while he kept me caged. I have insight not just into his external life but everything that was going on inside him.
My skin crawls at the idea of dredging up those darker emotions, but it’s better than sitting here like lumps.
“Let me think,” I say quietly, and close my eyes to concentrate.
When did the sorcerer feel scared? What would make him anxious about protecting whatever awfulness he’s created in his new life?
I riffle through the scraps of my experiences in his cage. There’s so much I ignored or tried to tune out to keep my sanity.
A fragment comes to me, vivid enough that the sour-metallic flavor of the fear passes over my tongue in an echo. “There was something… One time his daughter let someone into the house when he was down in the basement and not expecting it. I think he was terrified they’d find out what he was up to. He yelled at her a lot. He’d always get uneasy even if he was talking on the phone and the other person suggested they’d come by.”
Jonah hums to himself. “He was afraid of being discovered.”
“Maybe if he thinks he’s in danger of being discovered now, he’ll want to make sure everything is still hidden.”
“Yes.” Our sorcerer grins at me and then at Mirage. “Do you think that’s enough material to work with?”
The fox shifter’s eyes gleam. “I’ll sneak and creep through the shadows to spy. Make him imagine the other people arelooking at him suspiciously, whispering about him, plotting plans and planning plots.”
“Not too overboard,” Jonah reminds him.
Mirage nods eagerly and leaps away.
There’s nothing for the rest of us to do but continue waiting. I lean against Raze. He strokes his hand up and down my arm, but my pulse keeps thumping away.
Did I pick the right fear? Will it be enough?
Jonah sucks in a breath. “He’s coming back to his truck.”
I jerk upright in time to see my former captor hustling over to his vehicle with his beach gear wobbling in his arms. He shoves it into the trunk and practically dives behind the wheel.
A giggle bubbles up my throat. “It worked!”
As the truck peels out of the parking lot, Mirage materializes next to me with a cheeky grin. “He didn’t like the stares or the suspicious airs. Let’s see where he goes!”
Jonah is already taking our van out of park. We rumble down the road on our target’s tail.
David Blaver takes a winding route onto increasingly narrow and rundown roads. We stay far behind, but when we see him turn onto a dirt track amid thickening forest up ahead, Jonah motions to Mirage. “We do need the whole van hidden now—there’s no way he won’t be suspicious if we follow him in there.”
The fox shifter crosses his legs on the floor of the van, an expression of total concentration gripping his handsome face. Magic tingles over my skin as his illusion surrounds the vehicle.
We have to slow down on the bumpy track. Jonah closes the distance between the van and the truck, but we still almost miss it when the other sorcerer pulls off onto an even smaller laneway several miles later.
We follow him for another mile down that overgrownlane, the leaves of overhanging trees warbling across our windows, before the truck parks… at the edge of what looks like an empty clearing.
Please don’t tell me he’s figured out the secret of invisibility.
My former captor gets out and hurries across the clearing. As I crane my neck to watch, he bends over and appears to yank up a chunk of the grass.
Ah ha! There’s a trap door in the ground.
David Blaver clambers into the hole he’s opened up, shuts the grass-covered door over him, and it’s as if he was never there.
The five of us exchange a glance.
“We can either wait here for backup, or risk going down there and taking a look ourselves,” Jonah says. “Well,youcan take a look—there’s no way for me to get into that bunker without him seeing me.”
The men all turn to me. Raze nuzzles the side of my head. “The three of us could go. You shouldn’t have to face that brute again.”
