Page 59 of Misfit Monsters
Sorcerers are dangerous. Sorcerers push and cut andhurt…
I breathe as evenly as I can, hoping Jonah will take my silence for fatigue. I don’t want to talk about the other emotions conducting a dance-off inside me.
Of course, I don’t always get a say about what shows.
As we pass through a small clearing, Jonah veers closer. “Are you picking up on any unnerving impressions?”
My gaze darts to him. “No. Why would you think so?”
“I just noticed—your hair’s been flickering with a bit of that glow it gets when you’re feeling something strongly. An orange-y color that looks uneasy to me. But maybe I’m misinterpreting.”
He’s not, but I don’t want to tell him that. I also don’t want to lie.
I could take a page from Mirage’s book and turn the situation into a joke.
I summon a laugh. “It’s great being a walking mood ring. Always blaring what’s going on inside whether I want to or not. The forest is pretty spooky when it’s getting dark, don’t you think?”
I’d rather he assumes it’s the atmosphere that’s unsettled me.
Jonah echoes my laugh. “You can say that again. Maybe we should head back… but we might not find a lead this good again.”
“You’re the only one of us whoneedssleep,” I remind him. “It should be up to you.”
He smiles tightly. “I can keep going. Rollick is counting on us.”
I’m not paying enough attention, and my next step brings my foot into a hollow at a bad angle. The searing ache that lances up my calf has me biting my lip against a gasp. The orange glow flares bright enough for me to see it.
Soon I’ll be a mood torch. As much as I hate to abandon Jonah, it’s getting too hard to hide my discomfort.
“My physical body is getting tired,” I say as an excuse. “I’m going to slip into the shadows to give it a break.”
And to rest my throbbing legs.
Jonah nods without any sign of distress. But then, he’d never make me feel guilty for looking after myself, and he’s good at keeping his own emotions simmered down.
Maybe I should ask him to give me some lessons alongside Shanty’s… if we ever get back to the academy.
I hop into the nearest patch of darkness and ripple onward with all bodily sensations dispelled. In the shadows, I’m more clearly aware of Raze following the trail ahead of us, Mirage bounding among the trees to my left, Hail’s presence flowing along at a more measured rhythm to my right.
The sky is completely black when Raze pops out of the shadows and stays corporeal. He speaks in a hushed voice. “I think we’ve got something.”
I leap to his side and find myself at the edge of a larger clearing. Jonah points his light where Raze indicated.
A log cabin squats by the trees at the far end of the clearing. The structure stands only one story tall and maybe twenty feet across, with a wooden shed beside it.
Moss creeps across both buildings’ walls and roofs, and no light glints through the single dingy window. Jonah peersat it, braced as if for an attack. The other men materialize around us.
“I smell a human as well as shadowkind,” Raze says. “Just one. Male. Not very fresh. No one’s here right now—probably not for hours.”
Jonah frowns at the main structure. “It looks like a hunting cabin—meant for stays of only a few days. Did the shadowkind creatures hang around here or just pass by?”
Raze stalks along the edges of the clearing, his reptilian tongue flicking over his lips. I gaze down at the ground and notice the imprint of a boot sole in the dirt.
Not too long but wide. Like the person who made it was short and stout like that cabin.
An image of a man who fit that description wavers up from the depths of my mind. My pulse stutters with a fresh prickle of pain through my ankles.
Running away flailing suddenly feels like a good plan.
