Page 18 of The Chosen One, My Ass

In fact, I walk over and do just that. “Thank you for reminding me! I’ll go now.” Then I walk around, kissing the tops of the three younger kids’ heads, who also happen to be the kids still in the room, and say my prayers to them in turn. At the bottom of the stairs, I call up, “I have to run out for a little while, Jessie. I love you.” If a troll clubs me to death tonight, I don’t want the last interaction with my eldest child to be us rolling our eyes at each other. With the same idea in my mind, I give Jake one more kiss. As I pull away from the kiss, I mouththank youas clearly as I possibly can.

He nods to me and locks his eyes on mine as he says, “I love you.Drive safe.”

I have to leave because tears are welling up in my eyes. We’re finally connecting again, and I have to go fight trolls. Damnit to hell. I grab my purse and go out the garage door.

As my phone connects to the car’s Bluetooth, a notification pops up, telling me I have a text from Jake. I tap the message icon, and my car reads to me:

Hey, I just needed to tell you, PLEASE don’t get yourself killed tonight. We all need you way too much. Can you imagine if I had to raise the kids by myself??

I laugh at the sentiment even though the actual thought makes me want to throw up. Okay, I need to get my head in the game. One quick stop at The Tulip to grab a cinnamon cardamom latte, and I’m really on my way. It is eight o’clock on a weeknight, and I’m about to track downtrollsto fight. I am going to need a hefty dose of caffeine if I intend to live to tell Jake about this experience.

I’ve timed my coffee consumption perfectly for the length of the drive because I finish the cup of manna just as I roll my window down at the keypad before George’s gate. Of course, this means that by the time I park, I desperately need to pee. I run to his front door and bang on it rapidly with both fists. I’m bouncing from foot to foot when he finally opens the door, trying desperately not to relive the experience of my first training session in his dojo. I immediately push past him to run to the bathroom, not even pausing to say hi or explain. I’m sure he is shaking his head and smiling as he closes the door behind us. Or at least, I hope he is.

When I return from the restroom, he’s leaning against the closed door with his ankles crossed and hands in his jean pockets.

“How big a coffee did you have on the way?” His smile is so straight and bright that it catches me off guard. He doesn’t often smile so openly. I mentally give myself a pat on the back for the whole dinner idea. I think it made him feel less lonely. Also, my kids can be real charmers.

“It was a normal size, thank you very much. I’ve just birthed four babies, and that affects a woman, you know?” Although this subject oddly comes up often in our training together, he is just as uncomfortable every time. And I am just as entertained. “You ready to go hunt down some trolls?”

“Yes, please!” He nods and hands me a large flashlight while keeping one for himself and hoists a dark-green, tactical-looking backpack onto his back. “Let’s go.”

It’s a good thing he thought to bring the flashlights because I sure as hell didn’t, and once we’re outside and away from the circle of light cast by the motion sensor security cameras on the walls of George’s mansion we are plunged into a velvety blackness that is beginning to suffocate me, until I turn on that lifesaver flashlight. When the yellow beam illuminates the ground before me the tightness that was constricting my diaphragm lessens. We walk in relative silence, not speaking but grunting breaths and cracking sticks underfoot. When we hear a rustling to the left, we both freeze and swing our flashlights in unison, catching a deer munching on some leaves as a late-night snack. After a few more minutes, the sound of male voices draws our attention ahead. We stop abruptly and look at each other. Our ears are cocked, trying to make out the language, if it even is one.

“Do they sound human to you?” I’m not sure if my Guardian ears are deceiving me or if they really don’t sound any different than me and George. But my docent nods, and I am even more confused. “Why do they sound human?”

His brow furrows in response to my own. “You said they are pretty humanoid, right? It makes sense that their voices are too. Can you make out what they’re saying?”

I shake my head. “Not quite. Maybe they’re just people?”

“But then why would they come out only at night, just as you expected they would if they are trolls?”

Suddenly, a beam of a bright light catches us like unsuspecting flies in a spider’s web. After minutes of deep darkness, the light in our faces is blinding.

“You out there, who goes there?” Coming at us like exploding shrapnel, the voice still sounds more human than I would expect from a troll; not that I have had so much experience with trolls. Or any. And, unfortunately, George’s library doesn’t have an audio section where I can listen to recordings of different creature’s noises and voices as if they were bird calls.

George and I look at each other, unsure of what to do now. But since we’ve been caught in a literal spotlight, I decide to speak up.

“Um, hi. I’m Miranda, and this is George. We live in the house just over that way.” I point in the direction I think we came from, although I am even more disoriented in this light than when we were walking in the dark. “Would it be possible to continue this conversation with that crazy bright lightnotaimed at us?”

“Oh, sure. Sorry.” With an echoing click, we are plunged into darkness, except for our own small circles of light which may as well be from a Lite Brite in comparison to the pool of light we were just flooded in.

When I raise my flashlight’s beam, we are surprised by what we find. Or, I should say, who we find.

Three men, all of whom I’d estimate to be around thirty, stand around a floodlight that had been blinding us a moment ago. All of them look to be human. One is even rather attractive with eyes so blue I see them from here and a strong lumberjack kind of physique going on. George and I look at each other in confusion, then back to the men and smile awkwardly.

George speaks out of the corner of his mouth, “Those do not look like trolls to me, Miranda. I think maybe you were wrong.”

I speak back to him through my grinning teeth. “You can think that, but I know what I read. I know what I saw in the daylight, and I definitely know what I smelled and still do. These plants did not rot themselves. If these are not our trolls, there are still trolls out there—somewhere.”

One man, the handsome one with long reddish hair pulled back into a low ponytail, speaks to us, the short beard on his chin bobbing up and down. “Hey there, friends. What are you doing out this way so late at night?” His tone is friendly, but his voice gruff.

George takes the lead on our end. “Well,friend.” His tone is slightly less friendly, but not by much. “This is my property. So, I think if one of us owes the other an explanation, it’s you…to me.” He stumbles through the end of the sentence, his eyes looking away as he pulls his words together in his flustered state.

The three strangers look back and forth at one another nervously. A mousey blond man, slightly younger looking than Red in the middle, turns his head so quickly that his chin-length greasy hair swings. He mutters something we are not meant to hear. Although, with my super-hearing, I am able to make out some of his words.

“They’ve seen us. We should spell them.”

I grab George’s wrist in fear and whisper, “I need to do something. They want to spell us.”

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