“Hey,” I said as way of greeting. “I see we started the day off by making the boss mad. What happened?”

  Zibel’s head jerked up. “Azar and Wuaro started arguing like children right off the bat.”

  “I did no such thing,” Wuaro protested. “Azar just doesn’t like taking orders.”

  “She takes orders just fine,” I shot back. “And to be fair, this is her home, not yours. She should be the one giving orders.”

  “Not if they’re the wrong ones,” Wuaro said with an air of superiority. “The water pith here is tainted. The vaettur is close.”

  “And did you tell her that in a nice, respectful way?”

  Wuaro shrugged. “We don’t have time to waste on niceties with a strange vaettur on the loose.”

  I blinked at him. “Strange vaettur? Didn’t she tell you we’ve identified it?”

  Zibel’s eyebrows furled. “No, she didn’t say anything.”

  I stifled a scream. This whole team was so dysfunctional. “Callum identified Skullhead with his research, but since Wuaro acted like a jerk this morning, it appears Azar decided not to divulge that our vaettur is a wendigo.”

  Alarm slashed Wuaro’s face. “That’s not good.”

  “I take it you’ve heard of them.”

  Zibel stiffened in confusion. “What’s a wendigo?”

  “It’s a very powerful vaettur that, as you know, can drain pith by conjuring snow. Callum’s research says only a fire and water attack can banish it.”

  Zibel’s jaw dropped. “No one shepherd can pull that off.”

  “Not one shepherd.” I gestured at Wuaro and then up where Azar was fuming somewhere above. “Two augurs.”

  “That would have been nice information for her highness to tell me,” Wuaro grumbled.

  “Azar doesn’t think you two can play nice together for some reason,” I countered. “She’s brainstorming alternate solutions.”

  “And what’s her brilliant plan?”

  I paused a beat, not wanting to answer, but finally said, “Lightning.”

  “You seem so confident in yourself,” Wuaro said with heavy sarcasm.

  “It’s not a great plan,” I said. “I told her as much. But now that I see that the two of you are acting like disgruntled teenagers, I’m inclined to believe lightning’s better than the traditional method.”

  Before Wuaro could argue, my phone quacked off again. I was shocked that it even received service so far out in the woods.

  Wuaro and Zibel were also taken off guard, scanning their surroundings in bewilderment.

  “Where are the ducks?” Zibel asked.

  A small laugh escaped me as I reached into my kangaroo pouch. “It’s just my phone.”

  Zibel huffed. “Shepherds aren’t supposed to use manmade technology. We’re supposed to rely on Nasci’s magical gifts.”

  “Nasci’s magical gifts don’t include 5G coverage,” I said.

  Wuaro looked thoughtful. “I read a billboard near a roadway once that said 5G can cause global pandemics.”

  “I have enough crazy things happening in my life without supplementing it with conspiracy theories.” I checked who was calling, expecting a spam number.

  Vincent’s name flashed across the screen.

  I sucked in a breath. Vincent and I had already texted this morning. If he’d gone to work, he had no reason to contact me again so soon.

  I answered the call despite Zibel’s protest, holding my hand up to get him to quiet down. “What’s up, Vince?”

  “Ina!” he cried, his voice so loud that I had to hold the phone away from my ear. “I found your monster!”

  “Where?” I demanded as Wuaro and Zibel leaned toward the conversation to listen in.

  “It attacked Tita at her house. Please, come quickly!”

  CHAPTER 16

  ALL FOUR OF us shepherds flew down the mountainside, scribbling air piths so we could take bounding leaps toward the valley below. I led the group toward Tita’s rural property. We wouldn’t even need a wisp channel to get there.

  I was anxious about Tita. Vincent wasn’t at her house. His Aunt Lucia had called him in a panic, saying a “strange animal” had attacked his grandmother. He was on his way there to see if she was okay.

  I hoped we weren’t too late.

  Snow flurries formed around us as we jumped like flying reindeer over the treetops. We wrote Ss and Os to weave wind barriers that would prevent the snow from draining our pith.

  Wuaro tried to pace Azar’s leaps so he could gloat. “I told you the vaettur was close by.”

  “A mile away is a pretty wide berth,” she shot back.

  I shouted to be heard over their squabbling. “Neither of you would have found it without Vincent calling me!”

  My outburst got the two augurs to focus on our real problem. “We have to corner the vaettur so it cannot flee back through its breach,” Azar said.

  “Agreed,” Wuaro said. “I will hit it with a water banishment. Be ready to hit it with fire on my command.”

  Azar gaped at him. “Who told you about the fire and water combo?” Before she’d even finished her sentence, she turned her fiery pupils on me.

  “Don’t give me that look,” I said. “I’m making sure we all have the same information.”

  “Which Azar should have done in the first place,” Wuaro interjected.

  “A fire and water combo will fail,” Azar said through her teeth. “You don’t work well with others.”

  “You just have to follow my lead,” Wuaro argued.

  “Exactly, and that’s the entire problem,” Azar said. “The fire strike has to come first. Which means you have to follow my lead, not the other way around.”

  Wuaro paused. “I didn’t realize we needed to attack it in a specific order.” Now he was giving me the evil eye.

  “So I forgot that detail. Who cares? Just watch Azar and lend her some water support.”

  Wuaro shook his head. “It’s not going to be easy timing a water banishment after a fire one.”

  “This is why I didn’t bother to tell him anything in the first place!” Azar yelled in frustration.

  Zibel cleared his throat in the rear of our train of bouncing shepherds. “Maybe Ina and I could pool our water banishment sigils together. It might be as powerful as Wuaro’s.”

  “Doubtful,” Wuaro said with a hint of disdain.

  “And even if it was,” Azar said, “we’d be coordinating three sigils instead of two, increasing our odds of failure. I said it to Ina before, and I’ll say it again, her lightning is the only reasonable method of banishing the wendigo.”

  We finally reached the bottom of the mountain. After our last leaps, we hit relatively flat ground under the crowns of swaying pines. We broke out into a run as we paced each other through the brush, dodging trunks.

  “Tita’s house is over the next two ridges!” I called out so everyone could hear.

  The snow thickened to a steady fall, gaining momentum. We strengthened our air sigils to keep it away from our bodies.

  Wuaro popped the cork on one of his glass bottles. He summoned a thick stream of water, winding it in coils like a snake around him, a foot or so away from his body.

  “The vaettur is close by,” he warned. “I can feel its foul magic in the snow.”

  I scanned to the left, where Azar ran next to me, then right to Wuaro. By the time my sight returned to the left, Azar wasn’t running apace with me anymore. Startled, I skidded to a halt and looked behind me.

  Azar had picked up one of her kidama newts from the forest floor and was clearly communicating with it.

  “Wait up!” I yelled at Zibel’s and Wuaro’s backs near the first ridge. “Azar’s getting intel from her kidama.”

  Zibel stopped immediately, but Wuaro kept moving forward. “Wuaro!” I yelled after him.

  “I can scout ahead!” he yelled over his shoulder.

  Azar released the newt back onto the ground. “The wendigo is headed this way. If we wait on this side of the ridgeline, we can ambush it.”

  Wuaro had already leaped right over the ridge and disappeared.

  Flames burst into a ring around Azar, melting the gathering flakes into droplets. “Idiot! Come back!”

  We waited a few beats, but Wuaro did not return.

  Azar yelled in frustration and shot forward. Zibel and I trailed in her wake.

  We hadn’t quite made it to the ridge when we heard a deafening roar, accompanied by a blast of wind so full of snow that it momentarily blinded us at the ridge’s summit.

  Azar drew a quick sideways S to slice the snowfall in two, giving us a clear view of our enemy down below.

  If I thought the wendigo had grown before, it was nothing compared to its size now. It towered above the desert shepherd like a parent over a naughty child. Its antlers had sprouted out like full-span wings on either side of its head, framing the empty eye sockets of the deer skull. Its bow legs were bent like a leaping gazelle, and blood-red feathers ran down its arms almost like fringe, framing its exposed rib cage.

  There was no denying now that we were dealing with a wendigo. It was too close a match to the journal sketch Callum had shown us, only the real deal was much more terrifying.

  Wuaro crouched in a sigil stance, his swirling water dancing around him. His fingers wove a complex pattern of insular Us, writing a complex water sigil I didn’t recognize. The watery streams flexed outward like a cocoon, and when the wendigo took a tentative step forward, the stream snapped at it like a whip.

  The wendigo opened its four front teeth and roared again, causing the trees to tremble around us. My knees experienced sympathy shivers.

  “Zibel,” Azar said, her quiet voice still somehow full of authority. “Go around the left side of the perimeter. I’ll take right. We’ll try to block it on at least three sides before giving Ina a chance to strike.”

  The wendigo took another bold step toward Wuaro, its scary-fast movements barely countered by the water whip.

  “Are you sure about this?” I asked. “I’m not sure I can hit it with that kind of speed.”

  “It’s our only option,” Azar said before melting back into the tree line. Zibel similarly vanished.

  I grabbed my lightning charm. Retaining lightning in my pithways for an extended period of time was out of the question, so I’d have to absorb it at the right moment. I just hoped Wuaro could hold the wendigo in place long enough for me to banish it.

  “What is it with you and repeating past mistakes?” the fox asked in my head.

  I jolted at the sound of her voice. “Nice of you to show up.”

  The fox whistled. “That is one ugly vaettur.”

  “You can see it?” I asked, surprised.

  “I see everything you see. How else do you think I’ve appeared before?”

  I didn’t have time for a chat with the fox. I scrutinized the wendigo, mouth dry as I waited for Azar and Zibel to get in position.

  “I could banish it for you.”

  That offer made me pause. “You’d lend me your power?”

  “Actually, I was hoping you’d lend me yours.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Let me take over your body, and I’ll do the rest.”

  I frowned. “Why don’t you jump out of me as a fox spirit like you have before?”

  “Because this is more fun.”

  “I’m not hanging around here for fun.” I caught sight of Azar lining up at the two o’clock position. Zibel remained hidden in the trees. “I’d rather we work together, not just let you call the shots.”

  “If you let me control your body, we will be working as a team. Don’t you trust me?”

  Trust. Azar had mentioned that about her bond with her kidama. Unfortunately, I didn’t trust easily, especially not with a creature that suggested I blast down an old woman’s home with lightning.

  Zibel had finally slipped into place. Azar waved at me. The wendigo danced in front of Wuaro’s water streams, unable to land a hit. This was my best chance.

  “I can do this alone,” I whispered, more to myself than the fox as I absorbed the lightning charm’s pith.

  “Sure, you can.”

  I pushed aside the doubt in the fox’s voice, focusing on the sizzling sensation of lightning in my pithways. Ozone permeated my nostrils as I wrote the five-pointed banishment star in the air.

  Before I could complete the last stroke, the wendigo abruptly jerked its head, its hollow sockets staring in my direction. It screeched, and the snowfall doubled, obscuring my vision.

  “Wuaro!” I screamed. “Duck!”

  I gave him a few seconds to comply, then completed the sigil, unleashing all that electricity sizzling in my pithways.

  Bright white light overtook the snow, blinding everything. Thunder boomed, knocking me backwards against a sapling. I pushed myself back upright, ignoring the scratching branches as I squinted, trying to see if I’d done the job.

  A monstrous shadow zipped past me. The wendigo.

  Wuaro cried out. “It’s getting away!”

  I ran after the wendigo but lost sight of it almost instantly due to its insane speed. I followed the swaying foliage in its wake, hoping not to lose track of it further, but the snow made it hard to perceive more than a few feet ahead of me.

  “Come back here!” I yelled.

  “You still don’t think you need me?”

  I searched the snow and found faint signs of tracks, but the creepy jerk had spindly legs, making its hoofprints disappear fast.

  “Can you catch up to it?” I asked the fox.

  Wuaro answered, startling me from behind. “About as well as you are.”

  The fox also replied. “I have enhanced senses and speed. If you let me take over your body, I’ll find your ugly deer in no time.”

  “Why can’t you just show yourself instead?” I demanded in frustration.

  “Uh,” Wuaro said, confused. “I’m right here.”

  “Do you want my help or not?”

  I glanced in all directions. The vaettur had been going this way, but if it veered even slightly off course, neither Wuaro or I would be able to find it again.

  “Fine,” I ground out. “But only long enough to get rid of the wendigo.”

  “Done.”

  Wuaro grabbed me by the shoulder. “Who are you talking—”

  Lightning like I’d never felt before surged in my pithways, drowning out all the other elements. It sparked off my skin as if I were a Tesla coil. Wuaro yelped and jumped backward.

  “Ina!” he yelled. “What are you doing?”

  I had no idea what I was doing. I took off like a rocket, twice as fast as I should have been able to run. I was no longer in control of my movements. I saw everything out of my normal vision, but detached, as if watching through the lens of a dream.

  As I raced over the ground, an overwhelming wave of forest smells assaulted my nostrils: pine needles, decaying leaves, and animal dander, from birds to bears to bees. I sniffed, the fox in control at the helm trying to pinpoint one odor in particular: a putrid stench that had erupted from the wendigo after I’d first tried to banish it but a thousand times stronger.

  The fox zeroed in on that rot, turning slightly to keep on the heels of the wendigo.

  But for all my speed and senses, the fox’s lightning had pushed all the air out of my pithways. The wind barrier that had been protecting me from the snow died, which began to leech even the enormous surge of lightning pith sizzling through me.

  “Pull back,” I said, surprised that now it was me talking inside my own head. “The snow’s draining you.”

  “I just need one good strike,” the fox said with my actual voice. “Then it will be over.”

  I could feel myself weakening with each flake that brushed against my skin. “You could hurt me.”

  “I know what I’m doing.”

  We’d almost caught up to the wendigo. It spared us a glance over its massive shoulder and picked up speed.

  The fox gathered a staggering amount of lightning pith in my palm, writing a complicated sigil with zigzags that I’d never seen before. A ball of lightning as big as my head formed at my fingertips before I flung it at the wendigo.

  Unfortunately, the vaettur felt the lightning well before the throw. It flung itself into a laurel shrub, and the lightning missed the wendigo by a wide gap.

  “A lucky miss,” the fox growled.

  “It’s not working.”

  “I’ll make it work!” The fox bounded through the brush after the wendigo.

  Scratches scored my legs and arms. “Give me back my body!” I screamed in pain.

  “Not until I get rid of this thing!” the fox countered.

  I left the shrub and lurched into a wide clearing, swaying yellow grass underneath my boots. Across a dismal gray sky on the other side of the meadow, the wendigo scrambled toward an open breach.

  “It’s heading back to Letum!” I cried.

  “No, it’s not!” The fox gathered the rest of her incredible lightning reserves. Lightning ballooned between my palms into a crackling mass wider than my torso. Ozone burned my eyes, causing me to tear up.

  “Ina!” a voice cried out behind me. A stunned Wuaro leapt out of the laurel shrub.

  “Go away!” the fox hissed as me.

  He scrutinized me in horror. “You’re not Ina.”

  I flipped back around to thrust the gigantic lightning ball at the wendigo. It blinked across the field like a comet, creating lines of fire on the grass in its wake.

  The wendigo’s back leaped into the breach a fraction of a second before impact. The blast tossed Wuaro and me like rag dolls onto either side of the clearing.

  * * *

  I regained consciousness in a pile of snow.

  Snow is not a fun place to rest. It double-sucks when said snow is sucking the pith right out of you. And it triple-sucks when you realize that your aching body is still possessed by a tricksy fox spirit.

  “Ouch,” the fox said with my voice.

  “What are you still doing here?” I demanded.

  I sat up and looked around. “I’m making sure the vaettur is gone.”

 

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