“But she ruined Teresa’s favorite blouse!”

  Lucia finally clucked at me in chastisement. “That was a very naughty thing to do. Teresa did love that blouse.”

  I felt like I’d been dropped into the middle of some badly written sitcom. “I’m sorry?” I replied. I hoped Lucia didn’t want me to pay for the blouse. I didn’t exactly have a lot of cash on me after the batteries and the momos.

  “You’re a conniving little bit—” Christy broke off before swearing, I assume for her mother’s sake. “Stay away from our families.”

  “I’m not trying to stalk you,” I said, trying to hang onto my calm. “I’m just getting lunch.”

  Christy pointed an accusatory finger at my chest. “Don’t try to act like you’re innocent. I know who lives in this area and why you’re here.”

  I was about to retort that lots of people live in Florence when I realized she was referring to Vincent. His apartment was actually closer than the wisp channel.

  “I wasn’t planning on visiting Vincent,” I said, “but now that you mention it, I should drop by. He is my boyfriend, after all.”

  Christy’s face turned so red, I imagined steam coming off her like the dumplings I ordered.

  Lucia glanced in confusion at the term ‘boyfriend.’ “Wait, I thought Christy and Vincent were getting back together.”

  “You thought wrong,” I said. “I’m dating Vincent. Have been for a while now.”

  “It’s only temporary,” Christy snapped. “You’re the rebound girl. Once he’s done with you, he’ll beg me to take him back.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  Lucia frowned. “But—”

  “Order up!” a voice from the momo truck rang out. It was my number.

  I straightened. “That’s for me.”

  Christy refused to step aside for me. I had to squeeze past her, avoiding her touch like the world’s worst game of limbo.

  Lucia at least scooted over to let me through.

  “Sorry,” I grumbled as I shot past.

  “Yeah,” she said in an equally soft voice. “Me too.”

  CHAPTER 7

  I GRABBED MY order and hightailed it out of there so as not to stir up any more drama. Maybe I should have stood my ground against Christy since she’d planted a new seed of doubt into my mind. I didn’t actually believe I was a rebound girl, especially not so Christy could snatch him back up, but the idea fed into my fears.

  What if Vincent and I didn’t last?

  I tried to bury those thoughts in delicious momos, which worked to some degree. Their juicy, steamed flavor temporarily made me forget my problems. I’d discovered a new food to love.

  I only ate three of the six I ordered, saving the others in case Vincent was home. I knew the odds were against it since he was scheduled for a shift today. Vincent kept odd hours as a game warden for the Oregon State Police. Unless he had a super early morning shift, he probably wouldn’t be back until closer to sunset.

  But when I strolled into his apartment parking lot, I saw his silver Subaru in its usual spot. Happy that I’d saved him some momos, I skipped up the external steps to the second floor of his utilitarian apartment building and knocked on his door.

  He did not answer.

  My enthusiasm waned. Maybe he’d caught a ride to work. I pulled out my phone and texted him to confirm.

  Where are you?

  Three dots appeared onscreen immediately, followed by his brief reply. I’m home.

  I typed back. Then why aren’t you answering your door?

  Scuffling sounds arose from inside the apartment. They grew louder as they approached the door. My muscles relaxed. He hadn’t been lying.

  But that didn’t let him off the hook. I was talking before the door cracked open. “Why didn’t you answer the door when I . . .”

  Vincent raised his arm over his mouth, coughing as the door swung fully open. Wearing sweatpants and a matching shirt, he had dark circles under his eyes, and his shoulders drooped downward.

  “. . . knocked?” I finished lamely.

  “I’m sick,” he said with a nasal tone that hinted at the mucus within.

  “I can see that.” I shooed him inside and shut the door as he ambled to his futon and plopped down so hard that the back frame bowed. “You texted me last night that you were feeling better.”

  “I was,” Vincent said. “But then I woke up this morning with a head full of snot and a fever. I called in sick and have been sleeping all day.”

  “I’m sorry to have bothered you.” I raised the paper food basket in my hands. “I thought I’d bring you something new to try for lunch, but I doubt you’re in the mood.”

  “If I swallowed that, it would rip my throat apart.”

  “I guess that means more for me.”

  He leaned back into the futon and closed his eyes. He looked so pathetic.

  “How about some soup then?” I asked. “Don’t you have some in the cupboards?”

  He smiled weakly. “That sounds nice. You don’t mind?”

  “Of course not.” I put the momos down on his well-used dining table and scurried off into his small kitchen. “I may not be a great cook, but I can use the microwave like a pro.”

  As I found a sturdy bowl and the can opener, I noticed the pile of dishes growing in the sink. That alone would have told me Vincent was sick. I’d never known him to keep anything in there for more than a few hours.

  After I finished heating the soup, Vincent had his mouth hanging open and appeared to be napping. Trying not to wake him, I placed the bowl gently on a TV tray, but that barely audible sound woke him up with a start.

  I moved the TV tray in front of him. “After eating this, you should go back to sleep.”

  “I’ll try, but I keep waking up.”

  I couldn’t keep the worry out of my voice. “Should I take you to a doctor?”

  “Nah, it’s just a bad cold or the flu. I’m sure it’ll pass in a few days.” Vincent then took a slurp of his spoon and became engrossed with his food.

  As I dug into the rest of my momos, I reminded myself that getting sick was a part of life for most normal people. Vincent needed time for his immune system to fight this thing off.

  I stayed until Vincent finished and made sure he got back into bed. I put the dishes away in his tiny dishwasher for him, although I didn’t run the machine because I was never sure where the little soap packets went in the stupid thing. When I checked in on Vincent before leaving, he was snoring, fast asleep. I made sure his phone was on his bedstand and put an extra glass of water beside it.

  The weather had shifted during my stint indoors, causing a significant drop in temperature. A thick blanket of gray clouds swirled overhead, sending the lightest sprinkles of snow in the air.

  “At least Vincent’s not driving on those curvy roads when it’s icy,” I said to myself, drawing a sigil for warmth and heading east toward the bordering forestland, where I could take the nearest wisp channel to the homestead.

  The snow disappeared almost instantly as I made the first jump through the twinkling lights. The skies above the Siuslaw National Forest were blue, and although a chill wind blew through the pines, it felt more like our normal autumn fare. I thought it odd that the coast was colder than the mountains, but then again, the mountains often divided weather for the area. Inversions were known to happen.

  The sky slowly darkened overhead as the sun left for another day. I took a deep breath of fresh air. I let all of the natural pith of an autumn evening flow through me. Earth settled in my belly, water rushed in my veins, air swept through my bones, and it all combined into a crackling fire. The swaying of the trees around me, accentuated by the occasional animal call, made me feel like the world was at peace. It should have been a quiet night.

  Except it wasn’t.

  I heard the commotion as I stepped past the fake mountain illusion onto the homestead proper. I couldn’t see much other than the shadowed outlines of the buildings up ahead, but voices drifted over the muted wind, the loudest one sounding male.

  “Wuaro,” I guessed. “Don’t make me take back my invitation on the very day I gave it to you.”

  The argument came from the lodge, its door thrown wide open to expose the fireplace’s dancing flames. The lodge is where shepherd visitors stay while on the property, offering a room to rest, food and drink to consume, and a meeting area to gather. I more or less had a permanent room on the ground floor, but most other shepherds came and went less frequently.

  I crossed the threshold to stand on the dirt floor and found Azar speaking not with Wuaro, but Zibel, another Talol Wilds shepherd. The young earth shepherd was so red-faced, his freckles became blended in with the rest of his usually pale skin and matched his similarly colored hair. He wore a tattered shirt and pants, his normal attire.

  “I’m telling you, this wasn’t an ordinary vaettur,” Zibel insisted to Azar, pacing around the stone pool in front of the raging hearth. “It tried to suck pith directly out of me, and when that didn’t work, it went after Abby.”

  Abby, the Humboldt marten dryant, yowled in agreement near his feet. I’d known Abby when she’d been an ordinary animal. We’d since imbued her with vitae, which had turned her into a magical creature. Her burnt orange fur now had streaks of shiny silver, and her weasel-like body had elongated to be much larger than her kin. One hooked claw on each of her paws was three-times as big as the others, and her eyes sparkled with the same kind of light found around a wisp channel.

  Dryants were animal protectors of the forest, and it showed.

  Despite her size, Zibel scooped her up and cradled her in his arms as if she were a giant housecat. “Did the nasty vaettur hurt you, Abby?”

  Abby hissed, exposing sharp teeth.

  “Abby looks less upset and more like she’s about to rip out somebody’s throat,” I observed from the doorframe.

  Both Azar and Zibel glared at me. Normally I would receive a warmer welcome from Azar, but she clearly hadn’t forgiven me about Wuaro yet. Zibel had never liked me, but to be fair, Zibel didn’t like anyone but his precious martens on the Oregon coast.

  “Vaetturs are no joke, Ina,” Zibel snapped, as if I didn’t already understand this indisputable fact.

  “Did the vaettur hurt Abby?” I asked.

  “Well . . .” Zibel trailed off.

  Abby was much more vocal. She leaped out of Zibel’s arms and pretended to attack an imaginary foe at her feet, clawing it to shreds.

  “I’ll take that as a ‘no,’” I said. “You two took care of it.”

  “He didn’t,” Azar said. “He was unable to banish the vaettur.”

  “It was too fast,” Zibel said. “Even Abby couldn’t keep up with it. She eventually traced its scent back to its breach.”

  I stiffened at this familiar story. “The vaettur didn’t happen to be a runt with spindly, chicken limbs and a deer skull for a head, did it?”

  Zibel’s eyes widened. “It was the size of a beaver, which I wouldn’t classify as a runt, but yeah, all those other details fit.”

  Azar stepped toward me. “You saw it too?”

  I nodded. “I ran into Skullhead yesterday. It pulled the same escape trick on me.”

  Azar looked appalled. “And you didn’t say anything?”

  “It ran back into its breach. I sealed it off and figured that would be the end of it.”

  “Clearly it wasn’t,” Zibel said with derision. “The thing came back, and now it’s bigger than it was before.”

  “We must banish it,” Azar said. “Otherwise, it could just keep coming back.”

  “True, but it doesn’t seem that dangerous,” I said. “Unless Zibel and Abby had to put up a good fight to get it to run away.”

  “No,” Zibel said. “The vaettur was a coward.” Abby hissed in agreement.

  “I don’t like it,” Azar said. “We should do some research and figure out what exactly this vaettur is.”

  “Right now?” I asked, my weary bones aching to climb into bed for an early night. It had been a long day. “Can’t it wait until morning?”

  “If the vaettur comes back, and it sounds like it will, we should be prepared,” Azar said.

  “It’s what shepherds of Nasci do,” Zibel added.

  I held up my hands in defeat. “Okay, I get it. Let’s hit the library and see if we can identify our freaky little pest.”

  * * *

  I didn’t want to say “I told you so” to the others, but after several hours of searching in the library with nothing to show for it, I sure was tempted.

  The library was the smallest building on the homestead, but it made use of its limited space by having books crammed in every cranny of its sole room. Azar, Zibel, and I sat at its central table after we grabbed books off the shelves, being careful not to topple any precarious stacks.

  The shelves had a vague organization about them, with those closest to the entrance being more often used than those toward the back corners. But without any proper oversight, books had been hastily reshelved and mixed together over time. We’d already gone through most of the handwritten journals that outlined encounters in the Talol Wilds. I’d even located a few misplaced books on the less used shelves, but they hadn’t provided any information about Skullhead.

  I yawned as I gently closed a leatherbound book. Sigils etched by past forgers kept the old paper intact, but it still felt fragile under my fingertips. As I scooted my chair away from the table to put it back, Abby stirred by my boots on the dirt floor, fast asleep. I hated to admit, even to myself, that I was jealous of a marten.

  “This is getting us nowhere,” I announced, the first words we’d spoken for a good half hour. “Maybe this is a new vaettur.”

  Azar, who was almost through her latest tower of books, exhaled under the flickering lamp light. “Vaetturs that no shepherds have encountered before are exceedingly rare.”

  “Even if it is new,” Zibel interjected, “you can almost always find a similar vaettur, just like most animals here are related to other species.”

  Azar tapped her head. “Maybe the skull it wears is a unique covering that hides its true form.”

  I couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of my voice. “You think the skull is a fashion accessory?”

  Zibel scoffed. “Vaetturs don’t wear clothes. That skull looked like part of its body to me.”

  “Me too,” I said. “And I haven’t seen any references to creepy skull heads in any other vaettur I’ve read about tonight.”

  Azar leaned back in her chair. “There has to be something we’re missing. A feature that gives away its identity. Perhaps its magical signature?”

  “The thing didn’t do anything but run around in a panic,” I said.

  “And attack your innate boyfriend,” Zibel said with a hint of glee.

  While Guntram was all gung-ho about me forging a relationship with the innates, most of the others were more skeptical. The Talol Wilds had never leveraged those connections before, whereas Guntram had come from the Onyara Wilds on the East Coast, where it was more common.

  “Just because you shun all human contact doesn’t mean the rest of us do,” I retorted at Zibel. “And I told you, Skullhead didn’t attack Vincent so much as bump him as it escaped.”

  Zibel wrinkled his nose. “Maybe if your boyfriend was as ‘magical’ as you claim, he could have done something to stop the vaettur.”

  “Like you quashed it?” I asked with heavy sarcasm.

  “Bickering is getting us nowhere,” Azar cut in. “Besides the vaettur’s physical appearance and the fact that it was abnormally fast, we don’t have much to go on.” She eyeballed the far corners of the room. “I suppose we could sift through the copied journals from other territories beyond the Talol Wilds.”

  I groaned. There were ten times as many of those books as the ones we’d already covered, and with such awful clues, it would take forever to go through them. “I’d prefer to sleep this week.”

  A shadow darkened the library door.

  “What are you guys doing?” Callum asked, looking way too chipper for it being so late at night. He shuffled his scrawny legs across the threshold so he could scrutinize the books on the table.

  Zibel sniffed. “We’re doing shepherd work. Nothing a forger apprentice can help with.”

  Callum’s face fell. I opened my mouth to give Zibel a piece of my mind, but Azar beat me to it.

  “No need to be rude,” she admonished Zibel. He blushed as Azar turned her attention back to Callum. “We’re trying to identify a vaettur that Ina and Zibel have run into recently.”

  “With no luck,” I added. “It’s not listed in any of the journals we’ve searched so far.”

  Callum scanned the cluttered shelves. “How do you choose what books to read?”

  “Lots of guesswork,” I said. “We can usually find a clue in the journals written by Talol Wilds shepherds, but when that fails”—I threw my hands to indicate the massive stacks of tomes we hadn’t touched yet—“we get to play the world’s worst game of hide and seek.”

  Callum’s eyes widened. “Doesn’t the library have a catalogue of each book?”

  “No. This library is relatively new,” Azar explained. “Tabitha and Guntram built it from the ground up when they established the homestead. We weren’t even allowed to house original tomes for years because the northern shepherds thought we would disband at any moment.”

  That made sense, given the history of the homestead. “Are these books mostly copies?” I asked.

  Azar nodded. “It’s common for copies to be made and passed around, especially between regions. We actually have a decent collection from the Onyara Wilds due to Guntram’s influence.”

  “Speaking of Guntram, we should wait for him to return,” Zibel said. “He might have a better idea of how to search through the rest of the books.”

  I couldn’t believe I agreed with Zibel. Even Azar looked resigned. “Perhaps that would be best.”

  Callum cleared his throat. “I could do some digging.”

  We all gave him our full attention, and he shrank back a little bit.

 

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