CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR（Untitled）Naomi

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Naomi

The waves of fatigue just keep coming. Even the adrenaline jolt of watching Wranth battle the soul stealer can’t keep it away. But I don’t need to worry. I know deep in my bones he’ll keep me safe. The red crystals held off the worst—my magical nerves don’t feel fried—but I still feel worn out, wrung of every little drop of energy.

I just need to sleep for a little bit. The pavement’s so comfy. Does Hannah know how comfy it is? Is that why she spends so much time fixing the roads? A yawn cracks my jaw. God, I’m thinking nonsense, but I’m too tired to care.

Murmuring conversations tug at me. I peel an eye open to roll my head to look down the street to where half the town stands, phones raised, videoing everything. Maria pushes to the front, almost elbowing Trevor to get her phone into better position.

Oh, shit. I should probably be worried about all those videos.

Another yawn.

A high shriek slices across my nerves, pulling up one last jolt of adrenaline. My eyes fly open right as another soul stealer flies through the door.

A shirtless Wranth bounds to intercept it, a whirling tornado of green arms and steel blade.

The sluagh angles over to the far side of the street, the birds spiraling down and merging into the creepy cloaked figure that came after me before.

“You!” Wranth bellows, his sword pointing straight at the soul stealer. “I told you you’d never touch her again!”

“But her souls shines so brightly, orc,” its chorus of voices says. “That one little taste could never be enough.”

“Naomi,” Shadow’s voice whispers from close by.

I jolt, my eyes darting around, but I can’t see him.

“I’m hiding at the border of a shadow road,” he says. “Now, quickly. We need a net.”

Fuck. A net? I try to shove away the fatigue so I can think. There’s the closed ice cream shop, nope. My bookstore, nope. The old hardware store was one of the first places to close—it’s been stripped down to the bones for years.

No, wait. I snap my fingers, or I try to, but my noodle muscles make only a whisper of a sound.

“The hardware store.” I point. “It was a Halloween pop-up last autumn. My friend hung a big net across the ceiling and dangled decorations from it.” Hannah was so proud to bring a new business to Ferndale Falls, even a temporary one, that she did part of the decorating to attract them.

“Thanks.”

Wranth’s still trading barbs with the sluagh, and when the nasty thing darts forward, his sword pierces its chest.

But the soul stealer only laughs as a single bird appears skewered on the sword. Then even it fades away, one of the victims finally released to peace. “Foolish orc, you know that can’t hurt me.”

“It can if I do it enough,” Wranth growls, his shoulders flexing.

“Let me have the witch, and I’ll leave this world alone.” It takes a step backward and throws out an arm, its tattered cloak sleeve flaring wide. “Or I suppose I could eat my fill and grow so powerful I will live forever. I sense more witches all around us. They may not burn as brightly, but they’ll do.”

Who the hell is the soul stealer talking about? Witches? Here in Ferndale Falls? But it doesn’t matter—whoever it is, they’ll be someone I know.

“Naomi!” Hannah yells, pushing through the small crowd to the front, her beautiful face wearing the stubborn frown she gets when she’s determined to fix something. But she can’t fix this. “Oh, my god, Naomi. Are you okay?”

“Like that one.” The soul stealer gnashes its sharp, red-beak teeth together in a vicious snap as he points at my friend.

“No!” I try to push upright. Not Hannah!

My shout spurns Wranth forward, and his sword strikes straight through the chest of the sluagh, again with no real effect.

A sob shudders from me. Where’s Shadow? What’s he going to do with the net? Wranth’s an amazing warrior, but if his sword strikes don’t work, we have to do something to help!

Percussive beats echo between the buildings in the familiar rhythm of a galloping horse—or unicorn.

Zephyr thunders down the street, Shadow riding her in his elfin form.

There are several shrieks, and a woman yells, “He’s naked!”

Shadow flashes them all a sultry smile. Then he faces forward, his arms lifting to fling a black ball into the air. The fishing net unfurls, still dangling an assortment of paper spiders, and falls around the soul stealer.

It breaks apart into its flock form, but Aldronn dives and grabs the base of the net, keeping it from lifting off.

Wranth steps forward, his sword striking with such precision that he skewers bird after bird without slicing the net.

The last birds flow together to make the evil fae’s true form, but it doesn’t look like it did before. It’s now shrunken and pale, and its eyes have lost all color, going ghostly white. When it opens its mouth to scream, all of its red shark teeth are gone.

Wranth fists a handful of net, yanking the soul stealer closer. “This is the truth of you, without any victims to swell your false pride. You’ll never have another,” he growls. “Now, you will give my bride back what you stole. You should never have touched her.”

His sword finds the middle of its chest, spearing right through the heart. The sluagh shudders and breaks into dust.

A burst of energy shoots through me, and the world brightens a little, like when you turn on an extra reading lamp in an already lit room. I gasp.

Wranth wheels around and drops to his knees beside me, his sword already sheathed in a quick and fluid movement. He pulls me up to sitting, his huge hands cupping my shoulders with such gentle strength it brings tears to my eyes. His gaze and hands roam over me, searching. “Tell me what’s wrong. Tell me why you cannot stand. Is it your leg?”

“I’m okay.” I touch his cheek, pulling his eyes back to mine. “I was really, really tired after opening that last door. But as soon as you killed the sluagh, I felt better.”

“Ending it returned the piece of your soul it had eaten. You are whole again, my bride.”

I’m better than whole—my heart is whole, too. Because I love Wranth. I love him so dearly. No matter what it takes, we’ll work something out. I’ll figure out how to be with him.

And hey, I’m a teleporter. If I can’t do the ultimate commute, who can?

I pull him down for a kiss, loving the wild ferocity with which he takes my mouth.

“Uh, Naomi,” Hannah says. “Can we talk?”

My friend hovers a few yards away, and the crowd behind her has gotten braver, too. They shuffle closer, phones held high and filming. Jules leads the pack, crouching to get a better angle on me with Wranth.

“Oh, shit,” I mutter. How the hell do we explain this? What would the heroine in one of my favorite books do? If it was one with a super-hacker friend, they’d have them scour the internet, deleting every copy of every video. One with a billionaire friend would have them buy off all the witnesses and make them sign NDA agreements. I’ve got none of those things.

But what I do have is a great imagination. All that reading still pays off, just in a different way.

“Okay, everybody!” I yell and clap my hands together in a loud slap. “That’s a wrap.”

Then I stand and touch my ear like I’m trying to press an earpiece into place, nodding like I’m listening to someone. “The DP says the drones got perfect footage! We don’t have to shoot again!”

Wranth grunts and scowls at me.

The crowd starts talking among themselves, but they’re still watching all of us. Several of the women pay special attention to Shadow, still naked and preening from Zephyr’s back. I chuckle. He’s as gorgeous as a movie star, and he’s got the attitude to go with it. If anyone can convince everyone that this is a movie shoot, it’s him.

Longing fills me as I glance over at the bookshop. The sign on the door says open, so Mom and Dad must be in there. They’re probably so caught up in whatever they’re reading they didn’t even notice all the noise from our fight.

“What’s going on?” Hannah sidles over to me. “You can’t tell me that was a movie shoot. I know when you’re lying, and none of that stuff you said about a movie was true.”

“Hey!” I say. “I thought I really sold it.”

“Junior year, A Midsummer Night’sDream .” She raises an eyebrow. “Need I say more?”

I wince. My first and last attempt at acting hadn’t gone well—in my enthusiasm, I bellowed all my lines at the audience, and our high school auditorium is tiny. I might love literature, but I’m sadly not the person to bring it to life. “Fair point.”

“ And ”—she jabs a finger at the flock of birds hanging in place, wings beating eerily in unison—“those things are still around instead of being added in after like they do with special effects.”

Wranth scowls at the soul stealer, hand going to the balled-up shirt hanging from his sword belt. “We need to do something about them.”

“Another sluagh could come through at any moment,” Aldronn says, eying the door, which hovers in the air over me like a heat haze.

“What?” I yelp. Ferndale Falls is so not the place to have all of this go down. Main Street might not be bustling, but as the crowd shows, it’s still too busy for all of this.

In fact, Ms. Ellis, the drama teacher, stands near the front, eyeing me suspiciously.

“Shit! We need to move the door.” I pull the crystal out of my bra and waggle it in the air. “And I know just the place. Crystal Rock.”

It’s a rock formation near the waterfall that’s off any of the main trails. Only the locals know about it. But how are we going to get there? I can’t teleport right now. Even if Shadow shifts back into his panther form, that still leaves three people for Zephyr to carry. She’s strong, but orcs are heavy.

The sputter of an old engine echoes between the buildings as Joe’s vintage Ford pickup truck turns onto Main Street several blocks down.

I step into the middle of the pavement and flag him down, Wranth growling behind me the entire time.

When he rolls to a stop, Joe calls out through the open window, “Miss Naomi, what are you doing in the middle of the street? I know your parents taught you better.” His dark brown face creases in a smile when I laugh. He owns the town’s one gas station, out by the old interstate, and knows everyone.

“I’m hitching.” I stick out my thumb. It’s the thing we used to do when we were little to get him to take us to the gas station in the summer, so we could buy soft drinks and popsicles. “Can I get a ride out to the falls for me and my friends?”

He eyes first Wranth and Aldronn, then Zephyr and the naked Shadow grinning from her back. “Do I want to know what you kids are up to?”

“Nope.” I pop the p and shake my head.

“Go on, then,” he says. “Get in the back.”

“Thanks, Joe!” I flash him my biggest smile. “You’re the best.”

Wranth and Aldronn both glare at the truck as I drop the tailgate and wave them into the truck bed.

I clamber in after them and call out to Zephyr and Shadow, “You two, follow us!”

“Naomi, wait!” Hannah starts trotting down the sidewalk, keeping pace with Joe’s slow driving. “Are you coming back?”

“Yes,” I say. “I’ll come back and tell you everything. Tell Mom and Dad I’ll see them soon.”

The door to Faerie being open will change everything. I’ll be able to go back and forth without even using my powers. I might end up with the longest commute of anyone anywhere, but I’ll make it work.

Because I love Wranth.

And I want to be with him.