Shadow Rising
Chapter Twenty-Nine

As Retta gunned it back to the house, I filled Gus in on everything he’d missed. He seemed utterly stunned by what had been going on.

“And there was me thinking I was having a shit week,” he said.

When we made it back, we found Cora and Aaron awake, sitting in the living room.

“What did you do with Nik?” I asked.

“We made him lie down,” Cora said. “He was looking peaky. Where have you been? Is that Elliot?” Her quizzical gaze roved over to Gus. “You don’t look Vanpari to me.”

Gus started to chuckle.

“It’s a long story,” I explained. “We sort of split the mission in two. I had to get this guy first. Meet my friend Gus.”

Gus took Cora’s hand and shook it. “I like this,” he said, gesturing to her face, hair, and outfit with his hands. “A punk Celestial. Are those feathers dyed?”

Cora flapped her neat wings and nodded.

“Love it.” Gus turned his attention to Aaron next, his eyes narrowing inquisitively. “What are you?”

“Uh… a Shapeshifter,” Aaron said, shyly, seeming to wilt under Gus’s extroversion.

Gus smiled. “Fabulous. I’ve never met one of your kind.”

I was glad to see Gus behaving like his usual self. He seemed not to have suffered any ill effects from his time at Camp Crapview, though I wondered if he was hiding his pain beneath a facade of confidence.

“Okay, I still don’t understand what happened,” Cora said. “You guys haven’t been tracking Elliot?”

I shook my head. “My cousins went alone.” I peered out at the now dark sky. “Dammit. I was hoping they’d be back by now. You guys rested enough to head out after them?”

“Definitely,” Aaron said. “If they’ve not sniffed him out yet, then Cora can do her actual spell and we can hurry this thing along.”

Ouch. I couldn’t help but feel stung by his subtle diss at the inferiority of Elkie powers.

“Someone needs to stay with Nik,” Cora said.

“Someone who’s not Lucas, you mean,” Retta said with a crooked smile. “That meathead’s been sleeping like a baby for hours.”

Gus wiggled his fingers. “Lucas? Nik? Who are these boys?”

Retta answered. “Nik is a Vanpari-Mage that Theia’s inexplicably attracted to and Lucas is a Siren.”

“Stop,” Gus said, holding his hand up. “I’ll be the babysitter. Honestly, you had me at meathead.”

*

We headed into the forest and I guided my gang along the tracks that Juniper and Birch had made. It seemed like they’d been zigzagging around quite a bit. Elkie sense of smell—despite Nik’s put-down—wasn’t anything like a dog’s. We weren’t as sensitive or as accurate.

“This way,” I said, heading toward the thick brush.

My friends staggered along. They weren’t used to the forest, like I was, so were struggling to get through the dense undergrowth.

Before long, we came across a clearing. There sat Birch and Juniper, resting against a large tree.

I hurried over to them. “Guys? Is everything okay?”

“We’re fine,” Juniper said. “Bad-boy Birch got a blister.”

“No I didn’t!” Birch contested.

Juniper rolled her eyes. “How’s Gus?”

“Safe and back to his outlandish self,” I replied. I handed Juniper her bow. “That’s one heck of a weapon you’ve got there.”

Juniper wiggled her eyebrows as she took it from me. “Mom has Weretiger blood somewhere down her ancestral line.”

“Neat.” I sat down on the crunchy leaves beside them. “So, no sign of Elliot?”

“There have been plenty of signs of disturbance,” Juniper said. “Tracks going in and out. But it seems like he’s on the move a lot. He hasn’t settled down in any one place.”

Poor Elliot. He must be so terrified of being found, if he’d been on the move this whole time.

Cora stepped forward. “Let me do my tracking spell.”

We gathered in a circle and Juniper put the talisman in the center. Cora softened her focus then began to utter a Celtic incantation.

Just like at the séance, a swirling cloud of smoke began to surround us. I tensed, recalling my dad’s face bursting out of it. But instead of any scary gargoyle faces, the smoke turned into a long tendril that began to snake through the trees.

“Um, Cora,” I said. “Your spell’s getting away.”

Her eyes flew open and she quickly stood. “Quick. Come on.”

She tore off into the trees after the arrow of smoke. We followed.

The ground inclined upwards and the trees grew denser the farther we went. Leaves and branches, and the occasional unwelcome vine, whipped and snapped and battered my face, my heart pounding as I ran.

“Man, he really wedged himself right in, didn’t he?” Retta said, fighting against the branches, her fragile wings pinned against her back to protect them from getting torn.

The smoke led us onwards. Then, suddenly, it stopped dead.

I scudded to a halt, kicking a stone. It skipped along and plunged down a huge gaping crevasse.

The smoke tendril turned into a swirling cloud over the crevasse. Then, in a big poof, it dissipated into the air.

I looked down into the plunging darkness. “Ah crap.”