CHAPTER 32

Naia shook her head. "That's just it. That's not even something I can do." She bit her lip nervously. "We need to talk to Ratu, right away.

The cold air of Oregon bit at Mike through his jacket. The snow on the ground was only a couple of inches thick but crunched loudly when they walked.

Dana and Quetzalli were in the lead while Yuki brought up the rear. Mike saw that she was swishing her tail over the snow where they walked, and their footprints were vanishing as if wiped from a dry erase board.

Up ahead, the trees parted. There was a hanging fog in the air that shifted away from them as they approached. When they stepped through it, a tingle ran through his whole body.

"We're inside," he said. The magic felt similar to the geas, but not quite the same.

"How do you feel?" asked Dana.

"Kinda hungry," he answered, then pulled a granola bar out of his pocket. When he went to open it, he noticed that the wrapper had been opened already. Curious, he pulled the bar out and laughed. A third of it was gone, and he knew it had to have been Tink.

"May I have some of that?" Quetzalli asked, clutching her stomach. They had been walking for over an hour now, and she was probably just as hungry.

"Here, you can have your own. This one has goblin cooties." He pulled a couple more out of his backpack, then handed over his water bottle. They took turns drinking out of it while Abella and Dana kept watch.

"Is this like being at the house?" he asked Abella. "It's not the geas, but it feels familiar to me."

She nodded, then looked up. "It's been so long since I've seen the forest. Ever since Europe, actually."

"Were you brought over through a portal?" he asked.

"Freighter," she responded. "Was a long journey. I had to sit inside of a box."

"Kind of like Eulalie did." The mention of the Arachne's name caused Abella to scowl. "You don't like her, do you?"

Abella's cheeks darkened. "No, I do not."

"She seems nice."

"That doesn't impress me. Don't think I didn't notice how she suddenly couldn't bring us on this trip. There's one in the house and one waiting for us at our destination. Nobody builds a trap as the Arachne do."

"My magic tells me that she is safe." He patted his gut. "Besides, why go through all this trouble to get me if they could just leave the cabin and snack on some hikers?"

"I haven't figured that part out yet," she admitted.

"They're different." This came from Dana, who slowed down to walk with them. "The Arachne are killers, but their mother wasn't. Every time she laid eggs, she crushed them all because she could tell they would never be able to coexist with humans. Velvet and Eulalie were the only two out of hundreds of eggs that she allowed to hatch because she could tell they were different."

Abella snorted, then walked away from them to join Yuki.

"She really doesn't like them," Dana observed.

"There's always more to the story than we think," Mike said. "I'll admit, the whole spider thing freaks me out. I had a bad experience with them as a kid, and they are kind of being shoved in my face right now."

"I thought you'd enjoy it," she said.

"How do you figure?"

"Always took you for a leg man." She winked at him.

When he laughed, it was almost like a bark. "Okay, you've got me there," he admitted. "Though it's more the whole package, I guess." He thought about the different women in the house. There really wasn't a pattern among them other than not being human.

"For me, it is the hips. Sounds strange, right? But there's something to it. A girl with hips has got some curves to begin with. And don't even get me started on leggings."

"Oh?" Mike snuck a glance over at Quetzalli. The dragon's human form had very voluptuous curves. For the first month she was a human, it had been almost comical to hear her bitch about how parts of her anatomy would keep moving even after she had stopped. "I feel like leggings are one of God's final gifts to mankind," he continued. "A proper pair of leggings can make a housewife look like a goddess."

Dana smirked. "Maybe we could have Tink make us a pair of leggings with eight legs. It would be like immersion therapy or something."

"That would be—" A cold feeling filled his gut and he paused.

"What's up?" Dana asked him.

"Something bad is about to happen." His eyes were drawn up into the trees where he saw movement. He had barely raised his hand to point it out when Abella wrapped her wings around him, blotting out the light.

Someone yelled, and he heard multiple projectiles shatter against Abella's body. When she unwrapped her wings, the tree had been engulfed by a mass of ice. Three squat figures fell out of the tree and landed in the packed snow beneath.

"What was that?" he asked. When he looked over at Dana, he saw that she had arrows sticking out of her chest and shoulders.

"Arrows, apparently. Bad ones." Dana pulled one out and sniffed it, then made a face. "They've been dipped in something nasty."

"Was it just these three?" he asked.

"If so, they were firing them pretty fast," Quetzalli said as she came over. "I would surmise that—"

The cold feeling hit him again and he tackled Quetzalli to the ground as another volley launched over them. A barrier of ice formed in front of them and Yuki shouted in anger.

Through the clear ice of the barrier, he watched Dana pull a dagger from her pants and flick her wrist. The blade extended to reveal a sword that looked almost like a katana and was very similar to the one that Sofia carried. The zombie charged into the fray, the sword hissing through the air as she swung it.