CHAPTER 50

"I haven't been up long," he confessed. "Whatever was on those arrows was nasty. The good news is that they won't affect me the same should it happen again."

"We've had a great time catching up." Quetzalli had pulled her legs beneath an oversized sweater and held a large cup of hot cocoa. "Did you know that we met before?"

"What? When?"

"Over a thousand years ago."

Bigfoot stretched his arms and winced. "She was a lot bigger then. She's a storm dragon, trapped in a human body."

Velvet's jaw dropped. When Dana had said Quetzalli was a dragon, Velvet had assumed that she was a hybrid. Bigfoot had spoken often about the elemental dragons that used to control the American continent. The story about the one under Yellowstone fascinated her the most, but he rarely went into details about it.

"It was brief. I stumbled onto one of his meetings and was invited to join them." Quetzalli sipped at her cocoa. "That was before I started working for the Fairy Queen."

"Wow." Velvet could only stare. "Did you have wings?"

"Big ones. I would ride amongst the clouds all day, summoning lightning and bringing rain. Do you want to hear about how storm clouds are formed?"

From the corner of her many eyes, Velvet saw Bigfoot shake his head ever so slightly.

"No, but thanks. I'm probably going back out soon, anyway." From where she stood, she could smell Mike's scent. She assumed he was in her dad's bedroom, and wanted to stay away if she could. "I just wanted to check-in. Can I get you anything before I leave?"

"I wouldn't mind a beer." Bigfoot raised his eyebrows hopefully. "And some cheese, if we have any."

"On it." She walked to the fridge and opened it up. Her uncle's beer selection was running low, so she grabbed him an IPA. In the process of retrieving it, her eyes settled on a small cooler toward the back of the fridge. The hairs on her arm stood on end as a sweet scent tickled her nostrils.

With trembling fingers, she slid the cooler forward and opened it. The scent from within was overwhelming. It reminded her of earth, rainstorms, and something slightly floral. There were about ten capped shot glasses, each one filled to the brim with a milky white fluid.

"You okay?" This came from Bigfoot. He was watching her from the couch.

"Yeah, just trying to decide which beer pairs with recently poisoned."

He chuckled, then turned his attention back to Quetzalli. While he spoke with her, Velvet grabbed a few of the shot glasses and tucked them in her pockets. She was a couple steps away from the fridge when she realized that she had forgotten the beer, so went back.

She stood behind the couch, afraid that Quetzalli or Bigfoot would know what she had done. When she handed over the beer, Bigfoot gave her a huge smile.

"Be careful out there, bug." He popped the cap off with his thumbnail, then sucked down half the bottle. "Oh, I needed that." Bigfoot furrowed his brow and let out a rumbling belch.

"I will." She scuttled away and then out the front door, her heart pounding in her chest. Outside, she saw that Yuki was over by the barn, so she wandered around the side of the house, toward the back. Her fingers had closed on the glass in her front pocket when she nearly ran into Mike.

He was leaning against the back wall of the cabin, his eyes on the woods. It looked like he had been concentrating on something, but relaxed when he saw her.

"Good evening," he said.

"Oh. Hi. I didn't think you were up."

"For just a little bit longer." He gestured at the night sky. Even through the dim lights of the cabin, the Milky Way blazed in all its glory. "I don't often get to see the night sky like this. It's beautiful, isn't it?"

"It is." She took a deep breath and turned her attention toward the sky. A streak of light crossed, and she closed her eyes.

"Making a wish?" he asked.

Her eyes popped open. "If I tell you, it won't come true."

"I was just checking. I didn't want to wish on the same one and steal yours away." He winked at her, and her heart skipped a beat.

"What would you wish for?" she asked. "Since you aren't wishing, it should be fine."

He laughed. "I honestly don't know. This will sound weird, but I'm pretty happy these days. Can't think of anything I really want, nothing big anyway."

"What's it like? Living at the house?"

"Hmm." He screwed up his face in concentration. "I'm trying to think of a good analogy for you. I guess it would be like if you had twenty sisters, but you were all different types of spiders. I'm kind of making an assumption, since you look different than your sister does."

"It's a fair assumption," she replied. "Our body type gets determined by where we were conceived and the rest of the colony. The idea is that it allows us to adapt to our environment. My spider body is complementary to my sister's, and it makes more sense out here. It's far harder to hide a web from human prey in the forest. People don't generally wander off trail. Hence why I have a hunter's body."

"Human prey?" She heard his voice rise an octave.

"If I hunted humans," she corrected. "I may be different from my ancestors, but that doesn't change where I came from."

"We all come from darkness. It's our job to rise above it." The wind caught Mike's hair and blew it in front of his eyes. His scent permeated the area, which caused Velvet to drool so much that she had to swallow. "So yes, the many-sisters theory. Imagine having that. All the women in the house are different. We also have magic rats and centaurs. It's always busy, but then something like your goblin war will pop up, and it usually ends with house repairs. Granted, I know nothing about your goblin war, and would love to hear more."

Velvet relaxed. "There isn't a whole lot to tell. We discovered a cave system in the distant hills teeming with goblins. They started prowling around the area and even attacked my dad's jeep one day when he was coming home. My mom tried to contact Aunt Emily, but she never came. Emery said that she had sealed them away, but didn't know how.