Page 36 of A Malicious Menagerie (Fangs & Fables #1)

The Plan

B etween Colby, Nathan, and me, the beginnings of a plan start to form. Now, we just have to get everyone else on board.

The kelpies are easy. After all, they’ve already made it clear that they’re eager to go. “Anna,” Fionn says teasingly when Colby and I relay our plan to them, “you are such an angel. I could just kiss you for all you’re doing for me and my dear sister.”

“I’m gonna have to pass,” I tell him bluntly.

Breathtaking beauty aside, I probably see Fionn similarly to how Ciara does—as an annoying older brother.

Besides, there’s only one man I want to kiss…

even though that’s likely to be the last thing on his mind when he realizes what I’ve been plotting.

I gesture to Colby beside me. “Honestly, you’d probably have more luck with Colby than with me. ”

Fionn eyes the security guard consideringly, and I stifle a laugh when Colby takes a massive step away from the kelpie. “Nah,” Fionn declares at last, brushing off the suggestion. “I’ve no desire to take my baby sister’s sloppy seconds.”

Ciara elbows him in the ribs, Colby shudders, and we make a pact. The kelpies are in.

Delia is similarly easy to convince, if a little more hesitant than the siblings. “What if you get caught?” she asks quietly, her dark brows drawn in consternation .

“Then at least I’ll go down doing the right thing,” I bluster. In all honesty, I’ve been carefully avoiding any thoughts of what could go wrong. If I let myself start down that rabbit hole, I’ll fall and fall until I’m nothing but a spiraling, panicky mess.

Delia looks unconvinced. “Anna… I don’t deserve this.”

I gape at her. “So you… what? Deserve to be kidnapped and held prisoner? To be forced to kill people?”

“I…” She trails off and just stares at me, lost and so desperately alone.

“I won’t leave here without you, Delia,” I tell her firmly. “So, unless you want to be the reason I get caught, you’ll agree to come with us.”

And that’s that.

The centaurs and mermaids present an interesting challenge.

Neither pair speaks English, and it takes a lot of hand gestures and pantomiming for me to explain the plan.

Even then, I walk away only about fifty percent convinced that they know I was describing an escape plan versus performing an interpretive dance.

Besides Chase, the resident I’m most nervous about approaching is Rory. After all, he could escape at any time if he wanted, yet he chooses to stay captive.

As with most nights, Rory is waiting to greet me, and I’m disappointed by the wave of doom and foreboding that overtakes me at the sight of him. “Ugh.”

Rory looks contrite. “Bad news?”

“So it seems,” I mumble. I decide not to interpret the omen as the plan being doomed to fail. After all, we’re still a few weeks away from the gala, let alone the escape. Maybe I’m due some bad luck before then.

Not exactly comforting.

Rory tilts his head curiously. “Something is troubling you.”

I try to shake off the unease of knowing something bad is going to happen. If I let myself get too caught up in the what-if, I might abort the whole mission. “You once told me that you don’t leave because you have nowhere to go.”

“That’s right,” he agrees, looking confused about where I’m going with this.

“But what if you did?” I ask, eyeing him closely. “What if I found a safe place for you to go, at least in the short term?”

Rory thinks this over for a moment. “I’d ask where this safe place is?”

“An abandoned water park,” I clarify, encouraged. Is he really considering this? “Across the state line. It has plenty of space, and water for the kelpies and the mermaids. You would be safe there until you decide what you want to do next.”

That was Nathan’s contribution to the plan. A safehouse that FABLE has used before to house creatures with unconventional needs on their way to their final destination. According to Nathan, that destination is home, at least most of the time.

Even as I’m speaking, Rory begins to shake his head. “Anna, it’s a very generous offer. But I’ll have to think about it.”

“What is there to think about?” I ask desperately. How can I leave him here? “Rory, what happens when Mathis gets sick of you? Or thinks of some way to use you like he does Delia?”

The Mothman gives me a small smile. “It’s sweet of you to worry, but I’ll be okay.”

“Or maybe you won’t, ” I disagree hotly. “Rory, whatever you’re punishing yourself for… I can’t imagine it warrants dying here.”

Rory goes eerily still. “Why do you think…?”

“Call it intuition.” All I know is that Rory’s expression looks very similar to Delia’s. I know what she regrets, but what about my winged friend? “So? Will you go?”

“I’ll think about it,” he repeats, and as gut-wrenching as it is, I have to let him make his own decision. It’s only fair.

“Okay,” I agree faintly, managing a wan smile. “But let me know when you decide.”

“Of course, Anna,” Rory agrees, but he’s already slipping back into the trees and out of sight.

* * *

Finally, I’ve only got one menagerie resident left to convince of our plan.

I decide that going in guns ablazing is the surest way to make him balk at the suggestion. No, I need to ease him into the idea. Which is how I find myself sitting on a bed of fallen leaves with Chase’s head—human, this time—in my lap.

His eyes are closed as the artificial light dapples over his stubbled cheeks and dark lashes, and I can only stare, transfixed.

He’s just so beautiful, which might not be a word he would be particularly happy to hear ascribed to him.

But even in repose, there’s something feral about him, and I feel oddly honored that he lets his guard down just for me.

It’s similar to the feeling I had as a kid when I finally convinced a wild bird to eat from my hand—that feeling of being chosen , of being special in some undefinable way.

As Chase dozes, I slip my fingers through his newly short hair, enjoying the feeling of the soft strands and the sounds of his steady breaths.

I haven’t told him about the conversation I overheard between Mathis and Radha Gupta.

He deserves to know, needs to know, but telling him, seeing his reaction…

It will only drive home how much is at stake if I fail.

And while I know he doesn’t need me to protect him—God knows it’s probably the opposite—part of me hoped to just fix all this without ever having to worry him or make him suffer more than he already has. A futile hope, but there all the same.

Finally, I work up the courage to broach the subject. Before I can speak, Chase’s eyes fly open, and he stares intently up at me. I must have tensed, or maybe he could feel my pulse speed up. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I assure him quickly. “It’s just…”

Sensing that this is about to be a serious conversation, Chase sits up and twists to face me. “Just what?”

I take a deep breath before blurting out, “Mathis is planning to sell you.” Then, I wince. There was probably a gentler way of telling him.

Chase reels back, blinking rapidly. “What?”

“It’s true. I overheard Mathis talking to Radha Gupta—the actress who bid to see you shift at the last gala? He’s going to trade you to her in a few months.”

He looks like he’s struggling to process the news, and I can’t blame him. It was hard for me, too, and I’m not the one who might get traded like a baseball card. Still, his first question isn’t what I expect. “How long have you known?”

“Not long,” I hedge. “About a week.”

He looks more surprised by that fact than by the thought of being sold off. And a little hurt. “You’ve been keeping this from me for a week?”

I rush to assure him, “I needed some time to figure things out. And I did. I have a plan to rescue you.”

His jaw drops. “What?”

“It’s not just me,” I rush to add. “It’s Colby and Nathan, too, and—”

“You told two guys you barely know, both of whom work for Mathis, that you want to steal his werewolf?” he clarifies disbelievingly.

I wince. “Well, when you put it like that…”

“What other way is there to put it?”

“It’s not like that! Colby has a thing for Ciara, so he wants to break her out, and Nathan is undercover for this organization called FABLE—”

“Or so he told you, anyway,” Chase replies hotly, springing to his feet and beginning to pace.

I rise as well, wringing my hands nervously as I watch him start a groove in the dirt. “But we have a plan. Colby thinks he can lead the guards on shift into an enclosure and lock them in. And his cousin has a van that will fit the centaurs and the rest—”

“How many beasts are we breaking out?” he demands incredulously. “All of them? The chupacabra you told me about?”

Should I find it encouraging that he said ‘we’ even as he’s yelling at me? “Well, I would love to take them all, but the chupacabra might eat us,” I point out nervously. “We can probably only take residents who can understand the plan.”

“Anna, this is…” He runs a hand over his face, looking way more tired and stressed than he did when he was lounging in my lap. “You can’t do this. You can’t put yourself in danger like this for me. No matter what Mathis plans to do to me.”

“Well…” I can tell by his expression that he’s already dreading what I’m ab out to say. “It’s not just for you, really.” And I tell him what Nathan revealed about the previous caretakers.

“That son of a bitch,” Chase seethes, still pacing. “I worried you were in danger here, but to know that he never intended to let you go at all…” He pauses, finally slowing to a halt. “What about Nan?”

“Nathan and I have a plan,” I reassure him quickly. “Nan is going to fake a heart attack—”

“She’s what ?”

I rush to finish, “And Nathan’s coworker will pick her up in an ambulance.”

“ Anna …”

“We’ll grab her, and then, we can disappear.”

“To where?” he asks, burying a hand in his hair as if I’m driving him to pull it out.

“Well, FABLE owns this abandoned water park across the river. We can all hide out there until we figure out how to get everyone home.”

Chase winces. “Anna, if I get out of here, I’m not joining a slumber party in an old park. I’m going home to my family.”

“And you can,” I reassure him. “Nathan will be able to help get you home.”

“Assuming he’s telling the truth,” he grumbles. “But regardless… Anna, what are you going to do?”

“Oh, I…” The question throws me. My answer was to go to Alaska with him, but his thoughts obviously didn’t go in the same direction. “I, umm…” I shrug plaintively.

Chase squints at me. “That’s not an answer, and you’re smarter than going into this mad plan half-assed. So, be honest: what do you plan to do? Because you can’t keep working here, and you can’t go home.”

“I know,” I say slowly. “Which is why… I thought maybe… I could go to Alaska with you.”

He goes still, his amber eyes wide. “Is that really what you want? To live in Alaska?”

“Well, I never really thought about it in the past,” I admit.

“I guess if someone asked me, I would have said that it was too cold, and there was too little sunlight, and that I’m used to living around a lot more people.

But…” I shrug again, feeling very exposed.

“I also wouldn’t have known that you were there. ”

Chase’s eyes soften. “Yeah, it’s cold, and the winters are dark. But in the springtime, we get the most amazing wildflowers. And in the dark, we get the aurora borealis.”

Hope wells in my chest, fizzy like champagne. “Are you trying to convince me to go?”

He grins. “Is it working?”

“It’s tempting,” I tease. “But I have one question before I decide.”

He tilts his head curiously. “What’s that?”

“Do you want me to go to Alaska with you?” I ask softly. “Me and Nan?”

He steps closer until I have to crane my neck to meet his molten eyes.

He brings his hands up to bracket my face, his touch gentle but his skin rough, before leaning down to press his lips to mine.

I wind my arms around his neck, absorbing his warmth, his wild pine scent, his taste, his steady presence.

When he leans away, I’m tempted to pull him right back in. But his expression is solemn, and he’s so rarely serious that I find myself waiting with bated breath. “Anna,” he murmurs, “will you come home with me?”

Every second since I first stepped foot in the menagerie has been a roller coaster ride with no seat belt.

I’ve seen fantastical things I never could have imagined in my humdrum life before.

I’ve been threatened, belittled, and disregarded.

I’ve made friends and allies, and I’ve made enemies. I’ve even witnessed a murder.

But I also met Chase. So would I trade a single second of it?

“Yes,” I reply with a beatific grin. “I will go home with you.”