Page 102 of Hunted By Fae

One arm outstretched in front of me, the glow of the nightlight wisps over the nose of a car. Snow is packed onto the bonnet… but so is a set of boots, not unlike mine.

I lift my stare up a pair of legs, crouched, to a woman’s face, all sharp features and lowered lashes. In her clasped hands is a pistol, lazily aimed at me.

I part my lips, a plan swift to form in my mind.

I’ll tell her the enemy is coming, that we need to get out of the street, hide, mask our scents with bleach, and I can give her enough panic that she’ll believe me, and lower that fucking gun.

But all that comes from me is a raspy breath when the cold kiss of a metal blade touches my neck.

This woman is not alone.

Someone else has snuck up behind me—and holds a knife to my throat.

Fuck.

I seriously don’t have time for this.

TWENTY-ONE

TESNI

Bee checked in little over an hour ago—and I don’t think I have moved more than an inch in that time.

The constant static of the CB radio disturbed my almost-rest, an in-between place of awake and drifting into an uneasy sleep.

I took the call in the patient room at the end of the corridor, and since the radio has gone silent again, I’ve been a statue, sunken into the corner of the room.

The hard doors of the wardrobe press into my shoulder blade, aching me, but I don’t move. I stare into the darkness swallowing the room.

I am waiting.

Waiting for the static to cut out once again, for Bee’s next call to come through—for the moment she tells me Operation Dip is happening.

We dip out on all the others in the group.

But more than that is the plastic-wrapped scarf in my backpack. Bee’s scarf. Rubbed all over her body, thick with her scent. A decoy I’m meant to smear over the walls of our hideout before I steal Emily along for our escape.

Get ready.

That’s what Bee told me.

I need to be prepared for that next call to come through, that snap order. So that’s what I should be doing, getting ready. I should be taking the scarf out of my backpack, I should be packing up everything I need, and convincing Emily to come with me and leave the others behind, because she doesn’t know of the plan.

Too much heart.

That’s what Bee says about her.

I think she’s an NPC.

Just another non player character in the world, a background animation in a game, an extra in someone else’s film. There, but not.

I wondered that about some people in the Before. I saw adverts for TV shows. Dating shows, mostly. And the people on them…

Fucking hell, the people.

I would just look at them, replicas of each other with their fillers and botox and extensions and veneers, the same barber shop for all the ken-doll guys, the same fucking fast-fashion crap, all to look like hideous artificial clones.

But worse were their insides.