Page 24 of Misfit Monsters (Pack of Outcasts #1)

Mirage

P eri isn’t meant to look sad. Even though my body is still prickling, whiffs of essence shedding from my skin as it knits back together—even though she sent out the blast that scored my flesh—the sight of her drooped head has me bristling on her behalf.

Something here reminded her of someone who hurt her.

Flickers of the past—blazing lights, glinting metal—dart through my head. My voice sharpens. “What did that sorcerer do? We should string him up, shoot him down.”

Raze’s growl echoes my mood. “If the man who’s responsible for turning those creatures savage is the one who attacked you before?—”

Peri shakes her head quickly. She lifts her chin, girding her stance even more in the leather jacket and ripped jeans that can’t disguise the softness of her body.

“Whoever is messing around with the shadowkind here, it can’t be the same man.

He—he didn’t live anywhere near here. He wouldn’t have gone off somewhere with hardly any people around. ”

Our own sorcerer gazes at her steadily. “It sounds like you knew him well. And obviously they aren’t good memories. Will you tell us what happened?”

Peri’s jaw wobbles. I have the urge to shout out, “Stop!” To conjure bright and sparkly images around us that will make her giggle and grin rather than tremble on the verge of tears.

I want to understand, but I know how those kinds of memories can scrape at you too. Leave you raw on the inside where no one can see but the stinging never ends.

Before I can finish grappling with the impulse, Peri speaks in a voice gone unusually flat. “He had me caged for a little while. It was very painful and scary. I try not to think about it, because if I get too caught up…” She motions to us with an apologetic grimace.

Hail lets out a huff where he’s standing stiffly straight by the cabin, his cheek no longer wisping essence. “So you go around blasting burning shadows all over the place? Why haven’t they banished you already?”

Raze spins on him. “She’s obviously trying to avoid it.”

Hail’s voice turns even more disdainful, though his dark gaze lingers on Peri more avidly than I like. “Trying and failing plenty.” His attention shifts to Jonah. “And no one warned us what the pipsqueak is capable of.”

Our sorcerer frowns at him. “Her badge was updated while we were at the academy to show she’d harmed shadowkind.

I haven’t informed the rest of the team of every damaging thing you’ve ever done.

If you want us all to have a full accounting, I don’t think you’d come out ahead, Hail.

So maybe keep the judgments to yourself. ”

The winter fae’s mouth tightens, but he does shut up .

All the same, Peri has deflated again. Looking at her now, it’s hard to imagine all that searing power burst from this gentle being.

But it did. I’ve never felt anything like that.

There’s so much I don’t know about her.

Why wouldn’t there be? Every time our conversations got remotely intense, I leapt to divert them like a rabbit fleeing a wolf.

Peri exhales shakily. “It doesn’t seem right that our powers should break out of us when we don’t intend them to, does it? I want to control them better.”

She pauses, and a starker sheen of tears forms in her bright eyes. “I want to be part of the team. I want to help track down this sorcerer and stop him. But if the rest of you don’t feel safe with me around anymore… I won’t make you stick with me.”

An ache expands through my entire body. If she doesn’t pitch in, Rollick and the other administrators will pitch her out —out of the academy, out of the entire mortal realm.

“ I want to keep working with you,” I say quickly. “You keep us on our toes. I like the excitement!”

Hail glowers at me, but I’m being honest. Peri’s softness made me nervous. How could she accept a being like me with so much mischief and chaos in my nature?

But it turns out she’s got some chaos of her own. Maybe that’s why she’s never seemed rattled no matter what I’m doing around her.

What other powers will she show off next? She might beat this awful sorcerer all by herself—and I’ll happily watch.

Raze nods, stepping closer to Peri with a protective air that inexplicably makes me want to slip closer too. It’s not as if I could defend her better than he can with all that muscly strength.

She also needs someone to keep her spirits up and put a smile on her face, doesn’t she? I can do better at that than Mr. Doom and Gloom.

The lizard man bares his teeth at Hail. “We’ve all made mistakes and had trouble controlling our powers. That’s why we got sent on this mission. You’ve been complaining that Peri isn’t powerful enough—don’t start complaining that she can do too much.”

“I’d rather her not be powerful in a way that can fuck us up,” Hail mutters, but without much energy to the words. He considers Peri again. “I don’t suppose you can decide to blast people who deserve it? That might be useful.”

A shiver runs through Peri’s body. Even if she can lash out like that, I don’t think she likes the idea.

“I don’t know how to control the power either way,” she says quietly. “Not preventing it when it starts to happen on its own or making it happen when it isn’t already. But I’m working on getting there.”

Hail hums. “We’ll have to see, then.”

Jonah claps his hands together. “Yes. We’ll see if this team can hold together, but we’d better all do our best to make that happen. Now why don’t we take a closer look at this cabin?”

His tone gentles when he turns to Peri. “Do you think you’ll be okay to go inside and look around? What was it that set off your emotions?”

She appears to steady herself. “There was a footprint—I thought it looked around the right size to match the sorcerer I knew. But that doesn’t tell us a lot. He was short but wide—a lot of mortals are shaped that way.”

She points toward the cabin. “And the metal on the ground—links from a hunter’s net—he used those, but so do all the hunters and probably lots of sorcerers too. The worst part…”

Her gaze drops to the scattered objects I carried out of the cabin, their dingy sides glinting faintly on the ground.

“The medal and the trophy and all that… He had a display case full of those kinds of things. He stole them from… from people he didn’t like and wanted to punish.

They reminded me so vividly I panicked.”

Someone should send that man straight to jail, no passing Go.

I scoop up the trinkets I found intriguing and tuck them out of her view. “My fault for being hasty.”

Peri shakes her head. “You were excited because you thought you’d found something useful. Maybe you did. Do they have names or other information about who owned them?”

I plop on the ground and lay out my three bits of loot.

The disc on a ribbon only says, “Valedictorian” with no other words.

The cup-like one and the little statue have wooden bases with a bar of metal attached.

The bars look like they used to have some words etched into them, but they’ve been scratched up so much it’s impossible to make out more than a few random letters.

Jonah glances at Peri. “The sorcerer you knew—did he damage the mementos he held on to like this?”

Peri frowns. “Most of them were dinged up, but I’m pretty sure they still had the names on them. He wanted to remember who they’d come from. Where did you find them, Mirage?”

“The cabin has a trap door going to a basement. Sneaky low-down sorcerer.” I flick out my claws briefly. “They were lying on the floor near a table. Not much else down there.”

“You didn’t take a very thorough look the first time,” Jonah points out.

Peri straightens up. “Let’s do that now.”

Hail eyes her. His voice sounds both wary and amused. “ Are you sure you won’t be jumping at shadows, Cream Puff?”

She meets his eyes steadily, her usual perky tone returning. “I’ve calmed down. I know we’re not dealing with the same sorcerer who captured me. If I’m staying on the team, I’m doing everything I can to get to the bottom of the problem.”

She marches into the cabin ahead of the rest of us, showing none of the nerves that held her back earlier. I bound after her, wondering what she’ll make of the space that seemed drab to me.

The main room of the cabin holds a wood-burning stove, a sink, and a tiny table with a single chair. The other half of the main room is totally empty. You’d expect to find a bed there. Maybe the sorcerer only has one, so he brings it away when he leaves?

The trap door lies open. Peri’s stance tenses, but she heads down the rickety stairs without hesitating.

She stops at the bottom. “The sorcerer I knew kept the beings he trapped in his basement. It makes sense. Easier to keep us out of view from other humans when he was living in a city. Easier to set up protections against escaping. But there are no cages or protections down here. Not even nets.”

Jonah descends after her with the gleam of his artificial light. He scans the walls. “It’s like whoever was using the place cleared it out and left.”

Hail grimaces. “Did the sorcerer realize we were coming?”

The basilisk shakes his head. “The smells around here are too faint. He must have left before we were attacked, and we weren’t even heading in this direction then.” He pauses. “Maybe he moves around a lot. That’s a better strategy for a predator who doesn’t want to be turned into prey.”

“He’s not going to get any choice about that!” Peri declares, but the faint bluish glow that’s formed in her hair gives me the impression of disappointment.

Jonah sighs. “Well, I can’t see anything that would tell us where he went next. I’d better get in touch with Rollick and let him know about this development.”

Pulling out his phone, he clambers back up the stairs. The rest of us follow.

As Jonah taps text messages onto the phone’s screen, Peri meanders along the edge of the clearing as if looking for more clues. The determination on her face tugs at me to join her.

I extend three of my tails as I do, swirling them in a playful spiral, but she hardly seems to notice, let alone give me the laugh I wanted. She just shoots me a small smile and continues her search.

Tension ripples through my chest. When she’s talked to me, she’s always tried to understand me. To make room for whatever ugly feelings I’m holding in that even I don’t want to face.

What if she needs the same thing now? To know that she isn’t alone in being haunted by memories?

Would acknowledging a little of my own history be so terrible if it makes her feel a lot better?

My throat constricts, but I push the words past it. “I was trapped by humans once too. Kept in a cell. Hurt. And?—”

No, I don’t want to even think about the rest of it. My tails snap in a tighter whirl behind me.

Peri stops and focuses on me, her pretty eyes so wide I’d like to dive into them. “That’s awful. No wonder you’d rather be having fun and playing around now.”

Just like that, most of my discomfort melts away. She does understand—we both have our own kinds of chaos.

I want to wrap my arms around her and bury my face in her hair, tumble around in a giddy embrace, but even I can tell this isn’t a good place for that kind of fun.

Instead, I simply lean in and give her a quick peck on her temple. “You deserve all the fun too. Whatever happened before, it doesn’t matter.”

Her smile comes back, a little warmer this time.

Before I can decide what else to say, Raze’s voice carries from the other side of the cabin. “I followed the sorcerer’s scent a little farther.”

Peri and I hustle over just as the lizard man points off to the east. “About a mile from here, there’s a road and a spot where a large vehicle was parked recently. His trail ended there. He must have driven away. I can’t tell which direction to keep following.”

He grimaces, but Jonah claps him on the shoulder. “It was a longshot anyway. I’ll take pictures of the cabin in case there’s something we didn’t realize the significance of. Then Rollick wants us back at the school so we can give him our full report—and decide what to do next.”