Page 29 of Misfit Monsters (Pack of Outcasts #1)

Periwinkle

T he camper van is loud and the benches kind of lumpy, but I have to grin as Jonah drives us away from the private jet on the landing strip, back into the farther reaches of northern Canada.

We’ve got our mission ahead of us, unsettling as it is. No confusing classmates are going to trip me up or laugh at me.

Through the steady rumble of the engine, I gaze out at the wild beauty beyond the window. Majestic forest ripples over the rocky hills.

Raze has decided to stay in physical form for the trip, sitting next to me with his arm tucked around my waist. He wafts fond devotion like French toast drizzled with the perfect amount of syrup.

Almost as comforting is the tickle of sorcerous protection wriggling through my brain.

Jonah isn’t restraining our powers now that we’re away from the academy again, since that would defeat the purpose of testing us with this mission, and he needs plenty of energy to sway any strange creatures we encounter.

But he did give us each a basic command not to listen to any other sorcery.

“It might not hold if this sorcerer hits you hard with his own orders,” Jonah warned us, “but it’ll hopefully buy you time to get away if you need to.”

We don’t know what we’ll find on our second expedition. We don’t know what the sorcerer will do if we track him down or why the shadowkind he’s directed morph so strangely. But at least now we’re more prepared.

Jonah calls to us from the driver’s seat. “We’re coming up on the first town Rollick suggested. Peri and Hail, get ready to interact with the locals.”

Raze frowns, but he can’t deny that he and Mirage would have a harder time blending in. Partly because of his massive form, and partly because none of us really trust Mirage not to whip out his ears or tails in view of humans.

The fewer that know shadowkind exist, the fewer there are to freak out about it.

I look down at my leather jacket, close my eyes, and flicker in and out of the shadows in a blink. My new attire includes a cloth hood on the jacket that I pull up in case my hair starts to glow.

Hail sighs as if this is all too much work for him. He adjusts the sleeves of his collared shirt to ensure they cover the stark blue veins that stand out against his pale skin.

A few minutes later, Jonah parks the van by a small clearing with a couple of benches, neither currently occupied. He twists in his seat. “The three of us will walk into town. Raze and Mirage, you can roam around and stretch your legs, but steer clear of humans for now, all right?”

Mirage springs into a handstand and then flips back onto his feet with a flash of a grin. “Lots of space for the human race.”

Hail rolls his eyes, but he gets out of the van.

Raze hesitates and leans in to give me a quick kiss. “Be careful out there.”

I squeeze his arm reassuringly. “We’re just going to chat people up. But if there’s trouble, I’ll shout loud enough that you can hear.”

When we clamber out, Hail’s dark gaze is fixed on me with unusual intensity. He jerks it away and strides toward the road. “The town is this way?”

I glance over at Jonah for his answer and find that he’s also watching me and Raze with a tightness to his mouth I can’t read. A quiver of emotion passes by me too quickly for me to really taste it.

A prickle of self-consciousness makes me duck my head. Is it really so odd that Raze would care about me?

I guess they’re not used to seeing him even touch any of the other shadowkind, let alone kiss them.

Jonah jerks his attention to Hail with a nod.

“Yes, it’s just over the bridge. There’s a convenience store and a café I thought we could stop in to grab lunch.

We want to talk with the locals casually, but do your best to find out if they’ve seen unusual people coming through or if there’ve been any ‘animal’ attacks lately. ”

Hail ends up hanging back to let our sorcerer take the lead. The winter fae slips his hands into the pockets of his slacks in a careless pose, but I catch a whiff of tartly metallic anxiety.

I push my shorter legs faster to keep pace. “I’m sure it’ll be fine. You’re good at talking to people. Everyone at the school wants to hang out with you.”

Hail’s head ticks toward me with a scattered burst of emotion he quickly stifles. “I didn’t ask for your advice,” he says, but his tone is more stiff than cutting. And he doesn’t call me “pipsqueak,” which I’ll take as progress.

The town is a small one, with several shops surrounded by a cluster of a few dozen homes. Nothing about it looks particularly remarkable to me.

Rollick took all the information from our report and mapped it out with whatever details he’s gathered from his past investigations. He marked this area of the province as the likely center of the strange activity. There are only a few human settlements within it.

If no one here can give us a hint about where to go next, we’ve got a lot more combing the wilderness ahead of us.

In the convenience store, Jonah ambles over to the counter and strikes up a conversation with the cashier by asking for directions.

As he veers from that subject into a comment about how few other tourists we’ve run into up here, I scan the shelves for new snacks I might want to try and notice a teenager in a bright, off-the-shoulder sweater and dark jeans.

She picks up a magazine and flips through it with a dissatisfied expression.

I stroll over to join her. “Hi! Any good articles in there?”

It seemed like a decent opening, but the girl’s eyes dart to me and narrow. She shoves the magazine back into the rack. “I dunno.”

Her scowl contradicts the trickle of emotion flowing off her—all fishy insecurity and chalky determination. How can I cater to those feelings?

I motion to her outfit. “I love your shirt! It looks great on you.”

To my delight, her posture straightens up, a flash of a smile she tries to suppress crossing her lips. Pride washes away her uncertainties. “Thanks. Your hair is pretty awesome too. Are you just passing through?”

Imagine if she saw it glow .

I nod. “We’re stopping to get snacks. It seems like a pretty quiet town. Do you have to worry much about wild animals with so much forest all around?”

Her laugh is a bit scoffing, but it gets me an answer. “ We don’t. They don’t bug people usually. But my neighbor stupidly lets her cats go roaming outside. One of them got snapped up by a coyote or something last week.”

Or something. She doesn’t know for sure what did it.

She turns away from me, disinterested in continuing the conversation. I file away the tidbit of information I got.

I pick out a couple of candy bars, and Jonah rings those up along with some spicy chips Hail grabbed.

As we head across the street, Jonah frowns. “It doesn’t sound as if anyone’s passed through who’s drawn people’s attention.”

“The shadowkind creatures might have,” I say, and tell him about the poor cat.

Hail shrugs. “It could have been a coyote. Humans should take better care of the animals they claim they’re going to look after.”

I taste genuine frustration in his comment. He doesn’t like that an innocent animal was killed—the same way it bothered him to kill the shadowkind creatures that attacked us.

I touch his arm. “You’re right. They should.”

Hail’s gaze flicks to me with a flex of his jaw, and then we’re walking into the café. He shifts his attention to the patrons sitting at the tables that fill most of the room.

We end up seated between a couple of affable local families. In the space of a quick lunch, we find out that they haven’t seen any notable tourists either—but someone else in town had their dog go missing from their yard a few days ago.

“Hopefully it wasn’t taken by the same thing that tore up those wild rabbits in Mr. Johnson’s field,” one of the kids pipes up before his mother shushes him.

Some creatures have been on the hunt around here lately, more than the town is used to. Jonah and I exchange a knowing glance—for an instant before he jerks his gaze away.

Did he think of some other implications? He doesn’t say anything.

We return to the van to find Raze prowling around it and Mirage perched on the roof. The fox shifter leaps down with a flare of at least two tails and an illusionary cheer.

“What did the intrepid explorers discover?” he asks.

Jonah opens the driver’s door. “Shadowkind creatures might have been clashing with animals in and around town, but we still don’t know where they’re coming from. We’d better head to the next town and see if we can find out more.”

By the time we reach our second destination, the sun is starting to set.

This settlement looks even smaller than the last one, just a spiral of scattered buildings surrounded by uneven hills with scruffy trees.

But a building at the edge of the town has a big parking lot packed with at least twenty cars.

Artificial light beams through the hazy windows, and a mix of laughter and music spills out when a new arrival steps inside.

The sign says it’s the Blueberry Sunshine Restaurant and Bar.

Blueberries and sunshine are both delicious. Seems like a good omen.

Jonah pulls the van into the parking lot. “This looks like the best place to chat up the locals.”

He pauses and looks at the rest of us on the benches. Even Mirage has drooped after the long day of travel .

Jonah offers a faint smile. “Do you think you can all behave yourselves long enough to grab dinner and make a little conversation?”

The fox shifter springs up and gives our team leader a jaunty salute. “Eager and ready to follow orders! I’ll fox out all their secrets.” He manages to grin without revealing the points of his fangs.

Raze’s thumb strokes over my wrist, and he pulls his massive form straighter. “I’d like to help.”

Hail casts a skeptical glance toward the basilisk shifter. “And to keep an eye on the cream puff.”

I feel Raze start to bristle next to me—but he wills down his temper with a huff of an exhalation. “Yes, that too. If you can’t rile me up, I think I’m safe for now.”

The corner of Jonah’s mouth kicks higher, but somehow his smile looks more strained. “It’s settled. Let’s go in.”

We tramp into a restaurant big enough to hold everyone from this town twice over—but maybe people come from farms and other places nearby. At least two thirds of the tables are taken, and several figures sit along the varnished wooden bar counter.

The locals must immediately clock us as newcomers. Several heads turn and watch with open curiosity as the hostess seats us.

Jonah purposefully steps around Mirage to take the chair farthest from mine. Does he not want me sitting close?

Our waitress glides over a moment later, as sunshine-y as the restaurant name. “Glad you could make it! Let me go over the specials…”

By the time I’ve ordered myself a burger and fries, Hail has turned on the charm. Maybe he feels he needs to prove himself after Jonah and I dug up all the info in the last town.

“I hear it can be pretty dangerous living out in the wilds,” he drawls, cocking his head. “You must be very brave. ”

Something about his smooth tone niggles at me, I think because I know he’s faking it. But when he aims his cool smile at the waitress, she giggles.

She shakes her head as she jots down Mirage’s order of nachos. “Oh, not much happens around here. I like how peaceful it is. Hanging out at the Blueberry Sunshine is usually the most excitement of my week.”

Hail slides his graceful fingers over his napkin in a way that’s weirdly provocative. “We were hearing about pets going missing and wild bunnies hunted down. I guess the predators know to leave humans alone.”

The way he says human has a slightly terse cadence to it, but the waitress doesn’t seem to notice. “If people are careful enough, even the animals should be fine. You have to know how to live in harmony with the elements.”

Jonah eases into the conversation. “You must hear a lot of stories, working in here—about all sorts of things. We’re actually collecting local legends. Ghosts, bigfoot, all that kind of thing. Does Pilverton have any fables like that?”

The waitress taps her pen against her lips. “Hmm. I’ll have to think on that. Let me get your order in, and maybe I’ll have something for you when I come back with the food.”

She walks away emitting nothing but subtle satisfaction, but a smack of avid interest hits me from a different direction, as crisp as the french fries I can’t wait to devour.

A middle-aged man is sitting at a table behind us with a couple of other humans around the same age. He’s watching us while the other two laugh over some joke.

I aim a bright smile his way. “You look like you might have a story. If you do, we’d love to hear it.”

Surprise flickers across his face, and his friends turn toward us too .

One of them elbows him. “What’s up, Henry? Got bored of our company?”

“They told Marcy they’re collecting strange stories.” Henry chuckles and runs his hand over his hair. “I don’t really go in for that stuff. I was just thinking they should talk to Ted McGaffery.”

The other friend’s eyebrows shoot up. “He’s just crazy.”

Mirage leans toward them with a glint in his eyes. “Crazy stories are good too. What does Ted McGaffery talk about?”

The three men exchange a glance.

Henry shakes his head. “I’m mostly kidding. He’s an old-timer, usually keeps to himself on his property out in the middle of nowhere. A regular hermit. But he comes by the bar every now and then. A few days ago, he was waving his hands around with these ridiculous claims.”

My own curiosity wriggles up inside me. “What claims?”

Henry pauses. “He said his house got attacked by monsters .”