Page 20 of The Claiming of the Shrew (Fated Mountain Lodge #4)

LEAH

It turned out that being trapped in a coffee can, on the verge of starving (well, not yet, probably, but it felt like it) sent Leah’s inner shrew into panic.

OUTOUTOUTESCAPEESCAPE HELPHELP DONOTWAAAAAAAAAAANT

Wild shrews were skilled climbers, but her weak back legs made that difficult. Still, she tried scrambling up the sock as high as she could go. Most coffee cans had plastic lids. If she could just get up there, she might be able to chew through it.

After rolling back to the lowest point of the sock several times, she turned her energy to a different tactic: knocking the coffee can over.

She had next to no body weight, but what she lacked in mass, she made up for in momentum and fury. Flinging herself at the side of the coffee can, she pinged off it like a furious pinball, and felt it jiggle a little.

After pausing and listening to see if she could hear anyone moving nearby, Leah went into a frenzy of, quite literally, bouncing off the walls. The can wobbled, it bounced a little, and then?—

She must have been near the edge of something, because abruptly she was in freefall.

The weightless moment lasted only for an instant before the can hit something, up became down, and she was abruptly buried in sock. Leah thrashed around, dimly aware that she was still in disorienting motion—the can was rolling, maybe?—and then it stopped with a clunk and all was still.

Leah dragged herself out of the sock and found that she was lying on a metal surface. The can was on its side.

Take that, mystery kidnapper! You can’t keep this shrew down!

Using mostly her front legs, and pushing with the back legs for thrust, she scuttled up the can and bonked off a new surface. Sniffing at it, she found that it was indeed a plastic lid, snapped firmly over the top of the can.

Now that she was here, she could feel, more than see, pinpricks in the plastic. Someone had made an effort, after all, to punch air holes for her, but they were very halfhearted, just little pokes with a nail or similar item.

However, the pokes gave her something to sink her teeth into.

Literally.

Leah set to work with her sharp fangs, enlarging one of the holes.

There wasn’t much that shrews and other small mammals were better at than chewing through things, unless it was getting in and out of tight spaces. A few minutes of frantic gnawing and ripping, and she had enlarged the hole enough to squeeze her round but compressible body through the opening.

She hesitated with just her head stuck out, sniffing the air with her long, whiskered nose.

It was dark in here—merely dim to a shrew’s night vision now that she was no longer imprisoned in a can, but at her tiny size, all she could see were a lot of big shapes that failed to resolve themselves into anything helpful.

The air was full of a confusing mix of nose-tickling powerful smells, perfumes and soaps and mothballs and glue and face powder and musty old fabric and rubber and cardboard and latex and?—

“Oh,” Leah squeaked to herself. She was in the costume trailer. Or somewhere similar: a storage area where many things were kept. But probably the costume trailer. She recognized the overall vibe of the smells, although the mishmash was nearly overwhelming to her sharper-than-human senses.

Footsteps creaked loudly on the trailer’s steps. Leah hastily flung herself into the effort of squirming out the hole. It was a tighter fit than she’d hoped, but just in time, she plopped to the floor.

The door opened; there was a wave of fresher air, and the lights came on.

Leah frantically pedaled her front legs and hurtled herself in a half-drag, half-roll into the safety of the nearest pile of crumpled costumes. She had never been so glad that the costume trailer was always stuffed to the gills and an absolute mess. There were a million places for a shrew to hide.

“What the ...” The voice was male and annoyed. It was familiar, but she couldn’t easily place it. Not someone she knew well. “I left you right on the table. Where—oh there you are. Pesky little rodent.”

Leah shrieked indignantly from among the rustling fabric before stifling herself. Shrews were not rodents! The very nerve.

A big hand came down and picked up the coffee can. There was a moment of silence, then a curse, and the enormous figure took a huge step back and closed the door, cutting off her main angle of escape.

No big deal, Leah thought. There must be lots of spaces in this trailer that a shrew could slip out of. She’d certainly been startled by more than one mouse when she was digging through costumes and other props.

“Where did you go? Come on out, you annoying little shrew!”

Leah squeaked furiously again at top volume, then scuttled deeper into the costume jungle when she heard footsteps head in her direction.The problem was that she had no experience at all in hushing up her inner shrew.

It just did what it wanted. Now that her inner shrew was her outer shrew, it wouldn’t shut up any more than the shrew in her head.

There was some rustling, then a sudden, soft-sounding FLUMP! next to her. Leah had no idea what that was, but she didn’t want to deal with it as a shrew. It sounded dangerous. Also, she was in increasing danger of suffocating as costumes settled around her.

She turned human again in the pile of fabric.

Grabbed something at random, which turned out to be a purple velvet robe with fake fur trim, she flung it over her naked body.

And finally she recognized her assailant, standing over her with a large butterfly net that must have come from one of the costume bins.

“You!” Leah said in surprise.

She did know him. It was the slouching, perpetually sullen stagehand who was always so rude to everyone. What was his name? Robby? Rolf? Oh right, Ralph.

“What’s the matter with you?” she demanded, thrashing further back into the tangle of costumes to avoid him. “Have you gone insane?”

“Get back in the coffee can. Don’t make me gas you again.”

“What did you gas me with ?” Oh right, the stagehands handled the chemicals for the effects. It had probably been one of those. She was lucky all she got away with was a headache. “You could have killed me! What’s the matter with?—”

Then, behind him, on the cluttered countertop that must have been what her coffee can had fall off of, she recognized a very familiar pillowcase. It was open, spilling jewelry among tubes of grease paint and cardboard masks and Stacey’s crocodile puppet.

“You!” Leah gasped.

Ralph followed her gaze to the pillowcase. “Yeah, I found your little hoard. I brought it back here along with you. Let’s see what the director has to say about that.”

“You think I’m the thief?” Leah said, her mouth falling open.

“Of course you’re the thief! I caught you red-handed with a pillowcase full of stolen jewelry, including my watch .” He brandished his wrist, where there was a watch with a gold band that might have been in the pillowcase for all Leah could remember.

“But—what—I—” Leah tried to organize her scattered thoughts. Now she was being accused of sabotage and theft. This night could not get any worse. “It wasn’t me,” she said. “That pillowcase was planted.”

“Yeah right.”

“What the heck were you doing in my room, anyway? You came through the window, didn’t you? Are you a peeping tom?”

“What? No! I wanted to—” He stopped and waved the butterfly net at her. “Get back in the can.”

Leah folded her arms awkwardly across the purple robe that was the only thing saving her from a case of indecent exposure. “You gassed me and stuffed me in a coffee can even before you thought I stole a bunch of jewelry. What the heck is wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with you?” Ralph shot back. “You’ve been snooping around and asking questions and poking into everyone’s business, all to cover up your own crimes.”

“I didn’t do any crimes! What about you?” Leah’s brow furrowed. Anyone who knew how to drug someone with toxic gas could easily concoct chemicals to make a person’s hair turn orange. “Are you the person who contaminated Gloria’s cosmetics?”

“Get back in the can!”

Leah considered yelling for help, but so far Ralph hadn’t actually tried to hurt her, though he was between her and the exit. And now she was curious. “You are the person who’s been sabotaging our sets, aren’t you?”

“I knew you knew!” Ralph yelled, swinging the butterfly net at her.

“Ack!” It probably couldn’t hurt her, it looked light enough, but she grabbed the nearest halfway defensible-looking object, which turned out to be a huge paper maché mask shaped like a green dinosaur head (what play was that even from ?) and parried it.

“You hate Gloria too!” Ralph was ranting. “That overinflated, egotistical prima donna! You should be glad to see her get what’s coming to her.”

“Gloria’s a nice person!” Leah retorted. Leave it to this jerk to make her defend Gloria. But it really was true. Gloria was a little full of herself, but she was sweet. It wasn’t her fault that she got all the starring parts and Leah got walk-ons.

Wait a minute ...

“You’re jealous!” she said. “You’re jealous of the actors. Is that what it is?”

“I deserved that part! I was passed over! I’d be a much better Hook than that idiot Halstadt!” He swung the net again, and Leah blocked it. “I can sing! I can dance! Nobody else in this cast can carry a note in a bucket! But no, it’s all about who you know, not talent.”

Leah found it very hard to believe that he had any talent at all. That being said ... he did have a point that Maggie tended to give parts to the known talent rather than giving new people a chance.

“Look, I know how you feel,” she said, trying to push the butterfly net away with the dinosaur mask in what was starting to feel like the world’s dumbest duel.

“ I’m stuck backstage too, and I hate it and I’ll probably never be a star, but you know what I do?

I just do my job, because I’m part of the team.

You don’t see me going out of my way to wreck things for everyone else.

They all worked hard on this play, we worked hard, and it’s not fair to ruin everyone else’s hard work just because you’re a jealous twit. ”

Hmm, maybe that could have been more tactful.

Ralph reversed the net and swung the handle at her.

That looked more dangerous than the soft end.

Leah yelped, went shrew again, and plopped into a pile of soft stuff.

This time she went all the way down, what felt like a long ways.

Sniffing at her new surroundings, she realized she had fallen into a box of costumes; she smelled cardboard and tulle.

“Get back here, shrew! Ack!”

With the box muffling her surroundings and blocking her view, Leah couldn’t be sure exactly what happened, but she was pretty sure the loud banging noise that followed was the door slamming open.

And then came the best sound of all, Fawkes’s voice snarling, “Where the hell is Leah?”