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UNKNOWN NUMBER

I’ve never had a burner phone before.

Who should I prank text?

SETH MAYS

You’re ridiculous.

You love me.

Yes, I do.

You’re still ridiculous.

The burner phone had come courtesy of Helen, who had driven into Staunton on a larger supply run and stopped to get Elliot a cheap phone on Hart’s advice. Elliot’s actual phone was now a charred lump of metal and plastic somewhere in my equally-charred car.

I sighed. I wasn’t looking forward to the process and cost of buying a new car, or of trying to deal with the absolute shitshow that would be the insurance claim.

How exactly were you supposed to file a claim for ‘a cop ran my car off the road and shot it until it caught fire’?

I supposed I would find out. It would be nice to have a car that wasn’t continually threatening to fall apart on me, as was the tendency of old cars.

This definitely hadn’t been how I wanted to get a new one, though.

Especially since I’d also lost all the equipment that had been in the car.

Coolers that we’d used to keep food for the drive. Emergency survival and first aid kits. Extra sweatshirts and towels. A blanket. A fairly large collection of grocery-store tote bags. A full crime scene kit. Probably a bunch of other shit I didn’t remember even having in my car.

I missed you last night.

Elliot Crane

I missed you, too.

Did you get any sleep?

Not really.

Sassafras kept looking for you.

The cat does not give two shits about me.

You run warmer than me.

She’d walk over me, walk over your side of the bed, then cry.

And she doesn’t like Hart.

Probably because the room smells funny.

And of course she doesn’t like Val.

She can probably smell Pet on him.

Pet?

His cat.

He named his cat Pet?

What kind of monster is he?

After Pet the cow.

Like Pet Milk.

She’s a cow cat.

That made more sense, and explained why Sassafras had been standoffish with Hart. And the room probably did smell funny to her, because it wasn’t the room we’d been sleeping in.

Hart had been absolutely correct to have me bring Sassafras—and I’d been smart to grab the laptops—because when we’d gotten back around twilight, since Helen had been very insistent that we get down the mountain before dark, the room had been ransacked.

This hadn’t been a shock, since the second Hart and I had walked through the front doors, the desk attendant had hurried up to me to show me a copy of the search warrant and apologize about fifteen times for the state of our room.

We’d been switched to another room that was a little bit bigger and had a modern-style armchair in addition to its two queen beds, desk, and shelving.

It was honestly a nicer room, and the fact that our view had been switched from the parking lot to the pool meant they were probably trying to placate any upset at the mess that the police had left behind.

I was just happy that they were trying to make me happy rather than treating me like the criminal that the Augusta County Sheriff’s Department clearly thought I was—or, at least, wanted to treat me as though I were.

I wasn’t sure whether they actually thought I was guilty, whether they were so corrupt that they were just willing to sanction killing me to make the case go away, or whether it was some mix of the two—some corruption, some assumption of guilt.

At least they kept us in a non-smoking room.

I’m glad they moved you.

Why?

It wouldn’t have bothered you?

Staying in a room they’d ripped apart?

At least the sheets in that room smelled like you.

And now you’re in a different room, so if they did something like bug the last one, you won’t be there.

You seriously think they bugged the room?

They’re not the FBI.

Val will find it if they did.

Let him sleep in the one closer to the door, okay?

Hart had insisted on the same thing the night before, but he’d used the excuse of having had a lot of water and not wanting to wake me up.

Why?

Because he’s the one with a gun under his pillow.

Jesus.

You seriously think someone’s going to break in and try to kill me?

Not really.

But I don’t want to take any chances.

You’d rather they kill him?

He’s got the gun and the combat training.

I like his odds in a fight better than yours.

Gee, thanks.

I love you.

And I trust him to keep you safe.

I love you.

Who’s keeping you safe?

Ray.

You see those teeth?

Also Helen has a shotgun.

A shotgun?!

You’re from rural Virginia.

Why is this surprising?

The Community doesn’t believe in guns.

No, just knives and teeth.

And corporal punishment.

Point taken.

Be careful.

Please.

I’ll do my best not to be eaten by an alpaca.

I mean it.

I’ll be careful.

I promise.

You be safe.

I will.

I’ll stick with Hart.

Be safer than that.

He gets stabbed a lot.

The elf in question came out of the shower, already half-dressed in a pair of light grey dress slacks, the waistband of pale blue underwear showing above his belt loops.

I quickly looked away, feeling a flush creeping up my neck as I attempted to suppress a snort at how he’d wrapped his head in a towel.

“How’s this hotel’s coffee?” Hart asked me, and I looked up, then back down.

“Shit,” I answered him. “Cranberry’s is down the street and makes good coffee—black or espresso.”

“Fan-fucking-tastic,” came the reply, and he bent over to towel at his hair.

“I’ll—go get breakfast,” I said, pushing myself off the bed, wincing as my leg—wrapped in a tight ace bandage and topped with a brace Hart had picked up at a CVS—tried to protest taking my weight. “What do you want?”

“If you think I’m letting you walk fucking anywhere, you’ve lost your fucking mind,” came Hart’s answer from under the towel. “Sit your ass back down on that bed.”

I sat. Going to get breakfast had seemed like a good idea while I was sitting down in my sweatpants and t-shirt. I’d decided to forgo showering, partly because I’d showered at the Hills’ and partly because I wanted to hold on to the slight scent of Elliot on my skin.

We’d spent several hours at the Hills’, and they’d graciously let Elliot and I have their couch so that I could lean up against him with my leg up.

Ray had settled in an armchair, and Helen had a rocking chair next to a basket of reeds and rushes that suggested she’d woven many of the baskets in use in her house.

Elliot had talked to her about basketry for a good long while, while Hart discussed something with Ray that I mostly didn’t catch, my exhaustion catching up with me and causing me to doze against Elliot’s warmth.

I wanted to keep that scent with me, even though I’d gone back to the hotel with Hart and Elliot had stayed at the Hills’, sleeping in the loft of the barn with a sleeping bag and some extra bedding that Helen had set up for him.

I didn’t like that he wasn’t here. I didn’t like that he was in the barn , although I did appreciate his perspective that staying in the barn would potentially keep the Sheriff’s Department from noticing that he was at the Hills’ if anyone came to talk to them or check the house.

I didn’t like the idea of staying in a hotel where the Sheriff’s Department knew where I was sleeping.

Yes, I had Hart with me, so I at least wasn’t by myself with a cat, but it still made me uncomfortable. Nervous.

Hart finished toweling off the long, currently wet and slightly tangled, curtain of white hair that reached down to his waist. He set the towel on the desk unit and pulled out a brush—a fancy brush, the kind with a dark wood handle and boars’ bristles. Elliot had a similar one.

I guess you have to have long hair to get why a thirty- or forty-dollar hairbrush is something you need.

I barely even combed mine.

“How bad is it?” he asked, then.

“What?”

“Your knee, dumbass.”

I didn’t answer.

Hart sighed. “So bad enough that I’m putting your ass in the car and going to urgent care, then.”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

“And I ’m sure you’re full of shit.” He brushed his hair aggressively, pulling the brush through it with hard, fast strokes. No wonder there were a lot of white strands caught in the brush.

“What happened to your side?” I asked him, noticing the pink line that ran across his torso under his ribs.

“Magic-Free Movement dumbfuck,” came the clipped response.

“You got stabbed?” I thought back to the riots that had happened in Richmond. “Again?”

He shot me a glare through the mirror. “Pot, kettle, Mays.”

“Nobody’s stabbed me,” I pointed out.

“Last I checked, somebody tried to blow you up with Arcanavirus,” he countered.

I scowled. “They weren’t targeting me ,” I argued.

“Nope, but they were targeting you when they drove Elliot off the road and tried to turn him into a crispy critter.”

“Jesus, Hart.” My whole face and neck flushed.

“Too soon?”

“Yeah, too fucking soon.”

He grimaced, tying off the end of his long braid with an elastic band. “Sorry. Stupid comments are my coping mechanism.”

“And here I thought it was swearing.” It was hard to actually stay mad at Hart. Why, I had no idea, given the fact that he really was kind of an asshole. A weirdly nice asshole, but an asshole nevertheless.

“No, that’s my fucking sunny disposition.”

I snorted a laugh in spite of myself.

Hart pulled on a sleeveless undershirt, then a white button-down, followed by his gun holster and a grey vest that matched his pants and fit loosely enough that you couldn’t see the gun under it—unless you were specifically looking.

“You think we’re gonna need that in urgent care?” I asked him.

“You get in as much shit as I get, I don’t care if I think I’ll need it or not.”

He had a point.

After two hours in urgent care, I was sent away with a prescription for meloxicam and a much more industrial brace than the one we’d bought from CVS.

My knee also hurt like hell from being manipulated and prodded, and we’d determined via x-ray that I have early-onset arthritis on top of a severe sprain and generalized Lyme-related joint pain.