Page 75 of The Unlikely Pair

I take a deep breath, pushing the thoughts of Harry’s Pollyanna streak to the side. “Sadly, I’m all out of wolf repellent.”

“We need to think of another way,” Harry says.

“My knowledge of wolves is strictly limited to what I learned from fairytales. But as they don’t seem to be dressed up as a grandmother, and there are no little straw houses for the wolves to blow down, I’m fresh out of ideas.”

I hear what sounds like a snort from Harry.

“They are probably more scared of us than we are of them,” he says.

“There’s a pack of them.”

“We’re a pack of two,” he counters.

“Two alphas vying for control does not make a pack, Harry,” I say.

He snorts again. There was definitely something laugh-like about that snort though.

“These wolves aren’t used to people. I think if we make enough noise, we ought to be able to scare them off,” he says.

“Yo. Overgrown dogs. Go home,” I yell the words loudly, and in the pool of light from the torch, I can see the wolves startle at the unexpected noise.

They do appear quite skittish. Hope burgeons inside me.

“It’s a shame we don’t have any rocks to throw at them,” Harry says. “That might help scare them off.”

“We’re up a pine tree, Harry. We have another supply of ammunition,” I say.

And so, our next mission is collecting pinecones while up a tree. Which is definitely a more awkward method of pinecone acquisition than simply scooping them from the ground.

It involves edging along the branch with all the grace of a drunken squirrel, my fingers fumbling to grasp the elusive cones while trying not to plummet to the ground below.

When I manage to get one, I stuff it in the pocket of my blazer. I’m not quite sure becoming a makeshift pinecone grenade pouch is what the designers had in mind when they added pockets to this style of blazer.

“How are you doing?” I call to Harry.

“I’ve got a decent supply,” he replies.

I scoot back along the branch back to him. “Let’s do this.”

“All right, on the count of three,” Harry says.

I lift a pinecone, feeling the prickly scales dig into my palm.

“One, two, three!”

We begin hurling the prickly projectiles at the wolves. Our aim is surprisingly accurate, considering the dim light and our precarious perch. The first few pinecones bounce off the wolves’ backs, causing them to yelp in surprise and confusion.

“Take that, you mangy mutts,” I yell as I lob another pinecone at the nearest wolf. “Go back to the big bad woods! We’re not on the menu tonight.”

“Go on, get out of here!” Harry’s posh accent seems to have slipped into something more primal as he throws another pinecone that hits a wolf smack in the side.

We must look ridiculous, but hey, no one is around with a camera to capture our ridiculousness, so we can pretend it never happened.

But the combination of our yells and pelting them with pinecones works as a wolf repellent. The wolves begin to retreat, their tails tucked low and their ears flattened against their skulls.

“They’re leaving,” I say, my voice a mixture of triumph and surprise.

“Fire. We need fire,” Harry says urgently. “They won’t like fire.”