“Hello!” I flounced over to another group of people before anyone from the first could respond. “Hello!” Seeing their confused expressions, I chuckled and skipped down the sidewalk.
When I heard a woman speaking Spanish into her cell phone, I couldn’t help but exclaim “¡Hola! ¡Soy Leah!” She glared at me, but I was too giddy to care. I had a bet to win.
“I’m not good at being a human,” I explain, crunching a dead leaf under my feet as I take a step closer to the sidewalk bench. “I’ve been practicing, but I’m amateur at best. Humans, they’re… close to what I am, but I can’t avoid making them nervous around me.”
Big Ben chimes the late hour several blocks away.
Moira turned the knob on the dashboard, silencing the radio. She sat quiet for a minute, listening. Funny. She could’ve sworn she’d heard something. She shrugged and leaned back in the passenger seat, singing a little under her breath. Dad was taking forever. How long did it take to pay for the gas and grab a soda?
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“Come on, man!” Damon protested. “I asked off for tomorrow night!”
“I know, but Zach was supposed to be your fill-in, and nobody’s seen him for two days. Like he fell off the face of the earth. Surprised he lasted this long.” Mr. Corman smirked, his eyes inscrutable behind thick spectacles.
Father Gary eyed me as if I had asked him to rob a bank. I didn’t understand why. My question was simple. He had the power and the tools to help me, so what was the problem?
The priest folded his hands. “Edwin, let’s discuss this before I consider your request.”
Fair enough.
Samuel T. Clemens stared down the white sugar slope. He had a task before him that would cause many a man’s knees to melt. Not him though; he wasn’t some soft butterscotch cookie. No, his was a legacy of proud, hard, gingerbread men.
Samuel’s piercing green frosting eyes measured the distance. “Come on!”
My glasses fog, smearing the police tape into a fluttering yellow ribbon against the forest. Sunlight cuts across my cheek, but it can’t shake the chill under my skin. I’m shivering as Andersen finishes the report.
“The kids disappeared, just like…” He glances at me, concern thick as molasses.
I sip my latte.
I’ve been stuck in this cave for three days. Trapped by a wildergar. Once in a while, I peek through a crack between the barrier stone and the cave wall to see her—the largest and most terrifying of the mountain cats.
Her fur floats around her like feathers as she paces back and forth…
The other thieves whisper that I’m cursed. Dangerous, like all unknowns. They say I’m cold as ice. Heartless. They call me Sixth—a nickname I’d earned in my initiation into their gang—not the name my mother gave her son.
To them, I’m nothing more than the mask I’ve presented.
They might be right.
I panted, clutching my side as I pressed my back into the parking garage wall. I stared down at the bloody gash across my forearm. Dark veins branched from the cut.
My head spun. I was infected. I studied the progression of the dark veins. Veining became obvious in Stage Two? Stage Three?
September 3rd. The first day of school. A prime opportunity for battle.
I clutch Elsie’s right arm and glare at Insecurity, who holds her left arm.
It’s another one of those days I wish Elsie could see us and our battles. Knowing how much power she has over us would help her defeat those lingering self-worth issues, which would deal Insecurity a crippling blow.
Back in my day, we didn’t have so many blasted cryptids running around in the woods. When I worked for Game and Fish, I took my job as cryptid hunter seriously, and I kept nasty beasts to a manageable level. But things changed after I retired, and hunters started using a “holistic cryptid management approach.”
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