Wearing blue jeans, black leather and human skin, I sauntered up the road toward the herd of boys. A slight apprehension slipped across my shoulders and down my neck. I felt naked and exposed without my wings, like I wouldn’t be able to get away quick enough if I had to. Out of instinct, I tried to sort out their hierarchy, tried to figure out which one was the pack leader—that was the one I needed to be wary of.
Pack leaders often made wrong decisions. But it didn’t matter. Followers would still follow.
Two of them stood almost a head taller than the others. One slouched against a tree and his clothes carried the stench of smoke and alcohol. The other stood a little apart from the group, quiet. I could almost hear poetry in the rhythm of his breathing. As I drew nearer I noticed that he tapped the side of his leg with his fingers. A song. He could hear a song in his mind.
Just then they all swiveled and turned to look at me. One of them must have said something.
I stopped, cautious.
The one with the song in his fingers gave me a shy grin. “Hey,” he said. Pale eyes the color of the sky after a storm, bronze skin, hair bleached almost white blond.
“Why are you all standing here?” I asked.
The leader moved, catlike, away from his position by the tree. Dark hair and dark eyes and skin the color of milk. He was lovely and dangerous. And I was sure that most of his dreams would be about himself. “We’re waitin’ for Mad Mac,” he said, his words slurring a bit.
The taint of alcohol grew stronger as he approached.
“Who?” I asked.
One of the younger boys sidled up next to me, russet hair and sandy-brown eyes. “She wrote the Nemesis series.”
Another child frowned. “And the Shadowland series. You always forget that. Nick and Pinch used to drag children into the Land of Nightmares—”
“Dude, I didn’t forget. That series gave me the creeps when I was little.”
The boy with the music stared at me with a pensive gaze. I wanted to know his name. Almost immediately he held out his hand. “I’m Jake.”
I glanced at his hand, not sure what to do. “I—my name is Elspeth.”
Jake shrugged, put his hand back in his pocket.
The leader laughed, then pushed his way closer. “You can call me Hunter. Hey, I like your accent, where you from?”
I shuffled, uncomfortable.
“Don’t hassle her—” Jake said.
“It’s okay.” I tossed him a smile and heard the soft drumming of his heart speed up. “My family’s from Western Europe, someplace in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania or Hungary.”
“Wicked! Vampire country,” Hunter said, laughing again. This time the three younger boys laughed too, a bit nervously.
My gaze focused on Jake. He hadn’t joined in the laughter. With a quiet rebellion, he was challenging the leader. I could smell the stain of the forest on his skin, like he had been lying in the grass. “Do you all live in Ticonderoga Falls?” I asked.
“Unfortunately,” Hunter answered.
Then the three younger boys chimed in, words tumbling over each other.
“The Falls. It’s the edge of the universe.”
“Yeah, nothin’ ever happens here.”
“Except fires and mud slides and global warming.”
“What’s global warming?” I asked.
They all stared at me with blank expressions. Finally Jake said, “My dad says it’s all a myth. That everybody’s reading all the data wrong and makin’ a big deal out of nothin’.”
“But what do you think?” I asked.
At that moment, everything and everyone around us seemed to fade away. All I could smell was his breath, all I could hear was the music of his heartbeat. I wanted to peel him back, layer by layer, and find out what was underneath.
“I think it’s like every other myth. Based on truth, when you look deep enough.” He paused. “Like the Legend of Ticonderoga Falls, ’bout the shape-shifters that come here once a year to harvest.”
I froze. Unable to speak.
The humans know about our clan?
“You’re scaring her,” one of the younger boys said.
“No, I—it’s just—where I come from, we have legends about shape-shifters too.” I stammered my way through what I hoped was a plausible explanation. “But I’ve never heard of a harvest. Who—what do they eat?”
“You’re shivering,” Jake said. “Maybe we shouldn’t talk about—”
Hunter moved closer, slid an arm around my shoulder. “Honey, our shape-shifters eat humans,” he said in a low dramatic voice.
“And goats,” the little boy with sandy-brown eyes said.
“And babies—”
“Stupid, babies is the same as humans,” Hunter chided the kid with a swipe on the arm.
I pulled away from him. “Your shape-shifters eat people?”
“I told you guys, drop the subject.” Jake’s voice was firmer now. Ice crystals shimmered in the air around him. Like magic. Everybody held still for a moment and I almost thought that he had cast a Veil.
Then I realized what it really was.
The first snow of the year. Tiny perfect flakes drifted down, swirled in patterns around him. A few of them landed on his shoulders and clung for a second before his body heat melted them. For now, the subject of carnivorous shape-shifters was gone.
Everyone was captivated by the bewitching snow. Even me.