“Be careful,” Dorthea said. Her flaming hair acted like a torch, lighting our surroundings. “Stay out of sight. Don’t talk to strangers. Go straight to the shop and back, mind you, and don’t steal anything you don’t absolutely have to.”
“You sound like your mother,” I muttered, rolling my eyes.
Kato squeezed Dorthea’s hand, snuffing out the green flames glowing in her palms. I could feel her worry flare along with her agitation at me.
Her glare said plenty too. “I mean it. You could have at least let me give you a disguise makeover. We are all outlaws.”
“No way in spell am I letting you touch me with your Maker magic. Besides, I’m a hexed sidekick; nobody’s looking for me. And if they were, my wanted picture doesn’t even look like me. For once, being unimportant has been useful.”
Kato stepped forward and squeezed my shoulder, then pulled me close to whisper in my ear. “Just because you have a fool’s luck doesn’t mean you should act like one. Be smart and come home to us.”
I shrugged him off and backed away with a chuckle. “You two are the ones the world should worry about.” I stared intently at my fidgety hands. “So take care of each other. And…stuff.” As far as good-byes went, that was as gushy as I could handle or offer without tipping them off that I had no intention of coming back at all. I turned to the handsome and dimpled golem and gestured toward the path. “Well, let’s go, DumBeau.” (He’d earned his name due to lack of brain and the fact that his ears hadn’t really stopped growing.)
He followed me, smiling blindly and brightly, without a care for what was happening or that he was defective goods. At least he no longer wore a bucket around his waist. Kato had dressed him in some clothes from the Huntsman fashion line that Dorthea had accidently conjured using her Maker magic.
But there ain’t nothing free in this world. Magic always has a cost. To get anything of value, something of equal worth must be sacrificed. Equivalent exchange. It’s been my experience that royals do most of the getting, while the rest of us do the sacrificing. And while I was packing provisions for the journey, I discovered that Dorthea’s little magical shopping spree for DumBeau had swiped nearly all of Hydra’s spell ingredients, as well as most everything I owned. In fact, I was pretty sure that DumBeau’s calf-length coat was made of mossy loam from the forest and leather from my last good pair of breeches.
Which is why I felt no guilt in taking his coat. Repossession.
I waited until the ironwood tree sentinels closed the archway behind us before trying it on. Since I was shorter, the hunter’s coat swamped me a bit. But the soft moss hood was large enough to keep my face concealed.
“Rex?” DumBeau said with his head tilted to the left.
“Hate to break it to you, but you’re not actually going anywhere, so you don’t need it anyway.” I pulled out laces I’d swiped from a ridiculous pair of leafy riding boots. With heels, of course. I’d found them when I was scavenging for useful supplies in the home makeover disaster.
Knotting the laces together, I made a long rope and fastened him to the nearest tree.
Securing my knots tight, I took a step back. DumBeau’s smile was gone, his lower lip sticking out as if in deep thought, which was extra difficult without a brain.
“Look, it’s nothing personal.” Aside from bungling my name, DumBeau was quiet, good-looking, and compliant—the perfect man. Much better than that fur ball prince. “Sorry, but running away is sort of a solo project.”
In my defense, I’d only said I would go. I hadn’t said where or with whom. Or to do what. Or that I was coming back. I’d just agreed that I could make it through the merry men’s traps. If everyone assumed something else…well, that wasn’t my problem.
I turned away, making myself ignore the pitiful, “Rex,” since I already felt enough guilt misleading the others. I didn’t need to add someone else’s disappointment. Tracing the tree line, I scanned for where I’d stashed the bow (after Hydra had been taken off it) and hidden my pack, the one I’d crammed with enough supplies that it would have been a dead giveaway that I wasn’t planning a quick store run in the middle of the blasted night.
“It’s all about survival,” I reasoned to myself. As long as I stayed in the clearing, smothered by the bond, waiting to die again, trying to be good enough for Dorthea, Kato, and the rest of them—for the compendium—my life would never be my own. I would be no better than DumBeau. How long before my “friends” were arguing if I was more useful without my head?
I took a deep breath, adjusted the supplies on my back, and started walking. It was done. They were better off without me. And I was gonna be better off without them. As for DumBeau, when I didn’t come back, Kato or someone else in the group would go looking and find him in the morning. Probably.
“Rex.”
Or sooner.
Verte stood directly in my path, holding the Grow-A-Beau by the rope I’d tied around him like a leash. “Well, it looks like you done gone and swiped everything you could carry, but I think you forgot something.”
Being caught escaping brought back some unpleasant memories that Morte hadn’t confiscated. One in particular, from just after I’d turned twelve, when I broke into the Emerald Palace and boosted a certain gem dragon to prove my worth to the gang. Swiping the gem hadn’t been a problem, but even now, six years later, I needed to work on my exit strategy.
I froze. “Look, I can explain.”
“Don’t bother.” In the dark of the forest, Verte looked like a shadow, dimly lit by the soft glow of the carved eye in her belt. I felt like it was glaring at me. “I’m surprised you didn’t try to run off sooner.”
“Look, you have to let me—”
“Save yer bebuggered energy,” she interrupted. “I’m not gonna stop you.”
“You’re not?”
“Nah,” she said, stepping forward, DumBeau’s leash in one hand, a ball of slime in the other. “I’ve done did all I could for you. It’s time we see if it was enough.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You’ll know when you know.”
Yep. Clear as mud.
“Great, well, good luck with the whole ‘end of the world’ thing.” I pulled the straps on my pack tighter and moved to walk past her.
“Said you could go. Didn’t say I was done with ya.” She put out a hand, and her red, pointy fingernail stopped me in my tracks. “You were given to me to pay off a debt. Do one last thing and you will have paid in full.”
“Define ‘thing,’” I said carefully.
Morte had called me a puppet, and I could feel those strings tightening, forcing me to dance to Verte’s tune.
“If Hydra doesn’t have a new body to finish the swap by morning, her essence will decay with the head she’s in.” It was then I saw what the gurgling puddle of slime in Verte’s other hand really was.
It was Hydra.
Or what was left of the Baba Yaga head.