It’s Taavi who’s standing above me, shirtless and wearing jeans and a collar and nothing else. His brown eyes are intense as he watches me, like he’s both desperate to be by my side and terrified of it at the same time.
“It’s time to go,” he tells me, moving over to the window to part the curtains. The light outside is still gray, a clear sign that it’s some ungodly hour in the morning.
“What’s the rush?” I ask, rubbing at the sore spot on my head and wiggling my toes in the sparkly shoes. They’re surprisingly comfortable, as light as air on my feet. “It’s not like we have an appointment; we’re just dropping in.”
“It’s better to travel the Y.B.R during the day. We need every minute of daylight we can get.” Taavi packs up the rest of the food from last night, slipping it into the duffel bag and then waiting expectantly near the door.
“No breakfast?” I groan, putting my feet on the floor and yawning again. “No shower?”
“There’s deodorant in the bag,” Taavi tells me, business-oriented as usual. “Let’s go. Each minute we waste gives our adversaries time to track us.”
“Adversaries?” I ask as Taavi opens the door and heads into the hallway, leaving me little choice but to follow along behind him. It’s eerily quiet in the house, but when we hit the first floor, I see that we’re not the only ones awake. “What the hell?” I whisper as little bark-skinned creatures sweep the floor, polish the stones on the fireplace, and work diligently in the kitchen.
“Brownies,” Taavi says absently, barely paying the tiny people any mind at all. They’re even shorter than the Munchkins, maybe two feet tall at most, all of them wearing those same blue pointed caps. Their faces are vaguely human, with long noses, sharp elf-like ears, and pointy chins. “Don’t pay them any mind.”
The creatures watch us with bored expressions as we pass by, heading for the front door.
“God, this place is weird,” I murmur as soon as the front door is closed behind us.
“Do not ever thank a brownie, offer them payment of any kind, or give them clothing.” Taavi breezes through the front gate, starting up our way-too-early day with a brisk pace, his bare feet slapping a steady rhythm along the yellow bricks of the road.
“Why not?” I ask as the sun catches on Taavi’s handsome face, highlighting those full lips of this, those strong cheekbones.
“They’ll take offense, and it’s always best not to offend the fae.”
“Aren’t you one yourself?” I ask, raising an eyebrow. “A fae, I mean? Bain called that beast form of yours a barghest. I might not be super well-versed in faerie lore, but my older brother played a ton of video games. I most definitely recognize that term.”
“I am not a member of the fae,” Taavi says, his voice sharp and firm. This is one of those no-nonsense points of his, it seems. “I’m a canid.”
“Which is …” I start, gesturing in his direction for further explanation.
“A canid is a shapeshifter,” he says, ever vigilant in his scanning of the horizon. All I see here are corn fields on one side (not all that different from Kansas) and woods on the other. “Specifically, a shapeshifter that lives in the form of canids.”
“Canids?” I repeat, trying to place the word. I know that I’ve heard it before; the definition is resting on the tip of my tongue.
“Dog-like carnivorans,” Taavi says, glancing over at me. “Barghest are fae, but they’re also dogs. It wasn’t my intended choice, but your magic overwhelmed me.”
“Oh, so it’s my fault you slaughtered a man-eating horse faerie?” I quip back, my mouth dropping open when Taavi looks away and refuses to answer. “You know what? I liked you a hell of a lot better when you were a German fucking shepherd.”
I hang back a bit, swiping my hands over my hair to push it back from my face.
Taavi’s back muscles are stiff, but he doesn’t reply, continuing our boring ass walk for hours. I miss my phone so damn bad. When I pull it out, I find my battery mostly depleted. Guessing there isn’t anywhere to charge it here either?
“Fuck.”
Sweat starts to bead on my forehead and drip down my back, soaking my dress. I’m not in bad shape, but I’m also no athlete. This sucks. That, and it’s boring as hell. There’s nothing here to look at, nobody but stick-up-his-ass Taavi.
The cornfields go on for miles, this endless blur of gold against a blue-blue sky. After seeing little to nothing for hours, the scarecrow catches my attention.
Speaking of …
“Isn’t the scarecrow a major part of Dorothy’s story?” I ask, pointing in the direction of the hay-stuffed figure. It casts a long shadow, its painted maw grinning down at me like something out of a horror movie. If we are destined to meet up with a scarecrow of some sort, I just hope to hell it isn’t this one. The fucker looks like he might eat the flesh off my face.
