A Little Night Muse(14)

                Adelyn scowled at the ruined mushroom ring. She had used up all                     her spoors getting this far. She had jumped from the coastal side of this place                     known as Oregon, to the pointy mountain in the middle, following the signs of                     fleeing phae. While the ocean and the mountain had a                     certain rough charm, this place was just desolate, cold and stark and ugly. The                     memory of the phaedrealii’s intricate dances and                     sumptuous feasts made her eyes prickle with frustrated tears that threatened to                     freeze on her cheeks.

                She lifted one ruined slipper to kick the last standing                     mushroom, but stopped herself. She had no way to return to the phaedrealii—no way to get word to Raze—until the                     mushrooms released more spores. Just as well, the Hunter and his sylfana hadn’t been here. She needed a few days to get                     her harvest and her bearings.

                The human—Josh, she reminded herself—reappeared from around the                     house. He retrieved the gun from beside the door where he had left it and came                     toward her.

                She swallowed hard.

                Not that she feared his gun. It was steel, not iron. And he was                     no Hunter that she should fear him, gun or no. But something about his steady                     gaze and unfaltering step made her heart double its pace. She was too tired from                     her ordeals to maintain a thick glamour and had only blurred the preternatural                     edge of her beauty. She wanted him to tell her about the missing phae, not contemplate odes to her eyeballs. She’d had                     entirely enough of odes.

                Still, she had the sense he was seeing more than she might                     like. That muddy-colored gaze of his—neither blue nor green nor brown under the                     shadowing brim of his hat—seemed too perceptive for a mere mortal, despite the                     faint clouding of a scar in his right eye. Perhaps he had a trickle of phae blood in him. That would explain the strands of                     gold in his sandy hair, seeming to beckon her fingers to run through the thick,                     ragged locks. And that would also explain why the missing phae were comfortable in this land of small, bitter, ugly                     valleys.

                She supposed the Hunter and his paramour weren’t exactly missing. They had fled. And she had been sent to                     return them. The reminder of the vizier’s charge made her shift uncomfortably,                     her feet cold in the thin slippers on the icy ground. Every phae should want to be back with the court. Even if some—musetta among them—might occasionally venture into the                     sunlit world, they belonged in the phaedrealii, not                     wandering among sharp-eyed humans like this Josh who might bring the iron                     back.