“Boone,” I said, tugging on his arm.
“I’ll be fine, Skye,” he murmured. “I have to make sure…”
“Don’t try anything stupid, okay?”
“I won’t.”
He smiled lopsidedly and smoothed my hair behind my ear. His touch was too intimate for my mixed emotions, but right now, I didn’t give a stuff.
Reluctantly, I let him go, lingering in the lounge room as the front door opened and closed. My heart began to thrum, my skin prickling with goose bumps the moment I was alone.
I didn’t hear him change, and I didn’t hear him run or fly away. Neither had I heard the sound that had creeped him out, which wasn’t doing much for my own nerves right now. Sharpened hearing must be one of the side effects of his shapeshifting. The silence must be deafening for him.
Peering through the curtains, I was expecting something to pop up from the garden bed underneath and exclaim, rah! But nothing stirred. Above, thousands of stars were shining like diamonds dusted across a piece of black velvet. It was an epic cliché, but I didn’t have any other words to describe it.
Boone didn’t come back for a long time. I ate the rest of my microwave roast chicken in silence, fretting for his safety, while his beef dinner went cold.
The moon dipped lower in the sky, the night darkened, and it was three hours before I heard him come back.
He padded into the lounge room, wearing nothing but his shirt and a pair of boxers, his jeans and boots in his hands. I didn’t care that he was in his undies, I cared that he’d come back in one piece.
I jumped off the couch and flung my arms around his neck, squeezing him tightly.
“Oh, my God,” I exclaimed. “I was beginning to think you’d been eaten.”
“I’m all right,” he said. “I flew over the forest, searchin’.”
“Did you find anything?” I pulled back, my arms slackening around his neck, but I didn’t let him go.
His expression was grave like he’d been sucking on a lemon, and my heart sank.
“It’s lost,” he murmured, dropping his jeans and boots.
“But it’s out there.” I let him go and fell back onto the couch. “I’m so stupid!” I fisted my hands in my hair and felt like pulling it out in clumps. “Why did I have to meddle in stupid shit I know nothing about? Why didn’t I go to the hawthorn?” I let out a frustrated cry.
Boone sat next to me, not bothering to put on his jeans. Right now, I had more important things to worry about than his lack of trousers.
“It doesn’t seem to know where to go,” he said quietly. “It was roaming around in circles, searchin’. It was a fair way from the village.”
I made a face. “Still doesn’t make me feel any better.”
“It won’t come out durin’ the day, so we’ve got time to prepare.”
“Oh, God,” I said, flapping my hands around. “Deep fried shit on a stick. We’ve got to kill it.”
Boone nodded. “To be sure. We can’t let it roam around here.”
He was right. The only way to end this was to make sure the craglorn didn’t reach Derrydun in the first place. We had to go out into the forest in the middle of the night and kill it.
“So…” I muttered, my heart heavy. “I have no idea what I’m doing, but I’ll find a way to end it.” Or it would be the end of us.
He slid his arm around my back and sighed. Everything was in that gesture, the burden I’d stupidly brought down onto my shoulders clear as the crystal hanging around my neck. Well, clear with a lemony hue.
I glanced at him, knowing I was the only one capable of putting the twisted fae down for good. The last Crescent Witch had to live up to her destiny. This was why I was called home, after all. The protector of Derrydun.
I guess it was time to add monster slayer to my resume.
Chapter 16
Peering through the crack in the curtains, I studied the dark garden outside.
Nothing stirred, but it didn’t help settle my nerves. I knew the craglorn was out there, and I knew it was searching for me. Me, the idiot who called it here in the first place. The twisted monster starving for magic. Moron.
“We don’t have to do this now,” Boone said behind me as he dragged on his jeans and boots. “If it comes closer to the village, I can lead it away. I could confuse it for a few days to give us time to come up with a permanent solution.”
“You know what they say about a festering wound?” I asked, turning around.
He made a face and shook his head.
“The longer you leave it to fester, the worse it’ll get.”
“That’s a terrible punch line.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Let me just think up something that includes puss and maggots, then.” Now that he was decent and no longer parading around in his boxers, I sat back on the couch. “I need to deal with this now before someone gets hurt.”
Boone didn’t say anything. He just watched me stew in my own juices as my mind raced. How did I defeat something I’d never seen before with a power I’d hardly begun using?
“There’s gotta be a spell or something in here.” I opened the spell book—the grimoire—and began studying each page. Too bad some of them were written in languages that were similar to English but not. Went to show how words changed over the centuries. Unfortunately, ye olde English was not my forte.
“Aileen’s magic was always instinctual,” Boone said, seeming to have accepted my need for immediate action. “I never saw her chant or perform rituals.”
“I can’t rely on instinct,” I complained, leafing through the spell book. “I need a backup plan.”
“I’ve seen you cast spells, Skye.”
“Yeah, little ones. All two of
