I gave her a look. “Are you honestly more afraid of social awkwardness than you are of actual battle?”
She shrugged. “I don’t like strangers.”
“You liked me when I was a stranger.”
“It’s hard not to like someone who’s running around wielding banana slippers,” she said with a sly grin.
I laughed. God, my life had changed so much since my beating up a cheating boyfriend with banana slippers days. Some parts
of it had gotten way worse—like the whole being banished to the underworld thing. But when I looked around at the five people surrounding me in a tight knot, it was hard to regret anything that’d led me to this moment.
“I’ll do the talking then,” I promised her. “Come on.”
They all followed me toward the man. I tapped his shoulder. “Excuse me, we were wondering if you could tell us where to find—oh my God, Michael?”
The man had turned around and let his cloak drop, revealing a tired, grim-looking werewolf.
He blinked at us, seeming almost as stunned as we were. Then his gaze flitted over all of us, taking in the new member of our group.
“You found him. You got what you came for,” he said, jerking his chin toward Xero. “Thought y’all made it out of here.”
“We thought so too,” Kai grumbled. “But apparently there are rules.”
Michael nodded, understanding filling his wolfish features. “Fuckin’ Custodians. Pardon my French, ladies. Y’all picked up another one.” He peered at Hannah curiously. “Smart one too. How’d they talk you into comin’, sweetheart?”
She smiled. “They’re just doing the right thing. So I figured I would too.”
“And what thing would that be this time? Y’all got your boy back. What other grand plans you got?”
“We’re tracking Gavriel,” I told him. “We saw what he did to your house.” My throat tightened a bit, but I swallowed down my emotions. The werewolf didn’t seem like the type to be big on tearful reunions, and honestly, neither was I. “They destroyed it. I… I thought you were dead. I’m glad to see I was wrong.”
“Barely.” Sparks flashed in his dark eyes. “I heard ’em comin’. Gavriel’s army, tearing across the land. Saw that they were gonna pass me by a mile, but I kept a lookout anyway. When they started turning, I knew.” He ground his teeth, and his fists clenched and unclenched. “I made it out alive. Came here lookin’ for a witch I once knew. We had big plans together once.” He huffed a breath. “We were as idealistic as you pups once.”
This was the second time in the space of a day that we’d been referred to as puppies. I caught Jayce’s gaze and almost grinned.
“Did you find her?” I asked gently, turning my attention back to Michael.
He shook his head. “Naw. That rat bastard must’ve got her. I’m sick of this shit, pardon my French. Fuckin’ tired of hiding out. Living like a goddamn savage in this refugee town. Ain’t got running water, ain’t got electricity. Holed up like a goddamn Mennonite in here.” He spat to the side. “Good enough if you choose it, but nobody here chose this. Alls anybody wants is to live in peace without that tyrant breathing down our necks.”
“We want to help you,” Jayce said, and I was surprised by the fire in his voice. “All of you. And earth too. Gavriel needs to be stopped.”
Michael looked at him sharply. “And y’all think you’re gonna stop him?”
“We don’t know what we can do until we know what we’re facing,” I said. “Now that we’re cut off from the school and the Custodians, we have to start from scratch. I already know what the Custodians are doing, and it’s not enough.”
“Yeah? What are they doing? Apart from banishing good people.”
I acknowledged the compliment with a nod. “Same as they’ve always done. Cleaning up the mess after the fact. Taking on raids one by one. Picking off stray fallen. They’ve stopped even giving fallen that they round up the option to join their side.”
He shook his head disgustedly. “Idiots. So you all got banished to the underworld. And you came to this place because…?”
He trailed off, gesturing around at the small, hidden town.
“Well, because an old man told us to,” I admitted. “We ran into Maori, who told us to come here for rest and provisions though we’re pretty much set on both. I wanted to have a place to come back to. We’re still trying to map out the underworld. For as much traveling as we’ve done around here, we haven’t found a whole lot of places with people.”
“And you won’t, unless you know where to look. No one lives in the open anymore. I knew about this place from the witch I used to know, or I never would’ve found it. Everybody’s hiding out.”
“So we’ve heard,” Kingston said.