Page 10 of Blood and Bonbons

“Home.”

“We’re so close. Let me find the opening. Then we can go.”

“No. I have to work tonight. I have to be a responsible adult so we can pay rent. I—”

I smashed my toe on a rock.

Cursing, I wobbled around as my toe throbbed in pain.

“Sit down before you hurt yourself again,” she said.

It hurt too much to sit.

Just walk off the pain,I thought, hobbling in a circle. I was too afraid I’d trip again if I left the clearing before my toe stopped throbbing. When I limped close to Vena, she reached out to grab my arm. I dodged her attempt.

“Everly, stop!” She stood still, her wide gaze darting around us. “Did you feel something?”

“Yeah, I feel like my toe is busted.”

“No, I mean the ground. Did you feel it shift?”

“I can’t feel anything except my aching toe.”

“Stop moving!” she yelled right before the ground gave way beneath our feet.

My stomach lurched as we fell. The scream that ripped from my lungs was cut short a second later when I landed on something that made a huge clatter of noise and hurt like the devil.

Rolling to my side with a groan, I sat up. My cheek stung like a bitch, and when I gingerly touched it, my fingertip came away red.

Turning my head to look for Vena, I saw where I’d landed instead.

Light reflected off hundreds of shiny things underneath me. Confused, I picked up a bottlecap and squinted at it. My gaze slid to the metal pen under my hand and the aviator sunglasses beside it.

“Are you okay?” Vena asked with a cough.

“No, I’m not okay.” I scrambled to my feet and looked up at the sunlit hole above us. “We landed in a fairy hoard, Vena. What the hell were you thinking?”

She slowly got to her feet.

“I thought we’d locate the opening, maybe peek inside for something valuable that we could pawn, then safely report back to Miles that we found it. I wasn’t thinking we’d crash-land in the middle of it.” Her droll look turned concerned. “You’re bleeding.”

I wiped at my cheek, which was still bleeding freely.

“I landed on pens and bottle caps. Of course I’m bleeding. What part of ‘grounded from hunting’ didn’t you understand? This is exactly why I said it’s too dangerous. Random acts of chaos always seem to find you, Vena.”

Her gaze shifted to something behind me, and her eyes rounded.

“I swear on Grandma Lucia’s hunting boots that there better not be anything even remotely scary behind me like a—”

“Codpiece,” she said.

“What?”

“I swear he’s wearing a codpiece.”

It wasn’t the codpiece that had me whirling around but her use ofhe.

A man lay on a long, stone slab. Dust and cobwebs covered him, but not so much that I couldn’t see some details. The auburn-haired man looked like he was in his mid to late twenties. Fit and healthy, too, based on how he filled out his clothes. Time had frayed the meticulously detailed fabric of his waistcoat and breeches, but his skin remained untouched, if a bit pale.

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