Bearly Hanging On (The Jamesburg Shifters #6)(40)

The thought of singed hair and twitching muscles was entertaining enough when it was in a movie, but Jamie decided she'd rather avoid being zapped out of the sky, at least until she got to the bottom of who this mysterious Ryan Drake actually was, and why he'd captured her heart as unflinchingly as he had.

She dropped her left shoulder and slid down, down, down until she felt spongy forest beneath her feet. The squish of old, wet leaves, the give of ground that wasn't entirely solid, was both familiar to her and still a little unsettling.

"And... where are you supposed to be?" she asked, double checking the roughly sketched map. "Circled the whole place," she said to herself. And she had - the entire area marked with a red splotch of ink was, according to Maude, the place Ryan had marked out for them the first time he ran off. She said he probably had a den or a cave or something staked out that he rested in, relaxed, let himself think.

"If I were a bear, where would I go?"

Jamie crouched under a low-hanging branch and poked around for any sign of ursine life. With a heavy sigh, she realized that even if he were here that there was absolutely no sign of shelter, nothing to see. She lifted off once again, hoping - although with a heavy sense of self-preserving skepticism - that she'd find him at the third place.

Maude mentioned he had a cave he used from time to time, which sounded both dry and promising, since Jamie hadn't come across one of those yet in her search.

Then again, it could be nothing. This whole stupid thing could be nothing. She tried to make herself believe that, as though not having to bother with her own feelings would make them vanish like irritating gremlins on the wings of an airplane. Of course, pretending Glenn the "fairy" didn't exist didn't make him any less likely to douse a person with a handful of glitter, so maybe that wasn't always a cure-all.

As Jamie pitched, to the right this time, a dark spot caught her eye. A hollow – a cave, perhaps? She descended in slow, careful spirals, partially to prolong the disappointment she feared at not finding Ryan, and partially to make sure she didn't run headlong into any unseen rocks or trees. The long shadows of afternoon were being quickly swallowed by the steel gray of a late autumn dusk, and alongside the coming rain, that meant vision was harder than usual to trust.

Her heel clicked against the soft slate of the cave's entrance as Jamie squinted, letting her eyes adjust to the almost nonexistent light within. "Hello?" she called. "Anyone in there?"

Something scurried past her foot, which of course made Jamie squeal and recoil, and then immediately feel like a giant idiot when it turned out to be a tiny possum skirting the edge of the cave opposite where she stood. For a second, the passing thought that maybe she went to high school with that possum crossed her mind, as it often did when she encountered random animals in Jamesburg. It turned out to almost never be the case, though. Almost.

"Ryan?" she called again.

"Ryan... Ryan... Ry... Ry..." came the cave's echoing answer. It was an echo she felt not just in her ears, in her head, but in her heart. The hollowness around her was almost oppressive. If not for the fact that just then, rain started pattering against the outside rock face, she would have been entirely upset by the total lack of a bear. As it was, she felt only mostly disappointed instead of completely.

She gathered her skirt in a bunch around her hips so she could sit, and reclined against the wall nearest the mouth of the cave, watching the rain drip down the rock face and splat against the ground before soaking back into the earth.

"How do I always do this to myself?" she asked, sort of wishing the possum would come back so at least she wouldn't be talking to herself. "Up come the hopes, and then down they go."

She sighed, heavily, and nudged a rock with her toe before kicking at it, sending the little stone skittering across the cave floor and out into the woods. She scratched the soft limestone above her head, digging a little notch with her fingernail, and then stretched her legs out in front of herself, and reclined her head against the stone. The cool dampness penetrated to her bones, and shortly, Jamie found herself shivering, but still glad she was dry.

Outside, the storm started to whip the firs back and forth. "Hell of a storm," she said, to keep herself company. "Good thing I'm not a thousand feet up, that might be just about the worst thing ever."

"I'm glad too."

"What the f*ck was that?!" Jamie shot to her feet, immediately falling to a low ready position. "Who’s there? Talk, now!"

If she were a possum, she'd be spitting and hissing. Instead, she just felt her claws grow and her fangs lengthen. Whoever was sharing her little shelter had better show himself fast.

There was a footstep, distant and soft. Then another one nearer, but she couldn't see, or smell anyone. That was not something she was used to. Spinning in her low crouch, Jamie wasn't going to let anyone get the drop on her. She squinted, trying her best to search the darkness. She took a step forward, then another two, cautiously, deeper into the cave.

"Answer me," she said, her voice calm and cold. "Don't try anything stupid. I'm not messing around."

Still nothing. The sound of grinding rock made her spin, but it was just pebbles falling that she'd passed. She felt air whizz past. Someone was close, someone was moving around her so fast she couldn't keep up.

"Who are you?" she demanded again, twisting her toes into the ground, clenching her fists and her jaws. "I'm not playing arou—"