and inserted his axe. His boots beat the floor as he stomped through the sliding glass door.
Sprig’s head rolled to me. “Wow. Viking’s in a pissy mood this morning. What’d you do? Give him blue balls?”
“Sprig!” I choked on an oat loop. “I didn’t do anything.”
The monkey’s little eyebrows hooked up.
“I swear.”
“I saw you two last night. Don’t tell me nothing is going on.”
“You know nothing went on. You slept with us,” I exclaimed. “Plus, eww.”
Sprig rolled his eyes. “Deny it all you want. And I wasn’t talking about you two doing the hokey-pokey. It’s more than that.”
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” I got out of the chair, grabbed my jacket, and slipped it on. I lifted my bag from the counter and threw the strap over my head.
“Why? Hitting on a nerve?”
“What will it take for you to shut up?”
“This is fun.”
“I will get you a dozen granola bars when we get to the shelter, the ones with honey.”
Sprig tilted his head. “Shutting up now.”
I stuffed whatever I could into my bag: medicine, Band-Aids, rubbing alcohol. There wasn’t much. Whoever lived here did a good job of clearing out. “Sprig.” I pointed to my bag.
“Am I really so noticeable?”
“A human girl, a talking monkey, and a Viking look-alike? Yeah, we stand out no matter what, but you will cause panic if you open your mouth.”
He humphed, shoveling a last handful of cereal into his mouth before crawling into the bag I held. He settled at the bottom, wrapping around his goat.
“By the way, how do you know about blue balls?” He opened his mouth to speak, before I cut him off. “You know what? Don’t tell me.”
“But—”
I closed the top of the bag, drowning out Sprig’s response and headed after Ryker. I was better off not knowing about Sprig’s understanding of blue balls.
We trekked back to the city toward the Red Cross shelter residing in the northern part of Seattle. It had only been a day, but the city looked in further disrepair. The air held hopelessness. All promise and faith was buried along with the dead. People milled around, homeless and idle, waiting for something to happen. The county, the state, and local volunteer services tried their best, but with so much devastation, it seemed impossible to help everyone. There were so many layers needing attention. Where did you start? The crumbled buildings, the electricity, the water, the homeless people, the dead, food, homes, medicine, or the people still alive under the rubble, if there were any living? It was all desperately needed. It would take years to get this city on its feet again. Until then, for those who couldn’t get out of the city, they hung around—waiting.
Ryker did a full sweep of the area before he found me a less populated tent.
“I need the key.”
My finger felt for the object in my front pocket, tugged it out, and placed it into his palm. A lot of trust went into my action, but what could he do with it? This was not his mystery to unravel but mine. I had to believe he was doing this because he wanted to help me.
He coiled his fingers over it and shoved it into his jeans. “Don’t leave here. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” His gaze darted around. I could tell he was not happy about leaving me alone, but there wasn’t much else to do if I couldn’t go with him.
“Well, I thought about going shopping, then maybe a movie or something.”
He stared at me, unamused. “I’m not kidding. Stay put.”
“Yeah. Yeah. Where am I gonna go?” I opened one of the candy bars we stole from storage and shoved it into my bag. A happy groan emanated from the inside. “I’m going to take a shower and relax. Something I recommend you do when you get back.”
He didn’t stink, he actually smelled incredible—a clean, earthy scent. Like the air before a storm over a vanilla field. It was strange and slightly sweet but still woodsy and masculine. Most fae had various ranges of this scent, but Ryker’s affected me differently and in ways I didn’t want to think about.
“Keep your guard up. DMG and Garrett are still out there, searching for us.” His head was positioned deeply into the hood of the sweatshirt he took from the house where we stayed. He tried to remain hidden as much as he could, but no matter what, the man could not disguise his daunting