Witching Time (The Wild Hunt #14) - Yasmine Galenorn Page 0,20

into. You may want a goat, but you certainly don’t need one.” He shook his head.

I sighed. “Yeah, you’re right. Kipa would flip if I came home with one.” I wondered what Raj would think. He’d probably have a blast with a goat, but I couldn’t trust him around small animals. He didn’t have a mean bone in his body, but he wasn’t aware of his own strength and he could be dangerous around small children or animals.

We wandered through the tents, stopping to read the schedule of events when we came to the food court. It smelled delicious and I glanced in the booths as we passed them, only to see several local caterers and restaurants had joined in. One in particular—a doughnut maker—was frying the dough and rolling the piping-hot pastries in cinnamon before pouring a thick maple glaze over them. They weren’t exactly maple bars, but close enough.

I held up a five-dollar bill. “Two, please.”

The girl behind the counter handed me my two pastries.

Llew stared at me. “How can you eat so much and keep your figure?”

“I’m one of the Ante-Fae. We have a tremendously high metabolism, higher than even the Fae, which is high enough. I can eat five times a day and still be hungry.” I took a bite out of the bar and immediately regretted it. “Ouch! Hot, hot, hot!” I said, trying to move the fried dough around in my mouth so it would cool off.

“I’m going to go check out our booth. You want to come with me?” he said, laughing.

“Nope, you go ahead. I want to wander around and get a feel for the place.” I felt like poking around the edges, and the rain was still holding off so it was a good crisp night for a walk. As I decided to visit the pumpkin patch, I paused and looked up. The moon was waxing, a couple days past first quarter, and it was hanging luminous in the sky.

There were people milling all around. This was the third year that Marigold and Rain had held their harvest fair and by now, their regular customers had come to regard it as an annual outing. A family of wolf shifters passed me, the mother and father watching carefully over their children. Two of the kids looked in their early teens, but two others—obviously babies—were in wolf form, and the mother had them in harnesses, holding their leashes so they couldn’t get free.

I tried to suppress a grin as they passed by, but the mother caught my eye and she gave me a frazzled smile.

“I take it they’re just learning to shift?” I asked. Thanks to Kipa, I had learned that wolf shifters, when they first started to shift at around three or four years old, weren’t always able to control it. So a number of mothers would harness up the kids when they went out and about so the little ones wouldn’t have a chance of hurting themselves.

“Oh, yes. And they like being in wolf form. I swear, these are the last. Four children are enough!” But her eyes sparkled and even though she looked tired, I could tell she loved them.

The father grunted, but he reached for the leashes and took over watching the babies.

I swung off onto the lighted trail leading to the pumpkin patch. LED lampposts led the way, looking like cast iron but I could tell they weren’t. If they had been cast iron, I wouldn’t have been able to touch them without getting hurt. Iron didn’t bother the Ante-Fae as much as it did the Fae, but it still burned after a while.

The pumpkin patch was at least four lots wide and long. A scattering of families poked around, looking for the best pumpkins. A row of small handcarts allowed buyers to easily cart their pumpkins up to the register, which was near the entrance to the patch. A teen boy manned the register, and I recognized him as Dray, Marigold’s son—again, from her first marriage. I waved at him as I grabbed one of the carts and started pushing it through the rows of massive plants.

Pumpkins were everywhere—big ones, small ones, misshapen ones, a few gigantic ones. There were pie pumpkins, carving pumpkins, along with some odd turban-shaped ones. I finally found six that would make good carving pumpkins. I made my pumpkin pie using canned pumpkin, but I loved carving jack-o’-lanterns, and though I couldn’t trust him with carving tools, Raj liked to help. I