Wolf stood.
“What happened to him?” I cried.
Wolf frantically searched one of his pockets. “Fairy ring. See how the mushrooms are arranged in a circle?”
They were. Little clusters of mushrooms arced to create in a faint circle, including part of a tree. I realized the bark on the inside of the circle had a silvery sheen.
“So what’s that mean?” I asked.
Wolf yanked out a pouch and grabbed a handful of black powder. He flung it into the circle.
Alex suddenly materialized, stumbling out of the mushroom ring and falling flat on his back into a cluster of ferns.
I ran over to him. “Alex?” Behind me, I thought I heard angry chittering mixed with a bit of laughter.
“Are you all right?” Wolf asked. “Did they do anything to you?”
“Do anything?” I said. “He was only in there a few seconds.”
“Time flows differently on their side. That and fairies are fast workers.”
I helped Alex to his feet. He looked dazed, and after a few moments, managed to refocus some. He looked at me.
“They said they liked my outfit.”
I led him around the ring and back to the spilled contents of my daypack, Wolf at our heels. I sat him down.
“Will he be okay?” I asked Wolf.
“That was wild,” Alex said.
Wolf slipped the pouch back into his coat. “He’ll be fine. There are strange things in Fairy. He just needs a bit of time to readjust.”
“What was that stuff you threw in there?”
“Iron filings. Fairy folk don’t like iron.” Wolf glanced down at Alex. “I guess that really does prove that you’re not a Sentry.”
He looked up at us bleakly. “Could I get something to eat now, please?”
Thankfully Alex came to his senses rather quickly, though when I asked him what he’d seen within the fairy ring, he just shook his head and said he wasn’t able to explain. I let it go, and we continued. He was safe, and that was all that mattered.
“Are you sure they came this way?” I asked as we left the trees and entered open grasslands.
“They did. I can smell her. Her and sheep and little lambs,” Wolf said, his voice trailing as much as his thoughts. “Playing in the fields so innocent and juicy—”
“Wolf.” I stopped, eyeing him. “Are there farmers out here?”
“Farmers?” he asked, as if he didn’t recognize the word for a moment. “Oh. Yes. Farmers. Yes, they’re here. Out there, tending their crops, tending their flocks. Feeding their chickens, plump breasted and tasty and clucking...”
“Okay,” I said, interrupting him. I watched him. His gaze darted about as he sniffed, like a dog that had just gotten outside for the first time in weeks and could sense everything. Somehow between this morning and now he’d lost a lot of his human side, going more feral. Erratic. He’d said that the full moon was coming. Tomorrow, actually. I didn’t like the idea of waltzing into a farming town with him like this, even if we would need his help handling the magic beast that had taken Marianne.
I sidled up to Alex and whispered, “We can’t bring him in there like this.”
“What?” Alex whispered back, though he didn’t know why we were whispering. “What do you mean we can’t?” He scowled. “I thought this guy was our guide.”
“He is, but I don’t trust him like this. Wolves aren’t received well here, Alex. If they notice he’s part wolf, they’ll burn him alive or something.”
“I don’t like any of this Caroline, I want you to know that.”
“Will you shut up? I know, okay? I know. But we need to find somewhere to stash him. I mean, look at him.”
Wolf crouched on the ground, silent. But his eyes flickered gold, and a grin somewhere between horribly excited and creepy was plastered on his face. Alex sighed in a dejected this-is-too-fucking-weird-for-me sort of way, but resigned himself to the idea.
The sun slipped further and further over the edge of the horizon with every passing moment. The last thing I wanted to do was fall asleep and let Wolf roam the countryside, eating chickens or sheep if that’s what he really did. Rather disturbing ideas considering he was only a half-wolf. I didn’t think he could change into a real one. Of course, what did I know about this world so far? Not much.
“Hey,” Alex said. He pointed toward a shallow valley. “How about there?”
An abandoned barn sat in the valley, a few holes in the roof and its windows broken. The barn was surprisingly big. It seemed strange for it to