elf. Side by side, they sat on a sturdy limb and swung their legs back and forth.
“This is nice,” Sassy said. “I could stay here forever.”
“Inadvisable. Unless you can subsist on bark, you would soon grow hungry and thirsty. And a tree does not offer much shelter in winter.”
“Way to kill the dream.”
“It is my nature to be practical.”
“I’ve noticed. The Kir and the Dal are alike in that respect.”
Taryn thought this over. “A fair assessment, I suppose, though I find it irksome. We have the same Maker, so there are bound to be similarities.”
“And some rather glaring differences.”
“Obviously.”
Sassy drew the woodsy air into her lungs. A pleasant tingle spread from her chest throughout her body.
“Being in the woods agrees with you,” Taryn said. “Your hair is already losing its former startling hue.”
“That’s nice.” Sassy drifted on a wave of well-being. “I like being outdoors. It’s the fairy fusion, I guess.”
“Of course. That would explain your follicular response to emotional stimuli. The fae are mercurial beings.”
“Whatever the reason, I’m happy in the woods,” Sassy said. “I think I’m going to love working at the mill and being surrounded by trees.”
Humm, the elm said, as though agreeing with her.
Sassy smiled and pressed her cheek against the rough bark.
“Humm,” she crooned back.
Taryn stopped swinging her legs. “What are you doing?”
“Talking to the tree. Can’t you hear it?”
Taryn stilled, listening. “I detect a slight bombilation. Is that what you mean?”
“Exactly.”
Sassy bounced happily on the branch. How lovely to have a friend to share this moment with. None of her friends in the Lala Lavender League would be caught dead in a tree.
She put her ear to the furrowed trunk.
“It’s my second day speaking tree, and Mr. Elm is a little groggy from the morning sun,” she said, “but he’s singing about the excellent shape of his crown and a lark . . . No, his bark. He’s quite proud of his bark, and he’s elm-lishously happy to be spreading his roots in the bottomland where the soil is moist.”
The humming abruptly ceased. Nearby, a trio of young maples stopped shaking their leaves for attention and went still.
“That’s odd,” Sassy whispered. “The woods have stopped talking. The elm is frightened. He says something bad is coming. He feels it in his roots. He says we should leave.”
“Stay here. I will investigate.”
“But, Taryn—”
The huntress vanished.
Sassy clung to the tree and strained her ears to catch some sound, any sound, but the woods were silent. She shivered, foreboding slamming into her like a freight train. She’d felt this suffocating, bone-jellying sense of evil before. It was the witch. She was out there, old and ripe with malevolence; impossibly strong and burning with hunger. She was coming for Sassy, the thief who’d stolen from her. Those teeth, those horrible teeth like blackened files in the hideous gaping mouth, would tear into Sassy’s flesh as the witch consumed her in great slobbering bites.
Sassy crammed her fist into her mouth to keep from screaming. Where, oh, where was Grim when she needed him? And where was Taryn?
Demon hunters, Sassy thought in righteous indignation. She had half a mind to get in the car and let Taryn walk to the mill.
A wheezing snort made Sassy look down. The witch was beneath her. The Hag snuffled the roots of the elm, her pitted cucumber nose a-twitch. Her bones jutted through her skin. Greasy strands of lank hair clung to a scalp crusted with angry, oozing sores. A revolting smell steamed from her, a stomach-turning mixture of garbage and dead things.
Sassy shrank back and drew her knees to her chest to make herself smaller. The witch was between her and the car. No escape that way. What to do? Hard to think, with the witch a few feet away, groping for her scent like a hound after a pork sandwich.
Perhaps if she was still and quiet, the witch wouldn’t see her sitting among the branches. Perhaps she should—
Mose. Mose would know what to do . . . if she could remember the super-secret password.
His name was a mouthful that ended in moscarella. No, that wasn’t right. Marshmallows, why couldn’t Mose have picked an easier moniker? Sassy frowned in thought. It began with an i. Irilmoska-something-or-another.
Irilmoskamoseril? Yes. That was it.
Lips stiff with fear, she pushed the word out of her mouth with the merest exhalation of air so as not to alert the witch.
Fat chance. The Hag lifted her head with a hiss and spied Sassy in the tree.
“There you are, sweetmeat.” The