"I should have thought this through better," I said.

  "You said we would bring back water, correct?" he asked.

  "Yeah, although since we're here, we may as well grab power bars or something for everyone's lunch."

  Rider untied the rope holding the bags in the air and started hauling them up until they were almost touching the branch. He then climbed up the tree.

  "Is there anything I can do to help?"

  "It will only take me a few minutes," Rider said.

  While Rider worked, I looked around. It was beautiful here. Gorgeous, even. If it weren't for the blood waiting for us back at the village, I might have even enjoyed the jungle.

  A blur appeared and disappeared at the corner of my vision. I slowly scanned the landscape, trying to catch sight of anything out of the ordinary. Since I had no idea what was ‘ordinary’ here, it didn't narrow things down much.

  When Rider joined me, I was squinting in the area I had seen the blur.

  "Are you well?" Rider asked.

  "Can you go over there by that tree and tell me if you see or hear anything around there?"

  Rider slung a bag over his shoulder and walked to the spot.

  "Over the past two days there has been nothing here except for us and a large cat."

  "Oh. Thanks." I looked around a little more, but saw nothing. "Do you want to go back?"

  "We should."

  I gave up my search for invisible movements and smiled at Rider. "That's not what I asked."

  "I was... taken by surprise. I will be ready once we reach the village."

  "Don't worry. They've probably already cleared the building. We won't have to go in there."

  "I must go inside."

  "Why?"

  "A werewolf was killed inside."

  "A werewolf, out here?" I didn't bother asking if he was sure. Rider could identify anything familiar by smell.

  "She is someone I once knew."

  "Rider, I am so sorry to hear that. Of course you were upset."

  "Angry," Rider corrected. "Very, very angry."

  "Is there anything I can do?" I asked.

  Rider looked confused. "She is dead. I do not think you can help."

  "I mean... I'm not sure what werewolves think of death. I don't know how you think about death, especially of someone you know."

  "I understand."

  "Vincent and I both might need you to tell us what you need along the way." I thought about mentioning Logan, but he wasn’t friends with Rider the way Vincent and I were.

  "I will attempt to do that."

  "And we're going to make mistakes, but know it's because we want to help you."

  "Thank you."

  I stood awkwardly, not sure what to do at that point. Thankfully, Rider took pity on me.

  "I would like to return to the village now."

  "Of course," I said, setting off at once.

  "It is the other way," Rider said after I had gone a short distance.

  "Of course. Sure. It's... that way?" I pointed behind us.

  Rider moved my arm. "That is the correct direction."

  "Thanks."

  It was interesting to me that Rider didn't wander as he normally would. Instead, he stayed close by. Close enough to enter my personal space, but then Rider had never really understood people did not normally stand that close together. At least, we usually didn't back home.

  I caught the blur once again, but I didn't stop this time, only hesitated.

  If I was seeing parts of the Path without trying to, I was going to be upset. Who knew what lurked in the Path?

  However, if I could see it in this world, wouldn't Rider be able to see, hear, or smell it? What kind of thing could avoid—

  There was something that Rider couldn't pick up. And if you saw them, it's because they wanted to be seen.

  Leprechauns.

  Chapter Ten

  The realization stopped me in my tracks. I didn't look around; it wasn't worth it. If leprechauns wanted me to see them, they would show up no matter what I did.

  "Is there something the matter?" Rider asked.

  "Um, no. I'm good. Sorry, I got lost in thought." I hurried to catch up to him.

  I could tell Rider, Vincent, and Logan about my suspicions, but not the others. Most people would be tempted to try to catch a leprechaun if they knew they were there. If the military and AIR were using the Lost in experiments, there was no way I wanted either one of them to know that leprechauns even existed.

  That meant I had to be very careful talking to my team. Who knew what skills Boone's people had?

  We were near the village when Logan came out to greet us.

  "Howdy, partner." His smile was more of a twisted grimace that looked all wrong on the elf. "We all good here?"

  Glancing at Rider, I saw that his attention was already on the village.

  "Yeah," I said. "What did you tell the others?"

  "I told them I sent you and Rider to check the outskirts of town and grab some water. Which is what you did, right?"

  "Rider has the water and we brought some food as well," I said. "What happened after we left?"

  "We haven't found any survivors yet. Boone has his team searching the area," Logan said. "I want you two to stay down by the huts. Search again and look for clues to what might have happened. I don't want you anywhere near that lodge."

  "Rider needs to go to the building." I leaned in and lowered my voice, which I didn't have to do for Logan's benefit, but I didn't want any others to hear until Rider was ready. "There is a werewolf in the building. One that Rider knew."

  "I didn't realize," Logan said, his attitude shifting. "There were two bodies in there that definitely weren't locals."

  "Any clue as to why they were there?" I asked.

  "From the looks of it, they'd been settled here for quite some time," Logan said. "Rider, why don't you go on? Wait for me before you go inside, though. I need to talk with Cassie here for a minute—in private if you don't mind."

  Rider nodded and walked away.

  I watched Rider. "How bad was it in there?"

  "Bad. Really bad. Listen, Cassie, this isn't like home out here. I need to know that if I give you an order, you're going to follow it."

  "What?" My eyes narrowed and honed in on Logan.

  "This is a whole different rodeo. When I give an order, it's to keep you or someone else safe. You're going to have to consider the fact that I have more experience, and listen to me when I ask you to do something."

  I could feel my face start to flush red. "Most of the time I have no problem with that. If you ask me, chances are I'll do it."

  Logan raised an eyebrow. "Chances are?"

  "If you tell me to step aside when a friend or one of my partners needs me, then maybe you need to consider not giving the order."

  "You don't think I could have helped Rider?" Logan asked.

  "Help him by doing what?" I hissed, stepping closer. "You were ready to fight, not help."

  "What makes you think—"

  "You were already starting to go all strange. The only times I've ever seen you elf out are when you’re ready for a fight."

  Logan rubbed his chin as though checking the contours of his face. "I hadn't realized."

  "How could you not realize?"

  "We'll talk about it later," Logan said. "I'm going to catch up to Rider and make sure he's okay in there."

  "I should go—"

  "I'll have Vincent join me if you want," Logan said. "Why don't you go down by the huts and see if you can find anything?"

  "You don't want me to go into the lodge?" I asked.

  "Hell, I don't want anyone inside that building," Logan said. "I just thought you might want to take a few minutes to catch your breath."

  He was probably right.

  "Call me if you need me," I mumbled and walked off, out of the tree line and into the village.

  Standing between the rows of huts, I did take a minute to calm down.

  Everything felt wrong here. I'd never seen Rider upset in this way, except one time when he was accidently drugged. Was he close to changing? He had never done that around me before. To my knowledge, he hadn't done so with anyone around.

  Then there was Logan. Damn that elf had some nerve. I gripped my hands hard into fists, then relaxed them. After doing this a few times, I felt a little better. Logan was just upset about the experiments. We all were.

  And Vincent... well, I guess he was being normal, just ridiculous. As Gran had said, he was getting in the way of himself. In order not to do the same, I probably needed to stop being aggravated with him.

  Maybe I was just homesick. The faster we find what we're looking for, the quicker we get home. Then things could get back to some semblance of normal.

  This is normal, I reminded myself. Chaotic and something popping up all the time. Usually I liked it. This time, though?

  Not so much.

  I worked my way back to the hut closest to the lodge. Thankfully, that was far enough distance to make the smell less pungent. At least to me.

  Carefully, I started going through the buildings. The first two had four walls and a roof. Although calling them walls wasn't quite right either. It was more like four patches of walls, with a door and windows punched out of reeds. If the wind ever picked up, it would likely keep out most of the blowing rain. It also blocked out most of the sun, which cooled things down more than I would have thought.

  Some of the buildings had a few belongings inside—pottery mostly, some with ornate pictures carved around the edges. There were a few tools scattered here and there as well. Toward the middle of the town, most of the huts had three walls. The structures blocked the sun and seemed to catch the breeze.

  What I didn't find anywhere were clues as to what might have happened. There were footmarks in the dirt, most of them ours, but some indicated that the person who’d left them wore no shoes.

  Toward the other end of the village, a large, primitive-looking loom stood close to the entrance of a four-walled building. The loom itself fascinated me, but what looked like a splash of blood on the cloth being woven was what kept me in the place.

  Nothing looked out of place in the footprints. There was no indication something was here that wasn't human or human shaped. From the only known carvings of the nightmare, it didn't look human.

  I was giving up hope of seeing anything more than the splash of blood, when then I came to the buildings furthest away from the lodge. There was more than just a little blood here.

  At the edge of town, there was a platform near the trees. There I found our first hint of what might have happened. Drag marks in the mud showed something large pulled out of the town. More importantly, there were two animal tracks imprinted as well.

  The creature had to be heavy to have made such deep prints and they were larger than anything I had seen. I glanced nervously into the surrounding woods. The thing's prints looked larger than my head.

  "Logan," I called, raising my voice only a little, "I need something to mark a spot."

  Boone's team was out in the woods, I knew that. They would know if anything was close by, right?

  I wiped sweaty hands on my pants and edged away.

  "A few areas, actually," I added when I approached the pool of blood. "Not that this one really needs to be marked."

  Seeing the bloodshed here made me want to go back to the building with the loom, but I thought it might be better to get the others first, so I started toward the largest building, what the others had called a lodge.

  The track was well worn, all the way through the town and even to the edge that I had just left.

  A guttural howl pierced the quiet village. Expecting large monsters, I turned, getting ready to grab the Path.

  It was almost a relief to see a dark-skinned man running toward me. Then I took in his wild, dirty appearance, and the crazed look on his face. A lone fighter I knew I could take on, especially if the person didn't have a weapon. Crazy is harder to handle. Nothing they did was expected, and they could get lucky when they were flailing around.

  Still, I knew we wanted a survivor to talk to. The dried blood the man was coated in indicted that he had lived through something.

  I turned to the side, making myself a smaller target, and—despite wanting to run the other direction—I stood my ground, steeling myself to grab the man as he quickly approached.

  Mentally I prepared to reach for the Path, just in case.

  A loud BANG rang out, causing me to jump.

  The man's trajectory changed slightly and his momentum brought him to me. Instinct made me try to catch his fall, but when I saw the blood, I staggered back, letting the man fall to the ground.

  The hole in the side of the man's head was larger than I ever wanted to see again.

  "Cass!"

  I didn't turn to my partners. Instead, I looked in the direction the bullet had come from.

  Tolman walked into the clearing. He had his gun slung over his shoulder, and for the first time ever, I saw his smile.

  The man wasn't looking at me, but at the body on the ground. The look on his face appeared both proud and predatory.

  I shivered and looked back down at the body.

  "What happened?" Logan asked, arriving first.

  The only thing I could do was wave down at the body.

  "He attacked you?" Logan asked. Looking around, he saw Tolman as well, and didn't take his eyes off the man.

  It was only then that Tolman's face reverted to its usual bland expression.

  "The man wasn't armed," I said at last. "He—I was just going to subdue him and..."

  "So he didn't attack you?" Logan asked.

  My other two partners arrived. I could see Boone approaching quickly as well.

  "He was charging her," Tolman said. "He was a threat."

  I stepped back, wanting to fade into my team. As much as I hated to admit it, I needed a minute.

  "You saw that he had no weapon?" Logan asked.

  It was a leading question.

  Tolman shrugged.

  "Cassie, what happened, exactly?" Logan asked as Boone arrived.

  "He," I waved at the body once again, "ran toward me. He didn't have a weapon, so I was going to subdue him. So we could talk to him."

  "And then?" Logan prompted.

  "The shot fired." I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

  "What about the blood?" Logan asked.

  Looking down, I saw that my uniform had a large smear of blood down the front.

  "I wasn't thinking," I admitted. "I started to catch him, but then thought better of it and stepped back."

  Stepped back, staggered back, flinched back—it was all the same, right?

  "Anything else?" Logan asked.

  "He didn't look like he was in his right mind," I admitted.

  "Which direction did he come from?" Logan asked.

  I indicated the direction, back toward the pools of blood. The man had no other marks on him aside from the obvious one that we had just made.

  We? I thought.

  Well yes, we were a team now, like it or not. We had done this.

  "Why don't you get a drink and go show Rider and Vincent what you found," Logan said. "Boone and I will take care of this here."

  I nodded, and without another word, I walked away, back the way I had come.

  "Tolman," I heard Boone say, his voice the one of command. "Back to it. We'll talk later."

  The building with the loom was closest, so I ducked inside, Vincent and Rider following. The idea of Tolman lurking back in the perimeter of the woods made me uneasy.

  I had to shake that thought off. We were a team. As a teammate, he probably acted exactly as he should have. He’d thought I was in trouble and he did what he could.

  The look on his face... maybe I had imagined it. I’d been in shock or something. That was possible, right?

  "Cass?"

  "Hmmm," I said, still trying to pull myself out of darker thoughts.

  "Are you okay?" Vincent put a comforting arm around the small of my back.

  A part of me wanted him to pull me closer until the darkness in my mind faded away. However, this wasn't the time or the place.

  "Yeah," I said, taking the water bottle Rider handed to me and using that as an excuse to step away from Vincent. “I just need a minute.” With Vincent so close, the temptation to keep him around me was too high.

  I took a drink and passed the bottle back.

  Vincent looked upset, but Rider searched around the room without any of his usual curiosity. It looked like it was more something to do than anything else.

  "What about you, Rider?" I asked.

  "I am upset," he said without looking at anyone.

  His bluntness made me wish I had been honest as well.

  "Is there anything we can do?" I asked.

  "Not that I am aware of," Rider said. "Why are we in this room?"

  The question took me by surprise. I thought Rider would have noticed the smell of the blood, even if he hadn't spotted it yet. Although, how he could have missed it was beyond me.

  "The loom," I said.

  "Maybe this should wait," Vincent said.

  "No," I said, "it shouldn't. We have to do what needs to be done."

  "I'm glad Tolman was there," Vincent said.

  "What? Why?" I asked.

  "He neutralized the threat and kept you safe."

  My temper flared. "You don't think I could have handled one guy on my own?"

  "Doesn't matter. You didn't have to," Vincent said.

  "Stop." Rider's voice was hard and direct.

  I blew out a rush of air that I had been ready to use to argue with Vincent.

  "Is this the only blood in the room?" Rider asked.

  "As far as I know. Do you smell anymore?" I asked

  "The only thing I sense right now is blood," Rider said.

  Guilt washed over me. I needed to stop thinking about Tolman and start paying more attention to what Rider needed at that moment.

  "That's all the blood I found inside here. Unfortunately, there's more outside." I led the way out of the building and down the street.

  Nothing could be said about the drying pool of blood. Rider and Vincent looked around and found no more than I had.

  "Over here is where I found what we might be looking for." I waved them over to the drag marks. Logan was approaching while the others checked the area more thoroughly than I had.