âAre you sure youâre reading that correctly?â I leaned my elbows on the car hood and stared at the hand-drawn map Lock had spread over the hood, his bottle of Moxie acting as an anchor. As homemade maps went, it wasnât the best Iâd ever seen. It relied heavily on landmarks and pirate-style directions like âtwenty paces past the gnarled oak that looks like a naked old man.â
âYes,â Lock said, âIâm sure.â He stared at the drawing, as if he could glean more information from it just by furrowing his brow. Ezra wasnât even looking at the map. He was sprawled on the car hood next to it, his sunglasses on and his belly to the sun. Like this, it was all too easy to imagine him in his other form, his kohl-lined eyes closed and his little black booted fox feet pointed to the sky.
Despite the heat, Lock and I both had light jackets on over our tank tops. Jackets have pockets, which is handy for people like us. His was full of seeds, because Lock is half-dryad and his magic is definitely of the nature spirit variety. I guess you could say mine is kind of natural tooâforest fires are a part of nature, right? They clear the undergrowth and return nutrients to the soil. Iâve tried to tell Lock that, but he says the trees arenât buying it. So when we have an assignment that takes us into the woods, Lock takes the lead. Okay, Lock tends to take the lead anyway. Mostly because heâs the organized kind who thinks things through while Ezra and I are more by-the-seat-of-our-pants hot mess kind of situations.
So while Lock has seeds, my pockets are filled with things like electrolyte pills, granola bars, emergency cash, and a pocket knife. Everything a young firebug like myself needs.
âOkay,â Lock said, folding up the map and tucking it into his pocket. âI think I have it.â I double-checked my own pockets, making sure I had everything, my fingers automatically tracing the stitching along my cuffs. To the untrained eye, it looked like brightly-colored embroidery. To a witch or anyone who knew a thing or two about rune magic, my jacket was clearly warded. My jeans pockets had the same stitching. I have this embarrassing habit of setting my own clothes on fire when Iâm not careful. Iâm no prude, but all it takes is one scorched pair of trousers before you learn your lesson about such precautions.
While we readied ourselves, Ezra continued to sprawl like a model out of a teen magazine. Hereâs the thing about Ezra Sagishiâheâs ridiculously good-looking, and he knows it. Between being a fox and being Asian, he sticks out in rural Maine. When you factor in the restâwhiskey-colored eyes, black hair with russet tones, cheekbones that would make a master sculptor throw away his tools in despair, and a perfect physiqueâthe phrase âlike a sore thumbâ comes to mind. And while youâre drinking all that beauty in? Heâll pick your pocket. Foxes arenât the best with concepts like âpersonal property.â
âCâmon,â I said, pulling on his pant leg. âThe sooner we get this done, the sooner you can go back to getting your beauty sleep.â
Ezra popped his sunglasses up to look at me. âAre you implying that I would need something as pedestrian as beauty sleep?â
Lock grabbed his other leg and yanked hard, dragging Ezra off the car and onto the ground.
âHow pretty do you think youâre going to be if we donât finish this job on time, hmm?â With that reminder, our good moods vanished. Ezra became all business and we followed Lock into the woods.
We donât have what I would refer to as normal jobs. Not unless you consider extortion and murder ânormal.â Lock and Ezra are tithed to the Coterie, a supernatural mafia run by a vampire named Venus. I know these days vampires have a different reputationâsexy, misunderstood creatures just