Firebug by Lish McBride Read Free Book Online Page A

bedraggled chicken legs. I swear, in the silence that followed, I heard a faint “Bu-kaw!”
    Lock grabbed Ezra’s shoulder and mine, holding us firmly in place. “At least it doesn’t know we’re here and we haven’t spooked it or anything,” he said. His words were even, but the expression he turned on Ezra was 100 percent sarcasm.
    A man’s cracking voice drifted down to us. “Tell Venus she’ll get her money! I just need more time.”
    Now it was Lock’s turn to scoff. “He must be new,” Lock said to Ezra and me. “More time? Yeah, because the Coterie is in the kittens and hand-holding business.”
    I cupped my hands to my mouth as an impromptu megaphone. “I’m sure we can reach some sort of agreement, Mr. Monticello, but you have to tell your house to sit so we can talk it out like civilized—” That’s as far as I got before he screeched. The house did an about-face and started loping through the woods. “Damn.”
    Ezra took off his shirt, folding it neatly before he draped it on the fence. “I’ve got this.” After he finished stripping down, Ez shifted. I’ve never seen anyone else shift, but from what I’ve heard, fox shifters aren’t the norm. Like the creature they turn into, their shift is quick and graceful. In a few steps, Ezra went from a human Adonis to a russet-colored fox. If I’d blinked, I might have missed it.
    Ezra’s amber eyes shone in the light as he hopped on his little black feet in front of us.
    â€œDon’t get distracted,” Lock told him, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Now get going. We’ll catch up in the car. If you can, steer him deeper into the woods.” Ezra bounded off after the crashing sounds the Baba Yaga house made as it moved through the dense thickets of spruce and pine.
    â€œHow does he get so small?” I asked as I climbed into the passenger seat.
    â€œOut of all the things we just saw, that’s the one that your brain won’t accept? Not the giant chicken house, but the size of our friend when he’s a fox?”
    I clicked my seat belt as Lock jerked the wheel and punched the gas. We tore off down the street.
    â€œSylvie explained conservation of mass to me, and it just doesn’t make sense. How does he get smaller?”
    â€œIt’s magic, cupcake, not science.”
    â€œBut—”
    â€œScience would also tell us that we couldn’t possibly be chasing a house on chicken legs, you couldn’t be a firebug, and I couldn’t talk to trees, but we both know that all those things happen.” Lock turned abruptly down a side road. “Now be quiet. I need to listen, and it’s difficult from a moving vehicle.”
    We tracked the house using Lock’s intel from the trees and Ezra’s yips and barks. It got to the point where we couldn’t drive anymore and we had to get out. Then we tracked it by the giant mounds of chicken poo. Lock stopped at one big pile and what was clearly a beanstalk growing out of it.
    â€œThe moron is feeding it magic beans.”
    â€œHe’s afraid,” I said. Lock squeezed my hand. Fear of the Coterie, of Venus, was something we both knew well.
    â€œYou’re going to have to burn these,” he said after we’d had our moment. “They’re an invasive species.”
    We heard what sounded like a woman screaming. No matter how many times I heard Ez make that sound, it gave me the willies. But it was a sound that carried well, so we used it as one of our signals.
    Lock ran ahead to help him while I stopped at each beanstalk, put my hands on it, and vaporized it back into the ether. By the time I caught up, Lock had the house bound in a cage made of twisted tree limbs, a living chicken coop. Ezra was running around the house’s feet, yipping excitedly. Everything is one big game to a fox. Lock was sweating from holding the