The Tiny Curse (Werewolf High Book 2) by Anita Oh Read Free Book Online Page B

between them and me. Those polo guys were fast though, and one of the smaller girls, I think she was a professional tennis player. She was like a whippet, and I could feel her nipping at my heels.
    I turned down the path toward the Red House, feeling my heart grow a little lighter as I pulled away from them, just slightly. I might make it. I could lock myself in my room and wait things out. I’d explain things to Hannah and the world would go back to normal. Maybe I wouldn’t end up in a shallow grave in the woods after all.
    I ran smack bang into the fence.
    Dammit, I had forgotten all about Tennyson Wilde’s stupid garden rebuilding scheme. Why did he even need a fence around it? Didn’t he realize what a massive inconvenience it was to every single person ever.
    They were so close behind me, almost close enough to touch. I kicked at the fence, wishing it was Tennyson Wilde, and – like magic, only less creepy and annoying – a gate swung open right beside me. I flew through it just as Polo Guy #2 reached out to grab me and bolted it fast behind me.
    They rattled the fence, banged on it. It was high and sturdy-looking but I thought it probably wouldn’t take them long to break open that gate. They seemed pretty determined. I didn’t want to stick around until they broke through.
    Tennyson Wilde’s mysterious garden was not actually a garden at all, I realized as I looked around. It was a forest. A bamboo forest. The bamboo stood just higher than my head if I was on tiptoes, and was evenly spaced around 6 feet apart, except for where a stone path ran through. Most of the bamboo was still just a single cane, but I noticed a few shoots had already begun to spring up here and there. There was a strong smell of compost, which I assumed came from fertilizer underneath the bed of straw that lined the forest floor. Why ever would you build something so potentially creepy in a place where creepy stuff kept on happening?  Didn’t he know it was the perfect place for evil things to lurk?  Well, obviously he knew that, being an evil thing with a fondness for lurking. That was obviously his whole reason for building it. It was also a breeding ground for vermin, probably. And not really a fun place to wander around when you had an angry mob after you. I jumped at every little shadow, every noise. Rationally, I knew that angry mobs weren’t particularly stealthy, and yet I kept waiting for something to reach out through the bamboo stalks and grab me.  Seriously, the only thing that would’ve been creepier was maybe a cornfield. On a par, probably.
    As I got deeper into the bamboo forest, the sounds from outside faded away. I didn’t know if the mob had given up or if they were lying in wait or still trying to break down the fence, but I thought maybe if I could find a nice little place to sit, once it got late I could sneak back to my room unnoticed. That was basically the best I could hope for, at any rate.
    I couldn't be sure where I was headed, the whole forest looked exactly the same to me, but I seemed to walk on and on without getting anywhere. Nothing changed and I didn’t find a handy little seat or anything. The sky grew even darker and the water in my hair turned to icicles. If it got any colder, I decided, I’d have to risk going back to my room anyway. It was that or hypothermia. You didn’t want to play around with that kind of thing.
    That was assuming I could find my way back out. I stopped walking and looked around. The bamboo was almost fully grown. I couldn't see over it. There was no way of telling which way I’d come from or which way I was headed. I supposed it would be easy enough to head in one particular direction until I came to the fence, and then follow the fence around to the gate. I looked up at the sky to see if I could find the sun to judge the direction from that, but there was nothing but thick gray cloud. No, there was something else, I noticed.  Something falling from the sky. Snow.