A naked girl around the age of seven waved and started toward me. With a shrug to the wolf, I waved back. A few steps closer and her eyes shot wide as they bounced from me to Graeson. She squeaked and, in a burst of magic, her limbs flowed into the fluffiest, most darling puppy I had ever seen. Her pelt was the color of warm caramel, and one of her paws made it look as though she had stepped in a bucket of chocolate that dyed her front leg up to her elbow.

“Hey.” The wild look in her eye had me scrambling toward her. “Wait.”

The pup whirled and vanished in a burst of frenetic energy.

“I wonder what that was about” was my first thought. My second was that now I had an idea of where Isaac could point his security cameras. I shot him an update with a picture attached and the general direction.

Graeson kept his thoughts to himself but marked the area in case whoever was using it decided to come back. I knelt there, eyes stinging from the aroma, and peered through the crisscrossing vines into the clearing.

My trailer sat front and center.

Riffling through the wrappers at my knees, I shook off the creeping sensation that whoever had made this blind was hiding, watching as I tried to make sense their clues. As close as the shelter was to the edge of the woods, and my home, it made a perfect escape route after each delivery.

Questions pelted me like raindrops in a summer storm. Was this Bessemer’s doing? Or Aisha’s? Since they shared mental space, did it really matter? Did the wrappers indicate they had spent a significant amount of time here or simply that they had a sweet tooth?

More troubling was the possibility the girl was involved. She certainly seemed to be heading straight for the blind, and kids and candy went hand in hand. Would Bessemer stoop so low as to involve a child in his schemes? Or was she curious about the pack’s newest member, wanted to get her first glimpse of a fae, and I was being paranoid?

I had no good answers to any of my conjecture.

Standing, I dodged the wet spots and returned to the safety of the wards and my home. No challengers had arrived to petition me today. Perhaps rumors of my death had been greatly exaggerated, and I would last another day or two in blissful quiet without having to rip or tear or shred my hosts.