“Would ye stop, you donkey?” Niamh berated.

“But it wouldn’t be enjoyable to go unnoticed. I wait for them to pass, and when I’m in their peripheral vision, I move just a little. Hardly noticeable. If I don’t catch their eye, I move again, a bit more. Sometimes I am not obvious enough, and I lose them. This happened a lot in my youth. Or I move enough that they think I’m a bear, and there is great confusion and much screaming. But I have gotten pretty good at it, like I said. It is an art. I move a little, they glance over, and catch me looking at them. I stay there for the right amount of time—not too little, not too much. Enough for them to realize that I am an intelligent creature—”

“That’s debatable,” Mr. Tom muttered.

“—and then I move away, into the trees, out of sight.” He slid his ankle off his leg and planted his feet on the ground, his body shaking with laughter. “You should see their faces!” He laughed harder, tilting his head up to the sky. “It is fantastic. They search frantically for their phones to get a picture. Or they freeze, as though they think I might not see them if they do not move. Or they take off running like the devil himself is chasing them! You just never know!”

His laughter shook his whole body, and I felt a smile crack my face.

“How is it I’ve never heard of you before now?” I asked, forgetting myself for a moment. With this new life, I’d learned to take the bumps of crazy and roll with it.

He stretched his arms wide. “Because I am the best at this! I am a myth! This is what diligent practice will get you. Mastery.”

I couldn’t make out what Mr. Tom had muttered this time.

“Well, that’s pretty crazy, and I’d love to see it in action someday—”

“An audience. I’ve never had an audience, although I did have an apprentice or two in my day. Good kids. Fairly light on thinking ability, if you know what I mean.”

“They must be as dumb as posts if he’s saying that,” Mr. Tom murmured.

“Shut it,” Niamh hissed.

I shrugged. “Up to you. Listen, what I wanted to talk—”

“I can see how that might be fun. An audience. You would have to be very quiet. And very still.”

I stared at him with my eyebrows up and my mouth open, really wanting to move the conversation along but not wanting to push him. Given he’d chased two alphas off this mountain, there were clearly hidden depths to him that I didn’t want to see.

“If you dressed in brown, or maybe brown and green, you would blend in better.” He eyed my outfit. “The white sweats would only do for heavy snowfall.”

“Listen, Mr.…” I paused so he could give me his name.

“You would not want to blend in too much, though, or they wouldn’t see you at the end,” he said, clearly in need of dynamite to get him off this train of thought. “Although you are just a human woman. Maybe you’d get a better fright if you changed into that purplish sort of rainbow monster from the other day.”

“I would like to trade,” I said quickly, holding up the flowers. Granted, I’d already promised the Ivy House flowers, but hopefully he couldn’t call me on a technicality. Besides, I was delivering them. That had to count for something. “I am delivering some Ivy House flowers, directly to you…for a snack.”

As if this was the first time he was noticing them, his focus zipped to the colorful array in my hand.

“You helped me the other day—”

“Oh no, I did not,” he said. “It would go against my station to help a prisoner. No, I took my break, and tripped and broke my ankle. That was why I was absent, you see, and not able to sound the alarm when you defeated your confinement and escaped in a pretty, swirling light show. At first I thought I sprained it, of course, but upon reflection, it must have been broken, because I needed to be gone for longer than originally planned.”

“Right. Did the—”

“So you see, my absence could not be helped.”

“Gotcha. Did the mages come back to find me gone?”

“Yes.”

I waited for more. He didn’t give me anything.

“Did anyone else come—someone you hadn’t seen or met beyond those mages?” I wondered if the contract holder had shown up.

“No.”

That was a small relief, at least. “Were the mages mad?” I pressed.

“Yes. Very. They questioned my truthfulness. That is a grave offense, as you can guess.”

“Right. And then they—”

“As the guardian of this mountain and the prison herein, it is my duty to secure those detained here.”

“Totally. So did they—”

“But I am only one entity. I must take breaks. I must be able to eat, rest, and relieve myself. This is the nineties, for heaven’s sake. There are rules.”

“It’s actually the…” I waved it away. “Never mind.” He’d catch up eventually. Or never. It probably didn’t matter much to him, given his lifestyle. “Listen—”

“For their offense, I killed one of them. Justice was served on my mountain the other day. It is done.”

I looked back at Austin. Another down, three to go, and as of yesterday, they were still in the area.

“Make note of that,” Mr. Tom murmured. “Do not question the truthfulness of a basajaun, regardless of how big the lie.”

I had to agree.

I held out the flowers, feeling a fresh wave of urgency. The mages had lost someone yesterday, and they were probably still scrambling. If we could find them now, we’d have a shot at stopping them permanently, before they came after me again.

“Can you please show me to the lower cave entrance?” I asked, holding the flowers high. “I’ll trade you these flowers for it. I’m not a prisoner anymore. You don’t have to guard me.”

He stood, and I took a step back, his height incredibly daunting.

“Get ready to run,” I heard Mr. Tom say.

“I will show you because you have asked nicely.” He stepped forward. “Your friends may come, too, though they are not welcome on this mountain without you.”

“I get it. Some of them are awfully pushy—”

“You are so pretty when you fly. I would hate to dull your luster by killing one of your friends.”

I nodded and held out the flowers, doing my best not to scuttle backward the closer he got.

“I will show you as a gesture of good faith, in the hope that we can work together to give this mountain something it has never seen before. My family has never teamed up with a creature such as yourself. They will be red with envy. What name will the hikers make up about you, I wonder. Well…” He laughed as we walked, Austin and everyone else falling in silently behind us. “They would have to snap a picture first. Do you breathe fire, by chance?”

“Um…no. No fire.”

“That is okay. Maybe they will still think you’re a dragon because of your big fangs and the swirly rainbow colors that trail you when you fly.”

I ducked under a branch, still holding out the flowers. “I brought these for you. A trade, a gift—either way, I’d like you to have them.”

“Yes. Kindness. So very few people approach me with kindness. It is a nice change.” Clearly Austin and Damarion needed to work on their people skills, which was rich, coming from me. “Unfortunately, I do not accept gifts from strangers. It makes one feel indebted, and that is not a nice feeling.”

I wasn’t sure where to go from there, so I lowered the flowers, too scared to drop them in case he thought that was some sort of offense.

“How did those mages rope you into guarding me?” I asked as we made our way, although my breath was coming quickly because I had to jog to keep up with his large strides.

“They entered the caves and lodged their prisoner. That act summoned me. I may not like the duty, but it is mine. I cannot find a way to get out of it.”

“Right but…what if the prisoner isn’t someone who did something bad? What if they were kidnapped, like me?”

“I do not pass judgment. I solely guard my charge.”

“You guard your charge… In situations like that, maybe instead of guarding the charge for the kidnappers, you could guard them from the kidnappers?”

He looked down on me, not caring when a tree branch slid over his face. “That is a fun play on words, but that is not my duty.”

“So…just so I’m clear, you don’t have a duty to put me back in that cage?”

“The cage is broken.”

“If it weren’t?”

“No. You are not a prisoner. I do not have to guard you. The rules are pretty clear on that point.”

We roamed down the mountain, traipsing through brush and bushes, weaving through large tree branches, and ignoring the deer and hiking trails that would make travel so much easier. A half-hour in, just as I was about to ask how much further we had to go, he slowed and turned, veering around a rock outcropping and stopping in front of a large stone slab. Trees pressed in on all sides, creating a blind.

I waited for him to speak. He stared down at me, not doing so.

“Is this it?” I asked dumbly.

“Yes.”

“We found this rock,” Damarion said, pushing forward.

The basajaun bristled, and his arms lifted just slightly away from his sides, like a bro in a bar getting ready to fight. “If you found this rock and did not find the way in, you are incredibly stupid.”

“That means something, coming from him,” Mr. Tom said.

“Walk through, Jessie.” Niamh motioned me on. “’Tis a pretty standard illusion. A good one, don’t get me wrong, but easy enough to find if ye know what ye’re lookin’ for. That rock has the shape of a door and doesn’t blend in with the rocks around it, and take a look at the edges there, where they meet the natural rock. See how they are frayed, like fabric?”