Shifter's Destiny. Anna Leonard
looked at the horse, too.
It was white, she had noted that already. Sleek and muscled, as tall at the shoulder as she was, with a thick golden-white tail and shaggy mane, and large brown eyes looking directly at her, a darker golden forelock falling over its forehead and above that…
Above that…
Her brain stopped, refusing to formulate the thought, refusing to acknowledge what she was seeing.
“Libby.” Maggie’s voice, hushed with awe. “It has a horn!”
Chapter 2
Once Elizabeth caught her breath, she said the first thing that came into her brain.
“There is no such thing as a unicorn.”
The words sounded perfectly reasonable, and sane, and confident. Considering that her sister had her arm around the neck of a horse—very definitely a horse—with a foot-long, spiral-shaped, pointed horn in the middle of its forehead, Elizabeth wasn’t sure she believed her own words. But she repeated them anyway. “There is no such thing as a unicorn. It has to be a fake, some kind of a con or scam. Or it’s a mutant deer.”
It didn’t look anything like a deer, or a moose, or even a mule. It was definitely a horse. And that was definitely a horn.
So it had to be a fake. If she touched the horn it would be plaster, or plastic, somehow glued onto the horse’s head. Or grafted, some kind of surgical measure… Who would do such a thing? A circus or a sideshow? Maybe. That was the most reasonable guess. Sideshows did that kind of thing all the time, didn’t they? She had been to one, once, when Maggie was very little, a traveling circus, with cotton candy and carnival rides. They’d had a bearded woman and a so-called mermaid in a tank, so a unicorn would fit perfectly.
Yes. That made sense. Elizabeth nodded once, satisfied. If it belonged to a circus, no matter if the horn was fake or a freak of nature, then it was probably valuable. There might even be a reward, but no matter how much they were going to need money, they couldn’t afford to take advantage. They needed to stay out of sight, away from anyone’s attention, until she had time to think things through, and figure out what to do.
And if it was a scam of any sort, they really couldn’t afford to be caught up in it. Especially not if the person who was running it came looking for his or her animal, causing trouble. Elizabeth would go to the police, if she had to, but not as part of someone else’s problems. They’d take Maggie away from her for sure, then.
And if they took Maggie away, it would be easy for Ray, as an Elder, to claim custody. Elizabeth knew, bone-deep, that if he did that, she would never be allowed near her sister again, that Maggie would never be free. There was no evidence to support that—Ray had never done or said anything threatening—but she knew.
But the only people who might have believed her were dead, now. Only she was left to protect Maggie.
Her sister, not sharing her worries, was busy petting the creature, cooing into pointed white ears that flickered back and forth as she spoke.
“Maggie… be careful,” she warned, watching the horn come dangerously close to her sister’s body as the horse leaned into the hug. Even if it was fake, that tip was probably sharp.
“It won’t hurt us,” Maggie said, stubbornly hugging the beast. “It helped us! Didn’t you, guy?” She rested her face against the white neck. “You saved us. Like Prince Charming’s noble steed. Only where did you leave Prince Charming?”
The horse made a noise like a snort, and shoved Maggie—gently, but enough to make her stagger, as though responding to her question with indignation.
“Maggie, please step away from the horse. I agree, it helped us, but it’s still a strange animal and outweighs you by a considerable amount.” Her sister had never met an animal that she couldn’t charm, but Elizabeth saw no reason to tempt fate.
Maggie made a face, but complied, giving the beast one last pat before taking several steps away. The horse watched her, but stayed where it was. “You think they’ll find us again?” Her voice was matter-of-fact, but her body tensed as she spoke.
Elizabeth wanted nothing more than to reassure the younger girl that everything would be all right, that they were safe, but she had never directly lied to her little sister, not in thirteen years, and she wasn’t going to start now. “Not if we’re smart. We need to figure out how to get to the other side of the reservoir, somehow, and then we can find a bus station. Once we’re farther away, they won’t be able to find us again.”
She hoped. Her only plan had been to get as far away from the Community as possible, and find someone who wasn’t cowed by Ray, someone who would listen to them, and protect them. But now… Elizabeth looked around, noting that the light that had been slanting through the trees was fading, all too aware of the fact that they had no idea where they were—any direction she chose could lead them right back into Jordan’s clutches, or leave them wandering deeper into the woods, away from the bus station that was their only chance to get away.
Jordan was a smarmy bastard, but he was right—Maggie was still exhausted. She needed to rest, and have a good meal, something more than the hot dogs they had gotten at the flea market, and… things they weren’t going to find, standing here like ninnies. Elizabeth mentally counted the money they had left, and flinched. There was enough for bus tickets out of state, and another meal or three, but not much more than that.
“I just need to figure out which way leads to the next town over.” She didn’t even know what town they were in right now. She had lived here her entire life, all twenty-six years, and once she got outside a ten-mile radius of her home, she was lost. What the hell had she been thinking, abandoning everything without a plan?
Panicked. She had been panicked, and knew, the same way that she knew the summons was bad news, that Ray was counting on her to be her usual practical, pragmatic self. Think-it-through Libby, her dad always called her. Think-it-through Libby would never have yanked her sister out of school and abandoned everything they owned on an hour’s notice, on the basis of a series of bad dreams and a gut feeling.
But she had.
The horse took two steps forward, so graceful it seemed almost to float more than walk, and, bypassing Maggie, circled around Elizabeth. She turned to watch it move, only to stagger herself when it pushed at her from behind with its shoulder. She had been right; it was solid muscle, and she had to take several steps forward to keep from falling over.
Up close, the horn was clearly attached to the forehead with more than glue, and when she—with daring that amazed her—reached out to touch it, the sensation under her fingertips was that of solid bone, smooth and cool and heavy.
With that touch, a wall of memories fell on her. She could almost hear her mother’s laugh, see Cody’s bright, fearless smile, smell the scent of her dad’s cologne….
No. Those were memories of better times, happier times. If she let them come back now, she would break down and then Maggie would be lost.
The horse, as though sensing her thoughts, stepped closer, pushing her again with the exact same amount of force behind the shove, and she got a definite sense of being told to get a move on.
“That way?” She felt insane, asking an animal for directions, but… maybe not so insane, after all. She looked at Maggie, who was looking at the beast intently. Her sister nodded.
“I think so. It wants us to go… that way?” Maggie pointed in the direction the horse—the unicorn, all right, Elizabeth admitted it, the unicorn—was pushing her.
It shoved her again, and she took the third step of her own accord, almost numb at this point. “What the hell. You got us here, maybe you can get us out.”
There was so much that was crazy in her life, what was taking directions from a unicorn, at this point? The thought almost made her laugh. Almost.
Maggie