Between Monsters and Marvels by Alysa Wishingrad

Author:Alysa Wishingrad
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2023-06-29T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Two

Lost, Found, Lost

Part of being awful meant being temperamental, judgmental, and willful. And while throwing fits and judging others as they judged her never served Dare, her refusal to give up was, at times like this, the only thing that kept her going. As tempting as it was to break at having lost dear Beastie, she refused to succumb. Sheer force of will would see them reunited.

Dare pushed her way back to the doorway where that creep had cornered her, her gaze sweeping every inch and crevice. The storm had begun dropping steely pellets of rain, sending people scurrying for cover and leaving her more room to search. But there were too many places Beastie could be. Behind those stairs, between those urns, underneath that call box on the corner. In the pocket of that brute.

No. Undaunted by the rain and that relentless pull toward panic, Dare searched, called, even used that whistle Father had used to summon Pretty: Tweeewooo tweeewooo tweeewooo!

“Please come out!” she called, peering into the spaces between buildings, the cracks in stairwells. What few pedestrians were left braving the downpour mostly ignored her, although there were several who stopped to chide her, calling her foolish, or muddle-headed for playing out in the rain.

If only she were playing. As she searched on, her whistles and calls and pleas became more frantic, until finally desperation took over and the temptation of tears grew too strong. Of course she’d lose the one thing that had brought her any real joy since her father had died.

She fell back onto a stoop and buried her face in her hands, letting tears pool in her palms. She tried to block out the comments and sneers from passersby, but one voice was too insistent. “What are you doing?”

Dare looked up, expecting to face another nosy pedestrian, but instead was met by surprise, for there, having emerged from a shiny automobile, a large umbrella unfolding above her, was Nell Lawrence.

Dare’s defenses were soaked through, and all she could manage was a weepy “My Beastie, he got out of my pocket. I can’t find him.”

“Oh no.” Nell held her umbrella high enough to cover both herself and Dare. “Let’s look. I’ll help you.”

“Why? You’ll get soaked,” Dare said.

“No more than you already are.”

“Miss Nell, your mother will have a fit!” The driver of the car stepped out, another large umbrella shielding him from the weather.

“She need never know!” Nell shouted over the storm. “Help us, please, Ernest. Dare’s lost her pet.”

“We meet again.” Ernest tipped his cap at Dare with his free hand. “What’s it look like?”

“He’s got white fur, big green eyes, and a feathery tail, and he’s adorable in an ugly kind of way,” Nell explained.

Dare couldn’t argue with that. And so, without another word, the two girls and Ernest fanned out, calling and whistling for Beastie to show himself.

And still the search remained futile. Dare was about to surrender to misery, to thank them for their help, when Ernest called them to join him a little way down the street.

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