Freyja's Daughter by Rachel Pudelek

Author:Rachel Pudelek [Pudelek, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781944728687
Amazon: 1944728686
Publisher: City Owl Press
Published: 2018-05-07T23:00:00+00:00

Nineteen

I paced the sidewalk outside my motel room, squinting from the early afternoon sunlight. I exhaled a white puff of breath into the crisp air. Maids wore jackets as they pushed their cleaning carts.

My coterie listened on speakerphone from our common house in Washington as I explained the new developments, pausing each time a human came within earshot.

After I explained Marcus’s and my belief that the Hunters were behind the recent abductions as well as those perpetrated twenty years ago, because why else would they try to cover it up, Aunt Renee asked, “Is there a chance Naomi is still alive?” It was odd hearing my aunt refer to my mother by name. I had been four when my mother disappeared. My aunts had gone through all the proper channels—reported her missing with the police, contacted the Hunters—but nothing came of their efforts. And with four little girls to raise, they gave up, believing that the succubi galere had taken territorial revenge on her for sharing affections with a human male they’d already claimed as their own. Nothing could be done short of my aunts getting their own revenge, which would be difficult with the added responsibility of a little orphan huldra to raise.

Knowing Shawna was somewhere at the Hunters’ compound killed me inside. I couldn’t imagine how much it’d break me to think she was dead…forever gone. I supposed that’s why I had wanted to become an investigator so badly—to make sure what had happened to my mother would never happen to another woman. But it had, hadn’t it? And to Wilds no less.

A dog barked in the background and Aunt Abigale’s promises of a treat if it’d quiet down like a good girl followed the sound.

“Since when did we get a dog?” I asked.

“Oh, your aunt took her in from Shawna’s rescue center. Poor thing missed Shawna so badly that she wasn’t eating. The people at the rescue center reached out to Abigale and asked if maybe she could take the dog for a while. They thought it’d be worth a try to see if the little thing would eat if it lived in Shawna’s surroundings, with her scent,” Aunt Patricia responded.

“Is it working?” I asked, eager to see Shawna’s face when she found out our coterie had taken in a dog. I wondered if huldra had ever owned pets in the history of Wilds. Dogs and tree-jumping don’t mix well. We really were becoming civilized, housing domesticated animals. If anything, I would have thought we’d own cats, seeing as some of the stories surrounding Freyja included a cat-drawn chariot. And cats climb trees.

“She’s on her way to being fat and happy,” Olivia yelled a little too loudly into their side of the connection.

I laughed and pulled the phone from my face so it wasn’t blaring into my ear. “Can you send me a picture?” Knowing there was a little animal out there who loved Shawna so much that it stopped eating when Shawna left made me love the thing.

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