Monster Mine by Meg Collett

Author:Meg Collett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: coming of age, action, fantasy, asian, myths, folklore, little red riding hood, new adult, retellings, aswangs
Publisher: Meg Collett

T H I R T E E N

Sunny

I had a problem.

Hatter wasn’t right. Nearly twenty-four hours had passed since he’d been bitten, but I saw no change in him. No relief from the manic episode. This one wasn’t nearly as bad as the one back in Barrow, but I sensed its grip on him. He was lost somewhere deep in his head, a place I couldn’t pull him back from, no matter how much I chattered or banged around or told him my Gran’s stories.

His eyes had a glazed-over, unseeing quality to them. Every minute or so, he’d flinch away from some ghost sitting beside him that I couldn’t see. That I couldn’t fix.

I considered sedating him.

I considered slapping him to wake him up from the nightmare he’d lost himself to.

I considered screaming until my vocal cords tore.

Instead, I settled for leaving the room and closing the door quietly behind me. Across the hall, Luke paced in Ollie’s room. He went there right after she’d left to go hunt with Hex, which had been a few hours ago. I needed space and time to think, and I needed a break from him, so I hadn’t argued when he decided to lock himself away.

He watched Hatter too closely, and I didn’t like it. I hated how his eyes found all the little things I’d already discovered. The tiny jerks. The twitch beneath his right eye. The way he sometimes spoke to himself, nearly silent murmurings. Luke even saw the deeper things, the things I only guessed at. Luke probably knew who Hatter cringed away from, this ghost sitting next to him, and who he whispered to. Luke knew all these things, and I knew none.

I hated him for it—and a dozen other things. Like how he’d yelled at Ollie earlier, though I hadn’t come to her defense because I had no clue what she was saying. Hunters deserving to be killed . . . innocent ’swangs . . . Tully’s children.

I went to the kitchen to grab us some food from the barely stocked fridge. The cupboards suggested Ghost had gone to the local Food Pantry and grabbed all the things he wanted to eat. Fruit roll-ups. Peanut butter. Fudge cakes. A wild assortment of Pop-Tarts. I grabbed a few of those and sat down at the metal island with swiveling stools.

Tearing through the foil, I pulled out a Pop-Tart and held it between my teeth as I unfolded Irena’s picture. I stared at it for a long moment, just sitting there, catching my breath. I needed a moment before I started looking for the spare keys to that medical cabinet. Maybe I was just seeing what I wanted to see. Lauren could have been injecting the wounded with anything, and the fact that Thad had kept me from them might just mean he didn’t want me in the way.

I don’t know how long I sat there with Irena’s photo, licking the sticky berry-flavored Pop-Tart goo from my fingers, but suddenly, Luke was standing right next to me, and I had no clue how he’d gotten there.

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