Dead leaves rattled in the freezing wind. June glanced upward, distracted by the moaning of two branches rattling. “We’re almost there.”
“Good.” Peter waved a hand at a bit of nothing that turned into something vaguely glimmering as it stuck to his palm. He rubbed it against a nearby oak trunk. “The sunset’s letting me clear the cobwebs from this clearly oft-ignored path, my lady, but it’s also a bit of a time marker.”
“Say it with that Irish lilt all you want,” June answered. “I’m aware that looks like a haunted trail. That’s intentional.”
“Seems likely to work.”
***
Hmm, that’s not quite working. Let’s try that again.
***
Dead leaves rattled in the freezing wind, skittering across cracked pavement, scurrying under June’s truck like paper-light mice.
The sudden damp chill suited the New Hampshire evening as well as her mood. Her morning had started as gloriously as the sunrise, or at least had been filled with copious quantities of caffeine and hope.
Brittle laughter rose in her throat before she smothered the outburst, as inadequate for the evening as her leather jacket now seemed.
She’d come into the semester filled with optimism and a slight sense of confusion, armed with her father’s syllabi and memories as guides to fight a desperate battle to prove herself before getting mistaken for a student yet again.
She’d wound up with a sword, fought off literal living dead men, and turned it to her advantage. Whatever waited for her – and Peter – in the tunnels was linked to the universities’ ominous miasma of increasingly strange and bloody events.
Surely, she could handle a single man being obnoxious.
Straightening, she gave the ancient, battered truck a reassuring pat.
The dean might be intent on driving her away from campus, but she wasn’t going anywhere. It was time to find out why.
“As soon as I have a spare moment,” she said out loud, and swung into the driver’s seat.
***
Well, that’s better, or at least more satisfying. Thanks for the twofer on dead leaves, Becky! My prompt on the dragon upgrade request went to Cedar, and check out more over at MOTE.
