Page 67 of Search for the Lost
Cypher blinked owlishly. “The great eagle?”
Minkis nodded. “Big bird.”
“Ah.” He disentangled himself from Aspin’s grasp and got to his feet. “We were paying a visit to your mother, and things got… out of hand.”
“We?” Aspin got up and brushed off his pants. “Who is we?” Aspin looked like a lovestruck teenager, but then he growled again under his breath. He was clearly torn between his attraction to the young faun and his anger over what had happened to the Queen of All Fae. “Are you saying something happened to her? Mother can take care of herself. Besides, why would she have let the likes of you into her private cabin?”
Cypher ducked his head, having the decency to at least look contrite. “Yes we. She let him in. When the King of Chaos comes calling, you don’t say no.”
Leo raised an eyebrow. “The King of Chaos?”
“Yes, you imbecilic—” Whatever he was about to say next was lost in a high-pitched yelp as a cold nose touched Cypher’s left thigh, and he leapt into the air with an indignant screech. “What in the four hooves of Mithani was that?” He might have looked around wildly if his eyes hadn’t immediately settled on the gigantic WOLF that was staring him in the face.
He yelped again, this time with a much higher pitch, and slipped behind Crispin, trembling.
Crispin laughed at the spectacle, a low rumble that escalated into a full-bellied laugh. I needed that. “Those,” he said with emphasis, “are Leo’s new pets.”
“Well, then, Leo should keep his pets on a leash.”
Leo chuckled. “You want to try putting a leash on them?”
Crispin felt Cypher’s head shake back and forth comically. “No thank you. I’m fine where I am.”
“Just don’t make any sudden moves.” Leo reached up to scratch his pet’s head, and the beast rumbled happily. “I think I’ll name you Dweezil.”
Crispin shook his head. Another Earth reference. He turned to face his old assistant. “What’s this about the King of Chaos? I thought Leo was the King.”
With a nervous glance at the enormous WOLF, Cypher stepped out from behind Crispin’s dubious protection. “Leo may be the current King, but before him there was another.”
Crispin and Leo exchanged a confused glance.
Aspin frowned. “Cypher is working for the enemy. He admitted as much before. Why should we trust what he says now?”
The faun burst into tears. “I’m so sorry, Crispin,” he wailed. “I didn’t want to do it. They forced me—”
“How?” Aspin’s eyes narrowed.
“They have my sister.”
“Who is they?” Crispin frowned. “And where’s the Great Acorn?”
“The Red Dukes of Vespertine. And they took it.”
It was a dispirited group that trudged the last few steps up to his mother’s cabin. They were lucky that it was in the first place that Dietrich took them to and that they didn’t have to trudge somewhere else through the hot, humid, intrusive forest.
Crispin sighed. All the good luck today—Leo taming the WOLFs, Cypher literally falling into their arms, and now this—why did none of it make him feel lucky? And what would the Dukes do with the Acorn?
He had suspected for some time that the whole thing was a setup, one of his mother’s little games, but now a darker possibility had entered into the picture. What if things were no longer in her control?
Aspin was standing in front of the cabin, staring up at its long chicken legs. Every now and then, they shifted, making the whole house bob, and once a giant leg lifted up to scratch the side of the other. “How do we get up there? We need to search the place for clues.”
Leo grinned. “CSI Black Forest!”
Crispin stared at him blankly.
Leo’s shoulders slumped. “Sorry, it’s a TV show. These police folks that always have really advanced technology and solve crimes by looking for tiny clues.” He sighed. “Sometimes I forget that you guys don’t have streaming.”
Crispin briefly considered asking what streaming was but decided it wasn’t worth the prolonged conversation that would likely follow. DVDs had been hard enough to understand, and wiring the treehouse for electricity…. He turned to Dietrich instead. “Aspin’s right, we need to get up there. How do we do it?”
