It felt like they had barely made it half a block from the house when a strange sensation washed through Melody.
She stopped so suddenly that Leo nearly walked into her back. It wasn’t a sound. Nothing moved that she could see. It was the same pressure she’d felt before the giant snake revealed itself, something that reached her body before Edward’s brain understood why it should be afraid. The hairs on her arms rose. Her shoulders locked. Something deep inside her screamed that danger was close.
“Leo, duck!”
She grabbed the top of his Bluey backpack and yanked him down with her. They dropped behind the mangled remains of a FedEx truck that had been shoved halfway onto the curb, its front end smashed into a parked car and its windshield reduced to a glittering hole.
“Ow! Melody, that hurt.” Leo pushed himself onto one knee and rubbed where he’d landed hard on the pavement.
“Stay down.”
She crouched beside the truck and carefully leaned around the ruined front end. The street ahead looked the same as every other street they’d passed: cars abandoned at strange angles, broken glass across the asphalt, smoke drifting between buildings, and those endless blue-white flecks of mana falling like glowing snow.
Leo started to rise. “Why are we hiding?”
“Just shush for a second.”
Her voice came out sharper than she meant, but Leo heard the seriousness and lowered himself again. Melody closed her mouth and listened.
At first there was only New York. A distant siren. A car alarm dying by degrees. Somewhere behind the buildings something burned with a faint crackle whenever the wind shifted.
Then she noticed another sound underneath all of it.
A constant pattering.
It sounded like hundreds of tiny pebbles striking pavement at the same time. No—more like hard rain. Except nothing was falling except mana, and the noise wasn’t coming from above them.
Leo’s expression changed as he finally heard it too. His eyes dropped toward the road when the pavement began vibrating faintly enough that loose pieces of glass rattled against the curb.
“Is that an earthquake?”
“I don’t think so.”
Melody placed one hand against the side of the FedEx truck. The thin metal trembled, but it didn’t feel like the ground rolling. There was a rhythm to it. Thousands upon thousands of tiny impacts landing so close together they blended into a single vibration.
That was somehow worse than an earthquake.
“Melody, look.”
She followed Leo’s finger toward an apartment building farther behind them.
Something black covered the lower portion of the wall.
At first she thought it was smoke. There was enough of that around the city that another dark stain barely registered. Then the black mass moved—not upward, but across. It flowed over the brick like liquid, climbing around windows, swallowing the bottoms of fire escapes, and spilling over parked cars in a thick crawling wave. As it spread farther into the street the strange pattering grew louder, echoing between the buildings until Melody could feel the rhythm through her knees.
Leo stared. “What is that?”
“I don’t know.”
She narrowed her eyes, trying to distinguish anything inside the darkness. The entire surface seemed to boil, thousands of tiny shapes constantly crawling over one another as the mass advanced.
Then the instinct inside her body screamed again.
This time there was no ambiguity. It wasn’t telling her to be careful. It was telling her to get away. Now.
“Run!”
Melody caught Leo by the wrist and hauled him upright. They abandoned the FedEx truck and sprinted down the street while the dry rattling behind them grew steadily louder.
The first problem became obvious almost immediately.
Leo couldn’t keep up.
Melody had forgotten just how different her body was now. Her first few strides carried her so quickly that Leo’s arm stretched painfully between them. He stumbled when she changed direction around a wrecked sedan, and she caught the top of his backpack before he could hit the ground.
“Slow down!”
“Sorry!”
She shortened her stride and tried matching him, but even that felt strange. Her own body barely registered the exertion. The supplies in her backpack bounced against her shoulders, the snake sword slapped lightly against her back, and running still felt almost effortless. Leo was already breathing harder beside her.
Then something moved inside an alley to their right.
A dark shape lunged out of the narrow opening, hit the road on all fours, and rose almost immediately onto two legs.
For one confused second Melody’s brain tried to call it a werewolf. Broad shoulders hunched forward, long arms hanging low, black claws curling from almost human-looking hands.
Except werewolves generally had fur.
This thing had wool.
Thick, filthy gray-white wool covered its back, shoulders, and most of its legs. Curled horns swept backward from either side of its skull. Its face looked disturbingly close to a sheep’s if someone had stretched the muzzle, filled its mouth with carnivore teeth, and taught it how to hate everything around it.
A weresheep.
Of course it was.
“Are you serious?”
The creature dropped forward and bounded after them.
Leo glanced over his shoulder and nearly tripped again. “WHAT IS THAT?”
“I DON’T KNOW! KEEP RUNNING!”
They tore down the street. The weresheep didn’t chase them like a normal animal. It leapt from obstacle to obstacle, landing on the roof of a crushed sedan before springing onto an SUV. Metal buckled beneath its hooves each time, but it used the damaged cars like stepping-stones, crossing distances in a single jump that would have been impossible yesterday.
“Where are we going?!” Leo gasped.
“I don’t know!”
Melody looked behind them again. The weresheep was gaining. Beyond it the black wave continued advancing, close enough now that she could finally distinguish the individual shapes.
Small black bodies. Too many legs. Antennae. Mandibles.
Her stomach dropped.
“Those are ants.”
Leo looked over his shoulder. “What?”
“The black thing! Those are freaking ants!”
Not ordinary ants. Even from here she could tell they were far too large—some the size of mice, others bigger. Thousands upon thousands of them crawled over one another while pouring across buildings and vehicles like living tar.
She turned forward just as a rush of air struck her face.
“Oh, crap.”
The weresheep sailed over both of them and landed directly in the street ahead with enough force to crack the pavement around its hooves. Melody skidded to a stop and threw one arm across Leo’s chest, pulling him backward as the monster slowly straightened.
Up close it was considerably worse.
It stood well over seven feet tall even hunched. Thick wool covered its shoulders, back, and thighs, while sections around the chest and arms showed dark skin stretched over heavy muscle. Its horns were chipped, old stains darkening the grooves near their bases. The hands bothered her most—almost human until the long fingers flexed and black claws extended.
Then it smiled.
Its lips peeled backward from rows of sharp teeth, and fresh blood dripped down its chin into the wool covering its chest. Something pale was caught between two teeth.
Fabric.
The creature had been eating. Not an animal. Someone. A person had died recently enough that their blood was still wet around its mouth.
Any humor Melody had left disappeared.
“Fucking hell.”
She reached over one shoulder and pulled the curved snake blade free. The strange metal caught the blue-white glow falling from the sky, thin silver veins flashing as she brought it in front of herself with both hands.
Leo immediately drew the fang dagger and stayed behind her.
Good. At least one of them understood the basic arrangement.
The weresheep lowered itself slightly, broad shoulders rolling forward, long arms spreading away from its body. It didn’t charge. It watched them, black eyes moving slowly from Melody’s sword to Leo before returning to her face.
Behind them the sound of the swarm grew louder. Thousands of tiny bodies scraped against asphalt until the vibration came through her shoes. She risked one glance over her shoulder. The ants had already reached the wrecked FedEx truck. The wave climbed over the roof, windshield, and crushed cargo box without slowing.
She turned back toward the creature blocking the road. Its smile widened.
Leo shifted closer behind her. The dagger trembled slightly in his hand, but he kept it raised.
Melody tightened her grip on the sword.
They were trapped between a monster that had just finished eating someone and an increasingly close wall of giant ants.
For several long seconds nobody moved.
The weresheep broke the standoff first.
Its smile vanished as it dropped forward onto its hands. Melody expected another jump. Instead it launched itself directly at them—like someone had fired seven hundred pounds of angry sheep out of a cannon.
“Oh, crap!”
She barely had time to react. She brought the curved sword sideways across her body, both hands on the handle, angling the broader section of the blade and guard toward the charging monster. One foot slid backward until the heel caught against a broken section of pavement.
Leo seemed to understand at the last second. He grabbed the back of her My Little Pony backpack with both hands and planted himself behind her.
Then the weresheep hit.
The sound was closer to a car accident than a sword fight. Its horns crashed against the metal with a deep ringing clang that Melody felt all the way through her teeth. One horn scraped across the guard and clipped the upper part of her chest, tearing through the gray T-shirt and opening a sharp line of pain. The sword stayed between them, but the force still drove her backward. Her shoes scraped across the asphalt for several feet while Leo yelled behind her, his body acting like an extra brace until his grip finally failed.
He flew backward.
Melody heard him hit the ground somewhere behind her, but she couldn’t turn around yet. The weresheep had rebounded too. It stumbled several steps in the opposite direction and shook its head violently. A bright red line had appeared across its forehead where it had struck the sword, and one of its horns now had a fresh chip along the edge.
She finally risked looking behind her.
“Leo!”
He rolled onto one elbow and winced. “I’m fine!”
She returned her attention to the creature just in time to see its expression change. Before, it had looked hungry. Now it looked pissed.
“Great,” she muttered, raising the sword again. “I hurt its feelings.”
The weresheep came at her more carefully this time. It lunged upright and swung one long arm toward her face. Melody twisted away. Black claws sliced through the space where her head had been, close enough for the rush of air to brush her cheek.
She stepped backward and raised the snake blade into what she hoped resembled a defensive stance.
It probably didn’t. Edward had never learned sword fighting. He had watched plenty of anime characters do it, played enough games to understand that the sharp part went toward the enemy, and seen kendo matches where people held swords in front of themselves while yelling passionately.
That qualified him for absolutely nothing.
Luckily the weresheep didn’t know that.
It stopped.
Melody noticed immediately. The creature stood several yards away with one arm raised, shoulders hunched as though ready to attack again, but its eyes were fixed on the blade.
It understood. Maybe not what the sword was, or where it came from, but it understood one important thing: the weapon could hurt it.
Instead of diving forward again, the weresheep shifted sideways. Its claws scraped against the pavement as it started circling them. Those black eyes moved over Melody’s arms, the sword, her stance, and then Leo behind her before returning to the blade.
It was studying her. Looking for an opening.
“Oh, so you’re a smart one, eh?”
Leo had gotten back to his feet behind her. “What?”
“It’s not attacking.”
“That’s bad?”
“No, it’s thinking. I was really hoping the monsters were stupid.”
The creature’s lips pulled backward again. Definitely smiling this time.
“Damn,” Melody whispered. “What the hell kind of pit did you spawn from?”
“Melody!”
Leo grabbed the back of her shirt.
She nearly snapped at him for distracting her until the noise behind them finally registered again.
The ants.
The dry roar of thousands of bodies had become so loud she didn’t understand how she’d managed to tune it out. She glanced behind them. The swarm had swallowed most of the street. The FedEx truck was almost completely black. Ants flowed around and over one another across its roof while others poured beneath it and crawled along the walls on both sides of the road. The nearest edge of the swarm was seconds away.
“We have to go now!” Leo shouted.
Melody looked at the weresheep. Then the ants. Then the rooftops. Her eyes dropped toward the dagger in Leo’s hand.
An idea arrived. Possibly a terrible one. Most of her ideas today had been.
“Leo, grab me and use the dagger!”
He stared at her. “How?”
“Just point it toward that roof and grab me!”
“What?”
“The dagger launched me before! Point it up there and do whatever feels like magic!”
Leo’s expression made it clear he understood this was not actually an instruction, but they didn’t have time to debate it. He wrapped one arm around Melody’s waist and aimed the black fang toward the roof of a five-story apartment building across the street.
Nothing happened.
Melody waited for the familiar pressure she’d felt during the snake fight. Nothing. No heat. No dark glow. No ghostly wings.
“Now!”
“I’m trying!”
Leo’s voice cracked. He tightened his grip on the dagger and pointed it even harder toward the building, as if sheer desperation could convince the weapon to activate. The blade remained completely dark.
Melody’s stomach dropped.
It wasn’t responding to him. Of course it wasn’t. Why would anything today be that easy?
The first ants reached them. One crawled directly onto Leo’s shoe. Up close it was even larger than she’d thought, nearly the length of his foot, glossy black body, oversized mandibles snapping toward his ankle. Leo shouted and kicked hard, sending it tumbling across the road.
The sudden movement gave the weresheep its opening.
It lunged.
Melody saw it coming. Leo was directly beside her. The sword in her hands was too large to swing without risking cutting him instead of the monster. There was no time to move him.
“Take this!”
She shoved the snake sword into Leo’s arms. His hands closed around it instinctively, and the unexpected weight dragged the tip almost to the pavement.
“What am I supposed to do with this?!”
Melody ripped the dagger from his hand.
The instant her fingers wrapped around the grip, heat flooded her palm. The black veins inside the fang ignited crimson. Dark mana crawled across the blade.
“JUMP YOU DAMN TOOTH!”
The weresheep was already airborne.
Melody aimed the dagger toward the rooftop and felt the familiar pressure gathering behind it. For less than a second the translucent shape of metallic wings unfolded around her hand while wind whipped her crimson hair across her face.
She wrapped her free arm around Leo. The dagger fired.
Wind exploded behind them. Leo screamed as both of his feet left the street. An ant had managed to clamp onto the bottom of his jeans before they lifted off. It dangled beneath him for one horrible second, mandibles hooked through the fabric, until Leo kicked wildly enough to tear it loose.
The weresheep passed directly beneath them. Melody caught a glimpse of its claws swiping through empty air before the dagger dragged her and Leo upward at a speed that made her stomach stay somewhere several floors below.
“AAAAAH!”
Leo’s scream joined hers.
They cleared the edge of the apartment building by maybe three feet.
Then the propulsion vanished.
Melody hit the roof first. Her legs bent instinctively, one hand touched the rough concrete, and the remaining momentum carried her into a short roll before she managed to come back onto her feet.
Leo had considerably less luck. He struck the roof shoulder-first and rolled. The snake sword flew from his hands and scraped several yards across the concrete before stopping near a ventilation unit. Leo rolled one more time and finally landed on his side.
“Leo!”
“I’m okay!”
He tried standing.
“Ah!”
He immediately sat back down.
Melody hurried over. “What happened?”
“My ankle.”
Leo grabbed around it with both hands while his face tightened. Even through the shoe she could already see the joint beginning to swell.
She winced. “Yeah. Don’t stand. I think you twisted or broke your ankle.”
“You think?”
“Sorry...”
The noise below them became so loud she could feel it through the roof. She ran toward the parapet and carefully leaned over.
The ants had continued forward. They weren’t climbing the apartment building after them. They weren’t even slowing down. The swarm moved through the street according to whatever purpose had brought it here, flowing around structures and over vehicles without showing the slightest interest in two people several stories above.
Maybe they had never been chasing Melody and Leo at all.
The weresheep was not so lucky.
It had landed directly inside them. At first Melody could barely see the creature beneath the black bodies crawling over its legs. Then the weresheep surged upright with a howl and swung both arms violently across itself, throwing dozens of ants through the air. It stomped and kicked, crushed several beneath its hooves, tore handfuls of them from its wool, and even bit into a cluster clinging to one arm.
For every ant it removed, dozens more replaced it.
The creature staggered sideways. The sound coming from it changed. It wasn’t growling anymore. It was screaming.
Leo dragged himself close enough to the parapet to peer over, keeping his injured foot behind him.
“Are they coming up?”
“I don’t think they care about us.”
“What are they doing?”
Melody watched the weresheep disappear beneath the swarm a little more with every second. Ants packed into its wool until huge sections of its body looked completely black. The creature tore them away in chunks, but there were always more beneath them, crawling higher, finding exposed skin, disappearing under the wool.
“They’re eating it.”
Leo went quiet.
The weresheep stumbled another few yards before one leg finally gave out. It hit the road on one knee, surged back upward, then collapsed completely as the swarm rolled over it. The screaming continued for a while after that.
Melody stepped away from the edge. Leo remained there another few seconds, his face pale, before finally dragging himself backward too.
Neither of them had anything to say.
They waited on the rooftop while the swarm passed below. Time became strange after that. Melody sat with her back against the low parapet while Leo leaned against a ventilation housing and tried not to move his ankle. She checked her phone after what felt like forever and discovered only twenty minutes had passed.
The ants were still coming.
Ten minutes later they were still coming.
Melody occasionally rose to look over the edge, expecting the swarm to suddenly change course and start crawling up the building after them, but it never did. The insects continued moving through the streets in one enormous migration, flowing between buildings and disappearing farther into the Bronx.
Eventually the vibration began weakening. Not stopping. Moving away. The dry pattering faded slowly until she could no longer feel it beneath her shoes. What had sounded like hard rain became a distant hiss, and eventually even that disappeared beneath the normal background noise of fires, alarms, and the damaged city.
The silence left behind somehow felt louder.
Melody waited several more minutes before looking over the parapet again. The street below looked different. Garbage had been scattered everywhere, and several small dead animals she remembered seeing earlier were simply gone. A few straggling ants still crawled across the road in the distance, following the larger swarm away.
There was almost nothing left of the weresheep.
She narrowed her eyes. Something glittered below.
The horns.
Both remained in the street several yards apart, surrounded by dark stains and scraps of wool the ants apparently had not considered worth carrying away. More importantly, the horns were glowing. Faint blue-white sparks drifted off them.
Mana.
Melody’s first reaction was immediate excitement. Loot. Free power.
Then she looked behind her.
Leo sat against the ventilation unit with his injured leg stretched in front of him. His ankle had swollen noticeably by now, and although he had spent the last half hour pretending it wasn’t bothering him, every time he accidentally moved it his entire face tightened.
She looked back toward the glowing horns. Her excitement changed into an idea.
She had already absorbed two monsters. The first one had healed her broken ribs and made her stronger. The snake had healed injuries that should have taken weeks and changed her even more. Leo had heard the Awakening voice too. Maybe she wasn’t the only one who could do this.
“Come on.”
Leo looked up. “Where?”
“Downstairs. I’ll carry you.”
He planted both hands against the roof and started pushing himself upright. “I’m fine. I can walk.”
“You can dramatically limp five feet before falling over.”
“I can walk.”
Melody ignored him. She crouched in front of Leo, slid one arm beneath his knees and the other behind his back, then stood before he could stop her.
Leo made a startled noise as both feet left the ground.
“Whoa, whoa! Hey! Put me down!”
“Stop squirming.”
“I’m thirteen!”
“And?”
“I’m not a baby!”
“You have one functioning leg right now, squirt.”
“Don’t call me squirt when we are like this!”
Melody laughed when Leo crossed his arms and turned his face away from her, apparently deciding that if he had no control over being carried, he could at least suffer through it with dignity.
“Then stop making this difficult.”
“You're the one who picked me up!”
“Because your ankle looks terrible.”
“I could have hopped.”
“Down five floors?”
Leo went quiet for a second. “…Maybe.”
“Nope, not gonna fly McFly.”
Melody adjusted him slightly in her arms and started walking toward the sword. Leo wasn’t especially heavy to begin with, but with whatever the monster mana had done to her body, carrying him barely felt difficult. That was another weird realization.
“Also, you weigh practically nothing now.”
“That’s not helping my manhood.”
“Manhood. Kid, you barely hit puberty yet.” With that comment melody looked down at the blushing boy as he looked anywhere but her face. Then melody remembered how they woke up this morning and stopped grinning.
“Never mind… just let me at least take you down to the street,” She said ignoring the thought.
She crouched enough to recover the snake sword, managed to get it strapped across her back without dropping Leo, then headed toward the squat rooftop structure containing the stairs. The metal door was locked.
Melody shifted Leo’s weight against one hip, wrapped her hand around the handle, and pulled. The lock tore out of the frame with a sharp metallic crack.
She froze with the door halfway open.
Leo stared at the twisted lock hanging from it. “You just broke a metal door.”
“I noticed.”
Leo looked from the door to Melody’s arm. “That's kind of scary.”
“Imagine being me.”
She pushed the door open with considerably more care. A concrete stairwell descended through the building. Emergency lights had gone dark along with everything else, leaving the interior illuminated mostly by daylight coming through small windows at each landing.
The apartment building had clearly been abandoned in a hurry. Several doors stood open as Melody carried Leo downward, giving her brief glimpses into lives that had been interrupted less than a day earlier. An overturned suitcase lay outside one apartment with clothing scattered around it. Another door revealed a living room where couch cushions had been tossed aside and kitchen cabinets stood open. On one floor a stroller sat abandoned beside the stairs.
Melody stopped looking inside after that. Someone lived here. Maybe they still did. Maybe they had gotten out. She didn’t need her imagination giving her the alternatives.
Leo’s protests about being carried became less frequent as they descended. By the time they reached the ground floor he had mostly stopped talking altogether, and Melody suspected his ankle hurt enough that pride was finally losing the argument.
They stepped back onto the street only after Melody checked carefully in both directions. The swarm was gone. The air smelled different now. Smoke and burning plastic were still present, but underneath them lingered something sharper, a strange acidic smell mixed with crushed insects and blood.
Melody followed the faint shimmer toward what remained of the weresheep. The horns rested several yards apart. Up close they didn’t look entirely natural anymore. Thin golden lines ran through the dark material like veins, and faint strands of blue-white mana lifted from the surface like steam before disappearing into the air.
She lowered Leo beside the nearest one. The moment his injured foot touched the pavement he sucked in a breath and immediately shifted his weight away from it.
“Sit.”
Leo looked from her to the horn. “What?”
“Touch it.”
His eyebrows rose. “Really?”
“You heard the Awakening voice too, and if this stuff healed me…” Melody gestured toward his ankle. “It might do something for you.”
Leo looked at the glowing horn again. “You think I can absorb the mana too?”
“I don’t know.”
“You say that a lot.”
“I'm working with a sample size of me, Leo. Just try it.”
He hesitated for another moment before slowly reaching out.
The instant his fingertips touched the horn, light erupted around him.
Melody stumbled backward in surprise. Watching the process happen to someone else was completely different from experiencing it. Blue-white streams peeled away from the horn and curled around Leo’s arm. More mana rose from the second horn several yards away, arcing through the air toward him as though the distance between them didn’t matter. The two currents spiraled together around Leo while thousands of tiny sparks filled the street.
Leo gasped as wind whipped around him. His messy brown hair lifted away from his face, his clothes fluttered, and the mana grew bright enough that Melody had to narrow her eyes.
She stared for several seconds before Edward’s brain supplied the comparison.
“That is absolutely the Skyrim animation.”
Leo looked at her through the swirling light. “What?”
“Nothing!”
The glow intensified enough that both of them finally covered their eyes. Then it vanished.
The sudden darkness behind Melody’s eyelids lasted several seconds. When she lowered her arm again, the horns had gone completely dull. Leo remained sitting where she had left him.
Except something had changed.
“What the…”
Leo looked down at himself. A golden wool hoodie now covered his upper body. At first glance it almost looked like a completely normal pullover large hood, long sleeves, pouch pocket across the front. The shape was normal. The material was not.
Soft golden fleece covered the entire outside. Not yellow fabric designed to look like wool. Actual wool, thick enough that Melody could see individual curls in the material. It shimmered faintly whenever the mana falling from the sky touched it.
Leo rubbed the sleeve between his fingers. “It’s really soft.”
Melody crouched beside him and pinched some of the fleece herself. “What! No fair, you got clothes.”
Leo looked at the sword on her back. “What are you talking about? You got cool weapons.”
“Yeah but…It’s cute.” Melody really did find it cute. The brain occupying her body couldn’t help but appreciate the color and how it made Leo look.
His expression flattened.
Melody lifted both hands. “Not judging.”
Then the hoodie started glowing.
Leo looked down. “Uh… Melody?”
Golden light spread outward from the center of his chest. At first it was faint enough that Melody thought the garment might simply be reacting to him. Then heat hit her face. A sizzling sound came from somewhere beneath the fleece.
Leo’s eyes widened. “AHH!”
His entire body arched.
Melody reacted before thinking. She lunged forward, grabbed the bottom of the hoodie, and tried ripping it upward.
“Leo!”
He caught her wrists and shoved against her arms. “Wait!”
“What do you mean, wait? You’re cooking!”
“WAIT!”
Melody froze. The golden light continued for another few seconds before slowly fading. The heat disappeared with it, leaving Leo hunched forward on the pavement and breathing like he had just sprinted several blocks. His face had turned bright red, sweat dampened his forehead, and for several seconds Melody remained crouched directly in front of him with both hands ready to grab the hoodie again the instant it started doing anything remotely suspicious.
“Leo, what just happened?” The concern in her voice sounding almost motherly. For all she knew, the magical sweater had just branded him like an actual sheep.
Leo opened his mouth as though he intended to answer, but whatever explanation he had apparently required more oxygen than he currently possessed. He swallowed, took another slow breath, then placed one hand against the pavement and started pushing himself upright instead.
“Wait, your leg isn’t…” Melody began.
Then she realized what he was doing.
Leo stood. Not balancing awkwardly on one foot. Not keeping the injured ankle raised. Standing normally.
Melody’s eyes immediately dropped toward the leg he had twisted on the rooftop. The swelling that had been obvious only minutes earlier was gone.
Leo seemed to notice at almost the same moment. He cautiously shifted more weight onto that foot. Nothing happened. He put all of his weight on it. Still nothing. He slowly rotated his ankle one direction, then the other, watching it as though he expected the pain to suddenly return. When it didn’t, he bounced once on the foot experimentally before planting both feet firmly on the pavement.
Melody stared at him. “Your ankle.”
“I know.”
Leo bent forward with both hands on his knees and took several deep breaths. Whatever the hoodie had done to him seemed to have taken a lot out of him, but the injury itself was gone. Not reduced. Gone. A few moments earlier he had barely been able to put weight on it. Now he could jump.
Melody slowly looked at the golden wool covering his arms. Leo followed her gaze. Then a grin spread across his face. Not one of the tiny smiles she had managed to drag out of him since finding him. A real grin.
Melody immediately became suspicious. “What?”
Leo grabbed one of the golden fleece sleeves and held it up between them. “Did you ever read Percy Jackson in school?”
Melody stared at the wool. Then at Leo. Then back at the hoodie. Golden fleece. Healing.
Her expression slowly changed as Edward’s memory supplied the obvious answer.
“No freaking way.”