“And I don’t understand why you won’t let me go after them. They were one of you, doesn’t that mean anything?”

The husky man in front of me with the red beard and sun-tanned face named Ryan slammed his fist onto the table. “Enough of this. If you want to be one of us, then you will do as we say.”

“You are not the boss of me,” I snapped back. “Now tell me about their mission or…”

“Or what,” Ryan snapped. “You’ll poke at me with your pathetic little blade or set your dumb ass bird on me? You want our protection and you’ll earn it or I’ll feed you to the Crocs.”

“I don’t care about your protection. I’ll go on my own. They are my family, now tell me!”

Theo reached out, wrapping his fingers painfully over the shoulder that was Frank free. “Enough, Joe. This is not the way.”

I shrugged him off. “It’s the only way. I won’t leave them out there alone and in danger.”

Ryan threw up his hands. “They are dead. Can’t you just accept that? They’ve been gone for over three months. There is no way they could have survived.”

“You don’t know them like I do,” I snapped right back.

“Theo, get him out of my sight now before I take his head off.”

Theo gripped me again only harder this time and forcefully guided me from the room. Frank screamed from my shoulder but by now, three weeks into us being here, everyone was used to his hysterics. I shoved off Theo’s hand the moment we returned to our designated room.

“You can’t keep doing this, Joe,” Theo snapped, rubbing a hand over his face.

“I don’t want to hear it, Theo. I’m not going to stop. They’re out there, I just know it.”

“You have to let this go or they’ll kick you out of here. Do you really think if Nora was still alive that they wouldn’t be back here? You know her as well as I do. She’s a formidable force and she loves our ragtag family. She would be here if she could be,” Theo said.

“I know that. That’s why I’m sure she’s been captured. Something, or someone, is keeping her from us. We can’t leave her, or Stella, or Jacob, or Miranda out there on their own. They belong here, with us,” I said.

“You’re not going to get anything out of them this way. You need to focus on proving yourself to them. Make yourself invaluable and then maybe they’ll give you something,” Theo said.

“And how long will that take? A month? Two? I can’t just play nice and let them suffer for that long.” I stepped up close to him, jabbing him in the chest. “You, me, Gabby, and Sob are enough. We can leave this place and search for them. We can bring them home.” Frank squawked from his place on my shoulder so I quickly added, “and Frank.”

Theo shoved my hand away. “I am not having this conversation with you again.”

I swore and threw my arms in the air, marching away from the frustrating man. I tried to run my fingers through my hair but since I’d cut it short there was nothing to thread them through. I guess that was the downside of trying to be pretty. That feeling of wanting to hit something had resurfaced. Theo seemed like the ideal target for my fury. Self-control is a damn hard thing to maintain sometimes.

I needed my family back. All of them. If these people wouldn’t help me, then I would have to go out on my own. I would retrace their steps and I would find them and bring them home. I could do that.

On my second night here I’d sifted through the rack of weapons on the wall, hoping to find my blades twin stuffed among all the others, but it wasn’t there. Theo, after letting me search the entire rack, had told me Nora had sold it. I wanted to be angry at her for that, but how could I be angry when she was in danger?

Sob’s buzz of electricity filled me again as he climbed onto my boot. He wasn’t trying to hurt me like he normally was. The miniature horse could feel my frustration, and maybe, he shared some of the same feelings as well. I bent down, scooped him up, and placed him in the front pocket of my leathers. He snorted, shoving the flap up with his head, and looked around. Frank mumbled his displeasure at having the horse so close but reframed from screaming which I appreciated. My head was pounding enough without his incessant noise.

“Is there someone else I can talk to other than that Ryan guy?” I asked.

“Ryan is in charge of the outside missions. He is your best source of information,” Theo said from his place by the door.

“Well he’s giving me nothing, so who’s second in charge?”

Theo remained quiet for a long time, so long that I turned back around to look at him. His face was beet red and he was looking down at the tips of his boots. He was shuffling about like a boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

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“Theo?” I asked.

Theo cleared his throat and looked anywhere but at me. “Tanya, her name is Tanya.”

“And she is?”

“She’s in charge of the Crafters. She keeps everyone here in line and everything running smoothly while Ryan is busy with the warriors,” he said.

“And?”

“There is no ‘and’. That’s it,” Theo said. “I have to go.”

He turned to the door. I Blinked across the room, blocking his path. “Take me to her.”

“She won’t speak to you,” Theo snapped, trying unsuccessfully to get around me.

“Why not?”

“Look, you live here but you’re not really one of the Outsiders. As far as they’re concerned, you’re a dangerous freeloader.”

I blanched, unsure how to respond for a moment. “What if I could give her something useful, would she talk to me then?”

“You’re not a crafter, Joe. Besides, you wouldn’t agree to be a scout for Ryan. Why are you willing to do something for Tanya?” he asked.

“We both know it would have taken months of scouting for Ryan to give me anything. I can give Tanya something right now that might make her talk,” I said.

“What?”

“Take me to her and I’ll show you.”

The walk through the tunnels that followed was made in awkward silence. Theo wore a look of something akin to fear on his face the entire time. I tried to ask questions about this new mystery woman he was taking me to meet but they fell on deaf ears.

We snaked our way back to the central room and walked around the pool in the center of it to the tunnels on the other side. I eyed Ryan, who still stood on the concrete island in the middle of the room, as we passed. He noticed us immediately but avoided openly looking in our direction. He was speaking to a man dressed in full black-hued armor like Theo was, pointing at the stone slab in front of him and then off into the tunnels. The man he was speaking to was nodding along to the man's directions. The pair were no doubt planning another raid of some kind. The Outsiders always seemed to be up to something.

Even after three weeks of living here, I wasn’t sure how I felt about being trapped with them. They clearly had an agenda though whether that was simply surviving or something else entirely I wasn’t sure. Aside from Theo and Gabby, no one had really bothered to have a conversation with me other than an occasional greeting and maybe a little uninformative small talk.

I felt like an outcast in this place. Like I didn’t belong in their midst. I didn’t want to play the game by their rules and that made me repellent in their eyes. It was like I was a kid again; roaming the outskirts of society but never really being part of it.

I shook off my grim thoughts as Theo and I marched into a lantern-lit tunnel, following the curves and dips until we came across a room that looked unlike the others I’d seen so far. The room was jammed full of people hurriedly working away but one of them stood out among the others. It wasn’t because she was imposing like Nora or because she was powerfully magical like Miranda, no, it was because she radiated control. It was an odd sensation, one that was almost palpable in the air around her. Even before Theo’s awkward introduction, I knew exactly who she was.

Tanya was not what I expected. She stood a full head shorter than me and had a rope of mousy brown hair. She wore a long plain robe that billowed around her in the breeze that seemed to rush through the tunnels for some reason.

Tanya didn’t venture out of her crafting room very much, preferring the long thin room filled with tables and various supplies that I didn’t know the purpose of. When Theo introduced me to her she cast her soft brown eyes over me, judging me right down to my core while I stood there awkwardly.

“He doesn’t look like much, Theo,” she said in a surprisingly deep timbre. “Surely Ryan has more use for him than I do.”

Theo started muttering apologies and nonsensical explanations so I stepped up in his place and said, “I can make poisons.”

Silence fell over our small group of three. Well, five if you count Frank and Sob. Theo, finally realizing what I was doing couldn’t keep the smile from his face. Tanya took the news a little differently. Her brows dipped and she tapped a finger over her lips as she considered my words. Her eyes twinkled when she made a decision. I shuffled my feet, somehow frightened of what she’d have to say.

“Come with me.”

She turned and started marching down the long thin room. I jogged to keep up with her speedy pace. Theo made a move to follow us but she cast a few intricate hand movements his way that I didn’t understand and he stayed put.

I fingered the crossbow strapped to my wrist, wishing I’d thought to load it before I’d walked in here. The many Crafters lining the tables doing all manner of useful things followed me with their gaze as I walked past. I could hear the low hum of whispers behind my back. Being the center of attention was my least favorite place to be.

“Hurry up, dear. I have places to be.”

I jumped and quickened my pace, catching up to Tanya’s flashing heels. She led me through a doorway into a darkened tunnel, and then through another door on the other side into a large square chamber lit by lanterns. The sound of rushing water that I’d heard all throughout this sewer was louder here which made sense since there was a divet of running water cutting the place in two. All around me, on raised platforms or simply sprouting from the cracks in the stone at my feet were plants of every kind imaginable. From ugly-looking mushrooms to fantastical yellow blooms as big as I was. The room was hot and humid like I’d been transported to the tropics.

“Welcome to our growing room,” Tanya said with an unnecessary flourish. “Our scouts have brought back samples of each craftable plant they have come across on their missions. Our Growers have done a fine job cultivating those samples into this garden. The Outsiders have many more of these scattered about through the tunnels, but this is the only one with nothing edible in the mix.

Can you make poisons from this?”

I looked around, following the small path that weaved through the growing beds using my Identify skill on everything that caught my interest.

White snakeroot

Angel's trumpet

Hemlock

Oleander

I turned back to Tanya with a smile on my face. “You bet I can.”