Warm Nights in Magnolia Bay by Babette Jongh (best fantasy books to read TXT) 📕

“Okay, I’ll leave the light off if you’re sleeping on the patio. Is that what you’re doing?”

Same image.

“Okay, got it. Where would you like to be fed?”

He showed an image of him eating from a bowl on the patio.

She imagined a band of raccoons coming to eat the food and fighting the cats.

He showed the image of him curled up on the patio. I won’t let them come. I will protect everyone from harm. In her imagination, he lowered himself to his elbows and put his head on his paws. I won’t harm anyone, not even the chickens or the rabbits. I won’t need to eat them if you are feeding me.

“Will you show yourself, so I can see you?”

And just like that, his image in her imagination melted away.

* * *

Wolf slept hard that night. The bug-attracting light had been turned off, so he was able to rest without insects buzzing in his ears. The first few nights of his vigil, he’d slept lightly, waking often to chase away the masked intruders that seemed so humanlike with their little five-fingered hands and their ability to stand, and even walk, on their hind legs.

He allowed the armadillos and possums to stay. They assured him that their only interest was in eating any bugs and grubs they could find in the short grass. Georgia came to visit him after the lights went out inside the house. She cleaned his wound, which didn’t hurt much anymore but itched and burned as new skin grew from the edges inward, coming together to cover the scabbed-over patch. When she finished, she curled up in front of him. They lay like that for a long time, like one leaf curled around another.

Maybe her presence was the reason he’d slept so deeply. He’d been alone for so long, he had nearly forgotten how it felt to relax into the safety of companionship. Georgia went back inside the house just before dawn, and Wolf stretched out on the cool cement patio to doze till morning. He would leave before the dew was absorbed into the grass or suspended in the air. He knew that Quinn—and the young Quinn he’d seen from a distance—would come then, and he didn’t want to scare them.

More than that, he didn’t want to be chased away.

And though Abby had promised not to chase him, Quinn hadn’t promised him anything. A few of the cats came close to sniff him cautiously, and he remained still so they could explore him without fear.

Stillness lured him back to sleep, and he dreamed of rabbits and ground squirrels sleeping with each other the way he and Georgia had: one leaf curled around another. He dreamed that the yard was filled with pillows on top of wood blocks, like the one in the house where the cat slept. He and Georgia shared the biggest pillow, a fluffy, soft one that puffed up around them like a nest.

He didn’t hear the Quinns arrive until they were right on top of him. He barely had time to run around the corner of the house.

“Whoa, did you see that?” He heard the young Quinn say.

“No, what?” The first Quinn knocked on the glass door.

“Nothing, I guess.”

Wolf hid in the den he had dug in the red dirt under the front porch. He hoped it would show Georgia that he could be her home just as much as her people now were. But it also gave him a place to hide in case someone closed the gate and blocked his escape route into the forest. It hadn’t happened, but at least he had options. He wouldn’t stay hidden in the den for long this time, just until he heard the sounds of the two Quinns feeding the barn animals. Then, he would run back to the isolation of the forest.

Chapter 15

Quinn kept Sean busy after chores on Sunday with pool time in the morning followed by lunch with Abby followed by an afternoon paddleboard excursion, just the two of them.

They carried the boards all the way down the driveway, all the way to the corner, and all the way down the dead-end road next to the estate. Quinn figured Sean would complain about the trudge, but instead, he complained that paddleboards weren’t as cool as kayaks.

“I think you’ll like it once you try it,” Quinn said. “Paddleboards are more versatile; you can stand or sit, or even lie flat if you want. In a kayak, all you can do is sit, and after a while, your butt goes numb.”

Sean grinned. “Your butt, maybe.”

They put the boards in at the crumbling old boat launch. Sean stood in the knee-deep brown water and held his board steady while Quinn secured a life jacket and water bottle in the net on Sean’s board, then put the small cooler of snacks Abby had packed for them on his.

“Are you sure this bayou even goes to the bay?” Sean’s voice wobbled uncertainly.

“You’re standing in the bay right now.” Quinn pushed his own board out a little deeper, straddled it, then sat cross-legged and put the paddle across his lap. “All these little bayous around here are part of it.”

Quinn let his board drift while Sean struggled to climb onto his own board without tipping the edges into the water. “Just sit, Son,” he instructed. “You’re gonna get wet regardless, so go ahead and sit.”

Looking as if he’d rather be anywhere else on God’s green earth, Sean sat. “Even if these little backwaters are technically part of the bay, we could still get lost in them, couldn’t we?”

“We won’t get lost, I promise,” Quinn said.

Sean made a frustrated grumbling sound; his attempt to paddle away from the launch was turning him in circles, and he was about to end up in the weeds. “Aaaagh, shoot!”

Quinn knew he’d get the hang of it soon enough, and he didn’t want to start out by giving orders, but Sean held the paddle backwards and was sitting too