Next to it sat a little stone gargoyle-looking thing with a dopey smile, moss covering its head and shoulders, and a cheery red scarf wrapped around its neck in an effort to make it fit in with the surroundings. About ten feet beyond it, I could see another stump with a tiny door and little round stones leading to it. Off to the side, a miniature stone leprechaun lay back in its buckled hat and green coat.

I continued on, my teeth clenched and my spell ready. Shivers crept up my spine. The wind moaned.

The goblin’s magic intensified. Came pulsing toward me in strong waves.

Confused, I stopped and then back-pedaled, feeling for the source of the magic. I stopped five feet from that gargoyle-looking thing with the dopey smile. And the deep red scarf. The color of blood.

Hiding in plain sight.

“You’re positive it can’t shift into other forms?” I asked in a hush, staring at the stone gargoyle. Feeling the potent, vile magic pumping into the air.

Stone eyes moved. Changed. Colorized.

Turned as red as the scarf.

My mouth went dry.

I worked a few final elements into my spell, preparing to blast the thing. I just needed to get distance between us before it launched at me.

Too late.

Stone crumbled away, revealing crusty, deep gray skin. Long, curved claws at the end of knobby, knuckled hands flew up. It pushed out of its crouch and jumped at me faster than I could flinch.

I didn’t even have time to scream.

2

I knew one moment of blind terror before something body-slammed the creature from the side. Reagan. Her sword came up and flashed downward as they tumbled onto the ground.

She’d been across the freaking river! I hadn’t heard any water splashing.

Stupid me. For a second I’d forgotten she could fly-hover with her nutso-powerful magic. Thoughts were slow in getting through my head.

The creature screeched and twisted, swiping a claw toward her face. She jerked back, her faster-than-human speed saving her.

“Fast fucker, aren’t you?” I heard her say in a series of grunts. She hacked at its limbs with her sword, but the creature was on the move, twisting out from under her weight and springing up.

I shot out a stream of white survival magic. After that scare, it was on hand and ready to be used. The creature morphed into stone, one moment an organic, living thing, and the next a bristling stone creature that looked way more like a gargoyle than the dopey thing from a moment ago.

“Oh yeah, it can change shape, all right.” My magic hit its stone surface and bounced off at an angle, catching a tree and burning a hole through its trunk.

“Oh-kay. That’s a helluva trick,” Reagan said as she thrust her sword at its middle. The blade clanged off the creature’s belly and the Redcap morphed back into an organic being, launching at her with a growl. “Bugger!”

She jumped and kicked, her boot hitting it in the face and sending it staggering backward. I shot out another stream of magic, but the creature shifted back into stone as it tumbled across the ground, once again deflecting my efforts.

“Shizlefritz banana hammock,” I ground out, weaving a more intense, highly powerful spell that should twist its head right off. It would be gross, but that thing and its crusty red hat had to go. “How the heck can it make its hat change into a scarf and back?” For some reason, that struck me more than the whole changing-into-stone thing.

I flung my hands forward as Reagan took a running leap at the creature, my spell getting to it just before she did. The spell splatted against the stone but wouldn’t wrap around its neck. Unrealized, it fizzled back into the nature around us.

“Did you do that?” I asked her, frustrated and possibly suffering from cardiac arrest.

“You’ll need to think outside of the box for this one,” Reagan said before ramming into it with her shoulder and rolling across the ground. “Come back to normal, you filthy creature, so I can kill you!”

“Oh yeah, that approach will work, definitely.”

And yet the creature bounded up, bucking her off. Its hiss emitted a putrid smell that made her hesitate for a moment, her eyes going hazy.

“Oh no!” I shot a trapping spell at it before following with a kill spell.

The creature stopped its lunge for her and snapped back into stone right before my second spell could make contact.

“Dang it, Penny, I would’ve had it.” Reagan kicked the now-inanimate statue, catching it in the head and sending it cartwheeling end over end across the ground.

“How was I supposed to know? I thought you’d been stunned.”

“Magic from creatures of the Underworld doesn’t work on me.” Her tone carried an implied duh. She ran after the creature, which had come to life again and was scampering up a tree.

“I didn’t even know vampires existed a year ago.” I sprinted after her. “How in Mary’s cookie jar am I supposed to keep track of the magic of random creatures and how it reacts with yours if you never explain anything?”

“I just did.” She caught up to it as it tried to scurry up a tree. She grabbed it by the ankle and swung her sword around.

As she should’ve expected, the sword clanged off stone. It dropped to the ground. Once there, it changed again, clearly not taxed by the constant shifting like a vampire or shifter would be. It slashed at her with its sharp claws.

She dodged and countered, just as fast, twice as vicious.

Her fist met stone. “Damn it. Stop with that stone crap.”

This wasn’t working. At this rate, it would wear us down until we were tired and making mistakes. We needed a Plan B.

I stilled, closing my eyes for a moment and racking my brain. The name of the game was to stop it from changing to stone. Which meant I had to somehow block it from using its magic.

The nature around me whispered its song, centering me in the moment. Fanning my magic higher. I let it balloon out then blossom, confident that Reagan would keep the creature occupied.

I felt what I was looking for, hidden within the natural elements. A strange sort of magic wove through it, turning certain wisps brittle. The differences between these rogue strands and the heavy fog I’d been feeling were minute, barely discernible, and the magic was slippery when I tried to tap into it. Evasive.

Like the creature. It refused to heed me.

This was a puzzle and I wasn’t totally sure how to put it all together.

“Taking a wee nap, are you?” Reagan asked, then grunted.

Peeling up an eyelid, I realized she was talking to me. I also realized she had met her match when it came to speed and cunning. The creature dodged her attempt to sweep its legs out from under it before ducking under her left hook with a feral grin. She jabbed with her sword, only to hit off stone. She surged in to grab it, but when she made contact, it was once again an organic creature, and its claws swung up seemingly out of nowhere.

Air wrapped around the creature, her ice magic (I could never remember the Latin name) lifting it and then crashing it to the dirt. But stone was more durable than the rain-softened ground, and the battering did nothing more than dirty the creature.

It turned back into itself before striking out. She dodged and blasted it with fire. The flame washed across stone.

“That is the fastest shift I have ever seen,” she said through clenched teeth. “I can’t even burn it. What a crock.”

Stone turned back to gray skin. “I will dip my hat in your blood yet.” Its voice was deep and scratchy, like the words were scraped with sandpaper.

“You’ll have to pull it out of your ass, first,” she replied, facing it with her hand and sword out. “Because that’s where I’m going to shove it.”

“How does it withstand your magic?” I asked her, trying to figure out the riddle.

“It hits off the stone and just…slides away. I have never, ever seen a creature withstand my magic. Never. I can’t feel any spells or anything. I can’t fathom how it’s doing it.”

“I was given special gifts by the gods,” the Redcap said as it tried to circle Reagan, looking for an in. This thing thought it could win. It was not worried. And if I knew Reagan, she shared its sentiment. “I am not like the rest of my kind.”

“Well, aren’t you suddenly Mr. Chatty. How’d you get up to see the gods? A great big ladder?” She dashed forward, faster than lightning. But not faster than the goblin. Her sword tip scraped stone.