Another bone went flying through the air, bouncing off his head with surprising grace. Tuck glared. “Don’t even, Sprout.”
He cowered and held up his hands in defeat. “All right, I’m sorry!”
“You’d better be. One more wisecrack, and Perry gets your blanket tonight. Now.” She turned back to me. “Your name. This is important, you know. You don’t have to look like you’re about to burst out laughing.”
I wasn’t, but for her sake, I made my expression go neutral. “Why is this important?”
“Because your name is your destiny. It’s your identity—it’s everything you are. Once you have your name, that’s it. That’s all you’ll ever be.”
“And yet you’re giving me a new one,” I said, and she shrugged.
“Sure, because once you have a new name, you’ll be a new person. Not literally, obviously,” she said when I opened my mouth to protest. “But in the eyes of everyone else, you’re fresh. You’re unknown, a blank slate, and your name decides whether you stand out, blend in—you can fool yourself into thinking you’re more than your name, but you never will be. Not until you start over and make another one for yourself.”
Something pinged in the back of my mind, but I was too caught up in the way her lips moved to pay any attention. “So who am I then?”
She tapped her chin, and I held my breath. I understood what she was saying far better than she probably thought I did; I’d had plenty of names before, after all, but for some reason, this seemed monumentally more important than all the rest. “James,” she said. “Definitely a James.”
I raised an eyebrow. So much for monumental. “James? Really?”
“Yes, really. What’s wrong with James?”
“Nothing, I just—”
“You just what?”
I watched her for a long moment, and she didn’t so much as blink. “It’ll do,” I finally said, and she grinned.
“Of course it will. You don’t look like much, but a lot is happening underneath the surface. That’s the kind of name James is.” Popping a few berries into her mouth, she chewed slowly, her eyes fluttering shut as if she were savoring them. “Mmm. I’ve never had these before. You’re sure they’re not poisonous?”
“Positive. Despite your strange taste in names, I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“I’m not so sure.” She opened her eyes again and glanced around the circle, as if she was sizing everyone up. “All right, James. You really want the chance to prove yourself to us?”
They weren’t getting rid of me, but I might as well be polite about it. “Yes.”
“If you’re going to run with us, you’re going to have to steal. You think you can do that?”
“I think I can manage.”
“Tomorrow the earl who owns this land is going to be coming down that trail—”
“Tuck!” cried Perry, but Sprout clapped his hand over his mouth.
“—and you have to rob him.”
Perry squirmed in Sprout’s grip, but I held Tuck’s gaze. A robbery. Easy enough. I’d done plenty of those in my lifetime. “Anything in particular you want me to take?”
She toyed with the end of her braid, but there was something in the way she watched me that made it clear this was more than just some robbery to her. A hunger that hadn’t been there before. “Let’s make it interesting. Steal the pendant from around his neck, along with any other valuables you find.”
“And if I can do it?”
“Then you’ll be one of us.”
“And if I don’t?”
“You show us how you hunt, and then you leave us alone. Forever.”
Forever was much, much longer than she realized. I stuck my hand out, and she grasped my fingers, her grip surprisingly strong. “Deal,” I said.
She smirked, and my stomach did a flip-flop. “Deal.”
* * *
The convoy approached our section of the trail shortly after dawn. Six men, all riding stallions that pranced too much to be completely broken. Good. That would work in my favor.
It was easy enough to tell who the leader was—not the man at point who wore a cape with an insignia on it. Judging by the way he tilted slightly to his left, toward an older man who sat up straighter than the others and stuck his nose in the air, the first was a decoy. The other man was the real earl.
Tuck, Sprout, Perry and Mac—who still hadn’t said a single word to me—all waited in the trees, shielded by the thick foliage. Even if someone did spot them, they’d have the advantage, and that calmed my nerves. The last thing I wanted was to have to escort one of them down into the Underworld. Judging by the way Perry had deftly avoided me that morning, however, I figured they all expected me to be the one who bit the dust.
I sat in a tree as well, much lower than the others, and I waited. The procession had to squeeze through the narrow pathway, the horses bumping one another and spooking, but there wasn’t anywhere to go. They were trapped. I held my breath and slowly counted. Three, two, one…
Leaping from the tree, I landed squarely on the back of the earl’s horse, and I held a piece of sharp rock to the old man’s neck. The other men shouted, and their horses reared. But despite flying hooves and the screech of metal against metal as they unsheathed their swords, I held on tight. This was the easy part.