While I'd had my eyes closed, Jack had climbed back down the other side of the tree. He was now perched about twelve feet off the ground, in human form, with part of his head pushed forward into a hollow on the side of the tree.
He leaned back and looked down at us. "There either is or was definitely something Fae here. My skin feels like it's being electrocuted."
"Can you reach in and feel around?" I asked.
He shook his head. "No, I tried that. This is a deep hole that goes down into the tree, and I've already felt around as far as I can reach."
"Too bad you can't turn into a little kitten and climb down there," Carlos said, unhelpfully.
Logan flew down and landed next to me, shifting back to human. "I'm way too big to climb in there too, unfortunately. Don't you have any magical levitation tricks, vampire?"
Carlos bared what looked like a few too many teeth—but no fangs, thankfully—at the eagle shifter. "I don't like you, bird boy. Don't press your luck."
"Nobody likes him," Jack said, lightly dropping to the ground next to us. "And yet he keeps turning up. Okay, thoughts? We have enough of various types of magic users in town that we should be able to—"
"Just get a chain saw," Logan said. "We can chop this baby down in—"
"Nobody is chopping this tree down," Susan said. "Don't make me throw you in jail."
"Hey! Why is everybody always trying to put me in jail? I—"
"Stop," I shouted. "Just stop. All of you stop. You supernatural types—"
"Says the woman who can see how I'm going to die if I touch her," Logan murmured, but when I glared at him, he stepped back, holding his hands up in an "I surrender" pose. "Sorry."
"Yes, you've made your point," I said. "But I like to rely on good, old-fashioned, human ingenuity to solve problems. Like right now, when I have a tent in the car."
They all gave me blank looks.
"A tent?" Susan's brows rose. "Maybe that headache is worse than you thought, Tess—"
I cut her off. "Do you still have those tennis balls from when that K-9 dog visited?"
"I—tennis balls?"
"Yes. We need one."
It took a beat, but then she nodded. "Yes. I'll get one out of the locker room in the station. But—"
"Great! I'll get the tent and the duct tape out of my car." With that, I ran for my car, Jack right behind me.
I opened the trunk and dug around to find the duct tape—never leave home without it!—and then grabbed the tent and handed it to Jack.
His forehead furrowed. "Are we going to camp at the tree until we find the dagger? I mean, I'm with you, no matter what, but maybe you could explain the game plan?"
"Nope. No camping. We're going to MacGyver this problem." I grinned at him and slammed the trunk lid shut.
"We'rewhat?"
"Come on, I don't want to explain twice." We ran back to the tree, and Susan joined us a few moments later with a ragged-looking tennis ball. That dog hadlovedto play fetch.
"Okay," I said, dropping the duct tape on the ground at my feet and holding out a hand for the tent. When Jack gave it to me, I untied the drawstring and pulled out one of the collapsible tent poles. Then I held my hand out for the tennis ball.
"We can't get a pole or stick down in the hollow because poles and sticks don't bend. But this collapsible tent pole is built in segments, with this elastic rope holding it together from the inside of the pole. So we can feed it into the hollow in the tree, segment by segment, and attach each segment to the length of the pole once it's inside. But first …"
I looked at the rounded end of the pole. "Nope. We need something sharp. Anybody have a knife? I need to make a hole in the ball to stab the end of the pole into."
Susan, Logan, and Carlos all reached into their pockets, but Jack simply held out one hand and extended a tiger claw from the end of his human finger.
