Tobias dropped the last box into the bed of the truck and dusted off his hands. The satisfied smile from a job well done slipped off his lips as his gaze landed back on the house and Luc standing out front, hesitating to close the door.

  He gave her a moment, waiting for her to step away, but she didn’t. Luc remained there, staring at the house as though it had the answer to some big secret.

  He closed the truck bed and walked toward her. She carried a single bag in her arms, things she’d gone through the house collecting without letting him get a peek. He didn’t mean to look but still caught a glimpse at the picture at the top of the bag. A young Luc and her mom, smiling at the camera with more joy than he’d ever seen in her expression.

  “We can always go talk to your mom and—”

  “No.” She cut him off before he could finish and slammed the door shut. “There’s no point.”

  She stomped back to the car before he could say another word, throwing herself into the passenger seat and slamming the door.

  Tobias waited for a moment before following. Dealing with Luc could be so… frustrating, especially when she didn’t talk. Which was pretty much all the time. He’d thought, maybe, she’d open up more now, but the idea had quickly been dashed. She still didn’t want to talk, and that was fine.

  He climbed into the driver’s seat and pulled out, starting the trek back to the farm.

  Luc held the bag of pictures, memories really, in her lap, arms over it protectively.

  Luc must have caught him looking, because she let out a sigh, dropping her head back against the headrest. “I’m trying to decide if I think my mom ever wanted me, or if she was just better at hiding it when I was younger.”

  Tobias stared at the road, working out a response. The fact that she was talking to him was a miracle, but he also didn’t know what to say.

  “I’m sorry,” he said finally. “Is there an option that’s better?”

  “No.” She slumped further in the seat and dug into the bag, going through pictures in tattered frames, as well as a few other odds and ends. Something that had to be one of Luc’s first contraptions. She used to make things all the time in elementary school, always building something. The memories were blurry, but he could remember always finding her at recess putting some new toy together. “Am I stupid for keeping all of this?”

  “No. I mean, she’s your mom. Has she tried to talk to you at all?”

  “No,” Luc said. She opened her mouth to say more and let out a yelp instead, reaching across the car and grabbing the steering wheel to jerk it to the side.

  Tobias slammed on the breaks, whipping around to look back at the road as his heart jumped to the back of his throat. He expected to find another car or maybe some kids in the road that Luc had just stopped him from running over. Instead, a huge, four legged beast had climbed out of the creek and crawled into the middle of the street, slimy red tail snaking out behind it.

  “Aww,” Tobias said, leaning forward over the steering wheel to get a better look. “A swamp puppy!”

  “No! No, not aww!” Luc shouted, not loosening her grip on the wheel, as though she expected Tobias to try and keep driving. “That was not here earlier. Where did it come from?”

  Tobias shrugged, but she was right. They’d passed by here just a few hours earlier, and it had absolutely not been here. The creek also wasn’t big enough to hide something like this.

  Rather than keep moving, it settled down against the asphalt, head tilted upward toward the sky.

  “Doesn’t look like it has any plans of moving anytime soon,” Tobias said. “I’ll just turn around.”

  Luc shook her head as he put the car into reverse, glad to leave the creature where it was at.

  “We can’t just leave it here,” she said. “Somebody could get hurt.”

  He supposed somebody could get hurt if they didn’t notice the thing and ran into it. “Okay. What do we do?”

  “We don’t do anything,” Luc said. She pulled out her phone, pulling up the mage commission app. “I’ll deal with it. Just let me log the event so I get paid to exterminate it.”

  He grabbed her arm. “Hold on, why are you going to kill it? It’s not like it’s doing anything.”

  “It’s a crocodile.”

  “It’s a salamander,” Tobias said with a meaningful look. Just because he’d called it a swamp puppy didn’t make it an alligator. It was closer to an alligator sized salamander, bright red and orange just like the ones he’d pulled out from beneath rocks and stones as a kid. Magic had just enlarged one of the common salamanders they had near the creeks and ponds. “It’s harmless. It just eats bugs!”

  Luc looked skeptical, eyebrow raised as she stared at the thing. “You want me to just leave it here?”

  “Of course not, that creek is way too small for it,” Tobias said. “We can just relocate it.”

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  “Relocate it?” Luc asked. “That’s not standard policy…”

  “Didn’t you just relocate a hive of magical bees the other week?”

  “Yeah, but they were useful.”

  Tobias scoffed. He couldn’t imagine killing something just because it wasn’t useful. Salamanders were extremely useful for the environment, but the commission would have magical ones killed just because they couldn’t make money off of them, and that was ridiculous. “That’s stupid.”

  “It’s standard.”

  “Well, we’re not going to do that,” Tobias said, unbuckling his seatbelt. Even if he had to wrangle and relocate the creature himself, he’d make sure it didn’t get killed. “It’s not like it had a choice to become magical. Even less than you, I’d think.”

  “I guess?” Luc followed him out of the car, the engine still humming as they stood in front of it, giving the creature a little bit of space. He doubted the salamander was dangerous, and the ones nearby weren’t poisonous, but he didn’t want to spook it.

  “This is your fault, you know.”

  Tobias snapped his head down to look at her. “How is this my fault?”

  “These magical creatures just love you,” she said, waving her hand. “They keep showing up nearby.”

  “I don’t know about that. I wasn’t at the farm when the spiders spawned.”

  “Yeah, but you live there,” Luc said. “Just accept magic already and get it over with.”

  “If I do that, will the animals stop mutating?”

  Luc was suspiciously silent, and Tobias snorted.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought. No, thanks.”

  “You sure? You could join Maisey on jobs.”

  “Killing innocent creatures? No, thank you,” Tobias said. “Plus, Maisey is plenty excited to take jobs with you and Marie, I don’t think she needs me cramping her style.”

  Luc’s face visibly darkened at the mention of Marie and she looked away. “Yeah, well…”

  Tobias rolled his eyes. “Going back to hating Marie, are we?”

  “No.”

  “Uh huh.” He rolled up his sleeves, then thought better of it and pulled the jacket off. He could probably use it to capture the giant salamander and keep it from hurting itself as he transported it. “Does that mean you’re going to reschedule your date?”

  “It was never a date,” Luc muttered. “And I don’t have time for that thing anyway.”

  “Except you do now,” Tobias pointed out. “No more work at the cafe means more time to date the cute girl who’s obsessed with you.”

  “She’s not obsessed with me,” Luc said, rolling her eyes. “Where do you plan on bringing this to?”

  “There’s a pond just off the farm,” Tobias said. “We can take it there. If you hold it—”

  “You hold it, and I’ll drive,” Luc said, cutting him off. “I’m not touching that.”

  “Fine. Can you just go around behind it in case it tries to run off?”

  Luc looked like she wanted to protest but nodded just the same and walked silently to the edge of the road.

  “You don’t even know if it’ll be able to survive anywhere else, or at all,” Luc said.

  “And that makes it okay to kill it?” Tobias asked. “No, we’re going to give it a chance at life.”

  Tobias spread his jacket out between his hands and crept slowly toward the salamander. “Hold on, little buddy,” he murmured between slow steps. “Let me help you so you don’t become mage food.”

  “We don’t eat them,” Luc scoffed.

  The salamander startled at her tone, lifting its head off the road.

  “Shhh, ignore her and her bad attitude,” Tobias whispered. “She’s just mad she couldn’t eat you.”

  “Are you listening to me?”

  “Nope.” He didn’t look away from the salamander as he reached over it, slowly lowering the jacket down over the creature’s slimy body. It tried to dart away, feet skittering against concrete, and he grabbed it behind its front legs.

  It was heavy, at least as heavy as a toddler and twice as slippery, leveraging its tail and swinging it around in an effort to get free.

  “Stop fighting me,” Tobias said, tightening his grip on the salamander. “I’m trying to save your life.”

  “Maybe it doesn’t want to be saved.”

  “Shut up, Luc,” he said, hefting the creature up into his arms. “Just get in the car and drive.”

  Tobias walked over to the truck, fumbling for the doorknob before Luc reached in from the inside and opened it.

  He climbed into the front seat, carefully tucking the salamander’s tail between his legs to keep it from getting caught in the door before closing it. Luc pulled off the moment the door was shut, shaking her head at him.

  “We’re doing a good thing here,” he said before the salamander started flopping again, forcing him to control it once more so it didn’t knock into Luc as she drove. Luc just shook her head.

  She drove back to the farm, then followed his directions off the road and down to the pond between the Barnes’s property and the next. She parked, and Tobias climbed out, staggering down to the mud before lowering the salamander to the ground.

  It ran out of his arms, then stopped at the edge of the water, looking back at him. A smile spread across his face as he waved at it, then walked back to the truck.

  “See!” he said, motioning at the salamander as it waddled off into the grass. “It wanted to live. Sometimes, just because someone fights you doesn’t mean they don’t actually need the help.”

  Luc narrowed her eyes from behind the wheel. “I’m not a salamander.”

  “You kind of are.”

  “I swear to god, if you start calling me a salamander…” she trailed off into angry muttering as Tobias laughed.

  “I would never, Sal.”

  He ducked as she lunged across the car to smack at him, laughing as he shielded his head with his hands.

  “Okay, okay,” he said as Luc settled back into her seat, still glaring at him. “I won’t call you a salamander, I promise.”

  “You’d better not.”

  Luc drove back to the house, parking the car around the side to avoid the still ongoing harvest festival events, and they both headed inside. He went off to wash his arms and change after dealing with the salamander, and came back down to find Luc in the kitchen making herself at home.

  He slung an arm over her shoulders as she finished putting together her sandwich, sending her staggering into the kitchen island. “You’re fitting right in.”

  She groaned and jammed her elbow into his side. “I need to get my own place.”

  “Just admit you like it here,” he said.

  She ducked away, the hint of a smile on her lips. “I would never.”

  He watched her walk away, satisfaction settling deep in his chest. She was his first salamander, and she was doing great. So would the one down at the pond.