Irish Magic by Caitlin Ricci

since she couldn’t figure out how to get that to stop, they were stuck there for a minute.
    After a few moments the selkie pushed himself away from the front of the cage and Ippy took that opportunity to scramble out of it. She thought for a moment that he might have made a run for it, but then he turned toward her and moved onto the bed behind her, hiding himself, but not touching her. She could, however, feel his warm breath on the small of her back and she was happy to have him so close again.
    “We’re going to be okay, Ippy,” she told him while keeping her gaze on the selkie. When he stood up, getting to his full height and looming over her, she unflinchingly stared up at him. “What’s your name?” Hannah asked him.
    “Caelum.”
    Pretty name, and he wasn’t all that bad looking either. For an assistant kidnapper. “Well, Caelum, you’ve helped kidnap the most important child in a pack of werewolves. And her best friend. You think whatever P is going to do is bad? You don’t know anything. My dads will tear this place apart looking for me. And they’re never going to stop. You ever see a pack of angry wolves on TV? That’s not even the start of it.” Good, he looked scared, and in her anger she found strength. She might have been the one tied up, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to make him feel bad for helping to take them.
    He swallowed thickly and moved away from her.
    She wasn’t done yet, though. Now that Ippy was with her and no longer in some stupid cage, she felt much better about lashing out at him and saying everything she’d been thinking about. “I can’t believe I wanted to come over here and rescue you. How crazy is that?”
    Caelum looked surprised. He moved forward, but then stepped back, appearing uncertain. “Rescue me? Why? You don’t even know me. We’ve never met.”
    Hannah nodded. “Yeah. We haven’t. But when I was nine I saw you on a train platform and I knew what you were. I saw how hurt your fur was back then and its even worse now. I’ve spent the last six years trying to find your ungrateful butt. Only to be kidnapped by you!” She was seething now and really wishing he was close enough that she could kick out at him.
    Being mean.
    “He was mean first,” she told Ippy stubbornly.
    “Huh?”
    Hannah rolled her eyes and blew out an irritated breath. “Ippy talks telepathically to me. You wouldn’t understand, kidnapper.”
    “Caelum,” he softly told her as he took a seat not more than three feet from them. He was quiet for a few long minutes and she glared at him until he said, “You can see my fur?”
    She nodded. “It’s tattered and frayed. Last time it was only around your legs. Now I can’t even see it below your ribs, and even that looks like scraps. Why’s that?”
    He pulled his knees to his chest and started rocking. He wasn’t looking at her, but that was fine. Whatever, as long as he didn’t put Ippy back into the cage, he could do whatever he wanted to. “What do you know about selkies?”
    She shrugged. “Not much.”
    You thought he was a dragon once, too. And before that a unicorn. And a chimera.
    Hannah turned to look over her shoulder at Ippy. His eyes were closed and he was curled up as tightly as he could get, but she could tell he wasn’t sleeping because of his breathing. “Yeah. But at least I picked the right one. Eventually.”
    When she turned back she found Caelum watching them.
    “What’s a pack like?”
    “A massive family,” she replied instantly. “Where are we? I know the town, but what is this room?”
    Caelum looked and she looked with him. It was small, maybe only half the size of her room at home, and she could see a bathroom through an open door against the wall. There was only one window, the one directly behind her head, and aside from the bed and the cage, there wasn’t much in the room at all. “Mine,” Caelum quietly replied as he turned his attention to his hands in front of