I’d been on the trail for five minutes when I heard it—a faint crackle, as if someone with loads of experience sneaking up on people was walking on dead leaves. Excellent. Things were about to get interesting.

The first one appeared seconds later. He couldn’t have been older than nine, and he cried out at the top of his lungs as he ran toward me, brandishing a stick like a sword. I stopped, bemused. Did he really think he could hurt me?

To my surprise, he skidded to a stop a few feet away, his eyes wide. “What’re you gonna do, just stand there and stare?”

“Was there something else you wanted me to do?” I said. Another set of footsteps behind me; a third pair to my left, and a fourth to my right. It didn’t take an idiot to figure out I was being ambushed. By children, apparently.

“Yeah,” he said, puffing out his chest. “Hand over your things.”

“What things?” I held out my arms. I wore a simple tunic, not unlike the one he had on, and a pair of trousers. Judging by the style, I was in…England. Probably. “My clothes?”

“Your valuables,” said a second voice to my left, deeper than the first. “Jewelry. Food.”

“Does it look like I have any on me?”

“Then where did you set up camp?”

“Nowhere.” At least that was the truth, even if the look on the first boy’s face told me he didn’t believe it. “I’m just walking.”

“Where?” said the same deep voice.

“Well, that’s none of your business, isn’t it?”

“We just made it our business.”

The thief behind me shoved me hard, and I landed at the first boy’s feet. “Are you sure you want to do this?” I said calmly, making no move to stand. They’d just push me down again anyway.

The second boy’s answer was a swift kick to my ribs. Perfect. Now I was going to have to either fight or run like hell, and I wasn’t in the mood to take off like that.

Instead I fell over as any mortal would, clutching my ribs halfheartedly. It wasn’t much of a ruse, but the second boy continued to kick me, while the first screeched, “Your gold or your life!”

Good grief. Talk about overkill. “Since—I don’t have any gold—guess it’ll be my life,” I said between kicks. Wasn’t doing that great of a job imitating wheezing, but I didn’t care too much right now.

Behind the second boy, a third joined, this one much bigger than the other two. He had a baby face though, and he held his weight awkwardly, as if he wasn’t used to being so large. Even though he had to be the strongest, he didn’t join in, and I liked him instantly. Unless he was the brains of the operation, but he didn’t hold himself like an authority figure, either.

The second boy knelt down in the dirt and began to pummel me, and I sighed inwardly. They really weren’t going to give it up, were they?

“Stop.”

A fourth person, and a voice that was definitely not male. I raised an eyebrow, and despite the beating I was supposedly enduring, I lifted my head. A girl around seventeen stepped onto the trail, wearing the same tunic as the boys. But unlike them, her bright blue eyes sparkled with intelligence and cunning, and as the second boy reluctantly stopped hitting me, she began to circle us.

“Notice anything unusual, Sprout?” she said, and the hitter pulled back enough to eye me.

“He’s not bleedin’. They always bleed when I get to ’em.”

“The small ones, anyway,” said the leader, and she bent down. “Why aren’t you bleeding?”

I sat up. She was pretty for a mortal, even with dirt smudged on her cheek and her black hair pulled back into a braid. But pretty didn’t mean much when she was the sort to sic her goons on unsuspecting travelers, especially when they weren’t carrying anything of value.

Then again, she had stopped him, so there was that. Though had I been mortal, I would’ve been unconscious for sure by now.

“My secret,” I said. “Mind if I go?”

“Not yet.” She leaned toward me, scrunching her nose. “You don’t smell bad, either. And you’re clean.”

“Is that a crime?” I said.

“No, but it means you’re not what you look like,” she said. “Where are you going? Tell me, or I’ll let Mac have a go at you.”

The big guy with the baby face cracked his knuckles. Mac, then. “I don’t know where I’m going,” I said. “That’s the truth. I don’t even know where this path leads.”

“So you’re a drifter,” she said. “Fair enough. But where are your things?”

“I live off the land. I figure if humans did it for ages before us, I can, too.”

“But no tools? No water pouches?”

I shrugged. “I have good luck.”

The girl leaned toward me, her face an inch from mine. The tug in the pit of my stomach urged me forward, almost painfully insistent. I had to get going before anyone else disappeared.

Before I could move, however, the girl touched my chin. A familiar sizzle jolted through me, and as it always did when I found what I was looking for, that tug instantly vanished.

She was the answer? Now I was damn sure my powers were messed up. She probably couldn’t even read—had likely never held a book in her life. And she certainly didn’t have the secret to our eternity locked in her head. That just wasn’t something a single mortal could know.