“Nearly.” Hugh turned down an even narrower country lane. “My parents’ place is just over the next rise.”
“Are you really sure this is a good idea?” Ivy couldn’t help asking. “I mean, just the fact that we’ve run is going to tip Gaze off that…uh, you know. Confirm his suspicion.”
“His suspicion about what?” Hope asked.
“Nothing,” Ivy said quickly.
She hadn’t told her sister Hugh’s secret, and she didn’t intend to. Hope would only start spamming Instagram with unicorn pictures or something equally dumb.
Hope glared at her in the rear-view mirror. “I can tell when you’re not telling me something important, you know. I’m not a little kid. You can trust me with whatever’s really going on.”
“Says the girl who made friends with a basilisk crime lord,” Ivy muttered.
“I heard that!”
“You were meant to.” Ivy turned back to Hugh. “Anyway, if Gaze does chase us, I don’t want to bring trouble to your parents’ door. Won’t your family be the first place he’d look? Maybe we should keep driving. Pick a random destination.”
Hugh shook his head with a tight, curt motion. “I want to take you somewhere secure. My parents’ house is…protected, shall we say. Generations of my family have lived on that land. There’s a strong bond between us and the soil.”
Hope perked up. “Ooooh. Are they farmers? Are we going to a farm?”
Hugh hesitated. “It’s like a farm. Anyway, the land itself is an ally. Shifters can’t even cross the property boundary without permission from the family. In the unlikely event that Gaze does track us down, he won’t be able to get in. But I don’t think he will be able to locate us. It’s not easy to find out who my parents are.”
“I hate to break it to you,” Ivy said, “but there’s this thing called Google.”
Hugh’s mouth quirked. “Which will tell you that Hugh Argent is a deeply private individual with no apparent digital footprint. Mainly because he’s fictional. Argent isn’t my real last name.”
She blinked at him. “What?”
“I didn’t want people to be able to easily trace me back to my family. Just in case.”
“Just in case of what?” Hope asked.
Just in case anyone worked out he’s a unicorn, Ivy realized. If Hugh’s secret ever was discovered, it would be open hunting season on his family too.
“Wait,” Ivy said as a thought suddenly struck her. “Are there more, uh, people like you in your family?”
“More people like what?” Hope was sounding increasingly suspicious. “You mean healers?”
“I’m the only medical professional at the moment,” Hugh said, which Ivy interpreted to mean that he was the only unicorn. “But my father was, ah, in the same business. He’s not anymore, of course.”
“Of course,” Ivy echoed.
Naturally, Hugh’s father couldn’t be a unicorn shifter anymore. Hugh was the living proof of that. Though she supposed he could have been a test tube baby. He’d said that solo activities didn’t count.
She flattened her gloved hand over her stomach, catching her breath at a sudden vision of a beautiful baby with unicorn-white hair and wyvern-green eyes…but that was just a fantasy. Even if Hugh could donate his side of the necessary materials, she could never carry his child. Her body was as useful as a vat of cyanide when it came to growing a baby.
And anyway, I’d make a terrible mother, she thought bleakly. It wasn’t like she’d grown up with a good role model, after all.
Hugh slowed the car as they turned into a graveled road lined with ancient oaks. “We’re nearly there,” he said. “And this is probably the point that I should mention something.”
Ivy looked at the trees, which were planted way too evenly to be natural. The rolling fields and scattered copses beyond them were also much too artfully photogenic. The whole landscape looked suspiciously designed.
“Hugh,” she said. “When you said your parents had a farm, I was picturing something a lot muddier.”
Hugh cleared his throat. “I said it was like a farm. Well, actually, it’s quite a few farms. More of an estate, technically. And that’s my parents’ house up ahead now.”
Ivy followed the line of his pointing finger…and her jaw dropped.