Beneath The Crescent Moon {TMT #3}

Chapter 6

"Ellie!" I called out the second I stepped into the house.

Not even bothering to respond to my call, said little girl instead blurted out from the other end of the corridor just moments after I'd shut the back door. "Who was that?"

Almost immediately, the fear I'd harboured at the knowledge that the stranger might have gotten to her first morphed into relief so quickly that I had to balance my weight on the wall due to the emotion threatening to consume me.

That bastard, I gritted my teeth, absently placing a hand on my chest. Nearly gave me a damn heart attack.

"Who was that?" Ellie asked once again, fisting her hands on her hips. Apparently, she'd gotten rid of her fear during the time I'd been out conversing with the wolf-man.

"And what happened to your clothes? They look awful!"

"Those are not the questions you should be asking, Ellie." I pushed away from the wall and stalked across the small corridor towards where she stood.

"The first real question is," I grabbed her arm and pointed a finger to her face, "what the hell are you doing here?"

Ellie crossed her arms over her chest and threw me a defiant look. "Don't change the subject, Miss Lenny. Who was that? I know someone was out there. And why do you look so dirty?"

Her questions made me think for a moment. "Listen. If you tell me what you're doing here at this extremely late hour, then I'll tell you who that was outside." I waited for the little girl in front of me to speak, the wheels in her head turning.

"Well," she started with a small shrug, refusing to look me in the eye, "I just came here for a visit."

Yeah, so did that stranger.

"It's past midnight."

She gave another meaningless shrug.

"Ellie, look at me," I demanded, stretching all my fingers so that I could use that same hand I used to point at her face to grasp her left shoulder and adjust her body's position to face me properly. "What are you really doing here?"

Knowing I wasn't going to let it go, Ellie huffed, grabbed the hand I'd laid on her shoulder and pulled me after her. "Come on."

I rolled my eyes. "Where are we going?"

"You know where," the little girl retorted as she partially pulled me up the stairs towards my bedroom.

When we reached the door, Ellie turned to face me with an earnest gleam in her eye. "You have to promise to go through with it with me before I tell you what it is, Miss Lenny."

I arched an eyebrow. "I can't promise until I know what you're up to."

"Please?"

"No."

Ellie pressed her lips together and grumbled out an almost inaudible "fine" before she released my hand and opened my room door, marching straight to the bed.

"What the..." The moment I entered my bedroom, I glanced from my wardrobe to the haphazard clothes spread out on the wooden floor to the giant backpack lying idly on my bed in obvious confusion.

"What the hell were you doing in here?" I asked whilst I picked up the clothes from the floor and dumped them into my wardrobe.

"Packing," she answered, fidgeting with her fingers and playing with a strap on her backpack. "I already have my stuff packed so I started packing yours for you as soon as I came here. But then I found it fishy that you weren't here at that time so I went out to see what it was and that's when I-"