Hi all! So the first installment of "Hunters and Heartbreakers" has wrapped! It was actually super fun to write, especially because I sort of thought of it as an LGBTQ version of Cassandra Clare's "Infernal Devices" series. If you don't know what that is, I suggest you check it out: the love triangle in it is one of the best I've seen, and I've seen a lot. Didn't try to replicate that here, though.

Below, you'll find an excerpt from chapter I of the (still untitled) sequel. I won't say much about it, except that it's time to torture another character. You'll see what I mean by that when I start updating it, which'll probably be sometime in late May/early June. That's the plan, anyway.

--

I — Wells

A Traveller's Guide to France:

The Essentials.

2 June.

So there we were. Five hunters, chased out of our homeland, hiding like fugitives in some off-the-beaten-path bed-and-breakfast called La Grenouille. Two of us — me and my sister Naomi — had been able to get by on our wits this far. There was another sibling pair with us — Cornelius and Marjorie Selling — who had hatched the plan for us to flee London in the first place. And then there was Langdon Wilkes — the boy I loved and who most definitely held us together as a group at all. More likely than not we'd be at each other's throats if he hadn't been here.

The owner and proprietor of La Grenouille, a quintessentially French woman with a penchant for long brown cigarettes and brightly-coloured bohemian dresses called Angelique, didn't look like a hunter. Except she was — apparently she was best known for taming a creature called La Bête, or The Beast, and to this day, she was the only he would obey.

"La Bête?" Naomi had said when Angelique had recounted the tale at supper last night. "Like the fairy tale? La Belle et la Bête?"

"He is no fairy tale, girl," Angelique had said, pointing at her with a half-smoked cigarette. "He was a fierce creature...terrorising every village from here to Paris."

I'd noticed she'd said it Pa-ree, the French way. Which, I suppose, was not unreasonable, considering we were in France.

"So he was more like Beowulf," Marjorie had said. "Leaving destruction in his wake."

"Yes." Angelique had nodded at her, then turned back to Naomi. "You see? Mademoiselle Selling understands."

Naomi had grumbled and rolled her eyes, but she hadn't protested any more. Besides, this wasn't our homeland. We didn't know the first thing about it.

"Wells?"

I looked up from the map spread on the table in the common dining room, covered with colored circles and symbols I'd never seen before. I'd seen Angelique studying it a moment ago, but she'd gotten distracted by something Cornelius had asked her and breezed off to look into it. Now Wilkes was looking in on me, his bright brown eyes curious. The forelock of hair that never seemed to stay in place was falling across his forehead, and as he joined me I brushed it away.

"Angelique says we can go up to the market, on the Rue Sebastopol," he said, and I saw his throat work as my hand grazed his cheek. "She needs something from there anyway, for supper."

"Romantic," I said.

Wilkes gave my arm a punch. "Must it always be about you stealing a moment?"

"I mean..." I shrugged.

"Besides, we can't. The girls want to come with us." Wilkes jerked his chin in a vague direction over his shoulder. "It's better if we stay together as much as possible."

"Cornelius trusts us?" I raised an eyebrow.

"He's too busy flirting with Angelique," said a female voice from the doorway, and soon enough, my sister's arms were wrapping around me from behind. "A bit gauche for my taste, but...what are you going to do?"

"She was the one who started it." Marjorie was joining us too, coming up next to Wilkes and slipping her hand into his as if they'd been a couple for years. "Neely likes any kind of female attention. He'll be fine."

I glanced between the girls. Marjorie and Naomi had grown closer than I'd ever thought they could, different as their stations in society and their upbringings had been. But then again, there were bonds between girls that I had never understood. And when Naomi had said she needed a female friend, she'd truly meant it. I hadn't been great company lately.

"We ought to go while they're busy," said Naomi. She gave me a wink, finally looking and sounding her age — she was a year younger than me at seventeen, the same age as Wilkes and Marjorie too. Once again, there was a commonality that I didn't share.

We straggled to the front door in a loose group, Naomi hooking the shopping basket set there through her good elbow on the way out. My eye caught the sign outside the bed-and-breakfast when we stepped outside, and it had somehow changed overnight to Le Chat Blanc. The white cat. I made a mental note to ask Angelique what that meant when we returned.

"It's so much different than London here," said Naomi, her voice low and awed. She did seem truly fascinated, casting her eyes around at everything. It was so white here, where London had been grey and brown and black. The buildings we passed were made of a whitewashed stucco, and the signs stuck into them were covered with colour and French names, some of which Marjorie knew — but most she didn't. Over there was Le Cheval Noir, The Black Horse, and next to us was a bakery called Le Citron — The Lemon.

"Much more colourful, if that's what you mean," I said. I was taking in the clothing — only a few browns and almost no black. Instead there were patterns, like stripes and paisley, and colours I'd never even seen: light pinks, dark greens, bright purples, pale blues and oranges.

"Look, there's the market," Marjorie said, nodding down the street as we came to the next corner. "What was it Angelique needed again?"

Once we were inside the market, it was even more overwhelming: colours, smells, and sounds came from every direction, and the crush of people was so tight we had to link arms just to keep from being pulled apart. It was Marjorie who led the way, with Wilkes almost right behind her and the two of us after him. She was saying something about bread and a woman named Mathilde, but between everything else I couldn't catch much more.

She pulled our human chain to the right when we reached a less congested intersection, towards an old woman wearing a scarf covering her head and a shawl across her shoulders, sitting next to a cart piled high with bread of all shapes and sizes. The woman watched us come, and when we were close enough, she wobbled to her feet.

"Allo?" she said, blinking at us with her small, squinting eyes.

It was Marjorie who let go first, approaching the woman cautiously. "Mathilde?"

The woman squinted suspiciously at her, but didn't say anything.

"We came from...er...La Grenouille?" Wilkes said, mispronouncing it. "Angelique knows we're here."

"Angelique?" the woman croaked. "Send here?"

"Well, we..." Marjorie looked back at us, then to the bread woman again. "We're running an errand for her. And she mentioned you and your bread-cart."

"You hunting?" She squinted down again, this time at me. "He mission leader?"

"No, ma'am," I said. "We're not. We just came here to buy some bread, honest."

She gave us one more suspicious once-over. We didn't look too threatening — Wilkes and I had both dressed in normal clothing, and the girls had done the same. Naomi even wore a makeshift sling for the wound in her shoulder, which I thought the biggest non-threat of all. Injuries meant we couldn't fight even if we wanted to.

"One franc for one loaf," she said then, deciding we weren't a threat. "Two for boule."

Marjorie dug into the coin purse looped around her wrist and came out with four coins. "One boule, two loaves, please."

We traded, Majorie pouring the coins into the woman's hand and she motioned to us and then the cart.

"You take which you want," she said.

We did, and I felt her watching us the whole time. Briefly I wondered if she was doing this just to get us to go away, or if she actually believed that Angelique had sent us. Then we wandered away, arms full of bread, and back into the crowd. Naomi clung to me on one side, and I kept my eye on Wilkes and Marjorie in front of us.

At least, I thought I was. After a few minutes I realised I couldn't see them anywhere, and even with my height, I couldn't tell which way they'd gone.

"Hang on, I can't see them," I said, stopping in my tracks.

"What?" Naomi pressed into my side as a man pushing a cart stacked high with eggs passed by us.

"I lost them." I stood on tiptoe and turned my head both ways as far as it would go, but I couldn't pick them out.

"Wells, I'm sure when they notice..."

"Have you seen the two of them, Naomi? They're wide-eyed as a pair of toddlers. And about as inexperienced."

"Oh, give them some credit..."

That was when I saw the man standing behind a vendor selling fish. He was dressed like most of the men here, in a waistcoat, morning-coat, and a grey top hat with a white band. But it was the glint of gold against his cravat that caught my eye.

"There," I said. I couldn't point, because I carried the two loaves we'd picked out in one arm and supported Naomi with the other. But I jerked my chin in his direction. "Behind the fishmonger."

Naomi stood on tiptoe like I had, and momentarily the crowd cleared. I felt her hand tighten in my elbow, and she sucked in a sharp breath.

"Is it...a Shikari medallion?" She lowered her voice and leaned over to speak in my ear. "Can you tell?"

"Not unless we get closer," I said. "And I don't think we should."

"Do you suppose they've caught up to us that quickly?" Naomi sounded worried. "It hasn't even been twenty-four hours yet."

"It took them less time than that to find us in the Channel," I pointed out.

"What do we do?" I heard the rasp of fear in her voice. "How do we throw him off?"

"We'll have to leave," I said. None of us were quite ready to. It had been a tense forty-eight hours during our flight from London, and I knew we were all grateful for a little rest. Although now it seemed that was about to be scuppered. "Preferably at night like we did before."

Naomi seemed about to reply when a hand clapped down on each of our shoulders and made us whirl around in surprise. There stood Wilkes, glancing between us.

"There you two are," he said, a furrow in his brow. "I left Marjorie with an overly-talkative fruit seller for this."

"We were following you two—" I shot back, but Naomi squeezed my arm again, this time in warning.

"Sorry, Langdon," she said. "It's so bloody crowded. We thought we had eyes on you and assumed that was enough."

"Come on," he said, nodding back the way he'd come. "Marjorie says she only knows enough French to fill up a few minutes."

I almost mentioned the man I'd seen. But when I glanced over my shoulder, he was gone. Melted into the crowd, like he'd never been there at all.