One of the men stood and gave her a puzzled look. “I know not of a Lucy.”
“Sounds like a mundane name,” another wench piped up, then belched.
“There are no mundanes here this eve, milady,” said another.
This was going to be a long, long night.
TWO
Two hours later, she was no closer to finding Lucy. If her sister had been hiding at one of the campsites, her friends and fellow QuestMasters had done an excellent job of concealing her. Everyone she asked had never heard of a Lucy, and she didn’t know her sister’s QuestMaster name. Everyone, it seemed, had one. She’d met a Sparkle Blossom, a Megan the Fair, a Ragnar the Great (who didn’t seem so great), and three different Aragorns.
She’d also met a lot of drunks and had run across a lot of people making out. She’d been propositioned more tonight than she’d ever been in her life. Apparently the QuestMasters geared up for the big tourney tomorrow by drinking heavily and sleeping with anything that said yes. And here she’d thought they camped out in the woods because they were into nature. Turned out they were just into underage, unsupervised drinking. She’d seen more teenagers carrying bottles than she’d seen adults to supervise them.
The rain didn’t seem to be slowing down the QuestMasters any. They wandered from campsite to campsite, laughing and drinking despite the rain and now inches-deep mud. Most of the campfires had gone out in the torrential downpour and her newly purchased cloak was little more than a sodden blanket around her shoulders. She’d taken off her shoes when they’d started to sink in the mud instead of slide. Now she carried them in the bag along with the condoms and alcohol.
And despite all her searching, still no sign of Lucy. But every time she passed another couple making out in the open, or another teenage girl swinging past with a drinking horn, she was even more determined to find her sister. Seventeen was a little too young for this sort of thing, and some of the men here were older than Beth Ann.
It was getting harder to tell the trail from the rest of the ground, since it was all turning into a sludge. She tripped over a root and pitched forward, but caught herself on a nearby bush. Ahead, she could see someone moving and heard the clinking of a costume. “Hello?”
A girl approached and in the low light of a nearby torch, it looked as if she wore a belly dancer costume that was soaked in rain and mud to the point that it was indecent. Her other arm carried multiple bottles of booze, from what Beth Ann could tell. She glanced at Beth Ann’s dress, then back at her. “You with the cops?”
“Do I look like a cop?”
The girl squinted at Beth Ann in the darkness. “No?” she said hopefully.
She crossed her arms over her chest, wishing for the hundredth time that she had a flashlight, or that it’d stop raining for five minutes. “I’m not one.” When the girl sagged with relief, she pressed on. “Are there cops here? At the Tourney?”
The girl shifted her burden in her arms uneasily. “Maybe.”
“My goodness, why would cops be here?” Beth Ann smiled, as if totally oblivious to the minor in front of her carrying alcohol. “That’s just silly.”
“I know,” the girl blurted, relaxing a little. “But that’s what I heard back at the Templar camp.”
“Templar camp?”
The girl gestured behind her. “Back there. It’s quite a ways into the woods but they have the best alcohol.”
Maybe that’s where Lucy had headed. “That sounds like where I want to go. Can you show me the way?”
The girl shook her head. “I need to vacate the premises if the cops are here. Someone at the Templar camp told me they were making people leave.”
Well, good for the cops. They were going to have a field day with this place. She raised her voice to speak over the downpour. “I’m looking for Lucy Williamson.”
The girl fidgeted in place, her wet hair plastered to her skull. “I don’t know her.”
“I know,” she bit out, then forced the pleasant smile back to her face. “I don’t know her QuestMaster name. But she’s tall and skinny with blond hair and bright green nails.” She’d painted them for her sister just yesterday.
The other girl brightened. “I think I saw her earlier. She hang out with Lord Colossus?”
“Yes!” Finally, she was getting somewhere. “Have you seen her tonight? Where?”
Again, the girl gestured into the thick woods. “Back at the Templar camp.”
Beth Ann gave her a thumbs-up as the rain picked up once more. “Thank you.”
All right, she’d find this damn Templar camp once and for all.
What a way to spend a Friday night, Colt thought to himself. His mouth curved in a cynical twist as the man in front of him seemed determined to try and back his car out of the parking lot that had turned into a bowl of mud. The tires spun uselessly as Colt crossed his arms over his rain slicker.
The man finally turned and looked back at Colt. “It’s stuck.”
“I know.” He gestured at the parking lot full of cars. “They all are. Entire road’s washed out.”
“Even the dirt road?” The man seemed clearly skeptical. “We can’t walk out to the highway?”
“You can,” Colt said lazily. “Mud’s two feet deep along the way.”
“What do we do?” said the half-naked woman at the knight’s side.
Colt gritted his teeth. He kept getting the same damn questions from all these people. He knew it was because they were all drunk—or high—but it was getting tiresome. “I’m with the local fire department. We’re here to evacuate the campground and take you somewhere dry until the situation with your cars can be assessed.”
“The fire department?” the woman exclaimed in surprise. She gave him an appreciative look that made him uncomfortable. “Really?”
Damn it. He was tired of babysitting a bunch of drunks. When they’d called him to help out this evening, this was not what he’d had in mind. He’d volunteered, of course, since he’d thought there were people in danger. Not really—turned out that there were just a bunch of idiot teenagers that needed to be fished out of the mud. “Leave your vehicle and head out to the end of the main road. An all-terrain vehicle will be swinging by shortly to pick up more people.”