“Well,” Sage muttered to himself. “I’ve found the building.” Thankfully, Sage had been able to follow the footprints of the human right back to the human’s home. There’d been a few other tracks that had concerned him a bit, but none of them came to the building.

  “Which means all I need to do is get inside.” Sage tried to take in as much of the building as he could. This might be tricky. The house was one story, which was nice. But Sage didn’t see a single easy entrance on this side of the building.

  “How do people do this all the time?” Sage asked. The outer wall of the house had siding on it, which Sage wasn’t strong enough to tear off, break, or dig under. Maybe if he’d had more tools with him, but he must have lost his bag and supplies somewhere, because he had nothing. Which only left the doors and windows.

  That was problematic, seeing as Sage couldn’t reach any windows, even if they were open. Opening a door was laughable at best unless they had some kind of doggie door, which would indicate a much more serious problem.

  Well, there certainly wasn’t anything on this side. He should probably start moving and see about the others. The other sides weren’t any better. The best options he’d found so far had been the two doors into the house. But naturally, they were both closed. All of the windows that he’d seen were also closed.

  “Great,” Sage grumbled to himself as he stared up at the house’s front door. There was a small step up to the door that Sage was able to scale thanks to the rough material it was made of. On either side of the door were two beds of flowers that smelled quite nice actually. But the door was shut. “Just great. Now what?”

  No one saw fit to answer to him. He didn’t have a lot of options. There wasn’t a single other building in sight. Sage had no idea what time it was, but he couldn’t travel fast. With no supplies and no idea of where else to go, it would be stupid to move on.

  If he could just get in here, then he could almost certainly get into the walls. That would just take finding some plumbing, or an electrical outlet, and a bit of elbow grease. For that matter, once he was in the walls, he’d probably be able to make an exit outside that he could use in the future.

  Sage felt the vehicle coming before he heard or saw it. His heart lurched, and Sage reacted without thinking. He dived into the flowers and lay there as quietly as he possibly could. A few seconds later a large yellow vehicle stopped at the edge of the house’s driveway. It was a long driveway, but it was completely paved just like the road.

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  The door of the bus opened and a boy stepped out. He looked to be around Sage’s age, so thirteen or so. He didn’t look particularly tall or short. Was maybe a tad on the skinny side. He had brown hair that fell around his head, but even from by the front door, Sage could tell there was something odd about his eyes.

  The boy slung his backpack over one shoulder and started walking toward the house.

  Sage was up, and about to step out from the flower bed before his brain caught up with his body.

  He froze.

  What was he doing?

  He’d almost walked right out in front of a human? A teenage human! A boy teenage human! There was hardly a worse kind of human to be caught by! They’d torture, maim, and torment a beteenie just for fun, or because they were bored.

  Thankfully, the boy didn’t seem to notice him. He just walked up to the house, set his backpack down, and started fiddling with his pockets. Sage’s eyes latched onto the backpack.

  One of the pockets was half open.

  Sage needed to find shelter, and this house was his only option.

  This boy was going to be going into this house any moment.

  He would bring his backpack with him.

  “There you are.” The boy muttered. His voice hadn’t started changing yet, but it had a sort of musical quality to it. The boy now had a key in his hand and was reaching to unlock the door.

  Sage ran for the pocket. He had to climb up the stairs, which he did as fast as he thought he could do silently.

  “Stupid old key.” The boy muttered as he fiddled with the door handle.

  Sage climbed over the edge of the stair and sprinted for the backpack. He dove into the half-open pocket and was overjoyed to find it empty. If it were empty, the boy probably wouldn’t try to get into it to pull anything out.

  The world shifted around Sage as the boy picked up the backpack. A few steps later, and then Sage heard the door close. Then Sage was thrown from his feet as the boy dropped the backpack. Sage realized how reckless he’d been. What if the boy had had heavy books in his bag and they’d landed on Sage? What if he’d seen Sage?

  Why was Sage not afraid?

  Why did he feel comfortable? Maybe even safe in this bag? This was just some random boy whom Sage knew nothing about. What was going on with Sage’s brain?

  Sage would need to get to the bottom of that later. For now, he would wait for the boy to leave the room. Then it would be a fairly simple matter to get into the wall. He might need to snag some supplies and tools first, but he was confident he could do that.

  So, at the moment, he just needed to wait and listen. Then, once he was safe in the walls and had gotten himself established. Then maybe he could figure out if he was going utterly insane or not.