“I’m kind of impressed.” He shivered. “She’s intense, though. I see her walking around the school like she’s planning to blow the place up. Don’t make enemies of scary teenage witches with chips on their shoulders; they grow up to be scary powerful witches who’ve lost their souls.”
I needed more than chocolate to make me feel better about that.
***
I had wondered how Phoenix was going to sneak a massive werewolf around with us, but aside from a couple of kids staring and pointing from across the road when we met up at the crime scene, Phoenix could have been walking an ordinary dog on the leash. The lead itself was just for show, but the sight of the werewolf straining against it made me uncomfortable. They had gone from mindless animals to people in my head, but the rest of the world appeared to be a few steps behind.
I greeted Icarus then nodded at Phoenix. He looked completely still as he waited for me.
“Feeling better?” Phoenix asked hesitantly.
“Let’s just… not talk about it.” I jerked my chin toward the house. “This is it. The first body, the one I saw. It turned out to belong to the owner of the house. He lived alone, no witnesses.”
He turned to stare at the building. “It’s a nice house.”
“I suppose,” I said. “But the walls say, ‘Keep out, world.’”
He shrugged. “There’s nothing wrong with a little privacy. But it sounds like his walls didn’t protect him.”
“I know what that’s like.” At his puzzled look, I shook my head. “Never mind. Shall we go in?”
“Icarus is eager to begin.” He moved ahead of me, opened the gate, then removed the leash from the werewolf’s neck. Icarus bounded into the garden, and Phoenix followed. I took a quick look over my shoulder before joining them. I kept getting the feeling someone was watching me, but it was probably just the kids across the road, or a shifter. Not that I needed to worry with a werewolf on my team for the day.
Once the body had been removed and the crime scene cleared away, very little remained—only a dark, purpling stain on a patch of earth.
Icarus, however, found interest in the many scents in the garden. He eagerly sniffed the dark patch then abruptly ran off to the other end of the garden.
“Think he’s picking up something?” I asked hopefully.
“It’s hard to say.” Phoenix frowned. “Describe the body to me.”
I sucked in a breath. I really didn’t want to remember. “It was… messy.” I closed my eyes and tried to focus on the scene forever etched into my memory. “It was quiet, very still. Shay’s recruits were waiting for us when we got there. The wind wasn’t strong, and the scents didn’t hit me until I reached the gate. It was splattered with a little blood, but not enough that a human walking by would likely notice.” I let out a shaky breath.
“What was the body like?” he asked softly, and I jumped, startled by how close to me he was.
I kept my eyes closed. “It was torn apart. There were a few chunks of flesh scattered around, but not enough to account for what was missing from the body. It was completely destroyed. The attack looked frenzied, and I think…” I frowned. I hadn’t noticed that at the time. “I think the body was dragged to the spot. From…” I opened my eyes and pointed, realising Icarus was already sniffing around at a gate in that direction. “From over there, actually.”
“Very good,” Phoenix said, sounding pleased. “Shay told me they figured that out after you left. Beyond that gate is a small orchard, and it was there that they found a shed awash with blood. That’s where the man was killed, violently but efficiently. They believe he died after the first strike to his heart. He wasn’t eaten until after he was dead.”
“When he was torn apart.” I reached up my sleeve to rub the sudden goose bumps on my skin. “You don’t think somebody killed him and fed him to a werewolf, do you?”
“I didn’t see the body, and there is nobody out there who can get close enough to the werewolves to find out if their teeth match the marks on the body.”
“Nobody but you.”
His back stiffened. “May I see?”
I hesitated, feeling shy about the idea of him dipping into my memories. But if it helped him identify the bite marks, then perhaps it was the right thing to do.
“It’s all right,” he said. “I understand if—”
“No, it’s fine.” I sucked in a deep breath. “It might be important.”
He held my gaze for a couple of seconds and gripped my arms. “You must relax. Your mind will fight me when your body is so stiff.”
“Sorry. I’m just… nervous.”
He ran his hands up to my shoulders and squeezed. “It won’t hurt. I just need to see the body. Can you show it to me? It might be easier for you if you feel in control.”
I nodded, holding his gaze as he sank his fingers into my hair. I closed my eyes. He touched my scalp, a tingle of magic caressed my skin, then I felt him in my mind, a traveller clinging to me.
That wasn’t so bad. I could do it. I thought of the memory and brought it to the forefront of my mind. I felt the mild breeze, caught the scent of blood, and paid more attention when Phoenix made me hang around in that memory. I wasn’t a hunter, but surely a werewolf wouldn’t have been tempted by scents on such a still day. And the lack of noise was disturbing—no birds, no rustling, nothing. How could someone have died so violently in such quiet without anyone hearing? Even the local wildlife must have been terrified. That didn’t happen when the werewolves were around.
As I observed the wounds, paying attention to the bite marks, I felt Phoenix’s triumph. They didn’t belong to the werewolves. The paragon was going to be pissed—and that made me think of the Eleven. I saw them sitting around me and panicked that I had shown Phoenix something that was supposed to be a secret. I ran from the memory and straight into one of Phoenix the first time he had delved into my memories. We had been close enough to kiss, and I had wanted to. Now he knows that. Memories switched as I desperately looked for something safe to remember. Why isn’t he going away? Peter was kissing me, and—
I broke away from Phoenix as he finally released me.
Mortified, I backed away from him. “Why didn’t you let go?”
“I’m sorry.” He stepped forward, holding out his hands in a placating gesture. “I didn’t do that on purpose. I swear it. You panicked, and I got stuck, and I…” He shook his head. “I’ll never touch your memories again. I promise you.”
I covered my cheeks with my hands. “Let’s just forget it. It’s less embarrassing that way.”
He gave me a pained look. “You have nothing to be embarrassed about, Ava.”
I walked around him, unable to face him anymore. “At least we know for sure that we’re not looking for a werewolf.”
“We need proof that comes from an unbiased source,” he said. “Nobody’s going to believe me when I say that a werewolf bite is shaped differently than the murderer’s.”
“Okay,” I said, bucking up. “We’ll just find more proof.”
He hesitated. “We should probably check out the second murder site.”
“What about the farmer?”
“Farmer?”
“At one of the Senate meetings, a farmer came and explained that his entire stock of dairy cows had been eaten. The Senate seemed to think the werewolves were the culprits, but it might be worth checking out.”
“All right, then. There are two other crime scenes that we know of. The farm with the lost cattle, and the place where the murdered jogger was found. I’d like to speak to the farmer. He might be a witness.”
“I’ve no idea where the farm is,” I said.
“I’ll have the address with one phone call. Are you still interested in… accompanying me?”
I turned to face him. “I’m in this as much as you are. I want the murderer found, Regis gone, the shifters put back in their box, and everything else to go back to normal. I’m in, Phoenix.”
He smiled. ?
??Great. I rented a pickup so Icarus could ride in the back. It’s holding well so far.”
“You really know how to reassure a girl,” I said, trying to lighten the mood.
“Icarus!” he called out. “Let’s go!”
Icarus had been lying on the grass, looking bored. He hadn’t picked up any clues. It was a pity he hadn’t been at the crime scene on the day the body was found.
“They should bring werewolves to crime scenes,” I remarked as we walked to the pickup. “It would make things so much easier.”
“I’m not sure how well the police would adjust to having werewolves trampling their crime scenes.”
We got into the truck. “Do you think the werewolves will ever live like shifters and only transform when they have to?” I babbled, thinking of anything to avoid discussing the awkward scene from before. “I mean, will there ever be a detective who just happens to be a werewolf?”
“The werewolves love their wolf form. Someday, perhaps one of the children who learn to fit in well enough will want a normal job,” he said. “But not anytime soon.”
He made a quick phone call to get the farm’s location. “It’s not so far,” he told me. “We should be there in less than an hour.”
I gazed out the window as we drove, lulled into sleepiness by the movement. We may have needed more evidence, but Phoenix’s reaction to the bite marks had been real. The werewolves were innocent, and I was certain Esther was innocent, too. But I couldn’t connect the two similar events, no matter how I looked at them.
I jumped when Phoenix woke me gently to tell me we had arrived. We were parked outside a large farmhouse, and as we left the car, the old man from the Senate meeting approached us, along with a younger man I took to be his son.
“Can I help you?” he asked. “Are you here to double-check the amounts?”
Phoenix shook his head. “Actually, we’re here to investigate the crime.”
“There’s a werewolf in the back of their truck,” the younger man said. “They brought one of those killers here, Dad.”
“It wasn’t the werewolves,” I said sharply. “And we need him to help us track down who did this.” I looked at the old man. “We want to stop this from ever happening again, but that won’t happen if we continuously blame the wrong species just because it’s convenient. May we please take our werewolf friend across your land to see if we can pick up clues, anything at all, that might lead us to the real killer.”
The old man held my gaze for a moment before nodding.
“Dad,” his son pleaded.
“Nobody saw a werewolf commit a crime. These people saved us from being enslaved to vampires,” the old man said. “Have you forgotten that already? The least we can do is give them permission to protect us again.” He nodded at me. “Go ahead. Take as long as you need.”
“Thank you,” I said gratefully.
Much to the younger man’s consternation, his father opened a gate for us and gave us a brief description of his land and the areas where they’d kept the cattle.
“You did well with him,” Phoenix said as we crossed a muddy field.
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
“You can talk to people,” he said. “You’re capable of being truly persuasive, but you never bother with the Senate or others with power. Why is that?”
“I hadn’t noticed,” I lied. “What kind of thing should we look out for here?”
“We’ll follow Icarus’s lead,” he said, gesturing to the werewolf, who had already bounded off. “If there’s anything to be found, he will find it for us. You slept through most of the journey, but I believe this farm in its entirety is large enough to be close to both crime scenes.”
“It just doesn’t make sense to me,” I said. “There are plenty of farms around the country. Why clear this one of its cattle, only to move on to a single human in two separate attacks?”
“The cattle for hunger, the humans to send a message?” he offered.
“Maybe it was just bad timing. The killer roams, and for whatever reason, something about these humans triggered its hunting instincts.”
“It’s a possibility.” He sounded doubtful.
I couldn’t blame him—I was reaching for an explanation.
We kept moving, growing muddier by the minute.
“I think I’d like this,” he said as we inspected a broken fence. “Toiling the land, growing my own food, trying to be self-sufficient.”
“Not me.” I avoided a puddle. “I like sitting in my kitchen, drinking tea with Carl while we consume vast amounts of pre-packaged confectionaries.”
“You must want more from life than that.”
“Staying alive has kind of been my top priority for a while now.”
We strolled to the next field. We hadn’t seen Icarus in ages. I hoped he wasn’t scaring any farmers. Phoenix’s face had gone intense and brooding, and my legs were restless. My conversation with Carl about flawed men kept running through my head and making me want to run. Phoenix viewing my memories made me want to never come back.
Icarus let out a sharp bark from somewhere nearby.
“He may have found something,” Phoenix said.
“Oh, joy. We get to run through muddy fields together.”
He ran ahead then turned to grin at me. “I’ll race you.”
I made as if to run, and he sprinted away.
“Sucker,” I muttered, strolling behind him. At the fence by the next gate, something caught my attention. On the barbed wire that kept the cattle away from the fencing, something fluttered in the wind. I looked closer and winced. It was a patch of skin, fur and all. “Gross.”
Phoenix found me. “Why didn’t you follow?”
I pointed at the patch of grey matted fur.
“Unpleasant,” Phoenix said after he whistled for Icarus. “But it may have been one of the cows trying to escape in their panic.”
“That hair doesn’t exactly look bovine. What did Icarus find?”
“Some bones. The teeth marks were distinctive, and not like a werewolf’s at all.”
“If we could just see this thing or at least know what we’re looking for,” I said. “Do you think it could be a shifter gone mad?”
He gazed at the hair. “I don’t know of any shifter in Ireland who is quite so dangerous in animal form.” He gave me a meaningful look.
I nodded at the ugly patch of hair. “Esther does not look like that in bear form. And she’s never alone, so stop hinting.”
Icarus bounded over and immediately sniffed out the patch of skin. His ears pricked back, the hair on the back of his neck puffed up, and his tail went between his legs. He growled and paced impatiently next to us as Phoenix took a closer look.
“This could be our killer,” he said. “Although that doesn’t tell us much other than the fact this thing is hairy and perhaps injured.”
Icarus refused to leave the patch of skin alone. If he wasn’t following a trail, then there was none left. It was time to move on to fresher evidence.
“Icarus is done here. We should get to the final crime scene. Do you know how to get there?”
“Shay gave me directions. It’s at the base of a mountain, apparently, and a popular spot for hikers, joggers, and dog walkers.”
“Well, we sort of have a dog, so we’ll fit right in.”
He raised a brow. “You have a curious sense of humour, Ava Delaney.”
“So I’ve been told.”
In the pickup, we rode in silence, not even listening to the radio. My fingers itched to turn something on to break the silence, but Phoenix’s quiet mood had unnerved me.
When we arrived, I stared at the wooded area in surprise. “You were right. All of these locations are close together, and near open ground. So how come nobody caught a glimpse of this thing?”
“Perhaps it’s marking its territory.” He pulled a map from under his seat and pointed. “This is the first scene, and here is the second. Between those is the cattle farm. The
killer must be close. Perhaps it has a den nearby.” He frowned. “But that depends on how far it can run. The werewolves take up a significant amount of space, but there are a lot of them. I can’t see any of them coming all the way out here and none of the other werewolves noticing they were gone, or failing to scent the blood from their fur. The way that human was killed must have been extremely bloody.” He looked at me, his eyes bright with excitement. “I’m growing even more certain that we can prove it’s not a werewolf.”
“That’s not good news,” I said. “At least we know about the werewolves and how to deal with them. This is something different, maybe even something new. And it’s big, strong, and bloodthirsty.”
His face fell. “The problem is that you’ve just described half the supernatural population. So many are capable of this kind of violence.”
“But most won’t actually want to do this, right?”
“There are human criminals, Ava. Why not supernatural ones?”
“A supernatural serial killer,” I whispered. “That’s really bad.”
“Then let’s move on,” he said. “I’m not sure where the scene is exactly, but I have a rough guide, and Icarus will easily find the place. Shay said to keep to the south. So that’s what we’ll do.”
We got out of the truck. Phoenix called Icarus, who leapt out of the truck bed and immediately tried to run northwest.
“This way,” Phoenix said, but Icarus seemed reluctant to follow. “The new scents likely overwhelm him,” Phoenix explained. “He rarely leaves his own territory.”
We made our way south on a jogging trail, and eventually, Icarus followed then ran ahead.
“He’ll be there before we ever will,” Phoenix said, but he was walking so fast that I was practically jogging to keep up.
He glanced down at me. “Sorry. I’ll slow down.”
“I can keep up.”
“You’re quite short. You have to walk three times as fast to keep up.”
I frowned. “I’m not that small. And I can keep up.”
“I don’t want you to be out of breath when we get there. You won’t be able to talk.”