by Tess Adair
I worship the wolf wasn’t exactly a clear directive, but it was something.
He ran a search through whatever it was he was using, and came up with a list of options and basic descriptions, while she took down notes.
“It’s not coming up here, but it could also be a draugr,” he said after he’d read a few off from his search list. “The spell to summon a draugr requires an offering to the Viking god of death, usually in the form of a small statue of her. Draugrs can take on any number of forms, though it doesn’t mention wolf specifically. Ah, and it looks like the last one on the list is a rekal, a pretty common revenge beast. There’s not much of a physical description; it just says ‘beast.’ Oh, downside to rekals is it’s impossible to get control back if you ever lose it.” He paused for a moment, like he was considering something. “I think you need to figure out how it’s being controlled. That might help us narrow this down a bit.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. She knew a few things about rekals, and she wasn’t particularly eager to face one. She couldn’t remember if she’d ever seen a picture of one or not. “Well, thanks for your help. I wonder if I should take a lap through the woods or something. I’m sure this thing likes to hunt.”
“Probably so.”
She pushed herself to sitting. “I should let you go, I guess. You need to get ready for your date.”
“Oh, I was ready hours ago.”
She imagined him sitting in his pristine apartment in a perfectly pressed suit for hours, ready to jump at the drop of a hat. The idea made him seem unusually vulnerable.
“You feeling the pressure to impress? Must be someone kinda special.” She’d wondered more than once what sort of people Alexei voluntarily associated himself with. Most of her experiences with him had involved work one way or another.
“I don’t know about special, but he is certainly well-coiffed.”
Now she couldn’t help but imagine two of him, both in beautiful, richly colored suits.
“That sounds special enough. Hope you have a good time.”
“I don’t have to go on the date, you know.” Mischief laced his tone.
“And why wouldn’t you go on your date?” As she spoke, she got the peculiar sense that she was playing with fire.
“Oh, you know. So I could stay here. And talk to you.”
“You’d skip a date just to talk to me on the phone?”
“Maybe. If you promised to spice things up a little.”
“And how exactly would I do that?”
He didn’t miss a beat.
“You could talk me off.”
She scoffed out loud; the urge to roll her eyes overwhelmed her. “And what do I get out of that situation?”
“I could talk you off, too.”
“Alexei.” She dropped the slightest hint of warning, and he backed away immediately.
“Apologies, darling. You know I’m only having some fun. Mostly. Well, feel free to call me if you need anything.” Mischief still danced through his voice. “Now picture me winking at you roguishly.”
When he said it, she could see it as clear as if he actually stood before her.
“Goodnight, Alexei.”
“Goodnight, H. C.”
As soon as she hung up the phone, she could no longer entirely evade a creeping sense of defeat. Fun as Alexei was, and good as it was to have the list, she didn’t feel any closer to a real answer.
The truth was, Judith Li looked like her best suspect. Logan didn’t like thinking about it; Judith had seemed far more reasonable than a number of her other interviewees, and Logan understood perfectly why she might have more than a little resentment towards Violet and her other classmates. But in lieu of any better suspects, Judith Li stood at the top of the list.
Logan got up and flipped the television on, then turned her attention back to her sandwich, which remained untouched in the bag.
As she made her way through the rest of her food and let herself start to drift in front of the television, she felt a new unease settle over her—similar to what she’d felt leaving the school that first day. It wasn’t quite the same as the feeling that someone was watching her; it was more like there was something she hadn’t figured out yet, something close at hand. Maybe she could touch it if she only knew how to reach. It stood like an ominous shadow along the periphery, promising danger.
Fortunately for her, Logan was accustomed to falling asleep through any sense of unease. Before she finally dropped off, she set her alarm early.
She planned to go hunting in the morning.
Chapter 5: Callous and Bored
On Thursday, she woke before the sun, and a pleasant early-morning chill greeted her. She stretched her way to wakefulness, then willed herself through a few sets of jumping jacks and mountain climbers. When her blood had warmed sufficiently, she marched over to her supplies and grabbed a pair of sandalwood candles. She sat herself cross-legged on the floor and lit both candles, placing them before her.
Though life on the road made daily practice difficult, Logan did make something of an effort to meditate regularly, even if she didn’t need it just to fall asleep. It had been years since she’d seen her old instructor from Other Side, but when her practice was good, it felt like he was right there with her.
Regular meditation, for her, served two primary purposes: it kept her in tune with eira, and it kept a check on her power.
Power always struck her like a euphemism, like it was hiding the real truth. She knew where the power came from—or, at least, she had a pretty good idea. When finally pressed to explain her origin, her father had told her, in essence, that she was the result of an experiment. He’d been shallow on specifics, but the outline of it was that he had somehow summoned the “essence” of a demon and used it to create her. He’d made sure to inform her that she was “part human as well,” but somehow that phrasing only served to underline for her the fact that, on some level, she was a demon.
Still, her father’s explanation had never quite sat well with her. She had never heard of anyone summoning the “essence” of a demon like that; the closest magic she knew about was letha binding, but if that were the case, then she would have started out as a regular human child who had then been bound with demonic power. Yet Charles Logan had made it perfectly clear that his daughter had no human mother.
Eventually Knatt had offered her his own account, which had differed significantly from her father’s. It had also rung far truer, despite the fairy tale strangeness of it. But even in Knatt’s telling of it, there was no denying that, one way or another, she had sprung from demon stock.
Thinking about her father’s myriad deceptions never failed to make her queasy. After all, when he’d finally deigned to tell her his unlikely version of events, he’d only been trying to use the information to coerce her into coming back home. He’d thought he could convince her that the demon inside her couldn’t be controlled without his help—that she needed him.
Needed him. Logan had spent her life learning to get by without him. He’d demanded independence and self-sufficiency from her, practically from the moment she could walk on her own. He’d only decided he wanted her to need him when it was far too late—when she already hated the very thought of him.
When she lit the sandalwood candles, she had a specific purpose in mind. Most of the time, she suppressed her heightened sense of smell and hearing. But if she was going to hunt, it would help to have both of those intact. With a deep breath, she began to perform a ritual of release.
She breathed in and out, focusing on nothing but the movement of her lungs. Thoughts of her father fell away, replaced instead by the image of an empty field, long green grasses stretching in every direction around her. The earthy smell of the candle filled her, and she let herself relax into it.
As she did, she felt the ridges on her arms push out through her skin, slower and more gently than they normally did. She felt something unhook in her brain, and a sense of ease washed through her. With her next intake of brea
th, she took in so many scents, one over another over another—like layers of transparent paper. All of it almost entirely invisible to her, only a moment before. She had smelled the bleach when she first walked in, but now she smelled the blood underneath it, coming from somewhere in the bathroom. A number of other human smells rose up before her, though she was pleased to note the cleaner on every surface and the detergent in the sheets, proof that someone had at least tried to clean the room before she came to it.
All of this was beside the point, of course. Her eyes popped open as her body grew taut, alert and ready. With a quick huff to blow out the candles, she jumped to her feet.
She needed to get to the woods, start searching for a good hunting ground. She threw on flexible cutoff shorts and a sports bra so tight it felt like armor, and then a loose tank top over that. Shoving her key to the room in a back pocket, she walked outside.
For half a second, the world was far too bright—even though the sun had barely peeked behind the mountains, and the sky remained a dark and slowly lightening blue. It was the sudden change that threw her now more-sensitive sight for a loop. Then her eyes came back to normal and she glanced around, determining the best direction to go. If the beast had been allowed to hunt, it wouldn’t have gone more than a few miles out of town—provided its summoner still retained his or her control. A majority of the neighborhoods were on the south side of town, while her motel was towards the north. So she struck out along the road, heading south.
Once she’d walked past the last room of the motel and reasonably far enough beyond that she couldn’t easily be seen, she slipped a few feet from the road and broke into a run. Within moments, she was moving fast enough to appear more than a little unusual to human eyes.
Her muscles felt strange at first; it had been a few weeks since she’d run like this. She couldn’t help but bend and stretch as she ran, feeling blood rush into sinew and flesh. Her legs burned with unaccustomed pain, yet still seemed to ache for a harder push. She complied, forcing herself to the limit for a few exhilarating seconds. But almost immediately after that, she had to slow down completely, almost to a halt. She’d traveled far enough south to hit residential territory, which meant it was time to redirect her attention to the scents and sounds surrounding her.
Any wooded area was prone to host the smell of blood here and there, but she knew she’d need to be looking for something big. The beast that was hunting, if it was hunting, was large enough to feed on human beings, so it wasn’t likely to settle for rabbits and vermin as prey. It might take down a large dog, or even an elk, if it could wrangle one.
There. She picked up a newer, fresher scent. She couldn’t say for sure what it was yet, but it was something. It pulled her west, further from town. Once she had it locked in, she picked up speed again.
When she broke into a clearing, the scent hit her with full force. It was definitely blood, and it was near. She followed where it pulled, until she found herself on the other side.
There, in plain view, was the beast’s latest victim: a grey and ragged coyote. Its chest had been ripped apart, the empty cavity gaping open. As Logan gazed down, she felt an alien excitement grip her, and she all but rolled her eyes. She hated that feeling—that arousal she couldn’t control. When she let the wards down and relaxed like this, she put herself in a suggestible state. The sight of blood was enough to get the demon going, amp it up. At least, that was what she guessed was happening.
With a quick huff of breath to expel her own disgust with herself, she knelt down to get a better look at the gaping wound. Just like Violet Buchanan, the coyote’s heart had been torn out.
She stood up again and dusted herself off. There was little point in remaining here long; she’d found what she needed, and the monster itself was clearly long gone. She adopted a brisk jog again, heading back in the direction of her hotel.
So, the beast was still in town. That much was certain.
Once she was safely back in her room, she lit her candles once more and cleared her mind. This time, she felt her spikes slowly retract, disappearing beneath her skin. She felt the world close itself off from her by degrees, until the layers of human smells in the room seemed to fade away. With one last deep breath, she blew out the candles and headed for the shower.
She found herself dressed and ready with ample time to get to school before the first bell, so she decided to stop by her new favorite diner and pick up the breakfast burrito the cashier had mentioned the night before.
As she stood by the counter waiting for her order with one eye on her bike, her mind flashed to the coyote’s corpse, the wound, the short trail of blood leading back into the trees. The beast was still in town. Did its master have another victim in mind, or did they want to keep it around simply for the idea of its power? And the unwelcome thought came to her—what if they lost control, and the beast was set loose?
With a thump, the waitress slapped her bagged breakfast down on the counter. Logan slipped a few bills into the tip jar as she grabbed it and took off again, forcing her mind back to the road and the day ahead of her, and away from wild speculation.
Despite her reluctance to face another potential inquiry from Miss Esmerelda Swinson, Logan found herself back in the teacher’s lounge again. Unfortunately for her, it was the only place she knew on school grounds that had coffee. Once in, she made a beeline for the coffeemaker, glancing around the room for a hint of danger. She spotted Miss Swinson a few feet away, mercifully already preoccupied in conversation with another teacher. Today it seemed Esmerelda had something other than her students’ recent trauma on her mind.
Once Logan reached her target, she was close enough to make out Esmerelda Swinson’s not-quite-whispered conversation.
“Well, that’s the superintendent for you,” she said, distrust and contempt heavy in her voice. “You know what other bit of strange news I heard?”
“What?”
“Judith Li’s parents called in this morning, to announce that she would be absent all day today.”
“Is that strange?”
“Only if you happen to know that Judith Li has never once been absent, for the entire time she’s been enrolled here.”
“Is that so?”
“It is so.”
“But she’s absent today?”
“Yes, she is. And her parents gave no explanation except to say that she was sick.” She gave a short, disbelieving laugh. “Must be the plague to keep that one home.”
“That is strange!”
Logan might have scoffed at them if she’d been willing to call any attention to herself. The delight they appeared to take in this tiny whiff of a scandal, no matter how meager the evidence, struck her as absurd. Of course, unbeknownst to them, Judith Li happened to be a prime suspect in Violet’s murder. So, in a world beyond Miss Swinson’s narrow ken, Li’s absence was indeed suspicious. Logan topped her coffee off with a bit of cream before slipping out of the lounge as quickly as she could.
Off the top of her head, Logan could list a number of reasons why Judith Li might be absent. She could genuinely be sick, though she’d looked fine when Logan had seen her. She could have gotten in trouble with her parents for something completely unrelated, and they could have intentionally kept her home because of that. Any number of family emergencies could have required her absence.
Or, of course, it could be something related to Violet Buchanan’s death.
Reluctantly, Logan realized she would probably need to go to Judith Li’s home to find out for sure.
As Logan climbed the stairs and zeroed in on her assigned office, her mind centered back on the day ahead. She had only one interview today that she was sure would be pertinent: the interview with Derek James—by all accounts, Violet’s boyfriend.
Her first two interviews seemed to slip right by; one part of her mind kept itself occupied with potential questions for Derek through each one. When it was finally time for his appointment, he caught her almost unawares—she’d been
gazing out the window, wondering if she’d be able to take a break from travel after this and whether she was missing a late spring festival back home right at this very moment. When he knocked politely at the door frame, she gave herself a little shake to refocus.
“Come in, sit down,” she told him, hoping she sounded welcoming as she walked over to shut the door behind him. “You’re Derek, right?”
“Yeah,” he said, seating himself in the chair closer to the window.
I wonder what this one will be like. A part of her braced for a repeat of Jason Reed, all bravado and smarm, but for what felt like the millionth time, she reminded herself: make no assumptions. She took a moment to take in his appearance. His brown hair looked brushed and his tanned face looked clean, and he wore pants that fit properly and a plaid button-down free of obvious stains.
“And do you prefer male pronouns?” She took the other chair.
“Yeah, sure,” he shrugged.
“Lovely. So how are you doing today, Derek?”
He shrugged again, this time adding a quick huff—almost like a laugh, but not quite. “Uh, not great, actually. My girlfriend is still dead, so, you know. Everything is pretty fucked-up and stupid right now.”
He gave her a look of mild defiance, like he wasn’t quite sure he was allowed to curse in front of her, but he was willing to defend it if she took issue. Instead, she nodded. Cursing seemed perfectly appropriate to her.
“I think we can agree on that. It’s not fair, what happened to Violet. Or what’s happening to you. Tell me, have you thought about taking some time off school?”
He looked at her sideways, out of the corner of his eye, like he suspected she was laying a trap for him. “Are teachers supposed to say it’s okay to skip school?”
No idea. But seems like a fine idea for a fake grief counselor. I think.
“Well, I’m not a teacher,” said Logan out loud. “And it’s not really skipping if you need to take some time. I would say something like this is a more than a good enough reason to take a few days off.”