Chapter Twenty-Six
Snow sifted through Astrid’s fingers. The presence of ancient human magic was much stronger now. Whenever she tried pinpointing the heat signatures left behind by footprints, sharp, searing pain lanced the back of her eyes. Something was blocking her magic.
She and the rangers combed the area outside the ritual circle for tracks the old-fashioned way but found nothing apart from their own. Scanning the trees for elevated hideouts proved fruitless, too.
“It’s due diligence,” Johanna murmured privately to her. “Can’t write ‘magic made them disappear into thin air.’”
Valid. Whatever these poachers were trying to summon from the Otherworld was undoubtedly also giving them power. Enough to disappear and keep someone meddlesome like herself from tracking them down and thwarting their plans. But Johanna didn’t need to be any more alarmed than she already was from today’s gruesome sacrificial find.
“Do you think Wald Vater has seen this? The wolves?”
“I don’t know,” Astrid whispered. “But I’ll check in on him once we’re done here.”
“Have you found anything?”
Astrid nodded slowly, wary of oversharing, but knowing she had to give Johanna something. “There’s definitely magic at work here, but I need to talk to Perchta first to make sense of it.” It wasn’t completely a lie. There were a lot of pieces to this puzzle, and she didn’t know quite how they all fit together yet.
“Go,” the forest ranger urged. “We’ve got it from here. Get whatever answers you’re able to on the magic front so we can properly prepare for what comes next.”
She gave Johanna’s elbow a light squeeze. “I’ll be in touch soon. Just give me a day or two.”
“Text me so I know you’re safe?”
“Of course. But that goes both ways.”
Smart, strong, a fierce protector in her own right: Johanna wasn’t fragile, not by a long shot. But she wasn’t invincible either. These poachers were as much a threat to her as they were to Astrid. More even.
One day, Astrid would lose her friend. That was the heavy price to a hag’s longevity and something she needed to come to terms with in the coming decades. But not now. When Johanna lay down for the last time, it would be to time and age, not human cruelty.
“Let me know when you get home to Suri, yeah?”
Johanna roughly swiped at her eyes, trying so hard to hold it together in front of her colleagues. “I will. I promise.”