Chapter 37
“Her? You mean it?” I asked.
She smiled, thoroughly bemused. “That’s what I would say, but she identifies as female.”
I scratched my head, frowning at her.
“How long has that resort been there?” she asked Charlie.
It was the sheriff who answered. “Fifty years as a resort but people, especially First Nation folk, have been using the springs for thousands of years.”
“Well, all that exposure to people has made her curious and somehow identifying with females.”
“But she’s not really though, right?” Charlie asked.
“Elementals are whatever they choose to be. If she thinks of herself as female, I will not argue with her.”
In the meantime, I had stopped listening and had tagged Flint into the empty space in the matrix.
“Nice flair on the runes,” Vesta said.
“Might as well give her an artistic look to her name.” I shrugged.
“So what does this all mean?” Orren asked.
“In a short period of time, a vast spirit of enormous power will reach a tendril of thermal energy up from below to this town to this spell matrix. By then, we will have marked thermal pathways for heat to travel throughout this building passively.”
“How do you control it? You know, keep it from frying us all?” Orren asked.
“I’ll have a chat with her, and the spell itself has adjustable limiters in it. Oh, are there any water features here in town?”
“There’s the Indian Camp River that runs through here. It widens out into a set of pools that are popular swimming features in the summer.”
“We can dump excess heat into that river or those pools to offset things a bit. You might end up with hot springs for a while though.”
“Hot springs?” a new voice asked. We turned to find a younger man, maybe late thirties, pulling off a scarf and cashmere wool overcoat, with a nice suit underneath. He at least had boots on his feet, but even those were stylish and expensive-looking.
“Our mayor, Kevin Hatchell,” Sheriff Brower said. “Mayor, our help has arrived.”
“The power on all over town was sort of a giveaway, Monica,” the mayor said, eyeing first Vesta, then me, then Vesta again. He smiled a high-wattage smile, holding out a hand for her to shake. She took it but glanced at me.
“He’s excited about hot springs, excited to meet you, a little starstruck, and calculating advantages,” I said.
“I’m Vesta, Mayor Hatchell, and this is my beloved, Craig.”
“Beloved? Not familiar with that phrase,” he said as she shook his hand. Then he winced as he felt the power of her grip.
“Werewolf term. I’m both witch and werewolf. A beloved is a werewolf soulmate.”
“Oh. And he’s a wolf too?”
“No, he comes from witch stock,” she said.
“So a male witch?” he said frowning and shaking out his hand.
“Craig is a warlock.”
The mayor had nothing to say about that, but the sheriff instantly turned to me. “So Agent Jensen was correct? You are a killer?”
The words were blunt, but the intent was serious curiosity mixed with desperation.
“Yes. I used to control predators on Greenacres… Golf Alpha. Here, I just hang around Vesta and kill anything that threatens her. It’s a surprisingly busy job.”
“You kill monsters?” Sheriff Brower asked.
I glanced at Vesta and then back at the sheriff. “I can probably kill anything,” I said, scratching my head. “Right?” I asked Vesta.
“Hmm. Humans, weres, vampires, elves, supernatural animals, but I’m not sure about focused spirits and certainly not elementals.”
“She’s the expert,” I said, turning back to the sheriff. “You got a monster problem?”
“I think we do. Two nights in a row, we’ve had people taken right out of their homes. Forced entry into locked houses, brief struggles, blood left behind.”
“Smashed doors?” Vesta asked.
“Second-story windows. Most houses in Boatman are pretty secure, as we get grizzlies in town every so often, so our doors are reinforced.”
“Any markings like claws or scratches?”
“Long, thin claws, five in number.”
“Hmm. Okay, we have some time till darkness. Let’s get the elemental set up and do the same for the community building. I smelled woodsmoke in the wind, so I would guess some people have wood heat available and maybe electric heaters now that power is back.”
“Yes,” the mayor said, his wheeling-dealing demeanor gone.
“Okay, we get heat up and then we’ll visit some of your crime scenes and sniff around for clues.”
“How fast will the elemental get here?” the sheriff asked.
“Ah, I think she’s arrived,” I said, pointing out at the middle of the matrix. A spark was hovering in midair two feet over the word Flint. As we watched, it grew into a ball of flame which then lengthened out into a foot-tall spinning column of fire.
“Okay, that was fast,” Vesta said.
The flame changed shape and suddenly we were looking at a definitively female form that was a foot tall, hovering over the floor.
“Okay, here we go,” Vesta said.