Chapter 2
Wren
The moon shone high against its inky backdrop, and Wren wished he could break the tree line and get lost under its gaze for a while.
Pretending he was just another animal among those he protected was the only thing that made him feel free.
Not chained by Nexus and their rules, forced to live his life around everything they demanded.
The fact that innocent creatures needed him was the only reason he hadn’t run away like he had so many times before.
He checked that his trailer was still attached and had the right supplies before jumping up into his SUV. He looked ridiculous driving this thing, but he needed something with the horsepower to transport whatever he might find on the other end of a case.
He cupped Blu and placed him in the nest he’d built into the passenger seat—meaning he had destroyed the previous seat by inserting a blue bird house where a blue bird house shouldn’t be inserted and roped Fix into making sure it was secure.
Regretfully, he left the trees behind and followed the ugly railroad above toward the residential part of the city, where all the greenery had been leveled into houses with manicured patches of grass trying to simulate real beauty.
Any animal sighted here that wasn’t domesticated was automatically seen as rabid or cursed. Wren had lost count of the number of times he had been sent out on false calls.
This late at night, nothing was moving. No trains. No passersby.
It was peaceful in its own way.
He pulled up outside a white house that looked like the fifty others on the street. A lady in a yellow nightgown was already waiting for him impatiently on her porch, her brown hair in rollers and her feet encased in fluffy slippers.
“Here we go, Blu,” he sighed.
Blu chirped in sadness, flitting over and grasping Wren’s ragged braid. Wren didn’t bat an eyelash as he climbed out of the SUV, so used to the action and the slight weight.
“Thank god,” the woman called as he trudged up the gravel path, kicking a few extra rocks around just to be petty. “I called over an hour ago! This is an emergency, don’t you know?”
Wren knew that was a lie. Taylor didn’t play when it came to answering her line. Night or day. Rain or shine. Natural disaster or in her grave. She would take that call.
And it had only taken Wren half an hour to get here.
He didn’t bother to reply, just looked around for the supposed rabid and cursed animal terrorizing her life. Nothing seemed amiss. Not even a potted plant upturned. “An emergency?”
“Why else would I call so late? Of course it’s an emergency. We aren’t safe in our house with it around.” She spoke loudly. Wren didn’t know to whom, it wasn’t like he couldn’t hear her.
“What makes you think it’s a cursed animal?”
“It can’t be anything else. It’s been hanging around for days now, assaulting the neighborhood. I decided I’d had enough tonight.”
“Assaulting? People?”
“Not yet, but it’s surely only a matter of time. Shirley’s cat was injured just the other day and other properties have been damaged. It’s been getting into people’s homes!”
Wren hummed, wondering why it had taken so long for someone to call it in if it had been going on this long with escalation.
Blu twittered, drawing Wren’s attention as he flew over to the doorway to perch. Something was bothering him.
The woman made a sound of protest. “What is it doing?”
“His job,” Wren said, daring her with his eyes to say anything derogatory. He glanced over her shoulder through the doorway Blu was indicating. “Is your family asleep inside?”
She twitched. “Yes, of course. My husband and son are dead to the world. Why would they be up at this hour?”
“This incident didn’t wake them as well?”
Her face twitched. “I’m a light sleeper.”
Something crashed in the house and her face flushed completely red.
“It sounds like they’re up now,” Wren drawled. “Do you mind if I speak with them too?”
“No! That’s nothing. We have a…cat. No one is awake, I told you.” She cut him off swiftly. “Just do your job. It’s around the side of the house. Don’t touch anything and watch my hydrangeas. They’re award-winning.”
She hurried back inside, eyes going to the house next door. Wren followed her gaze to an upstairs window, where someone was clearly peeking through the curtain.
Midas hadn’t been wrong—something strange was in the air in Slatehollow.
Shaking his head, he made his way toward the side of the house, Blu following him. The wooden gate was ajar, and when Wren pushed it, the lock fell to the ground.
“So, perfect on the outside but falling apart,” Wren murmured, snorting.
Stepping over it, he glanced around the darkened space. The motion sensor had been shattered, the remnants of it crunching under his feet.
Wren frowned as he continued to explore, noting that the chips in the side windowsill looked nothing like an animal could create.
If he had to guess, he would say it appeared suspiciously similar to when he used to crack the locked window open at Nexus.
This was man-made.
Blu landed on his shoulder and twittered quietly.
Wren hummed in acknowledgment. “It is strange. Can you see anything?”
Blu hopped once then took off, searching the surrounding area.
Hart liked to try and call it Wren’s official diagnosis technique, this connection he was able to create with animals, always wanting to categorize things into neat boxes.
But animal curses didn’t work the same as other curses, and Wren certainly didn’t view it in those terms. Wren wanted nothing to do with the clinical way Nexus viewed cursebreaking.
He and Blu worked as a team, and whatever connection they had between them was a mystery Wren didn’t want to unravel or examine—or hand over to Nexus to ‘research.’ To this day there was nothing written in his notes about his cursebreaking, only speculations from instructors.
Wren squatted, peering under bushes for any signs of movement, watching the shifting of bugs among the leaves and the trails of snails with a small smile. He picked one up and placed it on a hydrangea leaf.
“Eat up, little one.”
He continued to go low while Blu scouted from above, moving things aside carefully. What he wasn’t expecting to find was a stray needle that had rolled behind a stone plant pot.
“What the…” Blu whistled to indicate that he’d found something and Wren nodded without looking. “Good job, give me one second, darling.”
Covering his hand with his hoodie, he carefully plucked the needle up by the casing and held it up. Under the moonlight the small drops left had a strange yellowish sheen that reminded him of something.
Before he could make the connection, a crash drew his attention. Blu was sitting on top of a small gardening shed placed against the fence, fluttering his wings anxiously.
Wren pulled a small rag out from one of his overstuffed pockets and wrapped the needle up extremely carefully. There was no way he wanted any part of stabbing himself with that.
Pocketing it, he got back to his feet and made his way over to the shed, peering in the dusty window to see a young raccoon caught up in brooms and rakes, chittering and distressed as it searched for a way out. There was a layer of foam around its mouth. Was it actually feral?
Wren’s heart immediately sank and he hurried back to his truck to heft out a small cage and catchpole, setting them up outside the shed door.
When he went to open it however, he found it locked. Alarm bells began ringing in his mind. The woman had mentioned nothing about capturing and locking the animal up. Supposedly that was what she’d called him in for…so why was it behind a locked door?
“That bitch,” he growled, finding a nearby gnome and using it to smash the small padlock off.
Casting the broken ceramic aside, sans its head, he unhooked the rest of the lock and opened the door carefully.
He could taste the disgusting magic in the air as soon as he did, confirming his suspicions. This wasn’t a feral animal at all. And this curse was fresh.
Wren couldn’t even fathom the reasoning behind this right now, he was so incensed, but nothing was ever reasonable enough to justify it in the first place.
“It’s okay, darling, you can come out now,” he murmured into the darkness. “I’m sorry she did this to you.”
The raccoon made more noises.
“Come on,” he called, crouching down.
Confused and scared, the raccoon tried to make a break for it and Wren expertly caught it with the pole. He hated using things like this, but it was necessary sometimes for both of their safety.
The raccoon struggled, clawing at the pole, but Wren managed to guide it into the cage and close the door.
He cast the pole aside and laid a hand to the cage, ducking down to try and catch its eye. “Shhh. Shh, it’s okay.”
When they finally locked gazes the raccoon stilled, cursemark reflected in its eyes.
Probing deeper, Wren could slowly feel its frantic heartbeat like it was his own, its staggered breaths and confusion filling his chest and head as the curse attacked an unsuspecting and vulnerable body.
Through their connection, Wren followed the curse to its source, seeing everything like there was an X-ray lighting up underneath the fur—bones, veins, organs.
He found the curse clinging to the raccoon’s nervous system like a parasite.
He watched it pulse and grow with every passing second, and Wren knew that if he wasted any time it would be too late to remove it.
Opening the cage door, he reached in and laid his hand over the area, ignoring the sting of a fierce bite on his forearm through the fabric of his hoodie as the raccoon broke eye contact and acted in self-defense.
Wren didn’t pull back as the blood spilled, stoically gritting his teeth as he forced his magic into the affected area, covering the parasite and burning it out instead of tugging.
The raccoon struggled, biting and scratching more, but Wren held firm, wanting none of the curse left behind to grow again.