Chapter Two
Emerson
The email comes in at two in the morning. I should be asleep already, but I’m scrolling through, trying to research the ghost I think I saw last night, and besides…
Maybe it gave me the creeps. That’s a normal reaction to seeing something like that.
So, when the email arrives, I open it. Better that than lie on Cate’s uncomfortable sofa all night, trying not to stare into the dark corners of her living room.
Dear Mr Hedges,
I am writing to enquire as to your availability to investigate several strange occurrences that have taken place in London over the past few months.
We have a recording of one such occurrence but are seeking more in-depth, credible evidence.
Having viewed your public accounts, I am of the opinion that you are the best suited to retrieve what I require.
Find also a document attached with relevant conditions and guidelines. Should you acquire and deliver the evidence requested, I am willing to pay in the vicinity of ￡50,000.
My eyes widen. I jerk into a more upright position. Fifty thousand? Holy—I shake my head and scan the email again, heart racing. A zipped folder is attached to the email, as well as a PDF titled ‘Requirements’. No contract, though. I frown.
Someone is having me on. I sigh, deflating, but scan the folder and download it all the same. It’s not as though I’ve never received joke emails before. I’ve been signed up for every shitty newsletter under the sun.
Go hunting for magic, and people figure you’re fair game.
Apparently, they’re taking the jokes a little further now.
The problem is that, as I read through the documents attached to the email, everything looks real. Legitimate. I remove my glasses, rubbing the bridge of my nose, and realise that at some point it turned three o’clock and I probably need to go to sleep.
I lean forward, glancing down the hall towards Cate’s room. She shut the door at midnight, but I still see a chink of light beneath it. She might still be awake. She can talk me down from this, at least, before I make any impulsive decisions.
I shove my blanket aside and move to rap on her door.
“Em?” she calls. “What’s up?”
I open the door and duck my head inside. Cate’s still sitting up in bed, but she looks like she plans to sleep soon, too. She shoves her bookmark in her book and sets it aside.
“Nothing bad. Just… Something weird.”
“Weird is what you do, right?”
I grimace at my catchphrase—the one I use on every stream, in every video. I might not show my face, but my audience knows my voice, and those words specifically.
“This is weirder than that.” And somehow more mundane at the same time.
Cate slides across her bed and pats the duvet next to her. “Lay it on me, then.”
Like that, any tiredness disappears from her expression. I sit on the bed next to her and sigh. “I shouldn’t have bothered you this late.”
“Well, you have, so tell me what the bloody issue is before I shake it out of you.”
“I got this email.” I angle my laptop so she can see it, then read it aloud. Cate’s eyes narrow behind her dark-rimmed glasses and when she’s had the chance to scan the documents herself, she’s quiet for a few moments.
“That’s… suspicious.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
“The video’s compelling. Could be CGI, of course. Manipulation like that is pretty easy now.”
“I know.”
“What’s got you on the fence about it?”
I frown at the screen. “Not sure. Can’t put my finger on it.”
“That’s not a good sign.”
“Something about the email seems familiar, maybe? I don’t know the sender, though. I checked.”
“And what if you go to London and there’s nothing there?”
“I spend a few weeks in the city. The most they’re going to do is try to embarrass me, right?”
I’ve fallen for a few tricks before. The only other suspicion is that it’s something more dangerous, that in my quest to find magic, I have actually stumbled upon something real, and now I’m about to pay the price.
Except I can’t quite work out what might have triggered this. Recently, at least. Cate and I saw a kelpie a few years ago. I’m fairly sure. Ghosts are commonplace—everyone’s got a story about them.
“They want to find werewolves, Cate,” I whisper, and I can’t help the way my lips twitch at her heavy sigh.
“And what if the werewolves find you first?”
“I’ll be careful.”
She arches red eyebrows like she doesn’t believe me, which is entirely fair. That being said, the worst injury I ever received on a hunt like this was from an angry goose, so it’s not as though I often go wandering into danger.
“Sleep on it, Em,” she pleads. “We’ll go through it again in the morning, okay? Do more research. See if there’s any way this could actually be real.”
“Yeah, good plan. Get some sleep. Sorry for bothering you.”
She snorts. “You always bother me.”
I laugh when she shoves me away and go back to my makeshift bed on the sofa.
I don’t fall asleep right away. I read through the email again before I click on the video.
It appears to have been shot on someone’s phone because the picture is fairly clear, even when the person holding it moves.
They swing the camera around in an arc, then pause, letting out a heavy breath before they zoom in further down the street.
It’s somewhere in London. Early in the morning, maybe, because the street is entirely empty and the houses on either side are dark.
A man comes into view. He doesn’t notice the person shooting at all; he certainly doesn’t look their way. No. He slips between two houses and after a brief second of hesitation, the cameraperson follows.
They’re quiet and careful, lagging some way behind him, and then they duck behind a low garden wall as the man crosses the road and walks into a park.
He glances around once before he drags his shirt over his head.
I can’t make out his features all that well from this distance, but he’s well-built, and I glance away briefly when he strips off entirely.
Then I look back. My heart hammers. I know what’s coming. I watched this three times before I even considered going to Cate.
It’s difficult to see at a distance, but I wince all the same.
The transformation looks painful. The man’s body twists, limbs lengthening, bones cracking, but it’s all over in a heartbeat, maybe two, and then a wolf stands where the man used to be.
He shakes out his fur once, ears twitching, before he bounds into the shadows of the park.
The video ends there. I don’t know who recorded it. I don’t know if they remained for a while after, the way I would have, or if they left.
Magic. The thing I’ve always sought. The thing I have to believe is out there because I need the world to be a little brighter, full of more mystery than what I’ve so far experienced in my thirty-odd years of life.
And fifty thousand pounds won’t hurt, either. That would be enough to really make something of my life. Get myself a real long-term housing situation, stop having to take shitty zero-hour jobs…
I start typing my reply before I can think it through any longer. Cate knows I want to take the job. She’ll understand when I talk to her in the morning.
I’d be delighted…