Chapter Thirty-one #2
Ripper squatted down to look at the symbols, feeling his face tighten. ‘I don’t know. But I know someone who will.’
Laying out the small pair of torn jeans on the hub’s counter, Emberlyn hummed as she took in the entire row of ripped clothes.
‘Let me guess,’ she said to the female werewolf in front of her.
‘He still keeps shifting before he’s finished undressing.
’ ‘He’ being the nine-year-old boy at his mother’s side, who blushed furiously.
The she-wolf gave a sharp nod. ‘He and his friends are always racing and seeing who can strip and shift first. But more often than not, they’re so determined to win that they don’t fully strip first. Which is cheating,’ she told her son.
Refusing to meet his mother’s gaze, he stared right at the counter.
It was not at all unusual for Emberlyn’s customers to be parents who were aggravated by their child’s habit of tearing their clothes during shifts. But this poor she-wolf was here more than most. ‘I can use magick to make his clothing more resistant to tearing, but . . .’
‘It won’t make him learn not to cheat, which is why I’m not paying for such a service. In fact, I won’t be dishing out any cash at all. From now on, he’s going to use his allowance to pay for repairs.’
He gawked. ‘What?’
‘Is it so outrageous that you’d pay the literal price for your deliberate carelessness?’ his mother questioned.
His shoulders slumping, the boy sighed at the wall, his face all scrunched up. ‘Ah, man.’
Hiding a smile, Emberlyn swiped a tag and nabbed a pen. ‘I can have them ready by tomorrow.’ She scribbled the relevant details onto the tag.
‘Thanks, I’ll see you then.’
‘See you, then. Bye,’ Emberlyn said to the little boy.
‘Bye.’ It was the mumble of a long-suffering martyr.
As mother and son then left, Emberlyn attached the tag to the pair of jeans.
Footfalls preceded the sound of Paisley yawning loudly. Sidling up to Emberlyn with a mug of coffee in hand, she peered down at the newly dropped-off laundry. ‘Another repair job?’
‘Yup. Kid still keeps damaging his gear during his shifts. It’s a werewolf-child thing, I know, but it has to be irritating. You’ll learn that for yourself eventually, since you have this to look forward to.’
Paisley tensed, a pinch of panic in her eyes. ‘What?’
‘Easy, I’m not saying that you and Crew are destined to shack up and breed.’ They were an item, and they were still going strong. But life provided no guarantees. ‘I’m just saying that any children you bear will go through this stage.’
Paisley pulled a face. ‘I don’t think I’d make a good parent.’
‘Because your own are crap?’
‘Yes.’ Looking tired, Paisley chugged back some of her drink. ‘This conversation is much too deep for a Monday morning.’
‘It’s afternoon.’
‘Doesn’t feel like it.’ She scratched her head. ‘I saw your old in-laws last night. I fear I may have given away how pissed I am at them for the stuff they said to Ripper. Because whatever they saw on my face made them wince.’
‘At least they’ve chosen to take note of his warning.’ The Reeds had kept their distance from both Ripper and Emberlyn since their appearance at his lake house.
Paisley raised her mug as if to honor the gods or something. ‘May the idiots continue to heed it.’
‘We can but hope.’
‘Ah, here comes your dude now.’
Flicking her gaze to the window, Emberlyn noticed Ripper striding toward the hub. Her scalp prickled at the hardness in his expression. Something wasn’t right. So the moment he stalked inside, she immediately asked, ‘What is it?’
There were times she’d catch him with a hard look on his face, but then he’d see her and it would soften. Today, it didn’t. His gaze was flinty and unreadable.
‘I need your input on something,’ he told her, very little inflection in his voice. ‘Can the others cover for you?’
‘We’ll hold the fort, no problem,’ Paisley assured him.
Emberlyn grabbed her purse from under the counter, hung the strap over her shoulder and crossed to him. ‘I thought you were hunting in Bloodhill. Did something happen? Is someone hurt?’
‘Nothing like that.’ Taking possession of her hand, he led her outside. ‘I want to show you something, and then I want to know if you can tell me what exactly it is.’
An oddly phrased request, but . . . ‘Okay.’
He gave her hand an appreciative squeeze. ‘We’ll stop off at your place on the way. You’re going to need different shoes.’
She felt her brow furrow. ‘Why?’
‘Because you’ll end up with blisters upon blisters if you walk through Bloodhill in high heels.’
She stiffened. ‘We’re going to Bloodhill?’
He nodded, the set of his mouth grim. ‘I wouldn’t take you into that level of danger if I didn’t need you there, baby. Some magick-related advice is much needed, and you’re the only witch I trust. Nothing will happen to you there – I wouldn’t allow it.’
‘I’m not afraid to go to Bloodhill; I’m just surprised.’ And mighty curious as to what he wanted her to take a look at.
They drove to the manor in his truck. Inside the house, she pulled on clothes fit for hiking in this weather – a tee, pants, boots – and nabbed her sunglasses. Then they were on the move again.
After he’d parked at a spot near the fringe of the woods, he led her into the forest. There was a lot of skirting trees, dodging mossy rocks, wading through shrubbery and ducking to avoid low-hanging branches before they finally reached his clan members.
Emberlyn was about to say a quick hey to them, but then a macabre display snagged her attention. ‘Well, hell.’
‘Ignore the pile, if you can,’ said Ripper, ushering her toward it with a hand on her back. ‘I need to know what these are.’ He pointed at two markings on the tree.
Moving in for a closer look, Emberlyn pushed her sunglasses upward and settled them in her hair. ‘These are sigils.’ Hovering a hand over each one, she read the magick there . . . and felt her mouth tighten.
‘What are sigils?’ asked Logan as the others gathered around.
‘They’re basically a written intent.’ Seeing the looks of blank incomprehension sent her way, she went on: ‘Generally, they’re positive – it’s about manifesting goals, protecting yourself, stuff like that.
To condense the intent, the sentence is simplified, vowels and repeated consonants are dropped and the remaining letters are scattered and overlapped until they form a single symbol.
Magick is then embedded in it, thereby activating it. ’
Ripper folded his arms. ‘You said sigils are typically positive. Does that apply to these?’
‘No. Each has a different intent. One is to attract Rabid. The other is to make them sleep. Basically . . . they together make a trap.’
Ripper’s eyes darkened and went slitted. ‘So a witch is drawing them here and then making them vulnerable so they’ll be easily captured.’
She dipped her chin. ‘Seems that way.’
Logan spat a curse. ‘At least now we know how they’re doing it. I couldn’t picture a witch hiking through Bloodhill to seek out Rabid. Using these sigils, they pretty much cast out a net.’
‘And in doing so, they’ve risked Rabid packs coming across others,’ Kerr pointed out. ‘You know what often happens in those circumstances.’
‘They fight,’ Ripper clipped, the veins in his neck corded. ‘Which means that the scent of death here might not only be coming from the animal remains over there.’
‘Fuck,’ Crew bit off. ‘The witch behind this needs killing. Reena . . . she won’t issue a fatal punishment. We need to ID the culprit before she does.’ He looked at Emberlyn. ‘How long have the sigils been there?’
She pursed her lips. ‘At least two and a half months. I can remove them, but you should take photos first, or have a Watcher who’s also a witch examine them. Not everyone will take my word on things.’ They’d insinuate a conspiracy was at work or something.
A muscle in Ripper’s cheek ticked. ‘Yeah, and that pisses me off.’ He turned to a clan member. ‘Go get Marvin. Tell him there’s something he needs to see.’
The wolf gave a curt nod and melted away.
‘A town meeting needs to be held,’ Ripper declared. ‘Everyone should be made aware of this.’
‘And we should closely monitor the reactions of the coven,’ Logan threw in.
‘Reena has to have suspects, but she isn’t sharing names.
And yeah, okay, that’s not a surprise. You wouldn’t give up the names of people in our clan who’d so royally fucked up,’ he said to Ripper.
‘But you would act. She hasn’t. Which means we need to, because this can’t go on. ’
Emberlyn sighed. ‘I do love town meetings.’
Ripper walked toward her. ‘I swear to Christ, no one had better give you shit this time – I’m fucking done with it.’