witch, badly enough to transmit the were-taint.”
At the words, Pea launched herself from Brute’s shoulders and scampered across the room, leaping, crabbing sideways; she disturbed nothing. Brute followed slowly, but outside the circle, the overhead light throwing odd shadows, the darkest ones pooling under the werewolf. His growl, until now only a vibration, grew in volume. Rick realized that Brute had already detected the other werewolf, had known what had happened here from the moment they entered the room, and had been kept calm only by Soul’s hand on his head. Rick would have to learn to read Brute in the field—assuming they passed the training
Pea stopped at the center of the circle and scraped at the dried blood with one scalpel-sharp claw. She brought it to her nose and sniffed. She sneezed, hard, covering her tiny mouth with a paw, then raced to the dried blood at Rick’s feet. Brute and Pea stood, nose-to-nose, sniffing.
Slowly, Brute moved to the center of the circle and sniffed again. His ears went back and the vibration of his werewolf growl filled the room, seeming to bounce off the walls into Rick’s chest. Brute’s pale, crystalline eyes stared up at the former cop, his growl increasing in volume before falling away into a whine. If Rick hadn’t known better, he would have thought the wolf was feeling worried, concerned. But three seconds spent with an Angel of the Light could have been no cure for Brute’s cruelty.
Pea stepped over the salt circle and put her forelegs on Rick’s jeans-clad shin, staring up at him. Her tail twitched, her face mournful. “Yeah,” he said to her, stroking her once in comfort. “We’re too late. Maybe weeks too late.” He looked at Soul. “Did the witch turn?” Soul pressed her lips together and didn’t answer. Rick figured that info was need-to-know, and trainees were the lowest on the information ladder.
On his hands and knees, Rick circled the room, sniffing, letting the scent signatures settle into his brain, new memories, new associations. Rick turned to Brute. “You’re up.” The werewolf held Rick’s eyes with a predator’s intensity. This was something they had worked out the first day of school, a Q&A to keep them from having any Timmy-fell-down-the-well moments of attempted communication. “Take scent signatures of the subjects.” Brute snarled at him, but walked slowly around the circle, sniffing at each spot where a witch had knelt during the working. When he was finished, the wolf sat down again, waiting for the confirmatory questions.
“All the witches were female,” Rick said.
“You can tell that by scent?” Soul interrupted, surprised.
Rick held up a finger, watching the wolf. There weren’t many male witches because they tended to die at puberty, but it was always wise to confirm. The wolf nodded, which was a strange gesture on the animal.
“Were all the witches related?” Rick asked.
Brute shook his head.
“Two were related,” Rick said.
Brute nodded once.
“This witch”—Rick indicated a point on the pentagram—“and that one.”
Brute nodded again. Most covens were related by blood, even if widely spaced on the family tree.
Soul’s eyes gleamed and her nostrils widened. Rick could hear her heart rate increase. “Very good,” she murmured.
Pea stood on her hind feet, asking to be held. Rick boosted her up and Pea balanced across one shoulder, her tail curling around his neck, her furry cheek next to his. She didn’t purr, exactly. It was more part-purr and part- croon, rhythmical, musical, and harmonic.
Soul crossed the room, walking widdershins, or counterclockwise. When she reached him, she buried her hand in Brute’s ruff, scratching his ears. The werewolf sighed in happiness. “None of the other trainees did half as well, not even the witches, and they had a better handle into magic-working than you will ever have. Starting a week late, you are better at this than any of the others.” A half smile curled her lips. “Don’t tell them I said so.”
“Psymeter,” he said, not responding to the compliment. Rick knew that, in his case, being the best was not a guarantee that his triumvirate would graduate and go on to be PsyLED agents. They had other issues. Lots of other issues.
Soul lifted the strap of the bulky device from around her head. The training units were older models, having been pulled from field use when the agency got lighter-weight, more compact ones, but the older models still worked. Rick stepped outside, clipped the box to his belt, and turned the unit on. He zeroed it to the outside magical ambience, which should have been close to zero. The meter needle fluctuated and settled safely in the green zone. This particular device had been calibrated just for his unit, taking into account their magical energies, which had higher-than-human readings.
He deliberately did not look up at the sky. Tomorrow night was the first night of the full moon and he got weird close to the full moon, wanting to sit and stare up at it. For hours. Yeah. Weird.
Rick stepped back inside and instantly the meter spiked. Rick stopped and looked at Soul. The meter wasn’t reacting to her—Soul showed up as human though she definitely was not—but to something else in the room. “It’s redlining. This far out time-wise from a working, it should be a low yellow, max.”
“What might that signify?”
“Several possibilities. The working was interrupted. The working is still active, which means they transferred the working to an amulet. Or it had a delayed result yet to be released. But I don’t see signs of anything magically active, so which was it?”
Soul shook her head. “We don’t know yet.” Rick handed Soul the psymeter and she touched Brute’s shoulder, which came to her waist. The gesture was part scratch and part something metaphysically calming, which made Rick once again wonder what Soul was. Fairy? Elf? The wolf started panting and closed his eyes.
Rick said, “I want to see the crime-scene photos, mug shots, and the notes of the OIC and the IO.”
“Why?” She sounded sincerely curious, not if-I-ask-a-question-he’ll-learn-something curious. “What do you think that the officer in charge and the investigating officer might have missed?”
“I don’t know. But the meter’s still redlining. I might see something that the rest of you missed, or something in the photos might hit on what I smelled or saw. I might draw a different conclusion or ask a different question. I want to see all that because tomorrow night is the start of the full moon. And we might have a werewolf out there.”
Soul stared at him, her black eyes speculative. They were even blacker than his own Frenchy-black eyes, and usually they sparkled, throwing back the light like faceted black onyx. But tonight they were somber. Soul pulled a cell phone from a pocket in her gauzy skirt and punched in a number. “Have the on-call administrator call me back ASAP.” She closed the cell.
Rick studied the circle once more. “Did our people make the three openings in the salt?”
That enigmatic half smile lit her features again. “No. It was that way when we found it.” Soul’s platinum ponytail slid to one shoulder and stayed there when she raised her head. She was graceful, small, and curvy in all the right places. He wanted to know more about her, but he also understood that the relationship between trainee and mentor was one of strictly enforced professionalism. There weren’t a lot of law enforcement jobs open to someone who carried the were-taint. He wasn’t going to blow his chance to work for PsyLED by giving the wrong signals. He’d made too many mistakes where women were concerned. He’d lost his humanity because of that. He turned and went outside.
The light inside the house went out behind him and he heard Soul lock the door. He could count the tumblers if he wanted to. Cat hearing was part of the enhanced senses he’d gained when he was bitten by a black were- leopard.
Soul’s cell tinkled, New Age musical chimes. She walked away, opened it, and instead of saying hello, said, “Mariella. Thank you for returning my call.”
“How did your wonder boy do?” Mariella Russo, the instructional administrator, asked.
Though Rick had never met the IA, he’d remember that voice. It sounded rough as splintered wood, as if she smoked four packs of cigarettes and drank a pint of rotgut whisky every day. Soul knew he had acute senses, but she never acted accordingly and he’d learned a lot of interesting things by listening. He turned away so Soul couldn’t read his face. Pea nuzzled his cheek and he stroked her, absently. Brute was a white shadow off to the side, glowering at him.
“Our best PsyLED investigators took two weeks to determine what his unit deduced in only twenty minutes,” Soul said. “And, thanks to his law enforcement training, he added observations that the other trainee units missed. It will be in my report. He wants the crime-scene photos, mug shots, and the notes of the OIC and the IO. I am
