An Apple for the Creature

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.