Chapter 005 — The Hunter Who Didn't Come Home

The sheriff's name was Booth. He was a large, red-faced man who had been the law in Alder Hollow for eighteen years. By ten o'clock he had a search party of a dozen men with flashlights and two dogs.

Evelyn went with them. Elias went with them too, over her very strong objections.

"I know those woods," he said. "Tom taught me to skip stones in the creek."

"Elias —"

"Evelyn. If my friend is lost, I am going."

She looked at him. His face was set in the way it got when something mattered to him. She had learned in three months that when he got that face, arguing was like arguing with a brick wall that also felt guilty about it.

"Fine. But you stay next to me. You do not chase squirrels. You do not rescue anything."

"I make no promises about squirrels."

They found the rifle at eleven. It was in the hollow of the old oak, just as Evelyn had expected. The barrel was clean. The chamber was empty. It was propped upright, leaning against the inner bark, like someone had set it down there on purpose.

Booth pulled it out. He checked it. His face went hard.

"Tom would never leave his rifle."

"No, sir," one of the men said. "That man slept with that thing."

"Whoever took him left the gun," Booth said, slow. "That means they didn't want it. That means they didn't take him by force. That means — he went with them."

Nobody said anything.

The shaggy yellow dog was sitting at the base of the tree. Its nose was pointed up the ridge. Its tail was not moving. It made a small, low sound.

Elias was watching the dog.

"Evelyn. The dog wants to go further up."

"I see him."

"Can we? Just a little?"

She wanted to say no. But she looked at his face — lost, worried, and quietly determined — and she said, "Stick to me. One step."

They went up. The shaggy dog led them along a deer path, then off the deer path, then into a gully where the trees were so close they had to turn sideways.

Elias almost made it an hour without incident.

The squirrel happened at the fifty-minute mark. It exploded out of a bush at his feet, brown and frantic, and Elias yelped and jumped backward and tripped over a root and went down a short embankment into the creek. Evelyn was down the embankment after him in three seconds.

He was sitting in the creek. The water was two feet deep. He was holding something.

It was a wolf pup. Small. Wet. Shaking. It was yelping in the thin, reedy way that only baby animals can, and Elias was holding it against his chest with both hands, looking at it like it was the Second Coming.

"Evelyn. It followed me down. It fell in the water."

"Elias —"

"It's lost. Like I was."

She looked at the pup. It was gray. Its eyes were the color of pale moss. For a split second — she would have sworn it later, even though it sounded like madness — the pup looked up at her with something that was not puppy eyes. It was a small, measuring look. A recognition.

She held out her hands.

"Give it to me. Its mother is looking for it. We are going to put it back where we found it."

"I don't want to. It likes me."

He gave her the pup. As she did, the little creature tilted its head and nuzzled her palm — quick, deliberate — and its nose brushed the inside of her wrist.

Her bond mark burned.

Not hot. Not painful. Warm. Like a hand closing over hers. Like a greeting.

She did not let her face change. She carried the pup up the bank and set it on a dry stone. It stood there, unsteady, looked at her, looked at Elias, then turned and slipped into the trees and was gone.

Elias made a wounded noise. "I didn't ask its name."

"You don't get to name wild animals."

"Why not?"

"Because then you have to keep them."

"Would that be so bad?"

She took off her jacket and wrapped it around him.

"Come on. We are going home. You are going to have hot soup. You are not going to rescue anything else for the rest of the day."

They were halfway down the ridge when she found it. She did not let him see. She knelt to retie her boot, and when she did, her fingers closed on something half-buried in the leaves. A strip of canvas. Torn. Stiff with old blood. The olive color of Old Tom's hunting coat.

She palmed it. She stood up.

"Evelyn? You okay?"

"Fine. Just mud on my boot."

The search party found nothing. They came down at dusk with their flashlights and their long faces. Booth told Marnie they would come back at dawn. The shaggy dog sat on the step of the sheriff's office and watched the north ridge all night.

That night, Evelyn waited until Elias was asleep. She took the strip of canvas out of her pocket. She lit the candle. She pulled the sheaf of wolf-script pages out from under the flower shelf.

She held the canvas over the page she had been avoiding. The words on it shifted in the candlelight — and then, because the old magic in the pages recognized the old magic in the blood on the cloth, they settled.

She read them.

Blood trace. Three days. The prey will show itself.

She closed the sheaf.

Outside, on the mountain road that led north, two sets of headlights came over the ridge and stopped. They did not come into town. They just stopped.

In the passenger seat, a tall man with a lean jaw and a scar along his left eyebrow smiled into the dark.

"He's here," he said.

In the driver's seat, a smaller, darker man leaned forward, sniffing the air.

"The Alpha's scent. Barely there. But yes. He's here."

The tall man opened his door.

"Then let's go say hello," he said. "We have a long walk into town, brother. And I want to be polite when we meet him."