The Wolves Of West Virginia Part 3 — Like A Thief In The Night

The route to Shep­herd­stown is very dark at night. I mention it because all those twists and turns I talked about earlier are partic­u­larly fun when you can’t see them coming. So my second trip to the town took signif­i­cantly longer than the first.

Not that I was really in that much of a hurry. I mean, I was about to break into an apart­ment (for the second time that day) and hunt for a book about were­wolves in a town where were­wolves appar­ently resided. Who wouldn’t be in a hurry to get started on that.

When I finally got there I parked my car in the same spot as before and walked casu­ally to Naomi’s apart­ment. Once I was within a block of the apart­ment I reached into my pocket and squeezed the twenty sided die in my hand, acti­vating my camou­flage spell. To my eyes every­thing seemed exactly the same, but I’ve done this partic­ular type of magic often enough to have faith that it works.

The lock was just as easily persuaded as before and I entered the apart­ment as quietly as I could. Every­thing looked the same, except darker, so it didn’t seem like anyone had visited since I left. But I wasn’t going to turn the lights on to confirm that. My camou­flage spell was defi­nitely not that strong. Instead I pulled out my flash­light. A little thing but surpris­ingly powerful. Easily enough for this job anyway.

I suppose that sounds a bit dull, a wizard using a flash­light. But magic isn’t free. It takes an effort just like every­thing else. And it’s never made much sense to me wasting energy on some­thing where there’s a perfectly good gadget avail­able that will fulfill the same task.

I don’t know if you’ve ever tried looking for some­thing in a dark room with only a flash­light but it’s actu­ally a massive pain in the ass. You get shadows all over the place and your brain is constantly inventing things to see. After a few frus­trating moments, I decided that a little discovery spell was in order.

Every­thing leaves a trail. Think of it like a scent. Most trails aren’t visible. Well, not to humans at least. But they do exist if you know how to bring them out. If there had been any were­wolves in the apart­ment, before or after Naomi’s disap­pear­ance then I should be able to find that scent.

After a moment’s inves­ti­ga­tion I found a container of salt in a kitchen cabinet and sprin­kled some over the living room carpet. Then, calming myself into the lightest of trance states, I concen­trated on the room’s auras. I know how that sounds, but they exist. When you tune your­self into them you see and feel a swirling mixture of colors and feel­ings. Now I tried to hone in on the one aura I was inter­ested in . The one with a wolfish scent to it.

I smiled in satis­fac­tion as soon as I felt it. There was defi­nitely some­thing present. Time to get a few answers! Concen­trating harder, I linked the salt parti­cles to the aura in my mind, locking the two concepts together. And then I opened my eyes and looked down at the carpet, only to blink in surprise.

The result was not what I had expected. The spell had worked perfectly. It had done exactly what I wanted. I just hadn’t expected nearly so many results. All across the floor, the salt had gath­ered into neat piles taking on the shape of foot­prints. But there had to be dozens of them and of different sizes at that.

Just how many wolves had been in this apart­ment? What exactly had Naomi stum­bled into? With a little work I could prob­ably refine the spell to give me an idea of how recent all the tracks were. Surely they hadn’t all been made at once. But that would take time and I could feel my palms start to itch.

If there was an entire pack of were­wolves involved in this then surely they would still be watching the apart­ment. Had they seen me enter? I was confi­dent about my camou­flage spell against human eyes. But what about a wolf’s nose? I needed to get out of here quickly. But I wasn’t going to leave without the book.

Which, it turned out, was quite easy to find. Where else would you keep a book but right on your night­stand for easy bedtime reading. Obvi­ously Naomi hadn’t felt this was some­thing you need to hide. Well not in her own apart­ment anyway. If I had thought to look there in the first place, the whole trip could have been avoided. Some­times I’m too clever for my own good. Or too stupid. It’s often hard to tell them apart.

The title told me exactly what to expect even before I opened the book to look inside. On Lycan­thropy by Armann Flosason. So she had been studying were­wolves. Which might explain their interest in her. But what was her interest in them?

Curiosity got the better of me and I opened the book. I had done little more than flick through the first few pages when some­thing big and solid slammed into me and knocked me flying. My head hit the ground hard and I was out cold in seconds.

I can’t have been uncon­scious for very long, but it was long enough for all hell to break loose. When I came round I was still in the apart­ment, lying on the floor. I strug­gled to my feet, wincing at the almost blinding pain in my head and almost walked straight into a rather over­weight police officer.

I froze and held my breath. The camou­flage spell was still working. The police hadn’t notice me, yet. Which did raise the ques­tion of why it hadn’t worked on my assailant earlier, but there would be time to figure that out later.

Right now I had to maneuver my way out of the apart­ment before someone tripped over me. I was pretty sure at that point they would notice. Escape was going to be a chal­lenge though because here were two more policemen, both of whom had clearly eaten too many donuts, blocking the door. I guess policing a univer­sity town doesn’t usually require a lot of phys­ical exertion.

Discre­tion being, as my father always liked to tell me, the better part of valor, I edged myself to the corner of the room where at least no one in this swarm of legal activity was likely to bump into me. I was pondering the ques­tion of who had called them and how they were connected to the person who had attacked me when I real­ized that the book was missing.

I may not be a detec­tive, but I can put clues together when someone attaches giant neon signs to them. It was way too big a coin­ci­dence to think that my attacker just happened to break in at exactly the same time I had and just happened to be looking for exactly the same book.

No, clearly someone didn’t want me to have that book. Which had me wondering just what was in it? Fortu­nately even a crack to the skull wasn’t going to shake such an unusual name from my mind. Once I got out of here I would ask Mercedes to find out all there was to know about a gentleman named Armann Flosason. Somehow I doubted there would be too many false leads to chase down.

It seemed the book was the only thing my attacker was after. The rest of the apart­ment seemed untouched. Well except where the police were tramping all over things. Feeling increas­ingly confi­dent about the power of my camou­flage spell, I lent back against the wall for some support and watched them stum­bling about.

I couldn’t tell what it was they were looking for exactly. Even assuming that they knew there had been a break in, there was no one here now. And it seemed highly unlikely anyone was going to return with all the lights and uniforms every­where. Mainly I just wanted them to go home so I could get back to my car and take an ibuprofen.

Finally the police came to the same conclu­sion about the intruders. Which was just as well because I really wasn’t feeling too good. As the police started to depart I kept my eyes firmly on the door, waiting for an oppor­tu­nity to leave before they taped every­thing off and locked up again.

Which was when I noticed the blonde. The same girl I’d spoken to earlier. She was peering out from her apart­ment across the hall, hand nervously fidgeting with her hair. Had she called the cops I wondered? She certainly seemed to take a lot of interest in Naomi and this apart­ment. And she was equally inter­ested in what the police were up to .

It was yet another ques­tion with no clear answer on this long and painful night. My vision blurred a little and I real­ized I had to get out of here or risk passing out again. It wasn’t as though I was going to get any more answers here anyway.

At the first oppor­tu­nity I slipped past the chat­ting police and walked away as fast as a man can without making a huge amount of noise. I didn’t remove the camou­flage spell until I was sitting in the drivers seat of my car. My head ached, my body felt drained from the prolonged use of magic and I had at best five hours until my next shift at Wal-mart.

To think I once thought that wizarding would be fun…

Go To Story Index — or — Go Straight To Part 4

Originally published at www.eoghann.com on October 16, 2014.

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