2: ELISE
Elise stopped at the first service plaza on the Mass Pike. She had a quarter tank of gas, but it was two hundred and sixty miles to Joshua’s home in Sauquoit, New York. Ignoring the signs on the gas pump, she called in her report.
Clarice answered with a sleepy, “Central. Ow!”
“Are you okay?” Elise asked.
Clarice had bright copper hair and the porcelain skin that went with it, which meant she bruised spectacularly. She was also a klutz. “No biggie. I just kicked my desk.” She yawned deeply. “Report?”
“It’s Elise. The huntsman is dead and I’ve secured its target.”
“Oh good.” There was a clicking of keys as Clarice entered the information into the logs. “And the Wickers that made it?”
“I’m looking for them now. I think they’re in the Utica area of Central New York. Is anyone else there? There was a wolf attack at a barn on Friday night. It was related to this.”
“The Wolf King is on the warpath in Belgrade.” Clarice must have put Elise on the speakerphone. Her voice floated away from the pickup, and was joined by the sounds of coffee making. “He popped up on our radar when he and half his Thane went through customs. All hell let loose there. We’re not sure what’s going on.”
“I said Central New York.”
“Yes, I know.” Another faint “ow” as she burned herself on the coffee she’d just made. “Whatever is happening in Belgrade has all the wolves rattled. After I heard about the attack in Sauquoit, I called Albany and Syracuse to see if it was one of their wolves or a true feral. The Baron of Syracuse said we should mind our own business. I took it to mean that the wolf wasn’t a feral, otherwise it would be our business.”
“What did the Marquis of Albany say?”
“That the Thane are looking into it. I got the impression that he’d talked with the Castle, been told something that was obviously incomplete, put clues together, but didn’t totally trust the answer he’d come up with. He chose to be rude instead of giving us false information. Why?”
Clarice manned the phones at Central because she had a rare magical gift of insight. She could sense patterns from the barest of clues. Also, no one really wanted her playing with knives.
“A wolf tangled with a Wicker’s puppets and ended up dead.” Elise ticked off what she’d pieced together from the clues. “The sole survivor had been bitten but didn’t go feral.”
“Bitten? Fudge, I missed that.” There was a long pause. “Oh geez, yeah, this has Wicker fingerprints all over it. The news media suddenly detoured off all the weird stuff on the case. You need to go down the whole way to the social media of the victims’ family members to get the nitty-gritty. The reporters are churning out buckets of crap, but it’s all been whitewashed. You’re looking at a big coven. There’s no way only one or two witches are running this show. And you’re right, the wolf must have been a Thane; I’ve talked to the two nearest Alphas. Good call.”
A big coven. Elise whispered a curse.
“Oh geez. Nonononono!” Clarice cried.
“What?”
“I spilled my coffee! Grandmother is going to kill me.”
“You spilled it in your laptop?”
“I’m not allowed laptops anymore. Grandmother said I was going to personally bankrupt the family, which is totally mean of her. I make a ton of money day trading in my spare time. She got me a wireless keyboard and wall mounted my monitor. I’m not allowed to touch the desktop tower. This is the third keyboard this week. Maybe if I can—” Clarice gave a startled squeak and the phone went dead.
Elise tried calling back three times before giving up. Clarice must have killed the phone too. It meant Elise was on her own.