“They’re checking everyone’s location, right? Making sure they’re all safe?” I looked down at Connor, and he lifted his gaze to me, but his eyes were unreadable.
“At the risk of insulting you, and I’ll apologize in advance for that, could we have some kind of signaling system when you’re in wolf form?”
He continued to stare at me. But it seemed chillier.
“One paw scratch for yes, two for no? And not like one of those counting horses,” I said, reading his expression perfectly. “I don’t want you to perform for me. I just want to be able to communicate with you.”
I made myself continue to meet his steely gaze, unreadable though it was, because it seemed important that I not look away.
“One for yes, two for no, and three for ‘you’re being a brat’?”
He scratched once.
Then he scratched three times.
I probably had that coming.
NINE
We walked for nearly an hour, following this wing of the trail over and around hills marked by god-strewn boulders. The trail appeared to dead-end at another creek that channeled through the high granite walls.
“End of the trail?” I asked him.
I sensed the lightning spark of power before I saw it, and this time managed to close my eyes. The light of his transformation still flashed red behind my lids. When darkness fell again, I opened them to find him naked beside me, hands on his hips.
“Yeah, unless you want to go rock climbing.” He lifted his gaze to the thirty-foot ledge on the other side of the cold, dark water.
“Not at the top of my list. But if we might find anything over there, we should probably follow it through.”
“We won’t,” he said, moving closer to the water, crouching in front of it. “I don’t smell Pack—or anything else—past here. The water’s deep, and if anyone tried to cross it, they’d have had to take a good swim.”
“Eliminating their scent trail,” I guessed, and Connor nodded.
“At least for a bit.” He rose again. “Long enough to mask their direction. I’d rather search with a scent, a footprint, something. Not randomly stumbling around.”
“We need more information,” I said.
“Yeah.” Frowning, he rubbed his neck.
“Are you okay?” I asked. “You seem... uncomfortable. Is it the paw scratching?”
There was laughter in his eyes. “No. It was a good idea, but your delivery sucks. Something is... strange out here. Something... off.”
“Magic?”
He looked back at me. “I don’t know.”
“Hold on,” I said. His was the only magic I could feel, but I’d let myself be ensconced by it. So I closed my eyes and tried to filter it out, along with all the other scents and sounds that wove through the woods.
Connor and I had left trails of magic along the path, shimmering ribbons of power that wove through the trees. But there was another trail, and this one was... different. Still shimmering, but not a ribbon. Not fluid or continuous, but sharp and broken. Angular, like a fork of lightning.
I opened my eyes, looked at him. “There’s magic, but I’m not entirely sure how to describe it. I think it’s broken.”
“Broken,” he said, staring deeper into the woods as he considered. “Yeah. I see that. But why?”
“I have no idea. I don’t know what would make someone—or their magic—leave a trail like that. Illness? Or the effect of some foreign magic?”
He looked back at me. “Like magical sabotage?”