Stepping over it, he glanced around the darkened space. The motion sensor had been shattered, the remnants of it crunching under his feet.
Wren frowned as he continued to explore, noting that the chips in the side windowsill looked nothing like an animal could create.
If he had to guess, he would say it appeared suspiciously similar to when he used to crack the locked window open at Nexus.
This was man-made.
Blu landed on his shoulder and twittered quietly.
Wren hummed in acknowledgment. “It is strange. Can you see anything?”
Blu hopped once then took off, searching the surrounding area.
Hart liked to try and call it Wren’s official diagnosis technique, this connection he was able to create with animals, always wanting to categorize things into neat boxes. But animal curses didn’t work the same as other curses, and Wren certainly didn’t view it in those terms. Wren wanted nothing to do with the clinical way Nexus viewed cursebreaking.
He and Blu worked as a team, and whatever connection they had between them was a mystery Wren didn’t want to unravel or examine—or hand over to Nexus to ‘research.’ To this day there was nothing written in his notes about his cursebreaking, only speculations from instructors.
Wren squatted, peering under bushes for any signs of movement, watching the shifting of bugs among the leaves and the trails of snails with a small smile. He picked one up and placed it on a hydrangea leaf.
“Eat up, little one.”
He continued to go low while Blu scouted from above, moving things aside carefully. What he wasn’t expecting to find was a stray needle that had rolled behind a stone plant pot.
“What the…” Blu whistled to indicate that he’d found something and Wren nodded without looking. “Good job, give me one second, darling.”
Covering his hand with his hoodie, he carefully plucked the needle up by the casing and held it up. Under the moonlight the small drops left had a strange yellowish sheen that reminded him of something.
Before he could make the connection, a crash drew his attention. Blu was sitting on top of a small gardening shed placed against the fence, fluttering his wings anxiously.
Wren pulled a small rag out from one of his overstuffed pockets and wrapped the needle up extremelycarefully. There was no way he wanted any part of stabbing himself with that.
Pocketing it, he got back to his feet and made his way over to the shed, peering in the dusty window to see a young raccoon caught up in brooms and rakes, chittering and distressed as it searched for a way out. There was a layer of foam around its mouth. Was it actually feral?
Wren’s heart immediately sank and he hurried back to his truck to heft out a small cage and catchpole, setting them up outside the shed door.
When he went to open it however, he found it locked. Alarm bells began ringing in his mind. The woman had mentioned nothing about capturing and locking the animal up. Supposedly that was what she’d called him in for…so why was it behind a locked door?
“That bitch,” he growled, finding a nearby gnome and using it to smash the small padlock off.
Casting the broken ceramic aside, sans its head, he unhooked the rest of the lock and opened the door carefully.
He could taste the disgusting magic in the air as soon as he did, confirming his suspicions. This wasn’t a feral animal at all. And this curse was fresh.
Wren couldn’t even fathom the reasoning behind this right now, he was so incensed, but nothing was ever reasonable enough to justify it in the first place.
“It’s okay, darling, you can come out now,” he murmured into the darkness. “I’m sorry she did this to you.”
The raccoon made more noises.
“Come on,” he called, crouching down.
Confused and scared, the raccoon tried to make a break for it and Wren expertly caught it with the pole. He hated using things like this, but it was necessary sometimes for both of their safety.
The raccoon struggled, clawing at the pole, but Wren managed to guide it into the cage and close the door.
He cast the pole aside and laid a hand to the cage, ducking down to try and catch its eye. “Shhh. Shh, it’s okay.”
When they finally locked gazes the raccoon stilled, cursemark reflected in its eyes.
