“What’s up?” I asked. He wasn’t someone who came for small talk.
“We need you to examine a death at the pack.”
My shoulders dropped.Okay, weird wish to make come true, Grandfather.
I swung my feet off my desk and grabbed my bag, double-checking I had some sugar. How long had it been since I’d done a retro read? It was like dusting off my true magic, a familiar thing that needed nurturing, and I’d neglected it. Nothing a mysterious death couldn’t solve.
“I’m ready,” I said with a nod before striding up the stairs with the pack’s chief of security on my heels.
Aunt Liz hurried down the hallway. “Where are you going? Everyone will be here and the parsnips need peeling.”
I glanced over my shoulder. “My scalpel skills are needed elsewhere. I’m sure Maggie can handle a peeler.”
Aunt Liz huffed and parked her hands on her hips.
Dave spun around, grabbed my aunt, and kissed her senseless. It was so passionate, I was stuck between staring like a creeper and running for the hills. Before I could decide, he let my dazed aunt go and ushered me out of the house.
I sighed as we scrambled into the car and launched on to the road.
“It’s not what you think,” Dave grumbled.
“Are they dead?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you know why?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then it’s exactly what I think. So stop blustering and let’s go.”
“Fine, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
The trees ruffledin the unseasonably warm winter breeze. The late afternoon sun was beginning its descent and rewarded us with a palette of pinks, peaches, and purples. In contrast, the scene before me was unnatural; a study in violence, colored in blacks, grays, and crimsons.
“I warned you,” Dave muttered from my left.
“How insistent were you?” Hudson snapped from my right.
I stared ahead, trying to understand. “How can you not understand why they’re dead?” I asked.
David squinted at the carnage. “Don’t confuse the why with how. How they died—clearly through limb and organ loss. Why? Well, that’s a mystery, given we can’t see anything missing.”
The only thing missing was my sanity. With a long-suffering sigh, I snapped on my gloves and strode into the middle of the field. “I didn’t even know you kept cattle,” I muttered.
Hudson pointed at a pile of bloody white feathers. “Hens.”
Dave jerked his head at one of the largest piles of remains. “Cows.” Then he pointed at a smaller mangled mess. “Goats and sheep.”
“I spotted a few rabbits in here as well,” Hudson added.
“Bunnies?” Seriously? Who or what would attack bunnies? I bent over to analyze the wounds. Large, messy, determined.
Twenty minutes later, I rose from my crouched position and peeled off my bloody gloves. “If I had to make an educated guess, I would say a human inflicted the wounds,” I told Dave and Hudson, who had stayed to watch me work.
“That’s not possible,” Dave said. “One human couldn’t achieve all this. There’s no trace of gunpowder, so they must have used blades.”
“No blade did this,” I told them. “The wounds aren’t clean enough. Hands and teeth made these.”
