Annie’s eight-cylinder scream was the only sound to cut through the inky blackness of the night as I drove Jenny back to her funeral home. I made a couple of tight turns at a slightly higher speed than the Tennessee Highway Patrol might have liked, lost in contemplation and relying mostly on muscle memory to get me where I needed to go. Angelica Bancroft had come back into my life after five years. Coupled with the definite murder of a young girl, that fact deeply unsettled me. Sending an adjudicator was par for the course, but sending a Black Dog meant that the Grand Coven of Sorcery suspected something very dangerous to be lurking in the shadows in my sleepy little town. Great, just great. Sometimes I just hate being a witch.

I slowed down as we pulled up to a traffic light and I stopped, laying my forehead on the steering wheel and taking a deep breath. I wrenched my hands from the wheel and popped my knuckles. My heart throbbed in my chest and my stomach had dropped a couple fathoms. I wanted to start sobbing, or screaming, or laughing. I couldn’t really tell which one.

From the passenger seat Jenny put the back of her hand on my arm. I'd almost forgotten that she was riding with me.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“I’m fine.” I lied. “Why do you ask?”

“Because you stopped at a light while it was still green?”

I followed her eyes. The light turned yellow, then red. Dammit.

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I didn’t say anything. I took a moment, feeling the steady rhythm of the engine rumbling beneath me.

“Old scars.” I finally said. “Not as faded as I thought they were.” Christ, I could still smell her. “I'm good. Really.”

"You sure?" She asked. I wasn't.

"Positive." I said anyway.

The light turned green (again) and we rode the rest of the way to Reagan's Funeral Home in still silence, the kind of silence you have with people you’re truly comfortable being around, people that allow you to let your guard down. I had a feeling that Jenny needed that. She needed to know I was still comfortable being around her, that I was still treating her as a person, as my friend, and not like a dangerous animal, so I just stayed quiet and let it wash over us.

As I pulled into the driveway that led up to the funeral home my headlights glistened off an odd displacement of earth that hadn’t been there before. A few large mounds had been pushed over the concrete driveway, dirt turning to drooling slurry by the downpour.

“What the hell is that?” Jenny called, having apparently noticed it at the same time as me.

I turned off the engine but left the lights on so I could see through the blackness. Jenny and I both got out and slinked out into the night.

“Jesus Christ.” I swore as I got closer.

“Holy shit.” Jenny agreed.

Beside the driveway was a paw print the size of my freaking torso. It was definitely mammalian, but I couldn’t tell from what animal, and on top of that the heavy rain was already eroding the relatively shallow print, despite its massive size. I guessed it was either canine or feline, but that was the best I had. I never was much of a survivalist.

It didn’t exactly take Bear Grylls to follow these tracks, though. They were certainly big and obvious, and for the most part they went in a straight line along the side of the building, following the incline that led down to the back entrance, which led into the embalming room in the basement. The tracks abruptly stopped at the steel door at the very back of the building. It appeared to be completely unharmed, but neither of us were taking chances. We both had come to the same conclusion, of that I was sure.

Jenny reached forward slowly. She might as well have been reaching for a venomous snake. My focus ring was already on my finger and I was drawing upon Chaos. The diamond in my ring glowed a vicious red that flickered like flame and began to leak ethereal black smoke. My arm tensed and a spell was in my throat as she engaged the handle.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

It didn’t turn.

We looked at each other and both relaxed just a bit, but we didn’t let our guard down. Jenny took her keys out of her back pocket and pushed one of them into the lock. Once the door was unlocked she pushed down the handle and pulled it open. It slid smoothly, with no obvious signs of tampering. I went first, she went behind me, in a formation that wasn’t exactly tactical, but was in the same ballpark.

The room was dark and quiet. My ring was the only source of light, but it didn't give off enough to really see by. Jenny broke off and went to the light switch a few feet down from the door and flicked it. As the sterile light came on I cast my gaze around the room and found it seemingly empty. Just to be safe I called upon Chaos to augment my vision again. Wireframe mesh fell into place over the room. I took another scan, slowly and carefully examining the room and the funeral parlor above us, but I found no traces of residual magic or the auras of any living beings besides Jenny and myself.

My vision returned to normal and I looked over to Jenny. “Whatever it was, it didn't try to get in.”

“That’s good, at least.” She hesitated, as if the words in her throat were vomit she was trying to keep down, but finally she gave voice to our shared concern.

“That was it, wasn't it? That was the thing that killed Vanessa.”

I was silent for a second, but I nodded. “It would be a really big coincidence if it wasn’t. The question is: Why did it come here?”

Jenny stood beside me and wrapped her arms around one of mine, seeking comfort. I tried to bend my arm to touch her hand reassuringly, but Jenny was still strong, and she had my arm locked out. So I settled for awkwardly patting one of her shapely thighs, which was the only thing I could reach with that hand. I slid my focus ring off my right hand by clamping it with my teeth and wiggling my finger free. I put the ring in my pocket and looked over at Jenny. She met my gaze, looking like she was about to speak, but she said nothing and instead rested her head on my shoulder, looking down at the floor.

“Hey, what’s that?” She asked suddenly. She pointed and I looked.

Along the wall in a straight path going in the direction of the refrigerators on the other side of the room were a line of wet smears along the tile floor. Getting closer, the smears resolved themselves to be footprints, but they weren't clear enough to tell me anything about who had left them. Someone had gotten in. They had tried to stick close to the wall, but the rainwater left an impression. The prints appeared to be small and narrow, maybe a woman's. I followed them diligently, but I had a feeling I knew where they would lead me, so I wasn't surprised when the tracks stopped at the refrigerator that held Vanessa's body. I threw open the door and pulled out the slab. The sight of Vanessa DeSilva’s mangled corpse was no easier to bear the second time, but it was untouched. Returning her to her temporary resting place, I looked down at the prints again. It was already fading, but there was a vague impression of two bare feet, very small, very narrow, very human.

My guts turned to jelly as a new piece of the puzzle was revealed. Our killer was a shifter. The jelly turned to stone as I made another connection, this one more nebulous. It couldn't have been her. Right?

I walked back to Jenny, who seemed very uneasy. The feeling was mutual.

“It’s a shifter, a person who can transform into a beast.” I said.

“They got in.” Jenny replied. This time her fear was obvious. “They broke in, tampered with one of my cadavers, and went back out the way they came. I barely noticed they were even here. Hell, they locked the damn door on their way out.”

I didn’t think mentioning that Vanessa had been left alone would really help the situation, so I shut up and gave her a reassuring hug. “Don't worry. I'm gonna fix this. I'm going to find this son of a bitch and take ‘em down.” I backed off from the hug, but kept my hands on her shoulders. “Do you want to stay at my place tonight?”

If the killer knew where the body was being kept, they may also know where Jenny lived. It was possible she could be targeted too. I couldn't think of a good reason to break in, leave a place exactly how you'd found it, and then go kill the woman who owned the building, but murderers very seldom do things people expect. I didn't give a voice to that concern, but I felt like my question implied it enough that I didn't have to.

Jenny bit her lip in thought and then shook her head. “No,” she said, “I'll be okay.”

I nodded and released her. “Okay, but if you need anything, call me. Okay?”

She put a gloved hand to her forehead in a mock salute. “Aye aye, cap'n.” Despite the joke I could still see the little flashes of fear in her eyes.

I smiled and returned her little salute, and then Jenny guided me up the stairs and out through the mortuary proper. We shared one more short hug, and then I stepped out into the rain. Lightning flashed overhead and a crash of thunder followed shortly after. My mind raced as I walked towards the twin beacons of Annie's headlights.

As I turned the key and the old engine growled to life again, I began to feel suddenly very tired. I had a lot of questions, but no answers, a puzzle with no picture to reference, a video game without a manual.

This was gonna be a long job.