Winds of Change

by Nova Nelson

  I thanked him, and Landon called Hera closer to his side. The tension between her and Grim was seemingly forgotten as the four of us closed into a tight formation. When was the last time a witch had entered the Scandrick compound? Had Grace come here? Or did Fritz go to her house?

  From what I knew of Grace, what I’d seen of her in pictures, she would draw quite a bit of attention coming here. So if she had, I could probably ask any one of the werewolves whose staring eyes followed Landon and I down the street.

  The compound was set up like a mini Eastwind with shops and restaurants and rows of homes.

  Except it wasn’t nearly as pristine or friendly as downtown Eastwind, and I doubted they had the equivalent of Fulcrum Park. Every building needed serious renovation, and we kicked up dirt with each step down the unpaved streets.

  Conversations slowed then halted as each werewolf turned from his or her daily happenings to stare suspiciously at the four of us.

  It felt a little like walking through a hostile Munchkin Land. I was looking for a distraction. Landon was looking for hope. Grim was looking to survive long enough to enjoy the bacon I’d promised him for coming along, and Hera, if I understood correctly, was looking for an opportunity to eat someone and thus start the rampage Landon had been carefully avoiding by feeding her a strictly vegetarian diet.

  When we finally reached the end of the brown dirt road, arriving at the doorstep of Fritz’s boxy, wooden home, I knocked and waited. What if he didn’t get the owl yet? Back in Texas, knocking on someone’s door unannounced could have dire consequences, and the stand-your-ground laws in the Scandrick compound were probably even more loosely interpreted than back home.

  But then I heard a voice shout from deep inside, “Yeah, I’m coming, I’m coming,” and I allowed my shoulders to unknot just the slightest bit.

  The werewolf who answered didn’t look anything like what I’d imagined. Basing my guess entirely on the state of the home’s exterior, Jane’s disdain for her half-brother, and Rufus’s less-than-stellar character sketch, I’d expected Fritz to appear in a stained white shirt, scratching a beer belly and whipping the party end of a mullet behind his shoulder with a shake of his head.

  But there was no scratching, and, thankfully, no mullet. Instead, Fritz was a tall, strong drink of water. Green eyes stared down at me as he leaned against the screen door, propping it open with his shoulder in a way that showed off the thick cords of his biceps. He wore an unstained white T-shirt, and as his attention flickered between each in our party, I tried to guess which parent Jane shared with Fritz. His skin was darker than Jane’s, not quite as dark as Ansel’s, but I could make out distinct freckles sprinkled over the bridge of his nose and down the tops of his cheeks like rocks tumbling down a mountain side.

  “Fritz?” Landon said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m Landon Hawker and this is Nora Ashcroft, and we—”

  Fritz placed a large hand on Landon’s shoulder, shutting him up immediately.

  “Hold up,” said Fritz. “You say Nora Ashcroft?”

  Oh boy. This was not a place where I wanted my reputation to precede me. Not after I was responsible for getting both Slash and Lucent, two Scandricks, thrown into jail. I should have picked an alias.

  “Yep,” I said. It was too late to backtrack. “That’s me.”

  He stooped over, inspecting and, if I wasn’t mistaken, sniffing me. “I’ve heard about you,” he said, his voice low.

  “Oh yeah?” Show no fear, Nora! They can smell it on you. Wait, is that true?

  “Yep. You solved Bruce Saxon’s murder. Kept my sister outta jail, as I recall.”

  “Oh right. That. Yep.” I continued breathing again.

  Fritz straightened and dropped his hand from Landon’s shoulder. “And you helped solve Heather Lovelace’s murder. Gave my buddy Lucent a little peace, too, I understand.”

  I was not expecting it to go that direction, but okay. I was up for it.

  “Yep, that was me, too.” I smiled.

  “And then you got him locked up,” Fritz added abruptly.

  I cleared my throat, taking a half step away from the large werewolf. “Yep. That was me, too. But in my defense—”

  He silenced me with a wave of his hand. “No need to defend yourself. I know your type. You care about justice, and blah, blah, blah. Must be nice to believe it can still exist. You keep people out of Ironhelm when they’re innocent and put them in there when they muck up. And boy does Lucent muck up. And Slash. Surprised they made it so long before getting locked away. Those two never should’ve been allowed out of the compound.” He shrugged. “Eh, what can you do? Can’t fix stupid. Hey, kitty kitty.” He leaned forward, hunching over and extending an arm toward Hera where she crouched between Landon and me. The bobcat hissed and arched her back, and Fritz laughed. “Smart familiar you got there.” He opened the screen door wider and stepped to the side. “Why don’t you come on in and tell me what sort of quest for justice brought you two heroic vigilantes all the way to my doorstep?”

  I knew that as much as I didn’t want to enter his home, Landon probably wanted to less, so I took the lead, knowing he wouldn’t let me go in alone.

  Grim and Hera on the other hand …

  “Come on,” I said to my familiar.

  “Somebody’s gotta watch the front door.”

  “No, actually, nobody has to.”

  “You’re right. I guess I’m just a gentleman like that. Have fun and don’t get eaten.” He flopped down and as soon as his chin hit the tops of his paws, I knew there was no more debate.

  I turned my attention to Landon, who was staring daggers at Hera, presumably having a similar conversation with her. Once she curled up on the porch a safe distance from Grim, a muscle in Landon’s jaw twitched, and he looked away from his familiar, meeting my eyes. I nodded for us to continue inside.

  The fact that Fritz didn’t have a significant source of income was apparent as soon as we entered the living room. A low couch that tilted down on one side faced two floor cushions, which I presumed took the place of chairs.

  When Fritz settled himself onto the lower end of the couch, Landon and I each awkwardly took a seat on the cushions. I tried extending my legs in front of me, but that put them right up against Fritz’s, so I readjusted to pull my knees up toward my chest.

  “Go on now. State your business.”

  I scanned the space. A hallway led off into darkness, and I wondered if we had privacy or not. “Is your wife home?”

  “Missy? Aw, who knows? She’s in and out. You need to speak with her? The owl was for me, so I figured—”

  “No, we’re here for you,” I said. “It’s just that we’re here to talk about Grace Merryweather, and …” I raised my eyebrows at him, assuming he would see where I was going with that.

  He did not.

  “And?”

  “And …” I tried to think of what to say next. Without knowing for sure whether his wife was home or not, I needed to remain discreet. “And I wasn’t sure if you wanted to have a private conversation about this or not, considering the nature of your relationship.”

  Fritz squinted at me, like he was struggling to follow along. “You mean because we were hooking up?”

  A faraway squeak rattled in Landon’s throat.

  “Yes,” I said. “That.”

  Fritz rocked back on the unsteady couch. “Ahh. You’re worried Missy might overhear.”

  I nodded, relieved we had come to an understanding. “I assume she doesn’t know.”

  “Nah, I don’t think so.” He paused. “Missy!” he hollered over his shoulder.

  A second later a tired voice echoed out of the dark hallway. “What is it now?”

  “Did you know I was carrying on with a witch named Grace?”

  My mouth fell open and I snapped it shut quickly.

  Missy replied promptly with, “No. Poor girl. Woulda warned her about you if I’d known.”

  Fritz turne
d back to us and shrugged. “Now she knows.”

  “She … doesn’t sound upset,” Landon said.

  “No reason she should be,” replied Fritz. “She doesn’t love me and I don’t love her. We were paired to breed, and when it became obvious that wasn’t going to happen, we decided to take this marriage of ours to the next level and become roommates. And when that soured, we both decided to spend the rest of our days slowly destroying the other.” He shrugged. “I guess we became a typical married couple after all.”

  “Why don’t you divorce?” Landon asked.

  “Just because Jane goes around exercising her right to a divorce doesn’t mean we’re all warm to it around here. Besides, neither one of us could afford the rent on our own. And, don’t tell her I said this, but Missy isn’t so bad when you’re not trying to breed with her. Sometimes she cooks breakfast.”

  What I wanted to say was, “Anton Gargantua cooks breakfast for me every day, and I didn’t have to marry him to make that happen,” but I didn’t want to go there. It was beside the point, anyway.

  Landon said, “Do you know if it’s you or Missy who’s unable to have children?”

  Oh wow. We were really just diving right in with the personal questions, weren’t we? Okay then.

  “It’s her,” said Fritz firmly. “Trust me. I’ve made a baby before. A couple times.”

  “O-kay, I think we’re good on that subject,” I said, trying not to cringe. “How about you explain your relationship with Grace? From your perspective. What was she to you, and what do you think you were to her?”

  He considered it, staring up at the ceiling. “Oh, she was fun. It was nice to get out a bit and be around a woman who wasn’t so controlling. Being surrounded by bitches all day is exhausting. Every one of them acts like she runs the place. Granted, we are run by the bitches.”

  I pushed through my aversion to the term “bitches,” which he used in a more accurate way than my old employees in Texas had when describing me. I said, “So, she was just a good time?”

  He pooched out his lips, bobbing his head. “Yeah, that was about it. She wanted to get serious, which was tempting, but I couldn’t deal with that level of naivety long term. Besides, there was no way a Scandrick could wind up with a North Wind that ran in a circle like hers. Blue moon, they were awful! They make you two uptight witches seem like raucous Bacchanalians.”

  I decided to take the jab as a compliment. “We’ve met them. We know.”

  “I was ready to ride out the relationship a while longer,” he said, “because why not? She was a good time, and she didn’t strike me as especially crazy, but she broke it off.”

  “And how long ago was that?” I asked.

  “About a month. But she broke it off a few times before that. Kept ending it, then running back to me. Almost as reliable as a full moon.”

  “And have you spoken with her since?”

  “Nope.”

  “No owls, nothing?”

  He shook his head slowly.

  Landon practically jumped off his cushion. “We know you wrote her a letter. We saw it. It’s how we knew to come here.”

  Fritz blinked rapidly at Landon as if pieces of a puzzle clicked together for him. “How you knew to come here? I just figured Grace told you to … Wait. Where’s Grace?”

  The usual flush of Landon’s cheeks spread, threatening to overtake his face. “That’s what we want to know. She’s gone missing. No one knows where she is. We searched her home and found a letter from you asking her to reconsider ending things. And now we’re here. So, where is she? Did you do something to her?”

  I noticed Landon’s hands had balled into fists, so I cleared my throat, cutting through his tirade before it built steam. “We’re worried about her,” I said. “It’s not like her to disappear. We’re just trying to see if she might have said anything to you about where she was going.”

  Fritz appeared genuinely shaken. “No, if I knew anything … How long as she been gone?”

  “Over a week,” said Landon. The rage subsided in his voice. “She stopped coming to work, and her circle doesn’t know where she is.”

  Fritz rolled his eyes. “Oh sure, they don’t. It was probably them that made her disappear!” He paused, chewing his lip. “You ought to show up at their doorstep asking these questions. They were the reason she broke it off when she did. She was terrified what might happen if one of them found out about us. She was just terrified in general. Every litter has its runt, the one everyone else gets to pick on and look at to think, At least I’m better than that one. Grace was the runt of that circle, make no mistake. I don’t know if the ladies were aware of that, but that Hunter fella, from everything I heard about him, he would’ve picked Grace for the circle solely because he knew they needed a runt.” Cracks appeared in his previously confident tone, and he paused to collect himself. But when he spoke again, the rage bubbling under the surface was unmistakable. “If anything happened to that poor girl, you mark my words, it was her circle who did it.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Days were quickly getting shorter as we marched through September, and by the time we left the Scandrick compound, passing through the Outskirts, it was nearly dark.

  There was a lot to think over after our conversation with Fritz. Unfortunately, the Outskirts at night aren’t the safest for pontificating, so we went to the nearest place that afforded us some safety, but more importantly, some discounted food.

  “You sure it’s okay if Hera comes in?” Landon asked as I reached for the front door.

  “As long as you promise she won’t hunt anyone,” I said.

  “I can’t promise that.”

  I paused, chewing my lip. “What are the odds? Seventy percent chance there won’t be bloodshed?”

  He cringed sheepishly. “Forty.”

  My stomach growled, and that made the decision for me. “I’ve faced worse odds and been fine.” I pulled open the door and let Landon and Hera enter Medium Rare ahead of Grim and me.

  Since Tanner had switched shifts with Jane earlier that day to attend his interview, he was there and his raised eyebrows as he saw Landon and I walk in together didn’t go unnoticed by me.

  Good. Let him be a little jealous (and probably confused because, come on, it was Landon). If he wasn’t going to speak with me about anything unrelated to work, my personal life would have to remain a mystery to him, one that hopefully drove him a little neurotic.

  We sat ourselves at a booth, and Grim immediately strolled behind the counter and back into the kitchen to beg for scraps. Hera sat like a sentry beside Landon’s bench seat, her ears on high alert, twitching and turning like hyperactive satellite dishes.

  Greta, Ansel Fontaine’s teenage niece, came over a minute later with two waters, setting them on the table. “Hey, Landon,” she said cheerily.

  “Hi Greta,” he said, forcing a smile.

  The conversation in the Scandrick compound had left Landon sullen, but I was glad he made the effort for Greta, who stared at the North Wind like she might have a poster of him on her bedroom wall.

  “Oh. Hi, Nora,” she added as an afterthought. “What can I get—” She paused, sniffing the air in my direction. It was easy to forget Greta was a werebear until she did something like this. “Where did you two just come from? You smell like you rolled around in a pile of werewolf.”

  “Not far off,” I said, “but we’d prefer not to talk about it.”

  She shrugged it off like only a teenager could do. “Queso to start?”

  “Yes, please,” I said, and she left.

  “What I don’t get,” Landon began, like we were already mid-conversation, “is why she broke it off with Fritz when she did. Did something happen with her circle that forced her hand?”

  “Maybe. We’d have to ask them, but I don’t know that we’ll get anything specific or useful. Not while Papa Hunter plays his mind control games.”

  Landon, who’d been staring at the glittery red tabletops, l
ooked up at me. I hadn’t noticed the puffy bags under his eyes before that moment. How much sleep had he been losing over this? “I want your honest opinion,” he said, and I nodded for him to go on. “Do you think Grace is dead?”

  I breathed in deep through my nose, buying myself a moment to collect my thoughts on the matter. “If she is, she hasn’t visited me. So, that would mean that she found some degree of peace and moved on. Or the fact that she hasn’t visited me means she’s alive, perhaps run away. After all, no one’s mentioned seeing her familiar, and I wouldn’t blame her if she wanted to ditch that awful circle of hers.”

  He nodded, and his jaw muscles ticked, but he said nothing, so I went on.

  “And, yes, she seemed to be having a good time with Fritz, but if she’s anything like you’ve described her, she’d recognize that he wasn’t what she needed. She sounds like a gentle soul, and Fritz couldn’t handle one of those in the long run. To be honest, she should have been with someone more like you, Landon.”

  He swallowed and his gaze dropped instantly to the tabletop.

  “We grew up next door to each other,” he said. “We used to play outside every afternoon. We discovered our North Wind abilities together.” He paused. “It started to rain one day when we were out in a field in Erin Park. The day had been perfect and sunny, so we’d snuck onto Harrison O’Neill’s property to pet his unicorns. The rain started to come down in big, hot drops, and it just seemed wrong. Normally, I like the rain, but not on a day like that. It was as if it wasn’t meant to rain, like there’d been some mistake. She took my hands in hers in the middle of the emerald meadow, and then it just happened. I could feel the connection moving between us, and suddenly a hole opened up in the clouds above us, letting in the sunshine. All around Eastwind, it was pouring, but not above us.” He sighed.

  “Did you ever tell her?” I asked. “Did she know how you felt?”

  “Nah.” He picked at a scratch in the tabletop. “She never showed interest. And then we were out of school and worked together and ...” He sighed. “I guess you’re going to tell me that working together isn’t a valid excuse, huh?”