Fair Game

bathroom.
Would you open the door so I can seek him there?
    She wrapped her hand in the tail of her shirt and opened it. At first he thought there was nothing to find, that the woman’s attacker had awaited her somewhere else.
    Then he caught a faint trace of excitement, something he felt almost more than scented—and a hint of something else that brought Charles to the fore, drawn by something he understood better than the wolf did: spirits.
    Some homes had spirits and some did not, and neither he nor Charles knew why that was. Spirits weren’t ghosts; they were the consciousness of things that Charles’s da didn’t believe were alive: trees and water, stones and earth. Houses and apartments—some of them, anyway.
    This one was faint and shy, better for the shaman’s son to deal with rather than the wolf.
    Show me,
said Charles to the spirit of the house.
Show me who waited here.
    The condo was new. It had not been a home for generations of children, so the spirit was weak. All it was able to give them was an impression of patience and largeness, so much larger than she whose home this was. Clean smelling—no, that was wrong; he smelled of cleaners. He carried a…something.
    Something?
Charles was patient with it.
A weapon?
Brother Wolf provided the smell of a gun, oil, powder, metal.
    Swift negation and a response, an answer more sensory than in words: something soft, mostly textile, with only a hint of metal.
    A bag, like a gym bag,
Charles thought, picturing such a bag carefully in his head, and the spirit all but jumped for joy, providing more and more information about the bag. As if by naming it, Charles had pulled a cork out of the bottle of what the spirit knew.
    He brought a bag,
Brother Wolf told Anna—triumphantly, because he’d been right about the stairway.
A big canvas bag, and stuffed our missing woman inside.He carried her down the stairs, which is why I could only smell her along the walls.
    “He has no scent?” Anna asked, having caught something of what he’d found. Her voice sent the shy spirit fleeing.
    He hid his scent with magic that feels something like fae magic,
Charles told her.
    Brother Wolf thought of the bitter taste that still lingered on his tongue from the kidnapper’s blood.
It also feels like witch magic, black and blood-soaked.
    Charles agreed.
It feels less…civilized than the fae magic I’m familiar with.
    “Would a witch have been able to carry a full-grown woman down twelve flights of stairs?” Anna asked.
    Maybe not directly,
answered Charles after a moment of consideration,
but there are ways.
    “Early in the hunt,” said Anna.
    Exactly,
agreed Charles.
    “Who do we know who knows a lot about fae and their magic?” asked Anna. “Would Bran know?”
    We have a better source,
suggested Brother Wolf.
Her father is old and powerful.
    “He reached for a sword,” Anna said. “Is that how you could tell he was old?”
    Brother Wolf supplied the memory of the scent of creatures that were older than a few centuries, a light fragrance that grew richer.
    Old,
explained Charles.
    And then they gave her what power smelled like among the fae, beginning with something weaker and increasing until Charles told her,
That is strength. But they are subtle creatures, the fae. They cannot add to their scent because they, for the most part, cannot smell it. However, when they conceal what they are, sometimes they can also obscurewhat we can smell about them. This one smells old, but he smells as weak
as is possible for someone who still smells like fae.
    “So a fae will probably not smell more powerful or old than he is,” said Anna, “but he might smell weaker. Like the way Bran enjoys hiding what he is.”
    Brother Wolf huffed out an affirmative sneeze. Charles added,
I think it might be a good thing to discuss this with Lizzie’s father—when there are no humans present.
    “Discuss how powerful he is?” asked his mate, a corner of her mouth twitched up. She knew what Charles had meant—she had a silly sense of humor sometimes. Brother Wolf liked that about her. Charles, however, was in a more serious mood and treated her question as if she’d really meant it.
    No. Discuss with him what kind of fae would fit the parameters we have been given for this serial killer.
    Brother Wolf sneezed to let her know that he thought she was funny.
    “DID YOU FIND something?” asked Leslie as Anna let Charles and herself out of the apartment.
    Anna looked at the techie-type