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- Flint -
Early evening light spills into the library at the Conservatory as Reese slips inside, which explains why my back hurts so much.
In fact, my entire body aches from being bent over the table for too many hours as the day passed without me realizing it.
The research we gathered about the Wild Hunt provided little insight, so I retreated to the Conservatory to see what else could be found within the eclectic mix of ancient and modern books collected here over the years.
With a groan, I straighten from the dusty tome I was reading, and my spine cracks in protest.
Orianna lifts her head from the corner where she had laid down, sees that I’m not getting up, and huffs before going back to sleep.
Across from me, Xander and Savannah flip through books of their own. There’s a lot of theory and speculation about the Wild Hunt, with different origin stories depending on the country and time of the myth. The only thing they share is a death toll.
“I may have an idea.” Reese sets the roll of paper he carries down on the table. “It’s a spell I’ve been working on that shares a base with both the spell to track tears in the veil and the time-shift trackers we developed for the demon plane.”
Savannah shoves her book away with a sigh of relief. “I’m up for anything that doesn’t involve more reading. You never said that being a teacher came with so much research.”
“Not everything can be about blowing things up,” Xander says dryly.
Savannah arches her brows. “I haven’t seen you in the battle room yet, Headmaster. When are you going to come let me test your reflexes?”
He closes his book with interest. “Are you making an official challenge?”
As a young headmaster, Xander faced a lot of critique from the established teachers at the Conservatory. Not everyone accepted him as the new leader of the magic school and thought I should have appointed someone older, with more experience.
So Xander created a rule that anyone could challenge him to prove his merit. The challenger has three chances to best him. It can be in spell crafting, performing a spell, or fixing one that doesn’t work. The last one has a caveat that the challenger must also be able to fix the spell in question.
So far, no one’s made it to a third challenge. Xander remains undefeated.
Savannah raises her hands in a warding-off gesture. “No way. Being a teacher is already too much responsibility. I don’t want to run this place.”
Smirking, Xander turns to his brother. “What have you come up with?”
“We’ve been trying to come up with a way to track the black dogs, but they can appear anywhere.” Reese moves some books aside to unroll the paper. “What we actually need is a way to identify when they open a rift, because they’re coming from somewhere. So if we know where they’re opening a door, we can find them.”
“That’s a clever idea.” I slide off my stool to stand and lean over the design spread out over the table.
Circles within circles filled with symbols and linking to the next spell cover the brown butcher paper, with cause, effect, and limitations built in like a complex math problem.
I see the spells for identifying tears in the veil, as well as the far more complicated machination of time tracking woven together throughout a dozen new spells.
It’s clunky and experimental at best, but the first real idea that might work.
As Reese said, the black dogs are appearing out of nowhere, which means creating a tear in space and time, opening a door from one location to another.
I trace a finger along one circle. “The veil tear spell only works because we know the resonance for the demon and human planes. It’s still a mystery where the demon dogs come from. How are you planning to resolve this issue?”
“We need to find the resonance.” Reese shifts from foot to foot. “The black dogs are physical when they make the kill, which means they have to have left something of themselves behind.”
“Yeah, death and decay.” Savannah rolls her eyes. “They steal the bodies of dead animals to use.”
“What about in the parking garage?” Xander pushes up his glasses. “We know exactly where it disappeared. There may be a residue we can collect.”
“It’s possible.” Despite the words, uncertainty fills me. “But the Clearhelm police have crawled all over that crime scene.”
“So we need a Find Spell linked with an Exclusionary Spell.” Savannah grabs a notepad and begins drawing. “All of Bailey’s people are human, and we know Pen, Darius, and Sharpe were there. Subtract the human resonance and those of our team and attract what’s left over. We use this kind of spell when we’re monster hunting.”
Xander leans in. “Subtract the dead canine, too. The black dog will require a fresh body once its current one deteriorates, and we don’t want that muddying the spell.”
