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“I’m going to call the DNR about the ravens,” I said. “Can you do something for me?”
“Sure.”
I wrote “Ian Walker, Baylor School of Medicine and British Institute of Homeopathy—Canada” on a piece of paper and handed it to him.
“What is this?”
“There’s a new doctor in town. Or at least he says he’s a doctor. Those are his credentials. Can you verify?”
“Shouldn’t be a problem.” Cal peered at me. “I thought your face would be a lot worse today.”
“You think this is good?”
“Considering how it looked last night, definitely.” He headed out.
I frowned, and for the first time since I’d been air-bagged, the motion of my face didn’t cause pain. Reaching into my desk, I withdrew the mirror I kept there just in case I had to check my teeth for spinach or my nose for—well, what we check our noses for—and held it up.
My bruises were fading toward yellow, and my nose was half the size it had been an hour ago.
I lowered the mirror and stared at the jar of balm on my desk as if it were an actual rattlesnake instead of just the oil.
How could it have worked so fast?
Chapter 6
My heart whispered, Magic. My mind scoffed. Too much in my life and my job contradicted any sort of fairy tale. But I’d also seen amazing, unexplainable things whenever I’d been around my great-grandmother, not to mention everything that had happened in Lake Bluff last summer.
On the one hand I figured the balm was just really good balm; on the other I wondered if the words Walker had used had been an equally powerful spell and, if so, where he had learned it.
Regardless, I rubbed more rattlesnake oil into my face before I picked up the phone and called the Department of Natural Resources. After a few transfers I reached the office of Alan Sellers, bird geek. Quickly I told him what had happened in Lake Bluff.
“Odd bird behavior after a strong storm isn’t unheard of,” he said in a nasal whine that had me imagining his colorless hair, pasty skin, and watery eyes.
“So it’s nothing to worry about?”
“Worry in what way?”
“Coordinated attacks. Bird rabies?”
His laugh disintegrated into a cough. I revised pale skin to the gray cast of a lifetime smoker. “You’ve heard the term ‘birdbrain’?”
“Far more than I’d like.” It had been one of my brothers’ favorite insults.
“Although recent studies have revealed that birds aren’t as dumb as originally thought, coordinated attacks are beyond the capacity of most species. A flock may follow the leader, they can even communicate information about where to find food, but they don’t have the brainpower to mount an attack.”
“S
o Hitchcock was full of shit?”
“Most movies are.”
Smart man.
“Also,” he continued, “rabies is a disease passed from mammal to mammal, so birds can’t get it. You say you have both crows and ravens?”
“Hard to know for sure. We’ve had reports of really big crows, which I took to be ravens. Crows have never been all that common in Lake Bluff.”
“Crows usually congregate near larger towns; ravens like the mountains and forests. A sudden increase in crows in a rural area often follows a radical increase in the timber wolf population. I highly doubt that’s the case in the Blue Ridge Mountains.”
