“A sinking shoe?” He smiled and bumped his leg up and down. “It’s environment manipulation, but what makes that a potential three?”
“I felt a tug.”
Jonah’s leg stopped moving, and his eyes went wide. “No way.”
“Way.” I wiped my hand over my face, failing to swallow my yawn, so I spoke through it. “We assumed, based on Octavia’s secondhand account, that the ranch hands’ accidents could have been environmental changes. But we can’t say that definitively until we get them in for interviews—how’s that going, by the way?”
“Oh…um, I was still concentrating on the preliminary data, so I hadn’t looked into their contact information. That’ll be the first thing on my list tomorrow.”
“Right, right.” I nodded, waving off his nervous energy. “It’s fine. You’re doing great.”
I’d become so accustomed to December and Nico’s swift multitasking abilities that I’d forgotten hunting didn’t typically go so swiftly.
“Potential corporeal grip.” I picked up the voice recorder and leaned back in my seat as I spoke into the mic. “Loose but consistent. No wavering, even when challenged. The descent took about two minutes. As of now, four hours later, the shoe remains underground, unrecovered. Harrison’s reading on the site of the shoe’s disappearance was an eight.”
Jonah laughed, half-nervous, half-thrilled. “An eight?”
I shut off the recorder and tossed it on the desk. Thefaint grip of a hand could have been in my head, but I’d started looking for hints of paranormal activity at the ripe age of five (my parents never believed one was too young to hunt). So, no matter how small or unsure I was, for now, we’d include the feeling of something pulling me under.
“How are you feeling?” I kept one ear out for Octavia’s movements across the hall. The squeak of a faucet clued me into her starting the shower.
Jonah pointed to his chest. “Me?”
I stretched my neck with my eyes half-closed. “Yeah, you. This is the first job you’ve done an assessment on your own. It’s also shaping up to be a big one—if my feeling about it being a cat four pans out.”
“I feel…grateful.”
I smiled. “Come on. It’s going to be a long night if you keep trying to be who you were in the interview room. You got the job, Jonah. You’re here, internalize it.”
He dipped his gaze down to his lap.
“What about your parents?” I tried. “How do they feel about you being here?”
Jonah’s laugh didn’t carry its usual ease. “They absolutely hate it.”
I frowned. “Why’s that?”
“They’re traditionalists.” He looked up, meeting my gaze. “Like your parents. They basically worship them. Think they can’t do any wrong—no offense!”
I laughed. “None taken. And yeah, you’ll struggle to find someone who doesn’t bow at their altar.” But after getting the chance to break away from them and develop my philosophy around hunting, I learned how enormous their blind spots had become over the years. Got off my knees.
Aging was a gift, but it alsocame with the risk of becoming stuck. Two things existed at once with my parents:
They were one of the best things to happen to the hunting community.
They were one of the main things preventing our evolution.
“You don’t think that, though,” I mused. “Even though on page, it’d seem like you would.”
Jonah picked at the edge of his worn notebook. “I have a hard time questioning authority out loud.”
