Page 47 of Of Magic and Murder

And that’s how, within days of Garnet Brooks’s journal bit me, I find myself spending nearly every waking hour with a wolf shifter as my constant companion.

A month ago, that sentence would’ve been the beginning of a horror story. Now it’s just another Monday.

I don’t know how it became our routine. Every morning, I’m up and dressed by nine. Riordan is at the back door, knocking precisely as the clock strikes, and we head out together. Once Gus realizes that our search has nothing to do with Olivia’s murder—and that we’re basically wasting our time in the woods, searching for a rock—he stays behind with Honey. She winks at me, handing a bag of goodies to Riordan before we go, knowing that the Beta will share them with me while we’re on the hunt.

Afternoons are spent in the library, making a dent in the piles of books. Riordan takes his newfound designation as volunteer librarian seriously. No matter how many times I tell him that he’s not responsible for my mess, he refuses to leave until he’s helped me clear at least two of the large piles. At this rate, we’ll be done ahead of Ash’s predicted timeframe, and if the opossum shifter is happy to talk over me and tell Riordan he can stay and help, I let it go because, well, that’s a good thing. The library needs to be open again, and Ash… he was kind enough to let us borrow Garnet’s journal.

Evenings… somehow, they became routine, too. Once we leave the library, Riordan insists on dinner. He has this fascination in making sure I don’t go hungry, and since I’m usually peckish after we’re done for the day, I go along with it.

Ash isn’t the only one who knows about the journal. We told Max about the book and the power of lodestones the morning after we found it. We had to. He’s the sheriff, the Alpha, and, according to Garnet’s research, the modern borders of Moonburrow might be almost identical to the borders of Avalon, which means most of the landmarks we need to investigate in order to search for the lodestone are on land controlled by his pack. Riordan’s status as the Beta will get us in anywhere his badge wouldn’t, but out of respect for his brother’s position, we had to tell Max.

We did not tell Delilah.

At least, not yet.

Garnet supposedly left Moonburrow voluntarily. There’s no proof she didn’t, and her journal is filled with research that could turn out to be nothing more than the enthusiastic theories of a witch obsessed with lost artifacts. Still, the fact that she abandoned it bothered me enough that I wanted to keep what we found quiet until we knew more.

Max agreed.

And when he said he wasn’t going to mention the possibility of a true lodestone being in town to anyone until we found it, I gave him a sideways look.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

His gold eyes narrowed. “That wasn’t a nothing look.”

He’s not wrong. “Was it more of a perhaps keeping important things from your mate hasn’t worked out particularly well for you lately look?” I ask innocently.

Sorry, Max. You put me in an uncomfortable position, trapped between an angry and naked opossum shifter and the ghost of a witch who is nothing more than a pain in my ass. If he thinks he’s getting me in trouble with Honey, he has another think coming.

From across his seat at his desk at the sheriff station where we had met up with Max, Riordan coughed into his fist.

Max glared at his brother.

I shrugged my shoulders, hoping he takes the hint. Now, whether or not Max told Honey after that is between him, his mate, and whatever couch the Alpha might’ve ended up sleeping on if he didn’t, but I did my best.

Since then, Riordan and I have been working our way through Garnet’s journal.

She did most of the hard work. There are maps, sketches, copied passages from books I’ve never heard of, and descriptions of landmarks that haven’t existed for centuries. One old boundary marker is now a fountain outside of the community center where the shifters in Moonburrow and the local coven trade off rec areas for weekly meetings. A stream that once cut through Avalon was rerouted decades ago, though Riordan could still follow the depression left behind through the woods. There’s an enormous oak on pack land that Garnet believed was the same tree described in a journal written by one of Avalon’s original witches.

That’s where having Riordan as my partner in this helps a whole bunch.

See, I have magic. He has a nose and an inherent understanding of where Moonburrow’s borders extend even without the help of the still active wards.

When Garnet’s notes describe a patch of land where wild lavender supposedly grew around an old ritual site, I can pick up remnants of magic in the soil while Riordan tracks down the same plants farther into the woods. When one of the old maps uses a rock formation as a marker, he takes one look at the terrible sketch and announces that he knows exactly where it is—and he does.

And while I know that this isn’t the reason I’m in Moonburrow, I can’t help but get excited. The more landmarks we verify, the more convinced I become that Garnet was right. Avalon existed and, because the lodestone was supposedly buried here, the magic eventually lured shifters this way until Moonburrow was built almost directly over it three centuries after the witches disappeared.

Thanks to the former head librarian, we found Avalon. What we can’t find is the lodestone.

That’s partly because neither of us knows exactly where it was buried apart from somewhere on pack territory, and partly because I have absolutely no idea what exactly I’m searching for.

“I can see magic,” I explain for what might be the tenth time as we stand near the edge of pack land one afternoon. “That doesn’t mean I’m some sort of supernatural metal detector for artifacts. There are so few of them left, and no one has seen one out in the wild in centuries… I don’t know what it looks like or even feels like. It can be anywhere.”

Garnet marked in her book at least seventy-five possible locations. Considering she didn’t make any note on how she figured out those spots or if she checked them, we’re following the landmarks the best we can and hoping for the best.

Riordan waits for me to finish my mini-rant before he says in a familiar, deadpan tone: “I thought true lodestones were made of stone, not metal.”