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“As yet, no, but I think I can read the blood.”
She blinked and stared at me for a second. “Seriously?”
“You already know the answer to that.”
“Well, yes, but… how is something like that possible? You’ve never been able to do it before now.”
“It’s not like we’ve had a lot of opportunities—”
“Since coming here, there’ve been ample,” Belle cut in. “Hell, the watch you found in the forest had dried skin attached, and you didn’t get any images or memories off that.”
“Maybe because I was trying to pull something from the watch rather than the skin.”
And even when I had touched the skin, I’d been unable to sense anything more than death simply because the watch had been in the ground too long. I glanced back at the blood. That was not the case here.
Belle swung her backpack off. “If you’re going to do this, I’ll set up a protection circle. If that blood does belong to a ghoul then it might still be nearby. I don’t want it catching us unawares.”
I waited as she set out her stones and then activated them. Once she was sitting comfortably on the other side of the stain, she dug her phone out of her pocket. “I’ll record what you’re seeing, but please remember to speak, otherwise Aiden will be annoyed.” She paused. “Or rather, more annoyed. You should have told him we were coming up here.”
“He’s not my keeper, Belle.”
“But he is a wolf, and they tend to get all territorial and protective over people they care about.”
I wrinkled my nose. “We’re in Marin territory—nothing untoward is going to happen to us here. Besides, I couldn’t have asked the questions I did if he’d been there.”
“Which doesn’t negate the fact that when it involves his sister—or anyone else in his pack, for that matter—you should have mentioned it. Ready?”
When I nodded, she hit the record button. I took a deep breath to center my energy and then carefully placed two fingers into the small, somewhat sticky pool. I didn’t have to reach for my psychometry abilities—they surged to life the minute I touched the blood, and filled my mind with sensations: hunger, frustration, pain, and anger. The latter was a fierce, deep burning. I pushed deeper into the wave of emotion, not only trying to catch some reason for the anger but also some sense of who and what we were actually dealing with.
“Lizzie,” Belle said softly. “Tell the recording what you’re seeing.”
“Old hurt,” I said with a frown. “Old anger.”
“Any reason why?”
“No.” I hesitated as the shadows within the blood shifted, revealing vague images. “It’s something to do with a wedding—and being betrayed.”
“Was she the bride?”
I pushed more energy into the connection, trying to deepen it. I might as well have tried to catch a wisp. “I think so.”
“What was she doing here? Why is there blood on the ground?”
More indeterminate images stirred. “She was splitting.”
>
“Splitting?”
I nodded. “It’s what I saw in the victim’s mind—she can sprout bat wings, and in taking flight, her torso tears away from the rest of her trunk and legs.”
“And this blood is the result of that?”
“Yes.”
I tried to catch more, but the images were now so vague—the pulse of darkness so faint—that there was little to see other than smoky wisps that held no form and made no sense. I withdrew my fingers and quickly wiped them clean on the dirt.
“So if she separated, where’s the body?” Belle said. “Even if foxes or other vermin had discovered it, surely there’d be remnants left.”
