“Come on, answer your fucking phone,” I said to the ringing on my ear, leaning at the window of Andrew’s truck as I tapped my fingers on the dashboard. “Sigyn, you can’t fucking be away from your phone this long. I fucking need to talk to you.”

  I’d been trying to call the girl since yesterday, and had even recruited Tara to help in trying to reach her. Thus far, we’d had little success in the matter, and she had even left early this morning the same as me and Andrew, hoping to check her dorm. While I hadn’t told the werewolf the exact details of what I knew, she pretty easily put together it was important and I thought her niece’s health was at stake.

  By the wolf gods, the only reason I’d not driven out the night before was Tara’s insistence it was normal for Sigyn to not answer anything over the weekend until Monday.

  It was thus not a few seconds later I let out a sigh of relief as the phone answered, and Sigyn answered, “yeah, yeah, I’m here, what do you need, Mary? Did you really need to blow up my voicemail this much?”

  “Thank the fucking gods, I have been trying to call you since yesterday,” I borderline snapped, feeling Andrew reach over to pat me on the shoulder.

  “My phone fucking died, I was spending the day with Lucy, I ended up leaving it to charge in her dorm,” Sigyn said, sounding like she was more than a little annoyed with me of all people, “by the way, my roommate called Lucy, you sent my fucking aunt looking for me? You know how that-”

  “I get it okay I do,” I interrupted her, rolling my eyes at her assumption, “listen though, I need you at the Covenant right now. Pack a bag to stay a few nights and come on over, Tara knows you’re coming, just wait for me in my room and I’ll explain everything.”

  Sigyn paused for a long moment, and I thought she might have disconnected, before finally she whispered, “I’m in a relationship,” a few times like a chant followed by “God dammit, you really waited until I had a girlfriend for this, Mary? I mean, I definitely want to, but-”

  “No, not like that,” I interrupted, rubbing my eyes at the thought. Maybe bonding over supernatural romance was sending a bad example too her, she did keep recommending books with lesbian werewolves and human women, “look, I don’t think the campus is that safe. I just need a few days to investigate it, see what’s going on.”

  “Jesus fuck, Mary, you could have fucking led with that,” the woman complained, the sound of drawers rustling followed by the sound of her briefly dropping her phone, “Lucy’s coming with me, we’ll be there in a couple hours she just left for a study hall meeting.”

  “Sigyn, you can’t bring a half-one to the Covenant,” I said, almost immediately realizing the irony, “I mean, fucking, look. Lucy doesn’t know about werewolves like you do, I’m already going to need to talk to The Lady about you being there. I need you to-”

  “She’s coming, or I’m not,” Sigyn said, a rather fierce bit of anger put into the voice of a woman I knew couldn’t take shit seriously.

  I froze at it all the same, not sure how to deal with the ultimatum, before a sigh finally escaped my lips and I told her, “fucking, fine, but don’t tell her a fucking thing. I’m meeting up with The Lady this afternoon, I’ll fucking see what we can’t do for this.”

  “Thank you, Mary,” the woman told her, and I resisted the urge to fucking slap her through the phone. I was already in trouble with The Lady, I did not need this getting added on.

  “Yeah, sure,” I muttered, “I need Barbie’s address by the way, she wanted me to model for her art project. I’m doing that before I meet up with the boss today.”

  “So, this is life or death, but you’re still taking time out of your day to model,” Sigyn said, sounding surprisingly annoyed for being the girl who set it up. Well, she didn’t know it’d be under these circumstances, but it wasn’t exactly a big deal if I got her to safety first.

  “The Lady prefers her meetings at night, she’ll be more favorable if I wait till then,” I explained, even if there were some lies to it all. The problem was I hadn’t even made a meeting with The Lady, as much as I needed to. She was already going to be mad at me no matter what I did, calling in for a last minute meeting meant that setting it up at night was only a courtesy

  “Fine, but you either help Lucy too or you help neither of us,” Sigyn muttered, hanging up not a second later. I sighed, resting my head against the window, and Andrew let us sit in silence for the rest of the ride.

  Eventually he pulled into a guest lot at the local college, and we got out as I painfully walked over to a displayed map and checked my notes. Phillip Edwards’ dorm was supposedly C45, at least according to physical records that had gotten marked as an administrative error. That meant, at least as far as I could tell, he was a few buildings away from here, and just a short trip down hill. All the same, I felt the need to keep checking the fact repeatedly, like something wasn’t clicking for me no matter how hard I tried.

  Andrew walked up beside me, and I felt the man’s eyes staring down at me as I checked my notes repeatedly. After a few seconds, he rested a hand on my shoulder and asked, “Are you sure you’re up for this?”

  “Yeah, just a little stiff,” I lied, shaking my head as I started down the sidewalk.

  I was stiff, my bullet wounds not yet fully healed even if they’d stopped bleeding and were safe to walk on. Each step agonizing pain as the wounds on my legs were put under weight and my torso moved at wrong angles. It was horrid, but at the very least I was up and about and moving around again.

  I was wearing the same dress I had to the office the other day, a white dress with a black over-dress pulled over it and laced tightly at my chest and my dad’s leather jacket over it. The lacing aggravated my wounds, and the long and full dress style was something that made it even more difficult to move around, but I thought it’d look good for modeling. I just had to hope I wouldn’t get Barbie in trouble by not dressing modern, or at the very least she’d like the outfit.

  Then again, I was probably worrying about it too much, it was just an art project.

  “Sure you don’t want to get breakfast before we do this?” the man asked me, staying close beside me in his jeans and flannel, looking almost ready to catch me if I fell. “You’re looking pale, I don’t want you to-”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said, even as the long walk downhill in my boots was burning my thighs, trying to keep my eyes out around me, “besides, I’m getting breakfast after this, the art thing I told you about. It’s just early, I’m not used to being up this late.”

  That definitely wasn’t a lie, and even if I was used to getting up at eight every day for Knives’ daily breakfasts, waking up at six in the morning was a whole other beast after the weekend I’d had. I’d not slept much last night, or the last few nights to be honest, and could have definitely used a few more hours. I also wanted to start investigating this case though, and at least try and get some of my issues out of the way. The gods knew I had enough on my plate, that I needed to start clearing it off now.

  Why did I have to be a night person though? Sometimes I felt like I was born to be a vampire and not a werewolf.

  “Alright, all the information we have on… this guy, is paper trails,” I said, frowning as I glanced down at the paper another time, like I hadn’t read it constantly the last hour and the name wasn’t supposed to be embedded in my memory. “Stem major, small social media presence, not really that well known. The sort of guy you expect to go missing without people noticing, but not the sort of person you expect to go missing and not be remembered immediately.”

  “You think his roommate might have done it?” Andrew asked, reaching an arm across my shoulders as I briefly stumbled on a crack trying to walk and read.

  “No, you don’t file a police report and then immediately pretend you never knew someone,” I said, shaking my head as we walked, “besides, this is large scale, Allie was still texting me names this morning. These guys are freshmen, his roommate would have been in Middle School when some of these people went missing.”

  “Never can just be an easy answer,” the man muttered, rubbing his eyes groggily, “alright, so, what causes it? I doubt something like this happens for no good reason.”

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Not sure yet, it’s why we’re investigating,” I answered, frowning as I checked my purse for the supplies I’d brought. “A lot of stuff can make people go missing, and I imagine a lot can erase memories. I have Misha’s old journals I can reference, but as you can imagine it’s going to help me if I know more than the broad strokes when looking for signs of what this is.”

  “And we had to do this first thing in the morning because you had a date?” Andrew asked, seeming like he’d be annoyed if that were the answer.

  “It’s not a date,” I told him, the only defense I had to the accusation, “I’m just posing for a painting, or sketch, or whatever this is. I promise you, it’s not a date. If it ends up turning even a little like a date you have permission to call me out.”

  “Oh I definitely will, and I will make sure Tara demands all the details,” the man said, letting things fall into a slightly humored silence for the rest of our walk.

  Eventually we came to the dorm hall, and were able to walk in without anyone questioning us. I followed the staircase up a few floors, and we were greeted by a door that required a key card. Andrew cursed at the sight, seeming to look around like he was checking for security, and I merely walked up to it — knocking a few times as I fluffed out my hair with my fingers and put on my nicest smile.

  We didn’t need to wait long when the door opened, and we were greeted by a half-one man who looked about my age, shirtless and wearing just a pair of sweats and short cut blonde hair, smelling strongly of weed. He looked at us for a few seconds with his mouth half-open, before he finally asked, “who are you?”

  “Hi, we need to talk to James,” I said, double checking my notes that I had the name right, “I needed to talk to him about a police report that was wrongly filed in his name, it’s part of an-”

  “Yeah, no, sorry, he’s not here, babe,” the man told me with a shake of his head, and I had to double take as I thought he sounded weirdly familiar, “his room’s down the hall if you wanted to wait for him. I mean, he should be back soon. He was just running out for some breakfast, you know?”

  “Trust me, wish we had too,” Andrew agreed, holding his hand out as he answered for us, “that would be great, mind if we just take a quick look around?”

  “Hey, not a problem dude, I’m not a security guard,” the man told us, stepping aside and letting us in, “you two like, you know, a couple? Just surveying the territory.”

  “No, we’re not,” Andrew said, furrowing his brow as he looked at the guy in confusion, “we just work together, we’re helping on an investigation.”

  “Oh cool, like, you know I get it,” the man said, leading us down the hall as he looked over to me and asked, “you want to get a drink sometime? I know this like, really nice place nearby. They have a band.”

  “Sorry, I’m busy right now,” I answered, frowning as I tried figuring out where the fuck I knew him from. It wasn’t anything recent, at least I didn’t think so. Maybe he’d been at Sigyn’s party? I needed to ask, even if it risked the cover, and I hesitantly observed, “you look familiar, have we met before?”

  The man looked at me for a moment, furrowing his brow as he looked like he might have recognized me too even as we reached the dorm room. We stood there a moment, and he shook his head slowly as he admitted, “I’m getting that feeling too now that you mention it. You go to Thomas down in Chesterfield?”

  Fuck.

  “No, might just be my imagination,” I lied, nodding as Andrew and I stepped into the room and I told him, “we’re just going to take a quick look around, you let James know we need to talk to him if you see him.”

  “Hey, ain’t a problem, sexy,” the man said, giving me a last long look with a strangely proud smirk, “like the outfit, very Crucible. You let me know if you’re ever wanting to press a guy, you know? You get it. I like reading.”

  I gave the most non-committal answer I could, and he walked off as we were left alone in the room. Andrew closed the door slowly behind us and flicked on the light, turning back to me as he blurted out, “what was that about?”

  “I think he was high,” I answered, knowing he didn’t need the assistance to be like that as I scrunched my face up and tried taking in the dorm.

  It was messy, clothes and trash on the floor, two desks and two beds. One desk had a scattering of food and empty energy drink cans on it, and the other was stacked high with papers and pictures. One of the beds was neatly made, with a duffle bag sat on top, and the other tossed about and half-done. The smell of mold was thick in the air, though a part of me felt like the air’s taste was…well, wrong for mold, and I couldn’t place why.

  I started pacing the room, sniffing at the air, and Andrew wouldn’t let me investigate as he pushed it and asked, “you recognized him, didn’t you? Was he like, in the Purists or whatever?”

  I paused, frowning as I walked over to the desk and half flipped through the papers there. There was nothing noteworthy, and I shook my head as I admitted, “I…we were friends in High School for a couple months. We, me and Percy, this hunter I grew up with, we used to call him Shady because… well, I mean, look at him.”

  “I don’t get it,” Andrew said, seeming to think on it as he shook his head.

  “The song?” I asked, tracing the smell of the mold to the near bed where I knelt down, holding my nose close to the fabric. The smell was overpowering, and I could actually detect something under it this close, something I hadn’t quite expected.

  Rotting meat.

  “My dad was religious as fuck, I lived in the woods more than you did. My cultural understanding is kinda just what I’ve seen since then,” Andrew said, frowning as he started picking papers off the desk and looking over them. “Looks like our missing man was researching local crimes of note in the area.”

  “Yeah, he was a criminology major,” I said, pulling a pocket knife from my purse, “anything stands out in his research?”

  “Maybe, it would be better to have someone who understands this stuff better look it over though, Cannibal” Andrew said, sitting the papers back down, “it looks like it’s about the historical lack of police response to hate crimes in the area. That sound important for this?”

  “No idea, sounds like the sort of thing that causes ghosts, but,” I stopped, grunting as I dug the knife into the side of the mattress and dragged it down. “Ghosts I’ve seen are mostly harmless, and if they did kill it wouldn’t look like what we’re seeing here. You got all that from a few seconds of reading?”

  “Well, yeah, last sentence of the first paragraph, I took a few community classes,” Andrew muttered awkwardly, even as I pulled open the folds of the mattress. The moldy and rotten smell of the mattress immediately pouring out like a tidal wave, and even Andrew scrunched up his face as he asked, “what the fuck is that?”

  “No idea,” I admitted, frowning as I moved the lip of the cut to expose the contents to the light.

  The padding inside was coated in a whitish-yellow layer of what looked like mold, and I scraped some of the flaky substance off on the tip of my knife. It was thick and stuck tight to the knife, and almost felt like a powdered honey under my finger, as weird as it sounded even in my head. I briefly considered licking it, to see if the flavor actually told me anything else, but decided against that based on the smell alone.

  “This shit’s saturated in the mattress, those papers might have something important,” I said, shaking my head as I rose to my feet, “I’ll call The Lady, we need to get a team in here to clean this all out.”

  “No help for what we’re dealing with here?”

  “No, not really,” I said with a sigh as I rose to my feet, “there’s no ghosts or anything, but that’s to be expected. You usually get a short burst of activity, and then the ghost doesn’t form fully for another several months or years. Sometimes if something triggers them they lie completely dormant until that point. The journals Misha gave me had a like, cursed clothing chest where the ghost only ever showed up and killed people if they wore stuff from it.”

  ”There anything like this in the journals?” Andrew asked as I stepped into one corner of the room, pulling my phone out as I called The Lady.

  I shook my head in answer, furrowing my brow even as I held the phone up and tried remembering anything. Misha’s journals were detailed, thick, and technical on the rougher cases, and I was disappointed to say I’d only read through maybe a random selection of about a third the entries. I was a slow reader, and Misha’s writing was close knit and written in a very train of thought way that made it too easy to fall asleep to.

  “Oh, Mary…” The Lady started as she finally answered me, sounding overly bored as always, “I was about to retreat to my chambers for the day. How are you…doing? Is your son well?”

  “Martin’s doing great, he’s loving preschool,” I said, feeling a tinge of guilt at the words. I only knew he was liking it because of what others told me. I fucking talked to him on the phone once or twice a week, and that was all I knew about him. All the same, The Lady liked when I talked about him, “I've been thinking of getting up there sometime, at least send up a nice present. Had some money saved up, figured I could go down a few days. I promise I'll still get my hours in.”

  “You’ll still get your hours in,” The Lady repeated back, taking a long pause at the thought, “well we may…discuss that, at a later date. I take it that is not why you’ve contacted me.”

  “No, I need a cleanup in a dorm room,” I said, frowning as I looked around, “Phillip Edward’s dorm, Allie has the information. I need some substance in his mattress tested. There’s also a lot of resources on his desk that might have connections we need someone to look through. Can you do that?”

  “Can I do that,” The Lady said slowly, letting out a small chuckle before she said, “I’ll have someone there in an hour. Will there be someone…there to guide us?”

  “Um, yeah, we can do that,” I said, frowning as I turned to Andrew and asked, “what time is it?”

  Andrew frowned, checking his own phone, and said, “eight?”

  “Andrew will be here,” I said, and the man delivered a rather fatal side-eye even as I hung up my phone. The man looked ready to say something, and I sighed as I explained, “I have to be somewhere in an hour, just off campus. If you think I’m getting into trouble, ask Sigyn, she’ll be able to confirm who I was with.”

  The man rolled his eyes and nodded, and I wiped my blade off on the mattress as he asked me, “what should I say if this guy shows up to his dorm?”

  “You’re following up with the cops, but you called the university and they’re going to get this stuff out of here,” I said with a sigh, stretching a moment, “that works?”

  “Yeah, whatever,” Andrew said, shaking his head with a smile, “you going to give your friend Shady your number? Might be good to catch up with him.”

  “That would be a bad idea,” I said, giving a small snort, “things have changed a little since I last talked to him if you forgot what the pride flag Misha gave me meant.”

  “People are trans,” Andrew shrugged, “I mean, you drastically so, but I don’t think he’ll jump to magic. If he asks just say you did some really good hormones and surgery, and he’ll probably buy it.”

  “He went to my funeral, saw him on the old memorial page I found,” I answered, frowning as I pulled my dad’s jacket close around me, “trust me, not a good idea to try and reconnect.”