“Rick. Are you all right? Say something logical,” Soul demanded.
“E equals MC squared. Isosceles”—he yawned in the middle of the words and swiveled his legs up, sitting—“triangle. ‘Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty,’ and so on. Will that do?”
“I just heard back from the lab. The black dot recovered from your laptop was LSD on absorbent blotter paper with a sticky back. Someone wanted you incapacitated or out of control.”
Rick grunted, thinking. “The list of people who might want me to become dangerous, and who know where I am, is confined to the people on campus.” He heard Soul’s long, drawn-out breath at the accusation. “Mary and Walk—” He stopped, remembering that Chief Smythe wanted the name of the witch who’d recorded his counterspell. Thinking about Polly’s sudden interest in him—keeping him out late so someone could get into his room? “Mary and Walker. Maybe Polly. And whoever wanted my counterspell music.”
After long moments, Soul said, “We need to talk.”
“About Chief Smythe, who wants the name of the witch who made the counterspell?” Rick let the harsh tone cops use on suspects grate into his voice. “Wants it enough to enroll me here, even though I’m dangerous?”
“We need to talk,” she repeated, her voice steely. “I’ll be there shortly. Meet me in the kitchen.”
“Yeah, yeah, sure.” He closed his cell and got up, dressed, and headed out. Brute and Pea were there first, Brute blocking the door, Pea riding on his shoulder. Rick reached for the leash, but Brute growled and shook his head slowly, the human motion utterly un-wolf-like. Rick sighed. “Fine. But keep close.”
Outside Rick leaned against the wall in the shadows and waited. Brute, however, went scent searching. He started right at the door, his nose to the ground, and began a circular pattern, walking and sniffing in an ever-widening spiral. He was about twenty feet out when he stopped, his nose buried in a clump of grass. Even in the moonlight, Rick could see his ruff stand on end.
“Brute?”
The wolf chuffed and breathed in and out in short, sharp bursts. Rick had seen the wolf get scent lost before, his wolf brain taking over, leaving the human part of him behind, disoriented and confused. Dog people called it nose suck, which might be humorous in a toy poodle, Chihuahua, or Shih Tzu, but not so much in a Rottweiler, pit bull, or werewolf.
Pea scrambled down from Brute’s shoulder and inspected the tuft of grass with her nose as well. She scampered to Rick, mewling and chittering.
“Brute, are you scenting the person who put the LSD on my keyboard?” Brute didn’t react or respond, and Rick knew better than to touch him. Wolves had violent physical reactions to being brought off a scent binding, and he wasn’t in the mood to be mauled. “Brute?” He whistled softly and finally the wolf raised his head. His pale eyes were wholly wolf, feral. Rick went still, vamp still, not even daring to breathe. The wolf growled so low Rick felt it vibrate in his chest. “Brute? Stand down. Stand down.” Pea launched herself across the two yards and landed on the wolf’s head with a catlike yowl. Brute yelped. In a moment, they were rolling around on the ground, roughhousing, the scent forgotten.
Rick blew out, letting the adrenaline rush melt away. “Brute,” he said, his voice a command. The animals’ heads came up fast. They stopped playing, and Rick could see the intellect again in Brute’s eyes. “Were you scenting the person who put the LSD on my keyboard?”
Brute dropped his head and raised it. Yes.
“Okay. Can you follow it? And not get scent lost again?” Rick asked. Brute nodded. A small, grim smile pulled at Rick’s lips. “Then let’s see where it goes.”
With Pea riding his shoulder, Brute turned, sniffed, and started running to the back of the Quonset hut, his nose to the ground. Rick followed through the bright moonlight at a trot. He was halfway around the building when he ran out of the shadows into the moonlight. The moon call hit him. His breath stopped in his lungs, his muscles cramped in an electric spasm. He hit the ground face-first. The night vanished.
? ? ?
Rick woke slowly, the dark night full of scents. He knew where he was and who was with him by the scent patterns alone—the Quonset hut. Brute, Pea, and Soul were there. Soul was sitting on the edge of his bed, he was lying on the floor. His music was playing, the musical notes of the flute driving back the pain.