Chapter 3

Early the next morning the whole Redridge pack went with Cassandra to the moon spring in Whitepine territory.

Before they left, Delia made a point of locking the side door and leaving two guards behind to "protect" Celine. Within an hour, scent images from Cassandra started arriving one after another. She sat beside Rafe wrapped in Gavin's hunting cloak, and their parents were sorting a food chest in the row behind her.

Every image was a reminder that the family was most comfortable when Celine was not there.

In her last life she had cried over these pictures for half a day. This time she shut the links down one by one and packed the last three rolls of moon-phase maps into the tidesalt case.

The maps held ten years of her own observations of moonwells and tide routes. Nobody at Redridge could read them, and Gavin had always blocked her from registering them with the Council. In her last life, on this very night, Silverclaw poachers had broken in, touched none of the jewelry, and burned every one of her manuscripts.

Everyone said afterward that it was an ordinary burglary.

Celine hid the tidesalt case in the abandoned barn, scattered moonshadow powder outside, and snapped a warden's signal flare. Silver-gray smoke dissolved into the clouds, visible only to Council wardens.

After the two guards were lured off with moon-spring wine, the territory went quiet.

At midnight an off-road vehicle with no pack crest stopped outside the tree line. Three men climbed the wooden fence, their gloves and blades dusted with scent-masking powder. They did not search the main house. They went straight to her studio.

"The maps aren't here," one of them swore under his breath. "The client said they have to burn."

Celine lay flat along a barn beam until the men entered the moonshadow powder's range. Then she pulled the rope. Moonlight refracted through the old glass roof, and a dozen false corridors sprang to life across the floor. The poachers crashed into one another inside the illusion, and a silver blade slashed open one man's shoulder.

She dropped from the beam and hooked the knee of the man nearest the door. Another swung a blade at her. She twisted aside, but silver powder grazed the back of her hand and left a burning welt.

Her inner wolf trembled with pain but could not fully surface. The part of her wolf soul drained the day before had not yet recovered.

The third man finally broke through the illusion. His blade was closing on her chest when a warden's long howl rose outside the trees. Two silver-armored wardens rushed into the barn and pinned the men to the ground.

"Who hired you?" Celine asked, breathing hard.

The leader crushed the scent wax hidden behind his teeth and his memory scrambled on the spot. He only had time to get out one word. "Heir..."

The wardens took all three men away and sealed the silver powder as evidence. Celine ignored a summons from the Redridge healer and wrapped her wounds in silver-suppressing cloth herself.

Her family did not get back from the moon spring until it was nearly light.

Rafe was the first into the barn. When he saw her hand, his face changed. "Why didn't you send a pack call?"

"If I had, would you have come back?"

"Of course we would."

Celine looked at the moon-spring scent still hanging on his cloak. "Last night Cassandra said her chest felt tight and every one of you left Redridge. If I said someone was trying to kill me, would you have believed it, or would you have decided I was trying to pull you away from her?"

Rafe opened his mouth and did not answer.

Then Gavin spotted the tidesalt case in the corner. He threw open the lid. Beneath the moon maps lay folded clothes, salt coins, and a fog cloak made for Greytide Island.

"What are you doing with all this?"

Every eye in the room turned to Celine.

She pressed a hand over her throbbing wound. "The Council art competition has requested my maps for review. I'll be gone a few days."

Gavin narrowed his eyes, plainly unconvinced.

And Delia was already reaching for the folded deed at the bottom of the tidesalt case.