The Wild Dead (The Bannerless Saga 2)

“He reminds me of me ten years ago. Exhausting.”

Patel chuckled, but didn’t really smile. “Just do me a favor and keep an eye on him, yeah? He may need a bit of reining in.”

She raised a brow, studied her colleague, the set of his frown. It wasn’t just what he said, but the careful way he said it that raised an alarm. “You sure he’s ready for this?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said quickly. “He’s got to start somewhere. We all do.”

This would be an easy case, she reminded herself. Wasn’t a whole lot that could go wrong. “I’m sure it’ll be fine,” she assured Patel. “We’ll get along great and be back before you know it with the report.”

“Exactly,” Patel said. “I look forward to hearing all about it.”

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At the time, Enid thought maybe Patel was just nervous. How Teeg did on the case would reflect on him, after all. It was the worry of a parent watching a fledging leave the nest—or tumble from it. Now she was trying to figure out exactly what she would tell Teeg’s mentor about how his trainee was doing on the case. She wasn’t looking forward to that conversation, not anymore. Patel had told her Teeg was brave. Headstrong. He thought this was one of his student’s better qualities.

Headstrong in the wrong direction was something else entirely. Reining in, Patel had said. Right.

Kellan was far more likely to say something helpful if he wasn’t being directly accused. Anyone would, really. Enid turned back to Last House to try to clean up the aftermath of Kellan’s breakdown.

The household came back into view, its lone cottage tucked in at the edge of the sparse woods. She tried to look at it without all the assumptions, the judgments imposed on it—that its folk were strange, isolated, antisocial, and that this must mean something was wrong with them.

Easy to see the house itself as rundown, lacking in charm. Too far out of the way to bother with. In truth, it was a nice spot. Higher up the hill meant cooler air, away from the muggy haze hanging over the marsh. Farther away from the fishing and such, but closer to the trees. Protected from flooding.

The house was simple. Usually, Enid liked to see a home with at least some decoration. A well-marked path, flowers in flower boxes, maybe even some painted trim. It showed pride in a place, a willingness to put in extra effort. This was a plain house, not even a kitchen garden to add some green. But the pile of driftwood and rusted salvage was organized, neatly corralled and sorted, not scattered about haphazardly. The roof was in good re

pair. The front steps weathered but not warped. The bone wind chimes on the front porch knocked hollowly, like someone was tapping a drum.

You could look at a house like this and see anything you wanted. She was pretty sure Teeg didn’t see anything good.

Enid heard voices around back. In the direction of the pyre. She held her breath. A group spoke quietly, two voices, low, male, and the tone of the conversation had an urgency to it. She thought one of them was Mart. Enid looked around for a way to keep hidden, maybe eavesdrop. Stepping softly, she circled around the house, moving along the wall until the words came through.

“She came here, now she’s dead, and you can’t explain it?” A husky, angry voice—the outsider, Hawk.

“We don’t know what happened, honest.” That was Mart, sounding weary.

“She’s dead and it’s your fault!”

“Hawk. Please. You should be looking at your own folk; they didn’t want her here any more than we did—”

“Mart!” Neeve hissed. So the woman was with them, part of this discussion.

More calmly, Mart said, “If we all just keep quiet, the investigators’ll be gone in a day—”

Hawk said, “You don’t know that.”

Silence answered this.

Then, Neeve said softly, “It happened, it just happened. Something bad was bound to happen—”

“It should have been you,” Hawk shot at her.

Enid was baffled. Teeg might not have been far off after all. Not about who had killed Ella, but that people were keeping secrets. Lots of secrets.

The question was, how might some of those secrets be cracked open?

Enid left the cottage, running to the path so she could approach by the usual way. No one had to be startled by her arrival.

“Hola,” Enid called, still some distance back, and waved.