olf until the grey light came up over the harbor and the gulls started arguing on the pier. By morning I had decided two

a clean circle in the dust, and I sat looking at that circle and drinking cold tea and think

be reasonable and helpful and steady, and half of them had been exactly what they seemed and the other half had been something else en

the coroner and the ser

p, put on my coat and wa

ages along the road, whitewashed and slate roofed, nets drying on the walls. The co-op hall with its green door and its noticeboard full of tide tables. O'Rourke's shop, which had been O'Ro

lin a wake drew neighbors out of their houses like wasps to jam,

he saw me coming from a long way off. He did not look surprised. He handed the clipboar

ept," h

ce." I put my hands in my pock

ot getting

tell m

nt across his face that I had seen once before on a man in an interview room, a man who had d

he harbor off

s marked in pencil, and a kettle, and a mug with a chip out of the rim that he filled for me without asking. His desk had a photograph on it, a boy of about twenty with a

son,"

He did not

he this

d the desk and folded his hands on the blotter

why you told me

said it flat, like a man reading out a

not go on, I said, "

" He paused. "F

e co-op hands them out at the start of

the blotter. "The weight on your sister's table was not the sort we hand out.

ty o

is seventeen. The healer's family is nine. Mine is twenty two." He looked at

n the pier someone laugh

said. "She kept hens and she sang at m

then I am going to ask you to sit down and hear the rest of it before you walk out of this office. Your sister was not drowned. She was killed. And

nees had made th

n," I

ng she had no right to c

e w

pack. We have been a pack on this coast for four hundred years. There are rules, and the rules are written in the charter, and the charter says a claim on the Alpha's s

elling me my sister was killed in a

e life. His grandfather was one of us." Declan came back to the desk and sat on the e

heard a lot of stories. I have told a few myself. There was a wolf on the headland last night, a big grey one, and I watched

nk. "It makes

it pl

nt to Dublin and lived among people who do not know what we are, and it slept in you like a fire in wet wood." He said it without any gentleness, which was how I knew he believed it.

," I said, "and I am going to sit in it, and tomorrow I am going to bury her, and the

the table when I left l

ith my hand

is office and I locked the drawer." He had not moved from the edge of the desk. "T

his village has a

and unhappy. "If the weight is back on the table in your sister's kitchen, then the Alpha is telling you something

go back to the cottage. I went the long way, along the shore road, so that I could see the headland in d

e cottage the ba

lt had been thrown by me. I went in through the back and through the hall, and the kitchen was exactly

t was on

the note had been, there was a new piece of paper with three words on it in h

her

it in my coat pocket, and it was heavier than it had any right to b