tunnels through the snow, and stopped at the gate of the pack house yar

ack hair was pinned back so tight it pulled at her temples. She was perhaps fifty, with a

the Council of Alphas. I apologize for the hour. I

came down the last step. "Nobody told m

d closed the door. "I am here about the Alpha's death and the quarantine question. I would like to

rprised me, and I le

or was opened at night." She looked past me at the pack house windows

ad her quilt on the bed. I did not tell her that. I watched her set her case on the chest and lock the door be

commissioners to a timber pack in the middle of win

ad lit both lamps and set the taxidermy records out in their grey c

t five. She asked one of the kitchen girls for hot wate

girl te

and does not know when to keep her mouth shut." Dara poured

ack house. Every animal taken on the territory for a hundred years had a page: the date, the spe

o years," she said.

count did not make sense. "There are more pages t

marter way to steal." She ran her finger down a column. "Every adde

er is

d to the pack house to explain himself." She tapped the ledger beside it. "And this is the pelt ledger. Here is where the page was cut out. It is not one

umn of last year. That'

over the rim of

me month. I laid them out in order and followed the route she had walked with my finger. Up the east fork

Timber

last patrol end

k ends at the landing, Luna.

the landing at four in the afternoon and she clocked out again two hours later. No

the shelf and brought down a map so old the paper had gone brown at the f

What was she doing at th

the landing and the name gouged into it and the bo

n his shoulders and his face set in the expression he wore when

he pelt ledger and the taxidermy records and she wants them in the pack

idermy folder with

. "She asked whether the Luna had been seen to shift since the Alp

on. "Then we had better g

gone quiet. "If she asks you to prove the bond in front

t his face. "I am going to ask her what a pl

ledgers, and neither of us said the thing we were both thinking. That the cut pages ran from the autumn Wren disappeared to the spring

had written it in t