Chapter 10: Conall's POV

Conall's POV

The pack-house garden phone is a wall unit bolted to the potting shed, and as far as anyone knew it had been dead for ten years.

I stood in front of it at six in the morning with the dust still on the cradle.

The call log lived in the security office, in a binder my father had never let anyone digitize.

I found the morning of the crash and ran my finger down the page.

7:40. Outgoing. Garden line to the clinic.

The call lasted only a few seconds.

I had taken it myself, on the clinic desk, with my coat half on.

A woman's voice had said, "Conall, come quick, it's Vera," and the line had gone dead.

I had assumed it was one of the girls from the kitchen.

I had never asked which one.

"Kitchen staff are on the rota," I said aloud, in the empty office.

I pulled the rota for that day.

Nobody from the kitchen had been in the garden before eight.

Nobody had been in the shed all week.

My hands were steady, which surprised me. I had expected them to shake.

I thought about Teagan on the phone.

I thought about how her voice had gone high and flat, the way it did when she was holding back tears in front of other people.

I had heard that voice a hundred times at the pack table, and I had always taken it for pride.

I had been a healer for eight years, and I had told a woman who was bleeding to stop.

I put the binder back.

My father kept every pack record in the locked cabinets in his study, and the key hung on a nail inside his closet.

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