Chapter 8: The Seer's House

The stone house behind the orchard had one window, and a candle burned in it.

Pat stayed at the gate with a basket of bandages, to look like a healer on an errand.

"Cough twice if somebody comes," I said.

"I'll cough like I'm dying."

"Cough twice."

"Twice, with feeling."

I went up the path and the door opened before I knocked.

The old woman stood in the doorway in a grey shawl.

She was the one who kept the pack's records.

She was also the one who had pulled my collar straight on the morning after my wedding.

"I wondered how long you would take," she said.

"Four years."

"Yes." She stepped back. "Come in, child, before the cold gets in."

The room was small and smelled of dried sage.

Shelves of ledgers ran floor to ceiling, their spines cracked and brown.

She lowered herself into a chair by the fire.

"I was the seer for this pack for forty years," she said. "I am not anymore. It stopped when I stopped speaking truth. Sit."

I sat.

I put the iron key on the table between us.

She looked at it and smiled with half her mouth.

"Dinah," she said. "She was always the brave one."

"You looked at my bite the morning after the wedding," I said. "You said it took. What did you mean?"

"I meant what I said. The claim took."

"On whom?"

She didn't answer.

She got up with a hand on the mantel, took a thick ledger from the shelf, and opened it on the table in front of me.

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