You've already accomplished so much, but you still don't know how to heal Clay, and the Broad Brook Caern—once admired all across the Northeast—has been reduced to four or five scattered Garou, and you have yet to reach the caern itself. Your brain rattles over names even as you try to sleep, Elton Daphne Nin Melodie Podge, until you finally fall into a deep dream. In it, Elton holds one of those threaded paper circles with a bird on one side and a cage on the other. He spins the paper circle so the bird appears trapped in the cage. But then the bird hurls itself free of its prison, heedless of fragile and snapping bones. The cage breaks. The bird is out. It flies away, spilling blood across the skyline of Northampton, and trees burst out of foundations, shattering buildings and flinging people high into the air…
Morning. You check your wounds: they're healing cleanly. You change the dressings, even though you don't really need to worry about infection as a werewolf, then you check your new phone. A single email from Scarper, only a subject. It reads He's dead Clay is dead already you blew it you fucked up everything
Well, shit.
I can only offer my condolences now. I tell Scarper and Black Tarn that I'm sorry.
One mission can't be accomplished, but there's still more to do here—I ask for details I can use.
Scarper is an asshole, but I'm not going to dash off an angry email. I'll let it sit for now.
I don't want Garou business going out onto the internet. I don't answer.
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