Chapter 2 The Woman in the Turbine Hall

Magnus came down the last steps with his torch swinging, and the beam cut across the intake hall and found the open grate.

"Tell me you did not let whoever that was walk into the sea," he said.

"She went out through the intake. The tide's still low enough to wade the first hundred yards." I picked up her wrench from the floor. The handle was wrapped in electrical tape gone tacky with salt. "We can follow the channel or we can secure the plant. I chose the plant."

"You chose wrong." He took the wrench from me, sniffed the tape, and his broad shoulders went still. "Rogue."

"You can smell that?"

"I can smell something. Copper and rainwater. Not a MacRae scent." He handed the wrench back. "Not a Carnmouth scent at all."

I put it in my coat pocket before he could ask for it again. Magnus walked the length of the main pipe with his torch held low, and he stopped where the rust had thinned. He crouched, ran his thumb along the clean metal, and looked back at me.

"This was orange when I did the rounds at six."

"Pressure change. The tide dropped fast tonight."

"The tide does not scrub rust off a pipe." He stood and wiped his thumb on his trousers. "What did she look like?"

"Tall. Red hair. She had a wrench and a bad attitude and she was gone before I could get my hands on her."

"You had your hands on her. There's a mark on your wrist."

I looked down. Four small crescents where her nails had pressed when I grabbed her. I put my hand in my pocket beside the wrench. "She pulled free. I'll catch her at the next low tide."

"Will you." His radio chirped and he silenced it without looking at it. "The Alpha wants a report by morning. I'll write it. You go home, and when you come back, you come back with an answer about this pipe that isn't the tide."

He went up the stairs first, and I followed, and on the third step my right hand began to shake.

It started in the fingers, a fine tremor like a struck wire, and climbed to the wrist. I closed that hand around the rail and leaned on it until the shaking passed up my arm and stopped.

"Alasdair."

"Coming."

I waited until his torch beam vanished around the turn, then sat down on the cold step and held my hand out in the dark. It was steady now. It had been steady for three days. The first time was six weeks ago, in the shower, and I had blamed the cold water. The second time was at the pack house dinner, and I had blamed the wine. The third time was last Tuesday, at my desk, and I had no one left to blame but myself.

My wolf did not speak. That was the worst of it. Six weeks ago he had gone quiet, and quiet was not something he had ever been. He had opinions about everything, about the way Magnus chewed his food, about the smell of new paint in the corridors, about every woman who crossed my path and whether she was worth the trouble. Now he lay somewhere behind my ribs like a stone in a riverbed.

Except tonight. Tonight he had howled.

I finished the climb, and by the time I reached the gatehouse the wind had come off the sea and taken the mist with it.

She was standing on the seawall.

I saw her from the gatehouse window, a thin figure in a dark coat with the copper-red hair loose now and blowing across her face. The moon was behind the clouds, and the sea beyond her was black and moving, and she was not running. She was watching the plant.

I went out. I did not run. I walked down the path with my hands loose at my sides, and when I reached the seawall she turned her head and watched me come the way she had in the intake hall, without any fear in her at all.

"You came back," I said.

"I never left." She nodded at the plant. "Your pipe is holding. It will hold until Thursday, maybe Friday, and then it won't. You should have someone look at the junction beneath the reservoir."

"You should come with me to the pack house and explain that to my Alpha."

Her mouth curved. "Would that go well for me, do you think?"

"Not especially."

"Then I'll stay out here." She turned to face me fully, and the wind pulled her hair back, and I could see the small scar in her eyebrow and the cold red of her cheeks. "You're shaking."

I looked down. My left hand was trembling at my side, and I had not noticed it start.

"It's cold," I said.

"It's not cold." She stepped closer. "How long since your wolf went quiet? How long since the first tremor? Because I have seen this before, and it does not get better on its own. The curse in your water gets into the wolves who drink it. It gets into their shifts. It gets into their bones."

"Curse." I said the word flatly. "You're standing on a seawall in the middle of the night telling me my plant is cursed."

"I'm telling you your plant is drowning in a debt that was cast into the water before you were born, and I am the only person on this coast who knows how to slow it down." She pulled her sleeve back, and there on her forearm, pale in the moonlight, was a mark like a crescent moon. "My name is Eilidh. I am not a rogue, whatever your Beta smells. I came here to break the thing that is killing your pack, and I have been breaking your valves every few nights because it is the only way to keep it from reaching your reservoir."

The wind changed. It came off the headland and carried the smell of her straight into my lungs, copper and rain and crushed ferns, and my wolf rose up behind my ribs and pressed against my skin.

"You have the mark on your throat," she said. "The crescent. I saw it in the intake hall. I have the same one, and mine has been burning since I touched you, and I do not believe in coincidences." She took another step, and her hand came up, and I caught her wrist before her fingers reached my collar.

The touch went through me like current through a wire.

She felt it too. I saw it in her face, the way her eyes lost their focus and her breath went shallow.

"Thursday," she said, very quietly. "I'll come back on Thursday with a tool that can reach the junction. Do not let anyone sign off on the reservoir inspection until then."

"Who are you?" I said. "Not your name. Who are you to my pack?"

Her hand was still in mine. She looked at it, then at me, and pulled it free slowly.

"Ask your healer," she said. "Ask Isla what happened thirty years ago, and why your father's name is on a ledger in the Council archive. Ask her tonight, before the inspector's letter arrives, and see what she tells you."

She walked along the seawall into the mist, and this time I let her go.

I stood there until the cold had gone through my coat and into my bones. Then I went back to the gatehouse, picked up the telephone, and dialed the pack house.

Isla answered on the fourth ring. "Healer's cottage."

"It's Alasdair. I need to ask you something, and I need you to tell me the truth."

There was a long silence. I heard her breathe in, and the small clink of a kettle set down on a stove, and when she spoke again her voice had changed in a way that made the hair rise on my arms.

"Not on the telephone," she said. "Come to the cottage. Use the back path, not the road. And Alasdair, before you come, look at your hands."

"I've looked at my hands."

"Look again," she said, and hung up.