I walked to the leash and sniffed it. It smelled like me, and like another dog, a not me-dog. I remembered other dogs and a lone wolf werewolf we had hunted with. The dog part of my brain associated the memories and I lay down beside the harness, remembering the smells of that hunt.

Hunger pulled my mind away from the past. More hungry than usual, my having shifted twice without eating.

Want cow.

I know. I smell meat. I’m sure they fixed us a nice meal.

Ten minutes went by, according to my unreliable internal clock, before Eli walked back into the room. I snuffled at him for the scent of blood or werewolf saliva. I got nothing, which was good. If Brute bit Eli, it would have meant Eli and the Mercy Blade in bed together for a few days of magical healing, which would surely not sit well with Eli’s überhetero tendencies. Even just a platonic, no-touch, no-tongue time in bed might send him over the edge. And Brute . . . As Eli had said. Brute would have been dead. There was no leniency for a were who bit a human. None at all. Automatic death sentence at the steel claws of the grindylows in the nation, and they had second sense when a human suffered a bite.

I whined softly as Eli knelt next to me.

He chuckled, the sound evil, and said, “He’s fine. But he’ll think twice about snapping around humans again.” I whined again.

“He’s okay. I’m okay. You’re okay. Step in,” he said, holding the harness out. I stepped into the harness and let him adjust the straps. “Let’s go, Fido.”

I butted him behind the knee and chuffed when his leg buckled. He laughed and led me to my steak dinner. The steak was cooked, but just enough to get the juices flowing, and it was so much more delicious and savory and smelled so much better than when I was Beast. I loved steak. I licked the dish and raised my head, licking my drooping jowls and the floor. I licked Eli’s hand.

“Yeah,” he said, cleaning his hand on his pants. “Right. Let’s go.”

* * *

I leaped from the SUV to the ground at the Elms and instantly stuck my nose in the air. And wanted to fall down and roll on the ground from the intensity of it all. The first time I shifted into a bloodhound, it had been like being blindsided by an odoriferous Mack truck, and this time was no different. Magic, blood, magic, anger, blood, magic, Evan, Molly . . . I whined and Eli scratched behind my ears. I leaned into him, sorry now that I’d tried to trip him. He said something, but with my long ears flopping down over my ear canals, my hearing was affected.

He scratched me again and I snuffled him. Eli smelled good. Like litter mate, Beast thought. Eli jiggled the lead and led me/us along the sidewalk and around behind the house, where the scents were . . . intense. Amazing. I took breaths in little chuffs.

A bloodhound’s nose is more sensitive than any other dog’s in the canine kingdom, and, as with the first time I took this form, it made my brain go into overdrive, identifying every scent and its breakdown components, cataloging everything, noting associations and differences, calculating, parsing it all out into chemicals and pheromones and—

“Fido? Let’s go, girl.”

“Fido is a male name,” Nunez said. He smelled of spices and coffee and sugar from donuts, and peanuts and chocolate from Snickers bars. He smelled good. I lifted my head and snuffled his crotch. Nunez jumped back. Eli pulled me away with a sharp flick of the lead. “Fido. Bad girl.” I chuffed and turned my head to him, remembering that my nose wasn’t supposed to take over. I was Jane. Jane Yellowrock. Not a dog. Right. A skinwalker. But Nunez still smelled good.

Eli led me through the backyard and to the first of the exploded focal items. It smelled like magic and Evan and vampire and blood and . . . And like Ming. I stopped, my nose to the ground, snuffling and searching through the scent signatures. Ming. Ming’s scent was here. Ming was a twin. Was I certain that it was Ming of Mearkanis? And why? I snuffled to the site and buried my nose in the ground. Sniffing, snuffling, analyzing. Remembering the stench of Ming in the small cage. Yes. Ming of Mearkanis. Her blood had been used in the creating of the iron icons. Iron and magic didn’t mix, but if combined with vampire blood . . . Yeah. That changed everything. The dark magic was beginning to make sense.

I pulled to the next icon and snuffled it too. This one had no Evan smell, but scented of Lachish’s sweat and urine and pain. The witch smell was strong here, a witch smell that had nothing to do with the witches I knew. It smelled of vampire, of Ming, and of the unknown witches. But I knew them now, the mother and daughter witches. The daughter was by far the most powerful of the two. The daughter was alpha of the pack. I followed the scent around the yard, to another place that smelled of gunfire and lead.

I remembered, in some odd part of my mind, that Eli had shot three of the places. Why did he shoot them? They couldn’t die.

And then I remembered again. I was Jane. Eli was my partner. Eli shot the icons to disrupt the magics. Jane. I held to myself, pulling memories to me, memories of Brenda, one of my favorite house mothers. Memories of Eli and Alex, my family. Memories of Bruiser. Yes. I had myself now.

I found two more sites shot by Eli. They smelled the same, set by the same two stranger witches, women I would know instantly now, even in human form. I followed the scent of an enemy witch across the lawn to the side yard and found a place that smelled of witch and iron but no gunfire and no lead. I sat and looked up at Eli. And whined. He had a flashlight and shone it on the grass. “Got it,” he muttered, and he pushed a small plastic army soldier, taped to a stick, into the grass.