Rena had a knife in her hand before Cole’s knuckles finished the second knock didn’t look up, just set the one she’d been running a whetstone over back on the belt and picked up the next.
She looked at the door.
At Cole through the window.
Kept working.
Cole waited.
She opened the door halfway.
Late thirties, dark hair pulled back, two knives on her belt and a third still in her hand.
Her smile had edges.
“Brenner,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“You’re the new kid working the Aberdeen wraith.”
“Was planning on it.”
“Plan something else.” She started to close the door.
Cole put his hand on the frame.
“I drove six hours.”
“That’s not my problem.”
“Three people dead in a week.
You need help.”
She looked at his hand.
At him.
“I’ve been working this circuit since before you knew what iron was for.
I don’t need help from a kid who smells wrong.”
“Wrong how.”
“You tell me.”
Cole pulled his hand back.
Rena Castro leaned against the doorframe and folded her arms Bobby had said the name once, in passing, along with the fact that her father had run the Dakotas before a wendigo took him in ’04.
“The wraith’s feeding at the grain co-op,” she said.
“Killing the night shift one at a time.
I’ve got the iron, I’ve got the lore, and I’ve been salting the building for two days.
I don’t need a stranger walking in and getting himself killed on my watch.”
“I wasn’t planning on getting killed.”
“Nobody does.” She tapped the knife against her thigh.
“You can work the next town.
This one’s mine.”
Cole counted the knives.
Three visible.
Probably more.
He looked past her into the room.
A duffel, salt lines on the sills, a notebook open on the table with writing he couldn’t read from here.
“I’ll stay out of your way,” he said.
“You will.
By leaving.”
“I’m going to the co-op tonight.”
Rena smiled.
It wasn’t friendly.
“Then I guess we’ll see how good you are.”
She closed the door.
Cole stood in the lot for a minute.
Got in the truck.
Drove to the grain co-op and parked three blocks south where the building’s loading bay was visible through a gap in the fence.
He waited.
Rena’s truck pulled in at eleven.
She got out, two knives visible now, and walked the perimeter with a bag of salt in one hand.
She didn’t look toward Cole’s truck.
She didn’t need to.
She knew he was there.
Cole got out and crossed the lot.
“I told you to leave.”
“You did.”
“And you didn’t listen.”
“No.”
She finished the line and set the bag down.
“You get yourself killed, that’s on you.
You get me killed, I’m coming back and salting your bones myself.”
“Okay.”
“And you do what I say.
No freelancing.
No clever ideas.
You see something, you tell me before you move.”
“Yeah.”
Rena looked at him for a long time.
Then she picked up the salt bag and handed it to him.
“East side.
Don’t miss the service door.”
They salted the building in silence.
Rena worked fast, precise, no wasted motion.
She checked Cole’s lines twice and didn’t say anything when they held.
The wraith came at one-fourteen.
It came through the west wall, a shape that wasn’t a shape, gray and thin and wrong in the way smoke is wrong when it moves against the wind.
It slid along the floor toward the loading office where the night foreman was doing paperwork.
Rena moved left.
Cole moved right.
The wraith didn’t notice either of them.
It was halfway to the office when Rena threw the iron spike.
The wraith screamed.
Turned.
Rena was already moving, a second spike in her hand, and she drove it into the thing’s chest.
It collapsed.
Twisted.
Started to pull itself back together.
Cole could feel the Lorebind in his teeth.
He’d bound one wraith before.
Marshalltown, two weeks back, a lone feeder in a funeral home.
This wasn’t one.
This was five.
Maybe six.
A cluster, a nest, a feeding pack that had learned to move together.
He could see the threads between them, faint and cold, holding the shapes in sync.
Rena was going for the third spike.
Cole stepped forward and said the binding.
It wasn’t Enochian.
It wasn’t Latin.
It was the thing underneath both, the structure the Writ had left in his mouth like an aftertaste.
He said it once, flat and clear, and the threads snapped tight.
The wraiths froze.
Rena stopped.
Looked at Cole.
At the wraiths, motionless, held in place like insects in glass.
“What did you just do,” she said.
“Bound the class.
They’re locked for the night.”
“How.”
“Does it matter?”
Rena didn’t answer.
She walked a slow circle around the wraiths, watching them, and then she looked back at Cole.
Her smile was gone. Get faster updates on g.com.
“You’re not a normal hunter,” she said.
“No.”
“What are you.”
“I’m the guy who just saved you six hours of chasing these things down one at a time.”
Rena didn’t move.
Her hand was on the knife at her belt.
Not drawing it.
Not letting go of it, either.
“Finish it,” Cole said.
She looked at him for another five seconds.
Then she turned and started driving iron through the wraiths one by one.
They didn’t move.
They couldn’t.
The binding held them like a vice until Rena’s iron put them down for good.
When the last one was gone, she stood and wiped the blade on her jeans.
“You’re gonna tell me how that worked,” she said.
“No.”
“Then you’re gonna leave my circuit and not come back.”
Cole didn’t answer.
Rena sheathed the knife.
Picked up the salt bag.
Walked past him toward the truck.
She didn’t look back.
Cole stood in the co-op for a while.
The wraiths were gone.
The binding was gone.
The only thing left was a faint ache in his molars and the taste of cold iron on the back of his tongue.
He drove back to the motel.
Rena’s truck was already gone.
There was a line of salt across his door.
Neat.
Deliberate.
A tip, or a warning, or both.
Cole scraped it off with his boot and went inside.
His phone rang at four in the morning.
Unknown number.
He let it go to voicemail.
In the morning he listened to it.
Rena’s voice.
Flat.
Professional.
“Bobby.
It’s Rena.
You’ve got a new kid on the circuit.
Brenner.
He works clean, but he’s wrong.
I don’t know what he is.
Thought you should know.”
The message ended.
Cole deleted it.
Closed the phone.
Packed the truck.
The next case was in Sioux City.
A vetala in a trailer park.
He’d work it alone.
He merged onto the highway with the salt still faint and white on the toe of his boot, and he didn’t call Bobby back.