An aggravating 20 minutes later, Annie had discovered squat.

She put her ands on her hips and let out a low growl of frustration, kicking some rocks. They clattered around, mostly about the island and a few into the creek with a plop! Annie had been hoping there’d be something here. Evidence of a scuffle, a torn piece of clothing, a splatter of blood, a scrap of fur. Anything. But she couldn’t find it. It didn’t make sense.

It had been, what, five days? Six? Since Connor and Sheriff Jed had discovered the body. The reports didn’t put an estimate on how long she’d been dead, but it couldn’t have been too much time. In his report Connor had detailed a deep slash in the neck, scrapes and stones embedded in the knees, and a broken collarbone. nothing about defensive wounds but given the severity of what else he’d found Annie would guess there were a few.

But there was no blood! Tulvir’s wound had sprayed blood all over the room and left a damn puddle on the ground. She could understand the stuff leaking away to a degree, maybe get washed off by the creek, but not completely disappear. The water was barely a trickle right now, it was the dry(er) season on the edge of the desert, no rain or high tide was going to cover the island.

Annie stomped over to the riverbed, frowning at the mud. The kicked rocks had left little rolling trails behind them before they’d landed in the water, carving thin lines in the creek bed. Huh. She lifted her boot, inspecting the muck that now clung to the bottom and letting her eyes trail down to the boot print she had left beneath her. Could be?

She trudged over to the edge of the creek bed and turned, appraising it critically. The body had been found on the island, but she had to get there somehow. She could have taken the path Connor had shown Annie on the way here but why would she? Apparently there was a clearer trail that led to the area, but it took twice as long and turned it into a day hike rather than a sorta quick trek straight through thick undergrowth that managed to survive in the canyon and the aftermath of landslides. No, if she was just out wandering the canyon she’d take the long way.

She started pacing the perimeter of the island, eyes scouring the mud. There should be something… There! Amidst a cluster of animal prints and scattered rocks was a pair of deep furrows in the muck. She hadn’t noticed it before because she’d been looking for bootprints, now she was almost certain the woman hadn’t been killed here at all.

The furrows led away from the island and into the brush. She’d follow them in a moment. She returned to the shore and took a breath, then tapped the side of her glasses. The world exploded into a myriad of colors. The plants gave off a deep green as they gently swayed, she could see faint trails of orange and yellow where animals had come and gone, and trails of colorless thread following the water in the creek. And there, by the furrows and dragged to the center of the island, the threads just ended as if they’d been severed or forced away. She was killed elsewhere, and then the body had been dragged through here and dropped on the island.

She tapped her glasses again and the colors dissipated. She was already irritated, no need to add a migraine on top of that.

Returning to the furrows, she struck out into the unknown. Or the very well known, considering she’d seen all the plants smacking in her face on the way here. But she pushed through with only a little bit of cursing and swearing on the way.

After a few minutes of shoving her way through the undergrowth, she stopped. Something bright and yellow hung right around her shin. Crouching down, she plucked it from the branch it had snagged on. It was a scrap of fabric, probably somebody’s clothes that had torn off. Maybe the victim’s? Annie glanced around and spotted a few broken branches and stones with a crust of dirt clinging to the upturned edges. This was promising.

She tapped her glasses again and brought up her thread sense to confirm her suspicions. There was a void of magic around her, carving a path through the brush behind her and further off to the side ahead of her. She stood up, brushed off her knees, and pocketed the scrap of cloth.

Following the void was easy, the life surrounding her almost made the thread density overwhelming, but the morbid serenity of the body’s trail was a stark relief compared the mass of color and light. The corpse’s trail also meant that a path had been carved through here before, branches broken and bushes trodden down made the going much easier than trying to fight her way through on her own in an awful sort of way.

Another tap of her glasses, she had enough of a sense of the trampled undergrowth that marked where the body had been dragged she figured she could get by without them. But a weight was beginning to settle in the pit of her stomach. Monsters didn’t leave bodies to be found like this. She was certain magic was involved here, but she was less and less sure there was a monster at the end of it. More likely was a mage.

She hated dealing with mages. Monsters were simple. They had rules and patterns to follow and you could predict what they wanted to do. Mages though, mages were people. People wanted all sorts of things and killed for all sorts of reasons. A mage killing people brought all sorts of tangled motivations and variables to the situation that were very much outside her ability to anticipate. But mages were still magic, and magic taken too far made monsters. And Strangers hunted monsters. With newfound determination she shoved her way through the brush.

It wasn’t too hard making her way through the undergrowth now that Annie knew what she was looking for. Whoever had dragged that girl through here hadn’t bothered to try and cover their tracks.

I ought to look for drag marks when I inspect the body at the morgue. She thought.

The lack of blood, trail of dispersed veil energy, and trampled shrubbery was more than enough to paint her a picture of what happened; but some extra confirmation would be good for whatever paperwork Connor would have to file for his higher ups in the Union when this job was over. Poor sap.

As she pushed through a thicket a branch thwapped Annie in the face, knocking her glasses askew and sending tufts of whitish fluff into the air. She swore and batted at the rogue limb, scattering another cloud of the dreaded cotton around her. She sneezed. And sneezed again. Tried to adjust her glasses, sneezed, knocked them off her face entirely, swore some more, and crouched down to pat at the grass around where she’d seen them drop.

A glint a few feet away caught her eye and she crawled over to it, hand passing back and forth in front of her like some beach-combing metal detector. And detect it she did when it stabbed into the side of her hand.

“Ouch!” She cried out and then snatched up the offending debris. It was not, in fact, her glasses but rather the round and jagged rowel of a spur. It looked as though grass had gotten tangled in the spikes and dislodged it from whatever boot had been unlucky enough to trudge through the tangled grass and brambles.

She held the wheel by the grass and dangled it in front of her face to glare at it for a moment, mulling over the idea of hurling it out into the undergrowth. It looked to be pretty good metal, or at least it wasn’t tarnished. Maybe she could sell it? Good metal’s hard to come by, even a small amount should fetch a bit of cash. Frugality won out over anger and she pocketed the spur.

Returning to her search Annie dug around some more, ripping up some of the grass in frustration and tossing it around until at last she unearthed her glasses. They had somehow managed to land several feet away from where she’d dropped them but luckily seemed unharmed by their impromptu flight. With a sigh she plucked them from the ground and sat back on her heels to dust them off, then returned them to their perch atop her nose and rose to her feet with a grumble.

Lenses returned, she surveyed the area around her. The vegetation was actually thin enough now that she could push through with ease. With a final shove, Annie emerged from the brambly hell and into the late afternoon sunlight.