Free Witch for Hire by N. E. Conneely Page A

work."
    "What's the traditional pack structure?" Most shifters didn't follow their wild counterpart as closely as they liked people to think.
    "The pack master was always male. The women always ranked below men only fighting with each other for position. It kept them safe. We're hard to kill, but no one wanted to take any chances with the women. We have difficulties reproducing and no one wants to risk children."
    "What are the women trying to change?" I'd seldom heard a shifter be this blunt about their pack structure and rules. It wasn't that they couldn't tell people, they just didn't.
    He frowned, "It's hard to explain. They want to be equal, but still protected. Right now we are allowing women to choose if they want to fight for pack standing with the males, but we won't know how it's working for a while yet." We both let the conversation lapse. After eating I drifted off to sleep. It had been a long day and I needed to work again later.
    I woke up to White gently shaking my shoulder. He helped me haul my stuff back to the work room before returning to his regular duties.
    Looking at the map, I could see what Jones meant. It wasn't useful at all. The only place that wasn't glowing was the troll preserve. I microwaved a bowl of water and pulled three vials of human blood out of the freezer, with markings indicating they were from different people. I set them in the hot water and waited for them to thaw.
    The actual mechanics of what I needed to do were simple. I needed to tell the map not to look at humans. To make it perfect, I would need to do that for every group or find a way to narrow down the trolls that it was looking for. I'd ask Jones about that tomorrow.
    Once the blood vials thawed, I poured them into a bowl and set a preservation spell on the blood. I then unbent a portion of the spell and told it that it shouldn't look for blood like this, but that it needed to focus on the blood most like the other blood. I wound the edge of the spell back together, hoping I didn't have to do that too many more times. Spells could be altered, but every time I pulled it apart I risked damaging the spell.  
    I sat down to read for a while, wanting to keep an eye on the spell before crawling into a cot.  

Chapter Five

    Michelle
    "Wake up, Michelle."  
    "Hmm, ump." I snuggled into the bed.
    "Michelle, wake up!" Jones yelled.
    I shot up. "Ok, ok, no need to shout. I'm up. Tea?" I rubbed my eyes and was able to focus. White pushed a cup of tea into my hands. "What happened?"  
    "I don't know, but we're going to another explosion."
    "At the preserve?"
    "No, at a chicken farm out in the country."
    "Oh, ok. I'll meet you out front in three minutes." White left and I ran to the bathroom, pulled my hair into a ponytail, grabbed a snack from the cooler and picked up my duffel. I was ready.  
    Information was flying across the radio. By the time we arrived, I knew the explosion had taken out part of a chicken coop. A body had been discovered, and police from across the county were rushing to the chicken farm.  
    Getting out of the car at the farm, I realized the radio hadn't told me everything. I wasn't prepared for the smell of burned flesh and feathers. My stomach lurched. While walking over to the body, I tried not to think about what I was smelling, or breathe through my nose.  
    White and I passed under the crime scene tape surrounding the body. The medical examiner was kneeling next to her. Feeling giddy with relief, the words I'd been thinking slipped out of my mouth. "That is one crispy troll." White chuckled, as did a few of the other officers nearby. I blushed, muttering, "Sorry."  
    The sight of the troll was just as grisly as her smell. She was small for a troll, only seven feet. Live trolls, with their white skin, hunched shoulders, and wiry hair, were not the most attractive creatures. The pasty skin was logical since they turned to stone in the sun, but I'd never found a satisfactory reason for why they turned to