Arc 3: All That Glisters (Part 13)

The next couple of weeks are exhausting—so exhausting, in fact, that I table my plan of trying to have a conversation with Canus. He’s slippery, and I’m both tired and distracted. Scintilla and I have been taking turns watching over Katy. We’re usually accompanied by thralls now, at least one at any given time, so it’s less dangerous. Still, though, it’s a lonely prospect; thralls aren’t very good conversationalists, and I haven’t seen Scintilla for more than minutes at a time since we first discovered Claudia’s scent trail in Katy’s stairwell.

It’s been a little more than a fortnight since then, and we’ve encountered no less than three instances of other scent trails appearing suspiciously close to various places that Katy likes to frequent. Scintilla finds one scent trail in one of the hospitals where Katy works, though two storeys above the unit where her shifts are normally scheduled. Scintilla describes the scent as masculine but clean, like sandalwood and snow. It’s not a descri