I frowned, focused, reached for the fire. Didn’t let it out, just kind of held it. Maybe it knew, maybe I could somehow track the fire that had been here. And something responded, something that felt familiar.

Something that spilled out to land on the grass. “You?”

The fyrhund sat down, charring the grass further, and panted at me.

“I thought you were dead.”
Seb was kind of staring. “Okay, where did the beagle come from?”

I laughed. “He’s not a beagle.”

And he’d…maybe I’d done it, instinctively, pulled him into myself before he could actually be destroyed, or maybe he’d dissipated into pieces and only now come back together.

“Oh.”

“He’s exactly what we need.” I reached to scritch the fyrhund behind his ears, feeling gentle warmth but no burn. “You can track who was here, right?”

He licked my hand then got to his feet and just started to pad along the river. I glanced at Seb, then followed.

The feeling that I hadn’t got the little dog killed after all was almost enough to make me feel better about what I’d had to do to Clara.
Almost. I wasn’t going to actually feel better for a while. Better was relative, anyway. But, it was one load off of my mind, one piece of sorrow lifted. He was even wagging his tail.

I also knew he was mine now and nobody could take him away from me. I hoped that if he planned on sticking around disguised as a beagle I could sneak him past the landlord. I wasn’t technically allowed a pet.

Along the river and back to a parking lot, one I hadn’t noticed. It was next to a desultory playground with a concrete floor and old-fashioned equipment. “Drat it.” They must have got in a vehicle.

Seb wandered over to a couple of teenaged boys who were trying to make the swing set go all the way over the top with minimal success. I let him talk to them as I glanced around.

There were tire prints, but they were in multiples in different directions. I wasn’t going to learn anything from that.

The wind picked up, and I wondered if I shouldn’t just call Mike. He, after all, had detective training.

I did, though, have a very faithful dog.