Lulu Harteford was a treasure. An accountant by trade, she could find the numbers you needed for any project and organize them so that they made sense. She was exactly the right hand that Lady Astor needed, and she proved herself time and time again. Throw in that she made a killer pot of coffee and she had no problem taking a ball and driving it home, and she was an incredible secretary.

They went through the various buildings that Helson wanted to sell off and started noticing some interesting patterns. There were a total of thirty-two buildings; the number seemed sort of large, especially given the small size of Elspeth. However, most of the buildings were on old homesteads whose owners had given them up and a few were in industrial parks; they made up 17 and 6 of the buildings, respectively. The other nine buildings were scattered through Elspeth's downtown.

She decided to look at the industrial park buildings first. Most of them were, no surprise, formerly owned by enemies and other opponents of Helson; only two were relatively neutral. She decided to inspect a couple of the buildings, taking advantage of how clustered they were. While they appeared run-down, their backbone was still pretty solid; with a little refurbishing, the buildings could be the center of a revitalization effort. She took pictures of what she saw to back up a growing idea.

The homestead buildings were pretty much what she had expected: Failed experiments of city people running to the woods that had been mostly reclaimed by the surrounding forest. She then took a step back and looked at maps of animal populations: There were some interesting spikes around the former homesteads, which made sense considering that the farming efforts had created fields of food for the larger herbivores. Those fields had taken root and prospered, providing food for a range of creatures. However, the effect on the deer population was worth noting as that could provide an interesting angle for tourists and hunters.

However, the management cost of those areas was an issue. Between worrying about fires, potential erosion issues, and flooding in general, those areas had some serious issues. As they were also well off the beaten path, it made them difficult to manage as well. Also, if she were thinking about increasing the tourist trade in those areas, it would need some additional infrastructure. However, as she crunched the numbers, she realized that the increase in business in that sector would help in others.

She then looked at the nearby colleges and which majors were popular. Unsurprisingly, there were a lot of agricultural and wilderness management majors, but also a lot of management majors. Put a motivated group of college grads under senior management willing to give their ideas a chance and it would be interesting to see what could happen. Those industrial buildings were suddenly starting to look pretty good. But it would take, effort, and time to start pulling a profit; in that regard, selling the buildings made sense. Keeping them would be a hard sell, but she saw a glimmer of hope for the idea.

She saw a business plan forming in front of her that help the pack's ecological focus as well as increase its portfolio, and would virtually manage itself. All of that made it exactly what she needed. It just needed to be whipped into shape, and with Lulu backing her, she knew it could be done.

She also gave the other buildings a quick look. The buildings were pretty much just burnt-out hulks; selling the properties made complete sense. However, some of the names looked familiar but she couldn't place them. She put the information on the buildings into a file and then emailed the information to Investigator Percival. Hopefully, he could make sense of them. Meanwhile, she had her own work to worry about.

* * * * *

Roderick was the youngest teacher, and as such was the one that students usually went to with their problems, and a lot of those issues had to do with anger. The ferocity of werewolves on the battlefield was legendary, and that ferocity was powered by anger; battle gave it a focus, and focused anger can be a dangerous thing. However, this also meant that they had to find ways to deal with that anger so that they could survive life outside of battle.

Turning into a storm of claws and fangs is not the ideal way of dealing with most of life's difficulties, no matter how satisfying it may sound.

Given that this anger intensified around that major dumping of hormones into the body better known as puberty and that anger at that age focused on one's nearest relatives, and it was a major surprise that werewolves survived adolescence. Part of this was because werewolves fostered their children to other families around twelve or so; the other families were not as emotionally invested in the child's drama and so had a better chance of teaching the child how to deal with that anger. As the activity was the easiest way of dealing with that anger, this meant that a lot of young werewolves excelled at sports, farmwork, and forest management.

Understandably, childless couples usually found themselves besieged on all sides by the parents of teenagers: They were having a problem fobbing them onto other parents, especially if they had younger children, and the childless couples usually had a little more money saved up that could be used to deal with all of the accidents that would inevitably crop up.

Thus, when Percival arrived home, hoping for a nice, calming shower followed by some very strenuous bedroom exercise, possibly followed by another shower and then ice cream and some bad television, he was not prepared for a gangly teenager in nothing but gym shorts playing video games.

“Roderick!?!”

Roderick poked his head out of the bedroom. “Yes?”

Percival pointed to the teenager while glaring at him.

Roderick closed the distance between them in heartbeats and engaged his lover. “Oh, that's Nier. He'll be staying with us for a few days.”

Percival pushed him off. “I thought we had agreed to discuss future adoptions of dangerous wildlife. A teenager definitely falls under that heading.”

Roderick tried to hug Percival but he was having none of it. “Nier was almost killed by his father this morning. Given the situation, I felt it best if I took him home with me and sought out a foster while he wasn't in danger.” He lowered his eyes. “I felt you would understand.”

Ironically, the lowered eyes just made him madder but he resigned himself to the inevitable. “He had better be out of here by the weekend. Next time, remember our agreement.” Roderick hugged him. Percival glared at him. “The weekend.” He walked into their bedroom.

Roderick heard the dummy in their room fall to the ground. Followed by the dummy being lifted.

Percival came out a few seconds later. “Pizza tonight is on you.” He walked back into the bedroom.

Roderick smiled. “That went so much better than I was expecting to go.”

* * * * *

Two large ravens alighted on the remains of the last ritual. Within the space of a heartbeat, the two ravens were replaced by Huginn and Muninn. The two looked at the scene, picking and poking at various items, in an attempt to figure out what had happened there.

The girl was picking at the remains of the stand. “The fulcrum is being formed. Soon it will be inevitable.”

The boy was looking at where the witch had been held. “The ritualist has made several key mistakes in the casting. However, he's realized that and is taking steps to make allowances for that.” He walked over to his twin. “The witch's escape was a boon for him. If she had become part of the ritual then it would have been undone beyond repair.”

She looked at him. “Unfortunate. However, he can still go forward. If the investigators don't figure it out, there could be a lot of chaos in this area.” Something drew her attention at the end of the pyre. She walked over to it and picked at it, pulling some metallic from the pyre. She showed her twin. “The remains of the sacrifice had not been cleaned well enough.” She threw the metal at him.

He caught it. “Neat.” He inspected it. “Too bad there are no marks on it and any magical residue has worn off.”

She frowned. “True.”

He cocked his head, then walked over to where she had been tied. He bent down and picked at the dirt around where she had been. He grabbed a chain and showed her. “It looks like the ritualist is being given the targets.”

His brow knit. “He either seeks to ruin the ritual or knows nothing of its inner workings. He is just using it to eliminate potential problems.” She looked at him. Either way, this does not bode well.”

He nodded. “We may need to figure out how this other person is. This could result in a massive mischarge with the ritual becoming more explosive than transformative.” He looked at the pyre. “Either way, the escape of the witch was fortunate for all involved. Had she been sacrificed in turn then the ritual would not have had the result desired.”

She walked over to him. “It depends on what result was actually desired. If the ritualist has his way, then the supernatural shall be eliminated from this area, with all becoming mere mortals. If this helper is allowed to help much more, then the area could be destroyed with few survivors.” She pulled at the police tape. Still, they only missed a minor clue.” She smiled at him. “I like these investigators, even if they need to be a bit more thorough.”

He returned the smile. “This could be fun. As long as we're not here when the ritual's final sacrifice is made.”

She nodded. “Off to the next stop?”

He nodded, and in a few heartbeats they had flown off.