Half an hour later, light broke through the tree line as Eve, Jon, and Ezra approached a clearing. Ferns, moss, and wildflowers covered the ground between towering pines, and the chirps of bugs and birds got louder as they approached the clearing.

Eve walked behind Jon, and as she stepped past the last tree and into the clearing, she sucked in a breath. A shock ran up her body from her feet, a full body tingle that almost hurt it was so strong.

“Woah,” she said. It subsided into a barely-there buzz in her feet as they stepped farther in.

Jon lifted his honing steel above his head and spun around to face Eve and Ezra. “Found a node!”

Ezra winced a little and held his arms close to his body. “Wow, that is really, uh, potent.” He shook his head once, and the little ponytail on top of his head—blue hair band borrowed from Eve when he’d gotten too hot on the hike—wobbled.

Eve rolled her shoulders and smiled. “It feels good,” she said. Understatement. It felt intense, and powerful, and Eve very nearly wanted to try doing something, you know, magical, just to see if she could. She shoved her hands into the pockets of her shorts instead. Jon tilted his head at her and Ezra.

“Wow, you two can feel it so strongly,” he said. “I can only tell with my dowsing rod.” Ezra looked away and shuffled his feet.

“I mean, only a little bit,” he said.

Eve took a deep breath and looked up at the sky. Maybe it wasn’t some kind of “spiritual power” bullshit. Maybe it was how beautiful the clearing was, with the mossy ground and vivid green pines, the light streaming from between them. Maybe.

Jon laughed “Maybe Eve should have led us. Let’s set up camp here.” He dropped his hiking bag near a flat spot in the middle and started pulling the straps off of the tent. “Eve, since you can feel it so strongly, will you mark out the edges of the node with rocks or sticks or something?” Eve nodded and Ezra drifted over to help Jon set up the tent.

Eve walked back the way they came until the electric feeling faded, and she pushed a rock over until it was in place. She picked her way around the clearing, marking a few feet from the tree line. The node was perfectly circular, although Eve’s markers were a little uneven. As she pushed the last stone into place, biting her lip with the effort, Ezra gave a startled yelp and dropped the load of sticks he was bringing to Jon. Both Jon and Eve looked at him.

“Are you okay?” Jon asked. Ezra nodded, though he was shaking.

Eve frowned and hurried over to them. “Did you get a splinter?”

Ezra swallowed. “Yeah, I must’ve,” he said.

Jon took a step closer and reached out for him, saying “Let me take a look, I can help,” but Ezra edged away and shook his head.

“No, no, it’s okay.” He held gripped his hand by the wrist and held it close to his chest. “But, uh, I think I need to head back into town now.”

“Alright,” Jon said. He gave a half smile. “We’ll miss you at our campout.”

“Another time,” Ezra said.

“Can you get back by yourself?” Eve asked. She dug through her pocket and held out her car keys. “You can take my car back if Jon can give me a ride in the morning?” Jon nodded, and a little crinkle formed between his eyebrows as he watched Ezra.

“No, no you might need your car,” Ezra said, his words nearly slurring together he spoke so quickly. He was backing away and shaking his head. “Thank you, I’ll walk!” He ended up shouting the last part, as he was halfway to the forest by then.

As soon as he disappeared through the trees, Eve turned to look at Jon. “That was weird.”

“Do you think he’s okay?” Jon asked. “I hope I didn’t make him uncomfortable.”

“You’re fine,” Eve said. “It didn’t have anything to do with you.” Jon nodded, but the downturn of his mouth didn’t change. Eve patted his arm. “We should finish setting up.”

Jon took a breath and let it out. “Okay. The tent’s up if you want to put your sleeping bag inside. I’ll get a campfire set up so all we have to do is light it when it gets dark.”

“What’s the plan, then?” Eve asked as she struggled to pull her sleeping bag out of its carrying bag. The tent floor rusted like a windbreaker. “Do we stay here until Schrodinger’s werewolf appears or doesn’t?”

“We could explore the forest a bit before dark and see if we can find any traces of activity.” He used a stone to scrape away a circle of moss from the ground and stacked the sticks into a little log cabin on the exposed dirt. “Although anything would be a month old. Maybe we should start laying the bait in a line from here to the nearest henge.”

“Sounds good.” Eve crawled back out of the tent. “I’m more hopeful for the cameras in town. I’m sure we’ll get some footage of Kyle being a fucking weirdo.”

“Me too, but this way we can confidently rule out werewolves from the investigation.” Standing, Jon brushed his hands on his jeans and nodded. “We’re all set here. Shall we?” Eve nodded, and Jon hoisted his duffle bag over his shoulder.

They set the bait up as they walked, about every few minutes. Jon’s plan was to wait for the werewolf to arrive at the node, at which time they would leave, sticking to the bait trail in the hopes that the werewolf would stop and eat the bait and give them time to make it to the henge. When they got there, they would trap—somehow, though Jon hadn’t answered Eve when she’d asked how—the werewolf. It would then transform back into a human when the sun rose.

It was a terrible plan. The kind of plan only a real dumbass could come up with, like, say, a flirty himbo who seemed intelligent on the surface until you saw him hold up a honing steel and call it a dowsing rod, or who wanted his first ghost-hunting gig to be paid in food. The plan was so terrible, with so many ways to go wrong, that Eve would never have agreed to it if she thought for a second they might run into a real creature.

Eve stuffed dog treats in hollow logs, next to rocks, and under bushes until the bag was nearly empty and they’d emerged from the forest at the Cliff Henge. They stopped near the edge of the cliff and looked out over Blackwater Lake. Up on the cliff, the pines were so thick it was hard to remember that they were only a few miles away from Blackwood. The lake was choppy and dark below them. Eve took a deep breath of evergreen, lake water, and sun-warmed rock.

“The sun will set in a few hours,” Jon said as he checked his camera placement one last time.

Eve stretched her arms over her head and sighed. “We should get back, then. I’m super hungry.”

Jon led the way back, checking his dowsing rod to make sure they were on the ley line occasionally since they weren’t following a path. Eve could have led the way if she paid attention to the little waves of tingles that lapped against her legs, which she did not.

“I brought foil dinners for us!” Jon said as they walked. “It’s too bad Ezra’s not here, this would’ve been even more fun with all three of us.”

Eve shrugged. “Yeah, but like I said, maybe we can do this again when he’s not freaking out over werewolves?”

“Yes!” Jon said. His voice rang through the trees as he hopped down from a mossy rock. Eve laughed a little and shook her head. “I’ve been dying to go camping with friends all summer, but the friend I’ve been staying with is not interested in going outside.”

“Like, at all?” Eve asked. Rocks and branches littered the ground, and Eve concentrated on avoiding them.

Jon tilted his head. “Now that I think about it, yeah, I haven’t seen him leave his place for at least two months, which was when he let me stay with him.” He shrugged. “Anyway, now I have other people to camp with.”

When they got back to the node clearing, Jon started a fire with a match and a stick he’d shaved into ribbons with his knife. Eve crouched near him, watching the little bits of wood catch and glow.

“Were you a boy scout or something?” she asked. He looked up for a second, and then returned to blowing on the burning stick-ribbons.

“Nah, I’ve just camped a ton since I quit seminary,” he said. “Hand me one of the small sticks, please?” Eve passed it over, and he went on constructing a fragile, glowing fire in the little hollow surrounded by rocks.

They were quiet as they waited for the fire to grow. Jon pulled out his plaid blanket and laid it out length-wise, a little away from the flames. He and Eve sat next to each other, watching the fire crackle and spark, throwing orange embers into the sky. It was too warm on Eve’s legs, but the heat was nice as the sun got lower, hidden behind the ridges and massive pines. Night fell with a breeze that chilled her exposed arms and legs, and Eve stood and pulled on a sweatshirt from her backpack.

Jon was settling two foil lumps—about twice the size of a baked potato—into the hot coals at the base of the fire. The forest around their clearing was settling in for the night, cicadas buzzing and crickets chirping. Fireflies blinked on and off through the clearing. Eve smiled. Chelsea seemed to be sticking to the apartment, which Eve was grateful for. She was getting used to having a roommate, but it was still nice not to feel Chelsea’s constant, ghostly presence hovering over her shoulder for a bit.

Jon swallowed his first bite of dinner and broke the silence. “Question. Why do you write spells for people if you don’t believe in magic?”

Eve sighed. “I’m just translating the shit people send me. I like learning languages, especially ones no one speaks, and there aren’t that many jobs where you get to do that.” She paused and looked up at the sky, picking out the stars as they began to stand out against the black. “It’s fun, and I don’t have to deal with people. Money’s shit, though,” she said, looking at Jon.

He laughed and nodded. “There’s not exactly a huge market for paranormal investigators, either.”

“Gotta move to a town in the middle of fucking nowhere and rent an apartment someone died in,” Eve said, grinning. “It’s all about the cost of living, baby.”

“You’re the weirdest person I know,” Jon said in that good-humored way he said everything.

Eve raised an eyebrow at him. “Sorry, whom? Me?” she said. “I’m the weirdest? For caring about my financial security? Not the almost-priest ghost hunter, or the reporter who’s convinced a werewolf murdered his friend?”

Jon lifted his hands in surrender. “Yeah, okay, when you put it like that. But, you are also an accidental witch with a ghost roommate,” he said.

Eve glared at him. “One possible spell cast does not a witch make.” Jon looked at her like she was being ridiculous. She ignored him.

The top of the full moon peeked up over the trees. Eve looked at it, all silvery and pale, surrounded by thick stars and a black sky. A howl sounded in the distance, low and melancholy, and Eve and Jon looked at each other in the following silence.

“That was probably a dog,” Eve said. Jon gave her that look again. “Or a regular wolf,” she conceded.

“I guess we won’t be using our sleeping bags much,” he said.

“I can take first watch if you want to try getting a few hours,” she said. She hadn’t felt this awake since she’d moved to Blackwood, and she certainly didn’t feel like sleeping. “That sounded pretty far away.”

Jon nodded and stood, stretching. “Thanks. Wake me up if anything happens, or if you get lonely.”

“I never get lonely,” Eve said.

“If you say so,” he said, crouching into the tent. After a few minutes of shuffling and noises, the tent was quiet, and Eve sat alone with the fire and the moon.