NOVEL NEXT 22. Not Giving Up
It took less than half a minute for Marissa to give up the chase, then she came back to where me and Kaylee were waiting. Not that she wasn't in good shape, but she wasn't an athlete like the other two. Plus her heeled ankle boots and long wool skirt weren't ideal running gear.
Brooke and Paige kept going, they chased the wolfgirl to the other side of the parking lot then finally disappeared from view as they rounded a corner behind an eye doctor's office at the end of the mall.
The three of us ended up waiting about five more minutes, before a dejected-looking Brooke and Paige returned. They came from the north-east, across the parking lot from the direction of a pet-food store which surprised us at first.
Then the five of us finally went into the cafe to get drinks. We managed to score a table too, so we all sat down together. I was enjoying a grande hot chocolate with extra whipped cream, Kaylee was trying a grande white hot chocolate, Marissa got a tall flat white and the other two had grande lattes.
"When she got out of the parking lot she circled back to the north," Brooke explained in a low voice. "There's a service road that runs behind all the shops? As soon as she was out of sight of the public she put on some supernatural speed."
Paige added quietly, "She left me and Brooke in the dust. We tried to keep up but she ran into the field at the north end of the mall and we lost sight of her when she cut through some trees."
"We should hang out here for a while," Marissa suggested. "You never know, she might come back for another latte?"
Kaylee frowned, "I guess it can't hurt, but I doubt we'll see her again any time soon."
I nodded, "She can pick up our scent? That's how she found my house last night. She'll probably know we're still here. I doubt we're going to be able to sneak up on her like that."
Marissa's shoulders slumped, "So we're back to square one again? No clues, no leads."
"That's not true," Kaylee responded. "We know part of her name. First name Melanie, last name starts with a C."
Paige frowned, "How do we know that?"
"It was on the cup she dropped," the cute redhead stated in a matter-of-fact tone. "Her name was on the order label."
"Yes!" Marissa exclaimed. "So where's the cup? Can we scry with it?"
Kaylee shook her head, "I put it in the recycling bin."
Brooke added, "We couldn't scry with a disposable cup anyways. Especially not one she'd only had in her hand for a minute or so? It probably had a stronger psychic link to the barista than the wolf."
"So what does a first name do for us then?" the younger blonde asked with another frown. "It doesn't feel like it's going to be much help."
Kaylee shrugged, "I don't know yet. But it's still another step ahead of where we were before."
After that we were all quiet again for a while, just sipping our drinks and watching around for any sign of the wolfgirl.
Eventually Brooke sighed, "Ever since that mess with Mrs. Reeves I've been kicking myself about not grabbing her map. I know May said she turned it over to the council and I'm sure that was the right thing to do, but I swear that map had every supernatural in the area on it? It'd really come in handy right about now."
"Can't you do whatever it was she did?" Marissa asked. "Didn't you say it was some kind of scrying or something?"
The tall blonde grimaced, "It was but I'm just not that strong. I have an idea of what she was doing, but I don't think I could do it. Or if I tried, I probably wouldn't get the same results? I'd probably miss a lot."
Paige glanced around then suggested quietly, "We shouldn't be having this conversation in public, I think? How about we finish up here then go back to my place for a bit. We can talk, maybe come up with some new plans without anyone overhearing."
"Right," Brooke blushed as she glanced around as well. "Sorry."
Fortunately nobody seemed to be paying any attention to us. So we all finished our drinks then headed back out into the parking lot. Everyone got back into Brooke's car, and a few minutes later we were at Paige's place again.
As we all got seated down in the den I spoke up, "So um, about that map? Does it have to be the original map, or would a copy work?"
All four of them turned and stared at me which made me cringe into my hoodie again.
"Do you have a copy of Mrs. Reeves' map?" Brooke asked.
I nodded, "I took a picture of it with my phone."
The tall blonde grinned, "Good job Cass, that's amazing! Let's have a look!"
It took me a moment to pull out my phone, then I had to scroll back through my photo roll to find the right one. Then I held it out for Brooke to see.
"Can we see this on a bigger screen?" the club leader asked. "Paige, can we get it on the big screen TV?"
The brunette grinned as she got up, "Cass can you email me the picture? I'll be right back."
She disappeared upstairs while I sent her the picture, then I texted it to Brooke and Kaylee and Marissa too for good measure.
Paige was back a minute later carrying a laptop as it booted up. She set that on the coffee table then got a remote out of a side table drawer and turned on the big TV as well. Another couple minutes later and Paige had Mrs. Reeves' map blown up on the big seventy-two inch cinema TV on the wall.
It was pretty impressive. Even though my picture wasn't the best Paige had the map straightened out and cropped to fill the TV screen almost perfectly.
Kaylee frowned, "Are there really that many supernaturals around here? This can't be right."
There were over two dozen red circles on the map, and Paige used her mouse to start pointing stuff out. "So red circle and red checkmark on Brooke's place. Red circle and red checkmark on my house. Red circle and no checkmark on Marissa's house."
Kaylee spoke up, "Red circle and checkmark on my house. Red circle and black X on Cass's place."
"And another two dozen red circles with black X's on them," Brooke stated.
"Lookit there!" Marissa exclaimed as she got up and pointed at the screen. It was a red circle black X combination on one of the rural roads outside of town. "Guess who's family farm's across the street from that?"
Paige frowned, "You think our wolf lives across the road from Gord Potts? She'd either be pretty bold or pretty foolish to be poaching the farm directly across the street from her home."
Kaylee looked at Brooke and asked, "Now that we have a copy of the map, what can we do with it? Or do we have to visit every one of these circles to find out who lives there?"
"I don't want to risk that," Brooke stated. "For one thing we have no way of knowing who or what any of these people are. They could be dangerous and we don't want to walk up to a bunch of unknown supernaturals and out of the blue ask them 'Hi are you harbouring a teen werewolf here?'"
"And for another thing," she continued, "If we did try doing that you can bet May would hear about it one way or another. Right now we're only suspended, I don't want to get Club Luna disbanded."
Marissa asked, "So what else can we do? Stake-out these places and hope we run into wolfie again?"
There was a minute or so of silence, before Paige said "I have an idea. It might not work, but it's worth a shot."
She started doing something on her laptop while the rest of us continued staring at the map on the big TV.
"Huh," Brooke commented. "You know what's weird? There's no red circle on May's place."
The tall blonde got up and gestured at the country road to the west of town, "May's house is right there, but it looks like Mrs. Reeves didn't find it."
Kaylee suggested, "May's a pretty powerful witch. She probably has some kind of anti-scrying stuff around her house that's even tougher than anything Mrs. Reeves could come up with."
"Yeah true enough," Brooke agreed.
The image on the TV suddenly shifted to a map app that basically matched the same layout as my photograph of the paper map. Then Paige tabbed back and forth between the picture and the app to make sure they lined up. Finally she used the map app to get the correct address for the red circle and black X that was nearest the Potts' farm.
Next she tabbed into her browser and used a reverse address search, and when that came up empty she tried another tab and started searching property listings.
"What are you trying to do?" Brooke asked her girlfriend.
Paige replied, "Rather than go visit every one of these places in person, we might be able to narrow down our search. Reverse address search will come up with residents' names, though it doesn't always work. And looking at property listings for those addresses, we can see if the place was sold in the past year. So we'll see if any of these places changed hands before the sheep attacks started. And if all else fails I might be able to access some other information but..."
She grimaced, "It's not exactly legal. I'd have to use some of my technomancy magic to get into places I'm not supposed to be. And if I got caught May would probably kick me out of the club or something."
"Just stick to legal searches then," Brooke stated.
A minute later Paige stated "Aha! That house across the street from the Potts' farm was sold on July twentieth. Property transfers are public knowledge but we'd have to go to the town archives to look it up and find the name of the new owners. You can do queries online but they cost money and they mail you the results, if you can believe it. I could probably get that information directly, but like I said it's not legal."
"The archives is probably closed now," Kaylee said. "And it'll definitely be closed tomorrow. They won't be open on the weekend either, so the earliest we could go over there for research is Monday."
Brooke suggested, "We'll start a list of potential locations, but we're not going to risk breaking any more laws. Not after the lecture we got the other night about trespassing. If we have to wait till Monday, so be it."
Marissa looked impatient but she didn't try and argue. Meanwhile Paige moved on to the next circle on the map.
Things got fairly boring after that, just watching her do reverse address searches and stuff. And we started to realize it was all a bit futile anyways, like a teen girl wasn't going to own her own home or anything like that.
So ruling out places because the owner's last name didn't start with a 'C' actually wasn't going to help us. Like she could be living with a relative who had a different last name. Or she could be renting. Or she might not even live in the area at all.
"Ok," Paige sighed after about an hour of searching. "We have four properties that changed hands between January and September, those might be our best leads. But if her family are renting then that's not going to help us. I could probably try and cross-reference rental listings with the addresses on Mrs. Reeves' map, but that's a bunch more work and I'm kind of tired now."
Brooke agreed, "It's something else to think about, but we can save that for another day."
Marissa frowned, "So we're just giving up?"
"We're not giving up," the taller blonde stated. "But we've done all we can do today."
"So what now?" Kaylee asked.
Paige shut off her laptop and turned off the big TV as she shrugged, "No idea. What's everyone doing for new years tonight?"
Me and Kaylee exchanged a glance and a smile, though both of us blushed a little too.
"I'm going over to Cass's place," Kaylee told the others. "We're going to do new years together."
Marissa smiled at the two of us, then announced "I think I'm going over to the Rotary park? They're supposed to be putting on a party there, with live music and fireworks and everything. Sounds like fun."
Brooke slipped an arm around Paige and said, "I'm going to be staying here tonight. We'll be watching the countdown on the big TV, with Paige's folks."
"Actually before I get too comfortable," the tall blonde added as she glanced at the rest of us, "Does anyone need a lift home?"
Marissa shook her head, "No thanks. It's not that cold out today, I'm gonna go for a walk."
"Please stay out of trouble ok?" Brooke asked as she gave the younger blonde a look. "Don't go poking around strange supernaturals' homes Marissa?"
"Yeah I get it," the brash young witch sighed. "I'll be good. For a change."
Brooke looked over at me and Kaylee and asked, "Cass? Kaylee? Do you two need a lift?"
I already had my phone out and texted my mum. She texted back, and I looked up and shook my head. "My mum's going to come pick us up in about twenty minutes if that's ok? She's just closing up the store then she'll be on her way."
Paige nodded, "That's fine. We're not in a hurry to kick anyone out the door."
"Not yet anyways," Brooke teased.
Sure enough my mum texted a little over twenty minutes later that she was waiting outside. Me and Kaylee got back into our winter clothes and stuff, then as we headed out we bid everyone a happy new year.
The rest of the evening was kind of quiet but really nice. We got pizza delivered, we had dinner with my folks, then me and Kaylee went up to my room for a while to talk and hang out and stuff. And we messed around with magic a bit, but we didn't do any big new spells.
I tried to scry for the wolfgirl using her first name and the memory of what she looked like, but there weren't any more random boosts so my spell just fizzled. It was a long-shot anyways, according to Kaylee it was almost impossible to scry for a stranger with so little information and no focus object.
She said I did better than she would have if she tried the same thing, but I knew she was just trying to cheer me up.
When it got closer to midnight the two of us went back downstairs and joined my parents in the living-room. We all watched the countdown together and celebrated the new year, then about half past midnight mum and me gave Kaylee a drive home so she wouldn't have to walk.
After all the excitement of the past couple days, it was kind of a quiet relaxed new years.
