Chapter 13

When Fluffy and I strolled into the office, John was sitting on the hard plastic chairs on the civilian side of the counter and Sidnee was talking to Anissa. Anissa looked slightly more rested than the last time I'd met her, but not much. She was dressed in pink scrubs, her dark hair braided down her back.

‘Hey, Anissa,' I greeted her. ‘How are you?'

‘I'm okay, thanks, Officer Barrington.'

‘Please, call me Bunny.'

She smiled. ‘Thank you, Bunny.'

‘How's your daughter?'

Anissa beamed and it warmed her stern looks. ‘She's wonderful.'

I smiled back. ‘That's lovely to hear. I know those early months can be tricky. Can you excuse me a moment?' I turned to John. ‘Hi, John, how are you doing? Is everything all right at Kamluck?'

‘Yes, everything is fine. Connor has been so welcoming.'

‘How can I help you?'

‘I need to talk to you about something.'

I looked back at Anissa. ‘Is it urgent?'

He weighed up the question before slowly shaking his head. ‘No, it's important but it's not time sensitive. It can wait. I see you're busy right now.'

‘I'll come out and talk to you tomorrow, or we can do dinner when you're in town,' I offered.

‘Either works. I'll be in touch.' He walked out and my gut curdled with anxiety. What could he possibly have to say to me that was important? Nothing good, that was for sure.

I turned back to Anissa. ‘I'm sorry about the interruption. Thanks for coming in. Can you tell us a little about what we can do about the curse?'

‘I consulted the elders and they think that the curse can be broken with an ancient ritual that requires the afflicted to consume a potion made from a bunch of native ingredients. The problem is that one of them is hard to get here, and we don't know if we have time to send someone to collect it from the nearest supernat town.'

I frowned. ‘What's the ingredient?'

‘It's a plant that's generally found in the sub-Arctic called alpine azalea, or Loiseleuria procumbens. It's an evergreen shrub with tiny pink flowers.'

I made a mental note to look it up. ‘You said hard to get. Can we find it here?'

Her face grim. ‘Yes, it also grows up there.' She pointed at the mountains. ‘At the top.'

Well, fuck. We could only get it from there if we went beyond the barrier.

‘The elders have contacted tribal members in the subarctic, but it'll be a few days, maybe a week before they can send some. Realistically, if we're going to save Jeff someone has to get the plant from the mountain.' Her look at me felt pointed.

I wanted to look behind me for someone else who could get it, but I knew no one was there. Besides, the only people who had successfully returned from beyond the barrier lately were me, Fluffy, Gunnar and Thomas.

‘Anything else?' I asked, my voice amazingly steady even if my knees were weak.

‘We need some devil's club, too. That grows everywhere, although if someone is going up there it would be better if it were naturally grown with no plant food or pesticides. The potion will be a little more potent.'

Great: devil's club was covered in thorns and prickles. And, of course, we'd have to survive long enough to bring it and the alpine azalea back. ‘Thanks, Anissa,' I made myself say even though I wanted to run away screaming.

She looked at Fluffy and paused. ‘How long have you had your dog?' she asked curiously.

‘I got him right before I moved here.'

She frowned. ‘There's something off about him.' She stared at him and hummed a low tune in her throat. Fluffy's tongue lolled out, then he looked at me and whined. I felt the little hairs on my arms lifting like they were full of static. Was she using magic?

She stopped humming and shot me a worried glance. ‘I don't know if you know this, but your dog is cursed.'

‘What do you mean cursed?' I said. ‘Is he going to be okay?' Panic filled me. How could that have happened? Fluffy hadn't been with me at the docks or the funeral home so he couldn't have stumbled across either curse accidentally.

‘Not like Jeff's curse,' Anissa clarified. ‘This is something else. It's a few weeks old at least – it's worn a bit. I can't see what kind it is, not without some proper study. But yeah, definitely cursed. It's lying around him like an orange haze.'

‘Can we get it off of him?' I begged. ‘Now?'

She grimaced. ‘I'm sorry; it's not going to be simple to remove. I'm not saying it's impossible but I need to look into it.'

My heart hurt. ‘Is he in pain?'

‘No,' she assured me hastily. ‘He'd be whining if he was.'

‘I can't leave him like this! Will the potion work on him, too?'

‘The one we have in mind is specifically for the nightmare curse, but alpine azalea is in the base of a lot of curse-breaking potions. Get me enough of it and I'll do what I can for your dog.'

‘Thank you so much. Obviously I'll pay for your time. How soon can you work out what's going on with him?'

‘I'll need to prioritise Jeff,' she admitted. ‘He's in jeopardy right now whereas whatever is on your dog isn't life-threatening. If it were, the haze would be red. But after we've sorted Jeff, I'll get right on it. It might be a week or so – I'll have to fit it in around childcare and shifts.'

‘I really appreciate your help. The sooner you can get to him, the better.' I was freaking out at the idea that Fluffy was cursed when I didn't know when, why, or even how it was affecting him. I dropped to my knees and cuddled him. ‘We'll fix you,' I promised fiercely. He gave me a lick.

I looked up Anissa. ‘If ever you need a favour, let me know.'

She gave a shy smile. ‘No worries. Helping you is the right thing to do. I'll start prepping things, but I can't do much without the last few ingredients.'

I nodded. ‘I'm on it.' And I was. Sure I wanted to help Jeff – but would I hurry beyond the barrier for him? No. For my dog, though, I'd tear the world apart.

As Anissa hugged Sidnee goodbye, I felt a weird twinge of jealousy. ‘I didn't realise you knew Anissa well,' I said after the door shut behind her.

‘Yeah, she was my nurse after the … incident.' The incident she was referring to was when we'd rescued her from black-ops drug dealers, her ex and a terrifying kushtaka.

‘Oh yeah, you mentioned that, but I didn't know you'd stayed in touch.'

‘We hit it off. She's really cool, and she doesn't have a lot of friends. Like me.'

The door opened and April Arctos walked in. She frowned when she saw Sidnee. ‘Have I got my shifts wrong?'

‘I'm not supposed to be here,' Sidnee said cheerfully.

‘You're all workaholics,' April muttered. ‘You're young, you should be out having fun, not loitering here.'

‘We like loitering here,' Sidnee objected. ‘There's free coffee.'

‘Good point.' April nodded and sat at my desk. ‘I'll check on things.' She logged into the system. ‘Ooh – curses! They're always exciting. I remember once when my brother paid a witch to transform my other brother into a fish.' She laughed. ‘Mum was furious. My youngest sister kept trying to eat him whenever she was in bear form. It cost a pretty penny to uncurse him, which my brother had to pay back in full. He had to pull double shifts at Kodiak Kitchen for years.'

‘What did the fish brother do to get himself cursed?' Sidnee asked.

‘Oh, he kissed my cursing brother's girlfriend. They're married now.'

‘The cursing brother or the fish one?'

‘The fish one. It was true love. Cursing brother is over it – turns out he was gay and was very much in denial about it. He's happily married, too. Grant is perfect for him.'

Sidnee was grinning. ‘Your family sounds fun.'

April beamed. ‘Thank you. They sure are something.'

‘Talking of curses,' Sidnee said, ‘Fluffy is cursed too!'

‘Oh no!' April bustled round to Fluffy to check him over.

‘Apparently he's not in pain,' I assured her.

‘What's the curse doing to him?'

‘We have no idea.' I admitted, but my head wasn't really in the conversation; it was on Fluffy and going beyond the barrier. I was determined to go but I was already pooping my pants at the prospect.

Sidnee shook her head. ‘Fluffy is the absolute bestest boy. I can't imagine how he was cursed!'

‘Me neither,' I said. ‘Maybe someone on a case did it and we never noticed. But I'm worried. I don't want anything to happen to him.' Thinking about losing him was making me sick to my stomach. I wanted to run home and shove him into a cocoon of blankets. I needed a distraction – fast. ‘I'm going to update Gunnar before we clock off,' I said. Besides, we were due at Sig's for dinner shortly.

I went into his office with Fluffy on my heels. Gunnar was leaning back in his chair, his feet up on the desk, scrolling through his phone. ‘Busy?' I asked a shade sarcastically.

He looked up. ‘Nope.'

‘We have a lead on a way to help Jeff.'

His eyebrows shot up; he put his feet down and leaned forward. ‘But?'

‘Anissa Popov, the shaman, said her elders have a cure but it requires a hard-to-get ingredient.'

‘How hard?'

‘Beyond-the-barrier hard.'

Gunnar gulped. The last time we'd been beyond the barrier, we'd barely escaped the beast and Gunnar had ended up with both shoulders dislocated. It wasn't an experience either of us was in a hurry to repeat.

‘Is there a way we could helicopter in or something?' I asked optimistically. ‘I know they're expensive and we don't have much of a budget, but it would be the easiest way by far.'

He grimaced. ‘Unfortunately there isn't a chopper in town, nor does anyone have a licence to fly one. Edgy couldn't fly one without it being properly modified. Jim used to be able to fly one.'

But I'd burnt Jim to a crisp.

‘The truth is,' Gunnar went on, ‘the mountain is so rocky and uneven I don't think a chopper could land there anyway even if we sourced one and could afford it…'

I squared my shoulders. ‘So we're on foot. That's fine. I'll go,' I volunteered.

‘Not alone. I'll call Patkotak.'

‘Yeah,' I brightened. ‘That would be good.'

Gunnar fixed me with a firm look. ‘I'm going, too. You don't have to go if you don't want to.'

I blew out a breath and explained about the alpine azalea and Fluffy's curse.

‘I'm sorry to hear about Fluffy being cursed. Whatever it is, we'll fix him.' Gunnar reached over and touched my arm. ‘If he's not been harmed by it so far, I'm sure he'll be okay a little while longer. Either way, Patkotak and I can go alone.'

I wanted to take him up on that, but what kind of officer would I be if I had others do my job? ‘Thanks, Gunnar, but I'll go.' Last time my fire had saved us; in fact it had saved us more than once.

‘Are you sure?'

‘Definitely.' I was no shirker.

He pressed the number five on his phone and hit the speaker button. Thomas Patkotak picked up after three rings. ‘Gunnar, what can I do for the Nomo?' he asked, his tone friendly.

‘It's a pretty big favour,' Gunnar said heavily. ‘We have an out of towner in the hospital because of a curse. We have a limited amount of time to save him, and we need to go fetch some weed from beyond the barrier. And Fluffy is cursed too. We were hoping for your assistance.'

The phone was quiet; even Thomas Patkotak, the scariest human I knew, wasn"t thrilled with the task. ‘I'll help – for Bunny. Small problem, though – I'm in Homer. I'm not due back until tomorrow.'

‘We have a little time,' Gunnar confirmed. ‘But not much. We'll wait for you, but it would be great if you'd get back as quickly as you can.'

‘You got it.' Thomas hung up; he wasn't great with hellos or goodbyes.

‘Well, Bunny Rabbit, we have a day's reprieve.'

I sighed. ‘Frankly, I'd rather get it over and done with.'

‘This way we can plan better, make sure we have what we need to fight the beast,' Gunnar said.

Fight? Survive, more like.

Sidnee wandered in carrying Shadow draped around the back of her neck. Gunnar looked at her sharply. ‘Maybe this time we should take your cat,' he suggested.

I considered it but shook my head. ‘He's too small – he's only a baby. Plus, he isn't Fluffy and he's not trained to walk on a lead. I'd be devastated if something happened to him.' I couldn't cope if I saved one pet only to lose another.

‘True, I wouldn't want anything to happen to the little fella. Still, I saw what he did to the beast when it was trying to get through the rift.'

‘And that bit of action wiped him out for over a day,' I argued. ‘And that was a little smoke from the beast, not the whole creature itself!' I wanted my dog and my cat safely at home. We didn't need Fluffy to find a body this time, it was a plant we were after and he wouldn't know its scent any more than I did. The animals could stay home safe whilst we blundered head first into danger.

‘Calm down, Bunny. I agree – but maybe when Shadow is full-grown we should think about training him. He could be the first-ever police cat.' Gunnar grinned. He was trying to ease my fears. Shadow was safe, Fluffy would be fine for now and Anissa would fix him. I clung to that. First, I had to go beyond the barrier.

I coughed out a small laugh, more from nerves than humour. I had twenty-four hours before I set off and I was already terrified.