Page 21 of Shadow Spell

When the phone jangled, he left her to answer, went back to clearing off a section of his desk.

So some felt it, some didn’t, he thought. Some were more open than others. And some closed tight as any drum.

He’d known Kyra most of his life, he mused, and she knew what he was—had to know. But she never spoke of it. She was, despite her blue hair and the little hoop in her left eyebrow, a drum.

He worked steady enough until Brian came in and, as predicted, was full of earthquakes that were likely nuclear testing by some secret government agency, or perhaps a sign of the apocalypse.

He left Brian and Kyra batting it all around, went out to choose the hawk for the first walk.

As no one was watching, he did it the quick and simple way. He simply opened the aviary, looked into the eyes of his choice, held up his gloved arm.

The hawk swooped through, landed, coming in as obedient as a well-trained hound.

“There you are, Thor. Ready to work, are you? You do well for Brian this morning, and I’ll take you out later, if I can, for a real hunt. How’s that for you?”

After tethering the hawk, he walked back to the offices, transferred him to the waiting perch, tethered him there.

Patient, Thor closed his wings, sat watchful.

“We may get some wet,” he told Brian, “but not a drench, I’m thinking.”

“Global warming’s causing strange weather around the world. It may have been an earthquake.”

“An earthquake ’tisn’t weather,” Kyra stated.

“It’s all connected,” Brian said darkly.

“I think you won’t see more than a shower this morning. If there’s an earthquake or volcanic eruption, be sure you get Thor back home again.” Connor gave Brian a slap on the shoulder. “There’s your clients now, at the gate. Go on, let them in, give them the show around. I’ll take Roibeard and William for the ten,” he told Kyra when Brian hurried to answer the gate. “That leaves Moose for Pauline’s.”

“I’ll set it up.”

“We’ll have Rex for Sean. He respects Sean, and doesn’t yet have the same respect for Brian. Best not send him out with Bri yet, on their own. I’ll take Merlin for the two, as he hasn’t been on a walk in a few days.”

“Fin’s hawk isn’t here.”

“He’s around,” Connor said simply. “And Pauline can take Thor out again this afternoon. Brian or Sean, whoever you have for the last so far, can take Rex.”

“What of Nester?”

“He’s not feeling it today. He’s got the day off.”

She only lifted her beringed eyebrow at Connor’s assessment of the hawk. “If you say.”

“And I do.”

Her round face lost its smirk in concern. “Does he need to be looked at?”

“No, he’s not sick, just out of sorts. I’ll take him out later, let him fly off the mood.”

He was right about the shower, but it came and went as they often did. A short patter of rain, a thin beam of sun through a pocket of clouds.

By the time his double arrived, the shower had moved on, leaving the air damp and just misty enough. Truth be told, he thought as he took the father and son around, it added to the atmosphere for the Yanks.

“How do you know which one is which?” The boy—name of Taylor—gangling with big ears and knobby knuckles, put on an air of mild boredom.

“They look alike, the Harris’s hawk, but they each have their own personality, their own way. You see, there’s Moose, he’s a big one, so he has the name. And Rex, beside him? Has a kind of regal air.”

“Why don’t they just fly away when you take them out?”

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