Chapter 167: 131. Caught In The Act

"I can't believe I let you talk me into using a sick day for this," Melanie grumbled as the four of us walked east along Second Avenue.

Cerys protested, "She doesn't seem to go over there on the weekends, so this is our only chance to catch her in the act! We need to figure out what she's up to, why she's spending so much time sneaking around the reservoir."

The older werewolf shook her head, "Except we don't even know she's doing that. All we know is she spends a lot of time in the conservation area."

"She goes off the trail into places the public aren't allowed to access," the blonde wolf stated. "Her scent is all over the entire area. Including the protected wetlands at the east end, and the county forest part at the north-west corner."

Melanie shrugged, "So do we, Cerys. I'm sure our scents are pretty common around there too."

"Yeah but when we do it we're wolves. That means we're part of nature, it's ok for us to be there," our club leader responded. At least she lowered her voice for that part.

"I'm not sure how 'natural' werewolfs are," the ravenette wolfgirl pointed out. "But whatever. I just hope this little expedition gets us a definite answer one way or another, so we can finally drop the subject."

"We'll see," Cerys responded in a tone that probably didn't fill anyone with confidence.

Kaylee and I exchanged a glance, but neither of us said anything. We didn't want to get involved in that part of the conversation. We agreed to accompany Cerys to the conservation area so we could watch our mysterious purple-haired neighbour and try to figure out what she was up to, but I was pretty sure none of us really expected anything to come out of it. None of us except Cerys that is. She remained convinced that the girl was up to no good, and she was determined to find some sort of proof.

So she took the day off from work, and convinced Melanie to do the same. Now it was mid-morning on the last Thursday of July, and we were heading over there to do some snooping around. There was a bit of a lull in the conversation at that point, but my girlfriend spoke up after a few moments with a slight change of subject.

"One thing we're going to miss now that Brooke and Melody are gone," she commented, "And Paige too for that matter, is access to a car or van. The conservation area isn't that hard to reach on foot, but a few other locations we've been to in the last year or two would have been annoying to get to without a vehicle."

I pointed out, "With seven people in the club we'd probably want a mini-van, so we could fit everyone in at the same time."

"Who'd be doing the driving?" Melanie asked. "How many people in the club have their licenses?"

Cerys shrugged, "Don't we all have our licenses? I got mine last year. The only people I'd assume won't have a license is Nina and Sasha."

Then she glanced back at my girlfriend and teased, "Kaylee might have a license but I don't know if she'd be able to reach the pedals anymore."

"Hey!" Kaylee made a face and stuck her tongue out at the blonde werewolf. Then she added, "I'm sure I can reach the pedals if the seat adjusts far enough. I'm more worried about my tails."

Melanie grimaced, "Good point. Cars and tails are not a good mix."

"I don't know how to drive," I admitted as my cheeks coloured a bit. "And I'm pretty sure Sasha doesn't either. Nina might? She's been around long enough."

"Next time we're all together we can bring it up," Cerys suggested. "Ask who can drive, and figure out if we want or need a vehicle? It's probably going to come down to you though Cass. I doubt anyone else has the resources to get one. Maybe Nina does? But if the rest of us had money for that kind of thing I think we'd already have one."

I cringed but nodded, "Yeah I figured."

The four of us reached the highway by that point where we had to stop and wait for the light to change. There were a few other people already there waiting, so that was the end of any club-related conversation for a while. And needless to say, the other folks were all staring at Kaylee as soon as they noticed her.

I tried to ignore that as I looked across the highway at the conservation area. And I noticed it actually looked like it was already getting busy, despite this being a Thursday morning. Then again it was literally the middle of summer, and today was shaping up to be a nice day. I knew it would be almost packed on the weekends though, so this was probably as quiet as the place got during the summer.

Eventually the light changed and we all headed over, then through the gate and onto the trail. Cerys was leading the way, and we all turned to the north. A couple of the other people were heading that way too, while the others went south.

There were more people walking along the main trail in both directions, not that it was packed or anything but we saw or passed people every couple of minutes. Which meant it might be difficult to have a conversation about club stuff, unless we broke the rules and went off the trail.

A few minutes after entering the park we had a stretch where there was no-one else in sight, and both Melanie and Cerys took advantage of that to switch to their wolfgirl forms. It almost made me want to ask why they didn't just keep those forms all the time now. Considering Kaylee was always a tiny demonic kitsune, the wolfgirls didn't even stand out that much by comparison.

We continued slowly walking north, past the cemetery on our left with the lake on our right. We weren't in any great hurry, just taking our time enjoying the walk and nature and everything. Soon enough we reached the earthen dam at the north end, where the main trail turned to the east. Instead of following that way Cerys led us to the west, where a smaller secondary path led northwards into the county woods.

There was a little wooden bench there, sort of set just off the trail. It faced back the way we came, with a view of the dam and part of the lake to one side, and the woods on the other side. It was in the sunlight for now, but from the look of it the bench would be in shade soon.

Cerys sat herself down on the bench and gestured, "Get comfy. We're going to hang out here and wait for our quarry to come to us. She seems to spend a lot of time in the county woods, and she pretty much has to come by here to get there."

Melanie sighed as she sat down beside her girlfriend, then me and Kaylee sat together next to the two wolfgirls. My girlfriend and I ended up cuddling, and the two werewolfs did the same.

"So how'd it go last night with the folks?" Cerys asked me and Kaylee.

My girlfriend smiled as she filled them in on dinner with her parents, how it was awkward at first but everything turned out all right in the end. The Holts were still a little freaked out about magic and stuff, and very freaked out about their daughter becoming part demon and me being a goddess, but they were trying to get past that and just accept us for who and what we were.

"That's cool," Melanie commented. "Y'all are really lucky to have folks like that."

"I know," my girlfriend agreed. "They're not perfect, but I think they're doing their best."

Then Cerys asked, "How about the other thing yesterday, how'd it go with Steph Ford?"

Kaylee glanced at me, but I just grimaced and shook my head. So she told the two wolfgirls how that played out, with Steph saying she was going to pray to me last night then I'd fix things for her overnight.

"So did you do that?" the blonde wolfgirl asked me. "Did she pray to you like she said?"

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I shrugged then mumbled, "I'm not really comfortable talking about that sort of thing. And um, the whole point of doing it that way was so it'd be private?"

"Right," my girlfriend nodded. "That's definitely none of our business. I guess we'll find out soon enough anyways, I'm sure Willow will be in touch with Steph so we'll get the details from her."

Cerys and Melanie seemed to accept that explanation and the subject was dropped, which was a relief. I really didn't want to talk about it, because I didn't actually know any of those details and I didn't know why that was.

I never heard any prayers from Steph last night, I wasn't even sure if it was possible for me to hear them. I'd never heard any prayers from anyone at all, in fact. Which now that I thought about it seemed kind of strange. Like I knew there were supposed to be thousands of people who believed in my specific kind of chaos, they were a sub-group of Discordians or something.

It made me worry there was something I was supposed to do to access people's prayers, and because I wasn't doing it nobody's prayers were being answered. I had visions of it working like a kind of supernatural email, only I'd have thousands of unread prayers backing up the system or something.

Then again there was another explanation, that seemed a lot more likely. It was possible that Cassandra was somehow getting the prayers without me, since she claimed to be our goddess half. I figured maybe she was doing that stuff at night when I slept. Actually it occurred to me that she might be doing a lot of things when I was asleep.

I wasn't sure whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, but it left me feeling uneasy. Like the thought of the other me doing all sorts of magic or miracles or goddess stuff while I was asleep, so I'd have no idea what she was up to.

And as uncomfortable as the whole situation made me feel, I decided I should probably try and talk to her again at some point. Even if I wasn't sure I wanted to know the answers, I figured I should probably try and find out what she was up to.

That thought reminded me of what my parents said on Monday, about seeing a therapist. And as much as I hated the idea, I started to wonder if maybe I should give that a try too. I doubted there was anything a human could do to help, but they said their friend Rav knew a supernatural who did that stuff.

Eventually I was snapped out of my thoughts by Melanie's voice. The werewolf stated firmly, "If y'all start calling it the Mystery Machine I'm out."

It took me a second or two to realize they were talking about cars and mini-vans again, and Cerys made a joke about getting a van and painting it sky-blue with lime green accents and flowers.

"How about 'Lunamobile'?" the blonde wolfgirl asked with a smirk.

"We can paint it black, with a full moon on the side?" she added. "Maybe we can even get personalized plates that read 'CLUB LUNA'? And every time there's an incident one of us could shout, 'Quick! To the Lunamobile!'"

The older wolfgirl just facepalmed and shook her head, while Kaylee showed me something on her phone. Apparently she'd been looking at used car listings and found a minivan that looked to be in good shape and didn't seem too expensive. It had seating for eight which was good too.

I nodded but suggested, "We should talk about this stuff later. Aren't we supposed to be on a stake-out now?"

"Yeah good point Cass," Cerys agreed. She was still grinning though.

We were all quiet again after that, me and the wolfgirls were sort of looking around watching people go by while Kaylee continued looking at used vehicles on her phone.

It was only about five minutes or so later when Melanie said quietly, "There she is."

We all looked, and sure enough the purple-haired girl was visible at the far end of the earthen dam. She was dressed in dark green leggings, a bright yellow tunic top, and sneakers. We could only see her for a couple seconds though. Then she moved north, heading down off the dam and out of view into the woods.

Both wolfgirls and my girlfriend all continued looking in that direction, but rather than relying on their eyes it was their ears they were using to track our neighbour's movements.

"She's not even trying to be subtle," Cerys whispered at one point. "She's not being quiet, and that top was bright enough she'll stand out through the trees if we move closer."

"Are we going to move closer?" I asked. "Or are we going to wait here a while more?"

Our club leader got to her feet, "We need to catch her red-handed, so yeah we're getting closer."

Once again the two werewolfs were in the lead, with Kaylee right behind them. I stayed at the back and just quietly followed along. We didn't head across the dam to follow our quarry's trail, instead we moved into the woods from where we were at the west end of the dam. The wolfgirls were using their ears and noses, tracking the girl by scent and sound instead.

After about ten minutes or so we came to a halt, the four of us were in some thick underbrush but we had a view of the girl. She'd stopped moving, she was sitting crosslegged on the ground in a small clearing. It looked kind of idyllic, she was sitting in some lush green grass with little clusters of wildflowers around her, and a perfect shaft of sunlight came down through the trees to shine on her.

She seemed almost motionless, and from what I could see her eyes were closed. In fact it looked like she was meditating, which wasn't all that surprising when I thought about it. Like it was kind of peaceful, she was away from the trail and other people, surrounded by nature. Yet we weren't that far from the town or from home. If she was some kind of nature nut then it was a convenient place for her to come and commune with the trees or whatever.

I was almost ready to mention that to the others when I saw the purple glow of magic spread out around the girl. And just like that I forgot about the whole 'meditating and communing with nature' stuff. Suddenly I was leaning towards Cerys's wild theories, that the girl was up to no good after all.

"She's doing something with magic," I whispered to the others. "I can't tell what, but I can see it in the air around her."

After a couple seconds I frowned and added softly, "I can't tell if it's flowing out of her, or into her. And I still can't tell what she's doing."

The magic was brightest around her, but only a meter or two away from her it was too faded to really see. All I knew for sure was she seemed to be the focus and it appeared to radiate out from her. It was stronger near the ground where she was sitting, but if the magic was actually doing anything it was happening where I couldn't see it.

The four of us continued to watch quietly while this went on for a good twenty or thirty minutes. By that point we were all bored and stiff and fidgety, and it was almost a relief when the magic faded and the girl opened her eyes. Then she got to her feet and brushed some dirt off her backside, before she started walking again.

She wasn't heading back towards the trail though, and she wasn't moving deeper into the woods either. Instead she was making a bee-line straight for where we were hiding. We didn't try and flee or anything, and didn't bother trying to find somewhere else to watch from. It was obvious she'd spotted us somehow, even though she had her eyes closed the whole time we were there.

So we just watched as she walked straight up to us, then she stopped a couple paces back and looked the four of us over while we did the same.

Her most defining feature was definitely her hair, it was violet purple and hung down to her shoulders in loose messy curls. She had bright lively green eyes, a pretty rounded face, and perfect fair complexion. Up close I could also tell she was a bit shorter than me, she was probably about the same height as my little sister.

With a cute smile the girl asked, "So how come I've got a pack of werewolves spying on me?"