“He won’t eat,” Croft rasped, his eyes watery. “Won’t climb. Just stands there, starin’ at the eastern fence.”
The eastern pasture was a postcard of rural peace—clover up to the knees, a creek chuckling over stones, and a split-rail fence where honeysuckle grew wild. Barnaby’s herd milled about nervously, tails twitching, refusing to graze within twenty yards of that border.
“It’s not a pathogen, Mr. Croft,” she said, standing. “It’s a predator. A ghost from the high timber.”
Elara ignored the goats and examined the ground. There. A smear of dark, oily soil where there should have been loam. A single track—not a coyote’s, not a dog’s. Too broad, with blunt claw marks that didn’t retract. And at the base of a fence post, a tuft of coarse, black-tipped hair.