[Ray's POV]
The festival was a sensory assault—a deliberate weapon against my kind.
My greatest asset, my sense of smell, was rendered nearly useless, drowned in a thick, cloying soup of scents. Sizzling pork fat fought with cloying perfumes. The earthy crush of herbs underfoot mixed with the sharp, sour tang of spilled ale. Smoke from a dozen cooking fires layered over the musky press of too many bodies in too small a space.
Can't filter through this chaos, I thought, jaw tightening. The cold, metallic scent of a witch's magic. The aggressive, territorial musk of a hostile werewolf. All of it buried under this... carnival.
And the masked man? He was a ghost. I didn't even have his scent to begin with.
My right hand, resting on the pommel of my sword, clenched into a fist. The leather creaked.
If only that masked man hadn't slipped from my sight so easily.
