The problem with most people who learntdark witchcraft was how few other morals they had. Her lead on the car went nowhere with the licence plate being registered as stolen, which made a break into the high school and its student ID database necessary to find the blond. Troy Harrow was the closest match she could find to her memory of the boy’s face, and jotting down his address Jo made her way out of the school and towards the street as quickly as possible. Her one advantage over the seeming witch was that he had no clue who she was, and from examining the hex bags left behind he was obviously rather new at it as all contained some piece of the boys’ hurt in it.

She parked several houses down, and it was as the hunter got out of the car that she spotted a flash of bright hair run across a different lawn towards someone else’s house. Sneaking to the house Troy vanished into, Jo recognised the name from one of the people she spoke to about the footballer - the second choice for the victim’s starting position - and drawing her gun, she notices the glow of light from the garage shining from below the rickety door. There were four bikes leaning against the roller door, and moving closer she looked through a window to see six teenage boys around a rather rudimentary but functional witches circle.

With a final sigh as a rather raccous round of laughter was heard, Jo kicked the door in on its hinges, pointing her gun at the second-rate footballer who was obviously the leader. The shouting and subsequent clocking of two boys over the head with the butt of her gun was unfortunate but it finally silenced the lot of them to the point she could talk and understand none of them were truly aware what they’d done starting down this path. It was the actual worst part to dealing with witches, a lot of the time they did not realise what was happening or what they had done to themselves or others. And what was the right thing to do, shoot a garage full of adolescents? Instead she took the names of each boy down, copies of the exact readings and deals they’d made, and given a rather in-depth and terrifying description of just how screwed their afterlives could be if they continued what they were doing and even if they didn’t. Scare tactics only worked if there was a light on the other end, but an ultimatum that if she heard boo about anything like magic happening near where any of them ever were or lived, she wouldn’t spare the bullet the next time and they could meet their doom much quicker.

Jo confiscated all the texts and other artefacts, careful not to leave a single trace of herself behind lest they try to take her out before she could them, she headed back west towards Duluth, figuring if nothing else she could add to the library for future reference to potential issues and wondering if she should burn the items as she went.

The main problem with a witch hunt was there is honestly no ‘tell’ to give away a witch. No flinching at ‘christo’, no weird reflections, no reactions to salt or iron a normal human wouldn’t have, no give-aways’ at all other than finding a motive. Speaking to the victims or those around them was the only way, and that in itself was an issue given how much people love to lie. She got seven different people who might have hurt any of the boys, but that didn’t really cut any of those down. Thinking it might be a coven made things easier until it turned out only two of the potential witches knew who one another were at all.

It was as she was headed out of the school that Jo saw one of the spells happen as it did, a thin boy’s leg jerked out at an unnatural angle before he collapsed backwards and hit his neck and head on the front steps. As everyone else rushed to his side at the boy’s screaming, the hunter’s eyes raked over the crowd repeatedly until she saw a blond boy hang back with a smile on his face. She meant to head towards him, the teen spotted her quick approach and took off running towards a beat up Toyota and out of the car-park before she could catch up, though at least now she had a face and a number plate to go off.

Three broken necks in one school, all within a one week period, was enough of a whiff for Jo to take off towards Trenton. If all three, or even two, had been involved in some sort of sport at the time, she wouldn’t have bothered - but given one was practising his flute and another was working in a computer lab alongside a footballer, it sounded a little too suspicious to be normal for her. The only issue with school cases was being able to get inside without attempting to pull a Never Been Kissed, instead opting to slip on the overalls and sneak in through the back door instead.

Where the seemingly ‘next Bill Gates’ of the school had fallen backwards in his computer chair was going to be harder to get into than the music rooms, so the music centre was where she started. Her EMF reader showed no signs as she moved through the room, and a cursory search gave no indication of foul play. The same went for the football field and the computer room. Tempted to wrap the case up as a series of unfortunate events, Jo was about to head back to Duluth when one of the other boys complaining as they left the locker room about the jock’s bag still taking up space in his ‘unneeded’ locker. Digging further she found that each boy the top of the school in each of their fields, while a quick scan over the locker assignments found all three victims lockers and a small hex bag tucked into the back corner of each. Witches, how fun.