Wolfsong (34 page)

I’d have to call Gordo, I knew. He always worried after full moons. He didn’t like waiting until I walked into the shop later in the day. He needed to know.

I couldn’t remember if my mom had come out the night before. So I’d have to call her too.

Joe and I would have breakfast. Maybe our feet would tangle together under the table. And maybe I’d work up the courage to hold his hand. Carter and Kelly would probably make fun of us for it after hearing the way our heartbeats went out of control, but that was okay. Elizabeth would scold them and Mark would smile his secret smile and Thomas would just look content as he watched us from his place at the head of the table. And when I caught his eye, he’d flash his red, red eyes at me and wink, and I would
know
what it meant to have a father again, I would
know
—

The fog started to clear.

The pain started.

It was a sliver at first. An irritant, just underneath my skin. I picked at it. I worried at it.

It only made things worse.

I took in a great, gasping breath.

I was awake.

They were gone.

Mom. Thomas.

Carter and Kelly.

Gordo.

And Joe.

I opened my eyes.

Two wolves lay curled up against me.

Elizabeth and Mark.

They breathed deeply, lost in sleep.

I envied them.

Because the pain came rolling over me, glassy and sharp.

I pushed outward, trying to find the others. Trying to feel them. The bonds. The threads between us.

But there was nothing.

I pushed again.

Nothing. It was like we were cut off.

The loss was so great that, for a moment, I couldn’t breathe. I tried to fist my hands at my sides, but my left hand wouldn’t close around the object it held.

I looked down.

In my hand was a wolf statue. Made of stone.

I watched it for a long time.

I knew what it meant. Who’d placed it there.

Eventually I nodded.

I said, “Okay, Joe. Okay.”

And began to wait.

the first year/pinpricks of light

THE FIRST
year was the hardest.

Because we didn’t know there was going to
be
a first year.

“YOU TEXT
me,” I’d told him as we’d lain in the bed. I could still taste him on my lips and I wanted nothing more than to kiss him again. “Every couple of days. So I know.”

“I won’t tell you where we are,” he said. “Because I know what you would do.”

I scowled at him. “Fine. But you text me. You understand?”

He did.

I MISS
you
, the first text said, three days after they’d gone.

I stared at it for hours.

“SHE LEFT
everything to you,” the attorney said as I sat across from him in his office. Elizabeth and Mark were close by, hiding in the woods. “The house. The accounts. And eventually, there will be a life insurance payout, but those things take time. It should be enough to pay off the mortgage and then some when it comes, though. She wanted to make sure you were taken care of should something have happened to her. You’re set, Ox. For now. I’ll get everything ready for you to sign to make it as easy as possible. You just focus on healing. Lord knows you’ve earned it.”

I nodded and looked out the window, thinking about soap bubbles on my ear.

CARTER AND
Kelly are fighting
, a text said.
I told them to stop. They didn’t. So I went Alpha on them. They aren’t fighting anymore.

“WHAT THE
fuck is this supposed to mean?” Chris said, glaring down at a letter Gordo had left for them at the shop. “‘I have to be gone for a while. Tanner, you’re in charge of the shop. Make sure you send the earnings to the accountant. He’ll handle the taxes. Ox has access to all the bank stuff, personal and shop-related. Anything you need, you go through him. If you need to hire someone to pick up the slack, do it, but don’t hire some fuckup. We’ve worked too hard to get where we are. Chris and Rico, handle the day-to-day ops. I don’t know how long this is going to take, but just in case, you need to watch each other’s back. Ox is going to need you.’”

Rico and Tanner were crowded into Gordo’s office. Chris’s hands shook as he held the letter, voice growing tighter and tighter with every word he read.

You’ll have to deflect
, Gordo had told me in the woods.
They’ll push you, Ox. For answers. You need to hold off as long as possible. They’re my brothers. I never wanted them involved in our world. But I don’t know how much longer that can last. Not now. I’m sorry to put this on you. I never wanted this for you. For them.

They all looked up at me.

“Did you know about this?” Tanner asked.

“Yeah,” I said, heartsore and tired. I wasn’t sleeping because of the nightmares.

“That asshole,” Rico growled. “How the fuck could he leave you like this? After everything?”

“Where did he go?” Chris asked, dropping the letter back onto the desk.

They all looked at me expectantly.

And I resented them then. Gordo and Joe. Because of the position they’d put me in. My back was against a wall and I didn’t know how to answer the question without bullshit.

Joe had left.

Gordo went with him.

They’d forced my hand.

And maybe I was already tired of carrying this burden alone.

So I said, “What do you know about werewolves?”

I THOUGHT
we had something
, he said in his text.
I thought we’d found what we needed outside of Calgary. But it was just a dead end. A fucking dead end. Ox. It hurts.

I thought about calling him.

But he’d asked me not to. He needed to focus, he’d said.

There was no green here.

“
DIOS MÍO
,”
Rico breathed, watching as Mark shifted in front of them, once a man and now a wolf.

“Should I be scared?” Tanner asked, voice high-pitched. “Because I feel like I should be scared. Okay. I’m scared.” He squeaked loudly when Elizabeth came out from the house and sat on the porch, watching them with her head cocked, tail thumping lightly against the wooden slats.

“Far-fucking-
out
,” Chris whispered. “This is like some Lon Chaney fucking shit!”

They all looked at me and waited.

“What?” I asked.

“You do it now,” Rico said.

“Like, just
do
it,” Tanner said.

“Show me your
American Werewolf in London
,” Chris said.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” I muttered. “I’m not a wolf.”

They were very disappointed in that.

A TEXT
came in the middle of the night.

It said,
Please tell me you’re all right.

im all right

Bad dream

about what

He didn’t reply.

“GORDO’S A
witch,” Tanner repeated.

“Shut the fuck up,” Chris said.

“I
knew
that motherfucker was up to something,” Rico said. “He sacrifices chickens at midnight and bathes in their blood, doesn’t he?”

We all stared at him.

“What?” Rico said. “It could happen. It’s a thing. I know my shit. I’ve
seen
stuff, man. Like
things
.
Mi abuela
used to slaughter chickens all the time. It was very hardcore.”

“That actually explains a lot,” Chris said. “Because of all his weirdness.”

“Like how his tattoos always seemed to be in different places,” Tanner said.

“Or how when we all moved here, he always went around our houses, rubbing the walls and muttering things,” Rico said.

“Or how he didn’t think it was funny when I wanted to put up witch Halloween decorations at the shop,” Chris said. “
Because they were funny
.”

“Or how he had daddy issues and never explained why,” Tanner said. “I always thought his dad was just a jerk. I didn’t know he was an
evil
jerk.”

“There were really a lot of clues,” Rico said. “I’m slightly disappointed in us.”

“We aren’t very self-aware,” Chris said with a frown.

“Holy shit!” Tanner said. “He can do
magic
.”

I sighed and gave in. “He has shiny arms.”

“Shiny arms?” Rico said. “Like… what.”

“His arms. They glow when he does magic.”

“Shiny arms,” Tanner said. “That’s… amazing.”

“Magic,” Chris said. “I… don’t know what to do with that.”

“And what about you?” Rico demanded. “How do you fit in with all of this?”

That led to tethers and mates.

“Like destiny and bullshit?”

“Oh my god, Ox, your life is like those shitty sparkly vampire movies. That I’ve never seen and don’t like at all, shut up.”

“Oh man. That explains the whole Jessie thing. She never stood a chance in the face of sparkly vampire destiny or whatever it is.”

I put my face in my hands.

The conversation went on for another three hours after that.

At the end, it was Tanner who’d spoken.

He said, “Your mom was very brave.”

And then he hugged me.

I held on for dear life.

Eventually, Rico and Chris came over too and I was surrounded.

THE TEXT
came from Gordo.

Joe’s fine. Ran into some trouble. He’s sleeping it off. He didn’t want you to worry.

I didn’t sleep much that night.

THEY STARTED
coming to the house, Rico and Tanner and Chris. At first it was just every few days. And only for a little bit at a time. They were slightly wary at first, jumping at every little thing. Laughing too loudly. They would talk to Mark. They would watch Elizabeth. They would ask questions, always asking questions.

Soon, though, they came almost every day. We ate dinner together. The second full moon after the others left, Rico, Tanner, and Chris were there. They were nervous. I told them not to be. I didn’t understand what was happening, but I was starting to see them differently. Mark just smiled his secret smile when I asked, though it was a shade less bright than it used to be. Elizabeth was always a wolf, so I could never ask her, though I talked to her like I normally would. For some reason, she seemed to like the sound of my voice. I didn’t know if she could understand me, especially since she’d been a wolf for so long. Mark said it was harder to come back the longer she stayed, but that she’d do it when she was ready. He trusted her and said I should too.

Mark and Elizabeth ran through the trees under the light of the moon. They didn’t sing, though. None of us did. We couldn’t seem to find the songs within us to show how we felt.

HOW ARE
they?
he asked.

okay
, I wrote back.
your mom hasn’t shifted yet.
I didn’t tell him about my friends knowing about them now, because I didn’t want it to get back to Gordo. Not yet, at least.

I waited for him to write back.

It was days before he responded again.

MARK PUT
an obituary in the newspaper announcing Thomas’s death, revealing no details. He asked for privacy. Condolences were sent. And flowers. So many flowers. They were red and orange. Violet and blue. There was so much green.

Elizabeth touched each one of them with her nose, inhaling deeply.

Sometimes, it felt like I couldn’t breathe.

“WE’LL HAVE
burners,” Joe had whispered to me as we lay side by side. “Cell phones that can’t be traced. We’ll trade them out every now and then. But I promise you I’ll keep in touch.”

“I don’t understand,” I’d admitted.

“I know,” he’d said, tracing his fingers over my cheek. “I know.”

“ARE YOU
ever going to change back?” I asked Elizabeth.

She licked my hand before she turned and walked into the forest.

I waited for a long time until she came back.

NO WORDS
from him, this time.

Just a picture. The full moon.

I stared at it, running my thumb over it, like I could tell where he was just by looking at it.

I couldn’t, though.

FIVE WEEKS
after they left, and two days after the full moon, there was a knock at the door.

I had just gotten home from work (and home being the Bennett house because I could still see the stain on the floor at the old house). I sat at the kitchen table, back sore and fingers stained black. Elizabeth came in and lay at my feet, her snout resting on my boot, eyes closed and breathing deeply. Mark moved in the kitchen, watching over a pot on the stove. Whatever he was making smelled spicy and my stomach rumbled at the thought. I was hungry.

The moment before the knock came, both Elizabeth and Mark stiffened.

Then, three taps on the front door.

It wasn’t Rico or Chris or Tanner. I’d just left them at the shop not an hour ago. And they didn’t knock anymore. They just came in, bringing in dust and laughter and grease. They weren’t like the others had been. And I thought maybe that was a good thing.

So I knew it wasn’t them. And while Gordo had said that no one could approach the Bennett house who harbored ill will, given his wards, we still snapped to attention.

Elizabeth was up and moving toward the door even before the knocks died out.

Mark half shifted and went to the window, scanning the backyard to make sure we weren’t being surrounded.

I grabbed my crowbar.

The threads between us burst brightly.

And there were other threads.