Scratch the Surface (Wolf Within)

by Amy Lee Burgess

  “—told me to fuck off, basically.”

  Murphy’s fingers clenched around the steering wheel. I hadn’t shared any of this with him. Or anyone. There hadn’t been anyone to share it with.

  “You called them, didn’t you?” Nora wondered.

  “More than once,” I agreed. “After the third time they stopped taking my calls. After that I left messages every couple of months. For the first year. So I felt like somebody was out there even though I knew there wasn’t. The whole of last year I didn’t bother and it actually was better. Those messages were hell. What did I have to say? ‘Hi, Lauren, hi, Paul, it’s Stanzie. Nothing much to report, really. I got a new plant for my kitchen window sill. I made spaghetti for dinner last week. Still have a job. Talk to you soon, bye.’” My tone was mocking and I laughed a little.

  “We thought you were drunk, and that’s why they died. If that had been the truth, you’d have deserved everything you got,” Jonathan muttered.

  There was nothing to say to that, so I didn’t bother.

  “So you thought of all those ways to kill yourself, why didn’t you?” Nora brought us back on track and I gave her a grateful smile. For a moment I had been back in time, exiled and terribly lonely and I remembered those phone calls from hell and the two days afterward when I told myself there might be a chance, a slim one that they’d call back. They never had.

  “Well, what’s suicide but a big fuck you to everybody?” I asked her. “Nobody gave a shit about me so who was I going to tell to fuck off? I thought people might actually be glad I’d done it and I said to hell with that. I’m not sure I believe in reuniting with your loved ones in the otherworld after you die so I didn’t really think I’d see Grey and Elena, and yet a part of me was a little afraid I might. And they’d blame me too. I mean, I was driving the car. I wasn’t drunk, but I was driving. And even now that I know Grandfather Tobias did something to the brake line, it doesn’t make much difference. I’m the one who brought the car to him in the first place. There’s some guilt you just can’t escape, I guess. Anyway, Nora, who are you trying to tell to fuck off? Jonathan?”

  Nora snorted. “As if he’d care. Probably can’t wait to find me dead one morning. Can you?” She turned to him and dared him to deny it.

  “I don’t want to find you dead,” he half-whispered. “Why do you think I go around pouring out all the goddamn booze you hide? If I wanted you dead, why would I bother?”

  Nora tossed her head and gave him a disbelieving smile. “You know what he said to me after our baby died? Stanzie, you know what he said?” Twins spots of color blotched her pale cheeks and her fists were clenched so tightly I could smell blood from where her nails cut the skin.

  A look of bewilderment crossed Jonathan’s features, and I knew he hadn’t expected her to say this. He also clearly didn’t know what it was he’d said. Either he didn’t remember or didn’t believe she was referring to what he remembered.

  “What?” I prompted.

  “The egotistical bastard said, ‘At least you’ve still got me, Nora.’ Can you freaking believe that shit?” The look she gave him was scorching hot with contempt. Jonathan sank in his seat, shoulders hunched until he looked like a little boy swamped in his father’s clothing. “Men think everything revolves around them, don’t they? Or is it just Jonathan?”

  Jonathan’s long black lashes swept his ashen cheeks. He said nothing in his defense. I still didn’t think he understood what he’d done wrong.

  “You know the last time he told me he loved me, Stanz?” Nora was on a roll and there was no stopping her now. I almost wished we’d found a package store and bought her a boatload of gin so we didn’t have to hear this.

  “No,” I said because I had to say something.

  “Neither do I. It’s been that friggin’ long.” Nora gave him another blistering look.

  “You just went to the Great Gathering, Nora. If you’re this unhappy with him, why didn’t you sever ties and look for somebody else?” I wondered.

  Jonathan’s chest heaved and his dark eyes accused me silently of betraying him.

  Now Nora’s scorching contempt was directed at me. Her mouth curled in absolute derision. “Who the hell would want me, Stanzie? A barren drunk, that’s what I am. I have nothing to offer anybody. Who’d want me?”

  “You’re beautiful. Lots of guys would want you,” Jonathan whispered, head down.

  “Oh, sure, right. The best I could have done was to be the spare to the pair in some triad. Bullshit. No way.”

  “Jonathan, you could have found somebody else,” I reminded him.

  “I don’t want anybody else.” He lifted anguished and ashamed eyes to stare at me. “And anyway, who’d want me? Listen to her, listen to what she says. I’m an egotistical bastard. Clueless, and I never say ‘I love you’. She’s right, I don’t. But just because I don’t say it doesn’t mean I don’t feel it. She always knew that before, or maybe I was just being egotistical. And I don’t understand why what I said was wrong. Callie came out of the room after...after the baby was born dead and she said, ‘I’m sorry, Jonathan,’ and it seemed so damn stupid and inadequate. Anybody can say ‘I’m sorry’. I’m sorry doesn’t mean shit. You say it if you accidentally bump into somebody or if you reach for the same piece of bread. It’s not what you say to somebody who’s just lost a baby. All I meant was that she wasn’t alone. That she had somebody who loved her and wanted to take care of her. That’s all.”

  A potent silence filled the car. My throat closed over and my eyes burned with tears. I stole a glance at Murphy. He was subdued and his gaze was fixed desperately to the road.

  Nora was very still, her expression blank, but her eyes were feverishly bright as Jonathan’s words seemed to sink in and penetrate her fog of drunken self-pity.

  For a moment the Nora I remembered, fuller of face and figure, Jonathan’s constant shadow and devoted companion, floated over the person she’d become—bitter, emaciated, drunk.

  “Why didn’t you say that? Say it the way you just said it?” She asked and Jonathan grimaced.

  “I could barely squeeze the words out that I said. You looked so fucking destroyed and I felt so tiny and scared because I knew anything I said wouldn’t be enough. I don’t know, Nora, you wanted that baby so much. You say I never say I love you, you never say it anymore either and you used to say it a lot. I felt replaced. You were so different after Grey and Elena died, and Stanzie left Riverglow. Somehow you lost respect for me. I know you did.”

  “We did a piss-poor thing to Stanzie and you know it,” Nora said, her eyes hard. “You were the ringleader, Jonathan. You turned most of us against her. We weren’t against you at first, Stanzie. Peter was talking about Vaughn bonding with you and everything.”

  “Vaughn.” I shook my head.

  “Everyone knew Jonathan wouldn’t take you into a triad with us. Even if you’d be the spare to the pair. But Peter thought Vaughn should bond with you, only Vaughn was dead against it.”

  I looked at her and she looked at me. I knew she knew then.

  “Elena.” We said in unison.

  “What?” Jonathan was lost again.

  “Vaughn was in love with Elena,” Nora explained to him. “He wanted to bond with her. Did he ever ask her, Stanz?”

  “Yeah,” I confessed, feeling dirty for doing it.

  “Poor bastard,” sighed Nora. “Is it a man thing again? Callie certainly understood. I did. Grey must have, but that’s because he was part of your triad.”

  “Understood what?” Jonathan looked between us, face creased in confusion.

  Nora and I exchanged another look of silent understanding.

  “Elena was in love with Stanzie. The only way she’d ever have bonded with Vaughn is if Stanzie came too. Stanzie loved Grey and would never have severed ties with him.”

  Jonathan stared at Nora as if she were talking a different language.

  “Elena was a dyke?” he blurted and Murphy choked a little bit
and pretended to clear his throat.

  “That’s elegant, Jonathan.” Nora rolled her eyes. “She was Pack, she was bisexual, the same as most of the rest of us. But she did prefer women to men. Only, if she ever wanted to shift, she needed a man, didn’t she?”

  “You prefer women too, Stanzie?” Jonathan looked fascinated and slightly turned on. Murphy choked again.

  “I liked being with Elena,” I told him. “But now that she’s gone I’m not really interested in being in a triad. She was special. We fit somehow. Me, her and Grey.”

  “All the best triads are like that.” Nora smiled.

  “You mean one of them prefers the opposite sex more?” Jonathan looked shocked to even contemplate it.

  “You. You think every triad you see made up of one guy and two women means the women are all over the man and only with each other to please him, don’t you?” Nora rolled her eyes again.

  “There are triads with two guys and one girl,” Jonathan pointed out. Then he narrowed his eyes as he obviously started wondering about Vaughn and Peter’s triad with Callie. “That’s how all triads are? No way.”

  “No, not all of them. Some of them though,” Nora explained. “You’ve got such a thick skull sometimes, Jonathan.” She turned to face me again. “It was Vaughn who trashed your house, wasn’t it, Stanz? You figured that out too, right? Because of Elena.”

  Murphy shot me a look to see whether I’d agree.

  “Vaughn?” Jonathan gaped. “Nora, Stanzie did it herself. To get back at us for kicking her out.”

  “That’s crap,” declared Nora so forcefully Jonathan’s eyebrows raised nearly to the top of his skull. He opened his mouth to argue and Nora said, “Crap,” again very loudly. He shut his mouth.

  “I guess I owe you eight hundred bucks, Liam,” said Jonathan. He seemed contrite. “I thought it was Stanzie.”

  “Keep it.” Murphy cast a look in the rearview mirror. “Take Nora on a trip somewhere with it. Get away together somewhere different.”

  Jonathan didn’t look like he thought Nora would go for that, but Nora’s eyes lit up.

  “We could go to New York, couldn’t we? I’ve always wanted to go to New York. We could stay in a nice hotel and have room service. I’ve never had room service. I know we just went to Paris, Jonathan, but wouldn’t New York be nice?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Jonathan agreed, sounding a little stunned.

  “Could we see a play? On Broadway?” Nora was tentative, as if expecting him to scoff and shoot her down. I couldn’t imagine Jonathan sitting still for an entire play, or even following it if it was complicated, but he agreed with alacrity.

  “And go to the museum? There’s a natural history museum, Jonathan. With dinosaurs.”

  “I like dinosaurs,” Jonathan said. Initially the word museum had brought near panic into his eyes.

  “Oh, it sounds like fun, doesn’t it?” Nora’s whole face was shining and she leaned into Jonathan, snuggling against him companionably.

  By Jonathan’s expression, she hadn’t voluntarily touched him in ages. Boldly he put an arm around her and she put her head on his shoulder.

  When I looked out the window, I saw a small plaza with a drug store, a dry cleaner’s, an antique shop and a small package store.

  “There’s a package store, you want to stop?” I wondered. Murphy shot me another look, which I ignored.

  “No,” said Nora with zero interest. “I can have a drink at the restaurant if I want one.”

  I looked at Jonathan and he mouthed the words thank you to me and, for one moment, we were actually okay with each other. For the first time since we’d been teens and had kissed in the back of the room at the Great Gathering in Louisiana.

  Chapter 18

  A cold, biting wind tore at our hair and scoured our faces as we walked single file down a snowy path that led into the Devil’s Hopyard state park.

  My wolf, already awake, nearly went crazy inside me, clawing to get out. She smelled the pine needles and the frozen brook just as keenly as I did. No, more. She did not understand why I wouldn’t let her loose. This was her space, her time.

  Behind me, Murphy put a gloved hand on my shoulder as if to steady me, although my steps were even. I was next to last in the line and the path was being broken by the others. I had only to keep in their footsteps.

  I wanted to shake free of his touch because it confused me and made me resentful that he could touch me first, but I never could take the initiative with him. However, my wolf was comforted inside me, settled. She trusted him and his wolf. She would never understand the nuances that ran between me and him in human form. I didn’t want her to, but I suspected some day she might.

  I pulled my scarf over most of my face and breathed in the scent of wool and my perfume. That also settled my wolf. They were not her smells.

  A part of me wanted to let her free so I wouldn’t have to bear witness to the final dispersion of Grandfather Tobias’s ashes. Often at Pack funerals, people shifted into their wolves to honor the dead. But there was no honor in today’s funeral. Anyway, I couldn’t let my wolf out at a funeral because the concept was beyond her. Still, she clamored within me. Was Murphy struggling with his wolf too? Somehow, I doubted it.

  Up ahead, Jonathan carried the urn because he was a blood relative. The Councilors followed behind Jonathan and Nora then Colin Hunter and Devon Talbot. Behind them, Vaughn, Callie and Peter, then me and Murphy.

  Callie moved more slowly than the rest of us. Her face was white and pinched and I suspected she was in pain. The wind blew her scent back to me and my suspicions were confirmed. Not only was she in pain, she was bleeding. The after-effects of her recent miscarriage were still manifesting themselves.

  Peter had a guiding hand on her frail shoulder and Vaughn made sure to clear the way for her so she wouldn’t stumble.

  I slowed my steps in response and Murphy squeezed my shoulder. I could have looked back at him, one reassuring glance, but I kept my face forward and my gaze fixed on the ground so I could see where I was going.

  A crow cawed from the top of a pine tree as we filed beneath. It was a macabre sound—a lonely one. There was a rush and flap of wings and he was gone, soaring away to another tree where he wouldn’t see predators such as us.

  I smelled deer and squirrels and lots of birds, too many to individually identify by species although I could have if I’d wanted to concentrate hard enough.

  As we got farther beneath the canopy of the trees, the snow cover thinned and eventually we were walking on crushed pine needles and leaves—leftovers from autumns past.

  The wind died down too, blocked by the branches.

  It got darker and miserably cold, and I tried not to let memories rush over me because I knew where we were going. I knew the clearing well. We’d always shifted there before scattering into the woods. Grey and Elena had blocked my wolf from going toward the parking lot and the road, but she had never wanted to go that way. She’d wanted to go deep into the woods, to the heart of the forest. The second I’d finished shifting, she was off, leaping into the pine-scented woods, certain that her mates were behind her, but only wanting to be free to run and run and run some more.

  Grey and Elena had walked here. Lived here. Spoken here. Laughed here. Again, I tried to bring up their faces and they were blurred the way they always were since sometime in Paris. More and more I began to believe the old man that they’d been with me in spirit until that night in the Paris hotel room when I could no longer distinctly bring up their features in my memory. I would always need a photograph now.

  Up ahead, the others stopped and ranged around into a loose circle. Murphy and I fell into our places, closing it.

  From where I stood I could see the frozen brook, iced over white in the dark gloom of the forest. The wind was gone and it became eerily still and silent, as if the trees mourned with us.

  All the birds and wildlife fled the way they always did from us. We were isolate and alone, thirteen of u
s. Twelve alive and standing in a circle, one dead and in ashes in an urn.

  Jonathan moved to the center of the circle, his handsome face white and grim. His eyes were red rimmed and bloodshot but he was not quite as broken as he’d been at the funeral home. He looked to Nora as if for support and she gave him a sad, sweet smile which he returned.

  He held the urn above his head and turned in a slow circle so we could all see it clearly.

  I pressed my scarf to my face and watched the tops of the pine trees, looking for movement, for air, but they were still.

  Jonathan started to speak, but I didn’t listen. I put myself in a different space away from the clearing. The old man was ashes because I’d put coniine in his hot chocolate. He’d begged me to watch him die, stay with him so he wouldn’t be alone. But where was he now? Nothing? Or a spirit condemned to walk—more alone than he’d ever been when he’d breathed?

  In the middle of the circle, Jonathan carefully pried the top off the urn and with his gloved hand reached in and took a handful of the ashes.

  He said something—I saw his lips move but I was beyond hearing. He scattered the ashes in a circle around himself and I didn’t hear them patter against the leaves and needles but I knew they made a sound.

  Nora stepped up and took the urn. Jonathan took her place in the outer circle and Nora repeated the process. She said something too, but I don’t know what.

  There was no set order to who went into the inner circle, but there were no lulls or awkward transitions.

  Jason Allerton looked particularly striking in his gray cashmere blend dress coat, his black hair perfectly in place, his piercing blue eyes meeting everyone’s in the circle before he scattered a handful of the ashes of the man he’d condemned to death.

  Kathy Manning moved like a ballerina elf, tiny and precise. Her short brown hair, tousled by the wind, gave her a gamine look, almost feral.

  Callie almost fell when it was her turn. Peter and Vaughn were tense, ready to go to her if she needed them.

  She held the urn as if it weighed a hundred pounds and her hand shook as she scattered ashes.