by Geonn Cannon
Gwen said, “All this will still be here in the morning. Why don’t you go home?”
“Because Dale isn’t there. And because I don’t know where Dale is, or when she’s coming back, or if she’s coming back, and it’s the first time in years that I’ve been able to say that, and I fucking hate it.” She picked up the box and hurled it at the wall with a shout that echoed out of the unit and down the corridors. It crashed and spilled its contents - just clothes - onto the ground.
Gwen said, “Wow.”
“If this was a movie, that would have broken open a secret compartment and the tapestry would be inside. Along with the real Dale, who has been held captive this whole time, and she’d make fun of me for taking so long to find her.”
“Apparently it isn’t a movie.”
“No.” Ari fell onto the couch and put her hands over her face. She was too exhausted to stop herself from crying, so she just let the tears come.
Gwen moved closer. “I want to help you, Ariadne. But I don’t know how. It’s breaking my heart. I hate to see you cry. You cried when you found out what I’d done to you as an infant, right before you left. So I guess we know the emotional threshold for tears.” She crouched and put a hand on Ari’s shoulder. “Come home with me.”
“I have to stay here. I have to... there’s something here. It’s not at the house, it’s not... it’s nowhere. The tapestry is as tall as a person when it’s rolled up, and it can’t just vanish.” She stood up and walked deeper into the unit. “It has to be somewhere. And if I find it, then this case can end, and everything goes back to normal, and Dale comes back to me, because the case is over.”
Gwen said, “What happens if you find the tapestry and Dale doesn’t come back?”
Ari took a deep breath. “Then... I don’t need to be Ariadne Willow anymore.”
“What? Honey...”
“Vivian refused to live with a death sentence. I don’t want to get used to not having Dale. So if she’s really gone for good, I’ll let the wolf take over and head out into the woods. Change into a person every week or so. Canidae have done it before.”
Gwen said, “Yes, but eventually they became more animal than people, even when they were in human form. They lost everything about themselves.”
Ari smiled ruefully. “Yeah, we don’t have to worry about that, Ma. If Dale is really gone, then I’ve already lost everything.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
The money from Hayden would get her a hotel room, but Dale wasn’t going to go much longer without some clean clothes, toiletries, and other necessary items from home. She waited until night and then called Neka to see if Ari’s car was in the driveway. Neka said it wasn’t, and that Ari had been gone since early that morning. Hopefully that meant she was at Gwen’s, or the office, but either way she wouldn’t be at home. Dale arrived and immediately went to the bedroom, opened the suitcase on the bed, and began transferring her things into it.
The house felt cold and abandoned. She didn’t know where Ari was or what she was doing and, despite everything that had happened in the past few days, that caused her a pang of sorrow. She tried to keep her head down, tried not to think about memories or focus on anything that could send her brain off on a tangent. But she saw her navy blue shirt and remembered Ari knotting a tie for her on a day she had to testify in court about a case.
“Do I look professional?”
“You do. You look very...” Ari put her hands on Dale’s shoulders, lips pressed together as she pondered the next word. “Would you prefer handsome or pretty?”
Dale smiled and tucked her hair behind her ears. “I’m good with pretty handsome.”
Ari kissed her nose and then both cheeks. “It works.”
She shook the memory out of her head. She didn’t look at the sheets, or the pillows. She didn’t think about the times she’d crawled into bed and kissed Ari’s hair before going to sleep. How many times had she woken up with the wolf next to her? She’d been comforted by that, loved knowing that both sides of Ari were comfortable enough to sleep around her. The wolf sometimes had a wild, feral mentality so the fact it stayed beside her was...
Terrifying. All those nights she could have woken up with her hand in its mouth, its jaws closing around her face, and she’d just stayed there.
The front door opened and Dale froze. She’d left the lights off in the front room even though it faced into the backyard, but the bedroom lamp was on.
“Dale? You here?”
Milo. Dale closed her suitcase and zipped it shut. Milo, drawn by the sound, appeared in the bedroom doorway.
“Hey. There you are. Where you goin’?”
“Past you, out that door. Anything more than that is none of your business.”
Milo said, “Maybe not mine, but it’s definitely Ari’s business. She’s worried sick about you. Gwen just went out looking for her.”
An image of Gwen being hit by a car flashed through Dale’s mind, so vivid that it made her flinch. She wanted to throw up at the image but she kept her face neutral.
“I need time to think.”
“That’s fair. Everyone needs time to think, and you deserve your space. But Dale, those essays you’ve been reading? They’re messing with your head. That’s why no one is allowed to read them. There’s something in them, some... subliminal message or something. People have been using it to make hunters since the forties, okay? It’s like a spike in your brain telling you all these horrible things.”
Dale said, “Or I’ve been listening to you for so long that I can barely recognize the truth when it’s staring me in the face.”
“This is truth?” Milo said. “You running away from Ari, using slurs against her, that’s true? That’s not the Dale Frye I know.”
“What’s the Dale Frye you know? A puppet? A toy? Some prey y’all tamed and lead around on a leash?”
Milo laughed. “You? Led around on a leash? Girl, you remember how we met? Gwen had this big ol’ master plan set up. You and Ari completely blew it all to hell and did your own thing, just like you always do. No one could lead you, and the path you take always leads you back to Ariadne.”
“I’m done running to that mutt.”
Milo stepped closer and got in Dale’s face. “Don’t you dare use that word on her, okay? Not because she doesn’t like it, but because I know you. And I know eventually you’ll come to your senses and you’re going to remember every single time you used that word to describe the woman you love, and it’s gonna hurt. So you’re gonna want to keep that shit to a minimum.”
Dale grimaced and stepped around her. “I’m done with all this wolf shit.”
“Are you?” Milo stepped into Dale’s path, but Dale just corrected her course and kept going. “Because you’re still wearing that bracelet. I know that means something to you. It means the world to you. Don’t throw that away.”
Dale paused at the door, with her back to Milo. “Would you be with a human?”
“What?”
“You heard me. Would you ever be with a human.”
“I’ve slept with a few--”
Dale turned around. “That’s not what I asked. I asked if you, personally, would ever be in a relationship with a human. Because for the past ten years or so, all I’ve been hearing is that Ari is one of the only wolves in history to have a relationship with a non-canidae. But I’ve never asked you. Would you, Millicent Duncan, ever marry a human?”
Milo glanced away and lowered her head. “That’s... No, Dale, I wouldn’t.” Dale nodded and started to leave, but Milo closed the distance and grabbed her arm. “But a few years ago, Gwen might have said she’d never be with a woman. When I first met Gwen, I thought she was a stone-cold bitch. Hot, sure, but I didn’t like her. I flinched when she put her hand on my shoulder. People can change their minds, Dale, and nothing changes a mind faster than falling in love. Ariadne didn’t go out looking for a human to fall in love with. She met a human who accidentally got all tangle-tied in her heart.”
&n
bsp; “Take your hand off me.”
Milo complied and stepped back. “Don’t read any more of those essays, Dale, I’m begging you.”
“They’re the closest thing I’ve ever gotten to the truth about all of this nonsense.”
“They’re a weapon,” Milo said. “You want to know how your new buddy Isaac got his hands on the book? ‘Cause me and Gwen, we’ve been looking into it all day. He broke into the place where it was being held and killed the canidae who had been assigned to guard it. Just killed them. Four canidae killed in cold blood.”
“Four less wolves in the world,” Dale muttered.
“I’m not kidding, Dale. Sooner or later, you’ll get your sense back, and you’re going to hate yourself for this, and there’s not going to be any way to take it back.”
Dale opened the door and stepped outside. “Lock up on your way out. Or don’t, I couldn’t care less. Nothing worthwhile left in there to steal anyway.”
###
Ari didn’t feel comfortable sleeping in the storage unit surrounded by someone else’s memories, and she also didn’t want to go home and sleep in their bed without Dale. That just left the office.
The building was creepy at night. Music played in the antiques shop next door, a place neither she nor Dale had ever seen anyone - customer or employee - enter. She paused in front of their cluttered window and peered inside, but she could only see the faint glow of a lamp burning far at the back of the shop. She thought about knocking, or just barging in, finally solving the mystery of their neighbors, but she didn’t trust herself to solve any mysteries these days. Besides, without Dale there to delight in the answer, what would be the point?
What was the point of anything, really? Tomorrow would be Sunday, and most of the Burroughs kids were going home in a few days. None of them cared about the tapestry. She could just let it stay lost. So one museum would have one less tapestry. Would the world really suffer?
She stretched out on the couch in her office and kicked off her shoes. She was reminded of her days as a solo operation. Willow Investigative Services. She’d once considered adding “Detection, Observation, Mysteries” then shortening it to WISDOM Agency, but she decided against it. It was Dale who suggested the change to Bitches. Another slur, now that she thought about it, but that wasn’t Dale’s intention. Same with calling them wolves. It wasn’t hateful. It wasn’t meant to be cruel or dismissive. There was a huge difference between how Dale used those words and the way she had spit ‘mutt’ out.
Dale’s ghost was all over the office. Crawling between the desk and the wall to plug in the new phones, bringing in countless cups of coffee and bags of lunch, straddling Ari on the couch to massage the kinks out of her weary muscles. Ari reached up and rubbed her shoulder. Before Dale, she just resigned herself to the pain. Other canidae didn’t suffer as badly, but Ari couldn’t see any other option. She had to transform. So she lived with it. Until Dale offered her a massage on a particularly bad day. There had been nothing sexual about it, nothing but one friend helping out another, but it had most likely set them down an inevitable path to falling in love.
She also saw Dale’s ghost at the window behind her desk, sitting on the little ledge, head against the glass and tilted up to watch the rain cascading down. They were still getting used to being a romantic couple, still navigating the waters between personal and professional. Ari had come in from getting lunch and watched her for a long moment before announcing herself.
“Everything okay?”
“Mm-hmm,” Dale said. “My head hurts a little bit. The glass is cold. It makes it feel better.”
Ari came around the desk. “Do you need anything? I can get you an ice pack or a painkiller... do you have any painkillers left...?”
“No, it’s fine. This is helping.”
Ari moved her hand up to the base of Dale’s skull, under her hair, and massaged. Dale cooed and pressed back into the touch.
“You got shot in the head because of me.”
Dale chuckled. “That’s not how I look at it.”
“I’d love to hear another interpretation.”
“I’m doing a job I love, with a woman I love, in a city I love. Being shot in the head means I don’t have to wait for the other shoe to drop. I get everything I want in life, but in exchange I have to get grazed by a bullet and thrown into a hedge. It evens out.”
Ari bent down and kissed Dale’s hair. “You’re the most amazing thing that’s ever happened to me, Dale Frye.”
“The feeling is mutual.”
Ari wiped at her eyes as the memory faded. She knew that if she went to sleep, the ghosts would attack en masse and infect her dreams. She couldn’t risk that. Instead, she went out into the front room and grabbed the chair from Dale’s desk and pushed it into the office. She positioned it in front of her evidence board.
“Okay, Dale. Time for you to figure out the case for me. I know it’s late, but I’m not going to sleep, so we might as well do this now.” She clapped her hands together and faced the board. “Vivian Burroughs, nice to strangers but an absolute monster to her kids. She’s only concerned about keeping the family name alive, so she shunned the daughter who is gay and the other daughter who had an abortion. Oh, right, that’s new information.”
She stepped forward and added Eleanor’s abortion to the wall.
“Vivian probably kept Preston close because he was the most likely to have a kid by accident. He was her best bet at the Burroughs line continuing. Then she gets diagnosed with a brain tumor. It’s terminal. She decides she’s not going to waste away, she’ll end things on her terms. So she sits down to start getting her affairs in order, and she comes up with a plan... a crazy plan, a complicated plan, a plan with no end game that I can figure out.”
She stared at the board and tapped the end of the marker against her chin.
“Come on, Dale. Work with me here, babe.” She paused and then nodded. “You’re right. We don’t need to know what the end result was, because we can work through the actions she took to achieve it. So... okay. First she came up with a way to get Eleanor in town, probably so she could have a shitty conversation with her, like she had with Elizabeth. ‘You kept me from having a grandchild, you killed the Burroughs line,’ that nonsense. She told all the kids to be in town for the big reveal about who would get Crossing-Over Place. Once she’d...”
Ari stopped as suddenly as if Dale had actually interrupted her.
“Why was that a reveal?” she whispered. “None of them cared about the tapestry. The locket was the heirloom, the tapestry was just decoration. They all told me they didn’t want it, so why was that the draw to get them in town? They came because... Vivian told them it was required, and they would have to be here for the reading of the will anyway, so why not just come a little early. And of course that made them think about it, and realize how valuable it was, and they thought, ‘hey, one of us is getting an extra bonus with our inheritance. Cool.’ So they showed up, suddenly caring, and she pulled the rug out from under them. As it were.”
She began to pace.
“Because... because why? Dale, come on, babe, you’re really not pulling your weight on this one. I need your insight here.”
Silence from the empty chair.
“No one in the family cared about Crossing-Over Place until Vivian made a big deal about it. She fabricated this whole thing to... to...” She slapped the board hard, which made her palm sting. “To what! Why! How! I don’t even know how she got it out of the house. I assume she used the housekeeper’s key to get in. Vivian stole her own fake tapestry, which she had hung up at some unknown point in the past. We don’t know what happened to the original or the fake. We don’t even know where the fake came from. Or why she made one.”
It’s like magic, she imagined Dale saying. Misdirection. Look at this, poof, that thing over there disappeared. Voila!
“I think they actually say ‘ta-da,’” Ari muttered. “But you’re right, Dale, it’s a magic trick.
Vivian brought me into the house, walked me to the tapestry, and explained what it was. And she made sure I was there for the big unveiling to reveal it was gone. I was the only proof it had ever been there in the first place. The whole big drama was just to drum up excitement, because Eleanor’s the only person who would care if the locket vanished. She wanted drama. She wanted everyone here looking for the tapestry, because she didn’t want them focused on something else. But what?”
Dale had fallen silent again.
“Fat lot of help you are. There’s something she didn’t want her family to know about. So she spent what would be a fortune to anyone else to make sure everyone was looking at Crossing-Over Place. The fake tapestry and the disappearance is all just part of the ruse. I’m part of the misdirect, too. So what is it that Vivian was so desperate to hide?”
She looked at Dale’s empty chair.
“You’re much more help when you’re actually here, you know. But whatever Vivian wanted to hide, there’s one person who probably knows everything about her final days. I think tomorrow morning I’m going to finally sit down with Mr. Dodd.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Dale was on the ground in the dream, not tied down or restrained but unable to move. Ari, Gwen, and Milo stood over her, with other shadowy figures moving in the darkness behind them. They were all human, but their mouths were stretched in grotesque grins to accommodate wolf fangs. Dale tried to get away from them, but other wolves surrounded her. She watched their hands deform into claws, huge dinosaur talons which glistened in whatever light was allowing them to be visible to her.
She woke herself up by flailing, one hand shoving the book of essays onto the floor. She was covered with sweat and out of breath, as if she’d been running, and she lay on the bed for a moment to let her brain catch up with reality. Eventually she got up to retrieve the book and placed it on the desk. She had gotten a water-view room at Motif, because if she was going to stay in a local hotel on Isaac Hayden’s dime, she might as well live it up.