by Maria Vale
Krissie walks toward us, her pencil flowing across the pad. Vasco smiles as he watches her.
“Me too, Mr. Colina. And that’s why I’m here.”
With a perforated rip, Krissie puts the check on the table. I reach for it quickly, pressing my black card into her hand.
“Cash only,” Colina says as he counts out the bills. There’s no resentment or accusation, just a one-legged gardener who recognizes the primacy of no man.
“I can’t make any promises, but I’ll see what I can do.”
Chapter 24
Hāmweard, ðu londadl hǽðstapa, in 9 days
Homeward, you landsick heath-wanderer, in 9 days
There’s a man in another mighty building a block away. I’ve see him before. Well-dressed, fit, and successful, he stares out toward me. I would have said he was master of all he surveys, but increasingly, I think he’s waiting for something.
Then yesterday, I nodded to him and he nodded back, and I realized that this wasn’t a man at all, just a broken wolf reflected in the crystalline plate-glass windows when the light is low.
Is this what happened to Aldrich, all those years ago, before he drove into the lamppost?
“Mr. Sorensson? I couldn’t reach Janine,” screeches Dahlia’s voice over the intercom on my phone, an agony in my sensitive ears. “That man from Great North is here again.”
Given that our lives are ruled by the calendar, you’d think the Pack would have figured out how to use iCal.
“Send him in. And Dahlia, could you arrange for someone to fix my intercom?”
A minute later, the door closes.
“No hard feelings?” says the low, cool voice.
“Of course not. Have a seat.”
Tiberius shakes his head. “As soon as we finish here, I’m going straight home.”
Leaning back in my chair behind the barricade of my desk, I cross my ankle to my knee.
“Can I just ask why the Great North no longer uses the phone?”
“Because the Great North has been betrayed once and has become cautious. We will not be betrayed again.”
We?
“I’m going to repeat: The Great North is getting paranoid.”
Tiberius turns, scanning the halls through the glass door.
“You know Maxim Trianoff contacted the Alpha.”
“Did he? And what did he want?”
“Wanted to tell the CEO of Great North that you were coming unhinged, spinning out of control. Said you’d had an accident on your way back from your last trip up there. Thought maybe you’d been drinking. You look better, by the way.”
“It was just a flesh wound.”
“Mmm. He seemed especially upset about the time and resources and goodwill you wasted on something about protecting wolves. Wolves.” He smiles and says quietly, “The Alpha commends your hard work.”
“And how did she leave things with Max?”
“She just said that you enjoyed the full confidence of the Great North, and she expected to hear nothing more on the subject. She did it in that way a good Alpha does, and he couldn’t wait to get off the phone.” Tiberius picks up the skull from my desk. “What’s this?”
It’s everything I can do to stop from launching myself across the polished oak to snatch it back.
“Fisher.” The thing looks so small and vulnerable in his big hand. “Be careful with it.”
He lowers his head a little and sniffs. “You marked it?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I touched it, that’s all.”
“You know as well as I do that there is a difference between marking and touching.” He takes another sniff. “Did you mark the woman who gave it to you as well?”
“And she is certainly none of your fucking business.” With a quick sweep of my forearm, the fisher skull is settled into the drawer next to the box of pine needles it came in. Then I jam the drawer shut, holding it closed with my thigh. “Now, why don’t you tell me your business.”
Tiberius touches his hand to his nose and draws in a slow, deep breath. His senses in skin are better than ours are as wolves. With every breath he takes, I feel exposed, my defenses stripped away.
He nods once as though confirming something to himself. “We will be having a lying-in soon, and the Alpha asks that you bring the necessary signature addenda with room for four new names.”
“Four? Tristan and Gabi always cull if there are over three. They—”
“There will be,” Tiberius insists tightly, “four.”
“And who are the parents?”
“Just bring the papers next moon.”
“It doesn’t work that way. I need the names of the adults who will be signing on their behalf.”
He stares out the window for a long time.
“Quicksilver Nilsdottir,” he says with a crack in his voice. “Tiberius Malasson.”
And for the first time, I see feeling in the Shifter’s dark face. It’s not anticipation or nervousness or joy. It’s nothing small or light. It’s pain and dread and guilt. He clamps his lips between his teeth, and the room reeks of salt and old leather. The unmistakable smell of fear.
I don’t know what to say to him. I can’t promise that his mate will make it. We use every bit of medical technology we can get our claws on, but we still lose females during the lying-in. Powerful females. Viable females. Females bearing only two. “Silver is strong of marrow,” I say, feeling the smallness of the comfort even as I say it. “And the whole of the Great North will be there for her. For you too, if it comes to that.”
Tiberius doesn’t pretend not to understand. He just slumps against the wall, his arms wrapped around his waist. He shakes his head and stares at the floor for a long time.
“I remember…” he finally says. “I remember when all I’d worry about was how to get rid of them. Women. How to get through those miserable morning hours before I could kick them out and start over. A clean slate.”
He rubs at his clipped beard, and I catch a glimpse of those freakish fangs that I’ve only heard about before.
“God, I miss it.” His shattered hand drops briefly to the braid at his neck, the sign of a mated wolf. “I miss the not caring.”
“Tiberius?”
He stops, his hand on the door, his head turned just a fraction.
“There will be room for four.”
Chapter 25
Hāmweard, ðu londadl hǽðstapa, in 4 days
Homeward, you landsick heath-wanderer, in 4 days
Vasco Colina’s text was cryptic to say the least, but after double- and triple-checking the address, I am in Hell’s Kitchen at nine like he said. The address he gave me is for a dive that was once called McCarran’s Lounge, but time and flaking paint has transformed the old neon into Carmen’s Lung.
He told me to wait outside. B SUBTLE, he said in capitals.
Not sure why I need to be subtle. In the half hour I’ve been here, only one man has come out. I try to look inside, but the diamond-shaped, mesh-reinforced window is covered with ancient stickers. ZAGAT RATED, 2002 NIGHTLIFE GUIDE.
Another reads THE HAPPIEST PLACE ON EARTH, though someone has scribbled a circle with a line through it in red ballpoint.
I wasn’t subtle enough to avoid a lackluster offer of a hand job. I smile my thanks and give the woman forty dollars anyway.
Then the door opens a crack. “Thanks,” says that voice, and my devastated wild bounds into the air. “I’ve got him.”
The door to the bar opens inward and stays open. There’s a lot of shuffling and rearranging. Thea’s clearly struggling with something unwieldy. I lean forward, pushing at a doorknob that is dark and sticky with the buildup of sweat and sugary drinks.
That voice starts to thank me but trails off.
“Elijah?”
“Thea?” Becau
se she is the person who is struggling. And the unwieldy burden is her uncle. Vasco is wobbling and stinks of liquor. But I know what liquor in the body smells like. It smells sickly sweet, not smoky and bitter like this. This is the smell of liquor on the body, not in it. Vasco is wearing his bourbon like a cologne.
I stutter a moment, partly because I am processing and partly because it seems appropriate to such a crazy coincidence.
“Here, let me help you.”
“Thanks,” Thea says, trying hard to take care of it herself. “I’ve got him now. It was just the door.”
“Are you sure?”
Thea nods, scanning the street for a cab, and Vasco’s eyebrows jump twice, shooting me a sly grin, before he starts to slide down.
I love you, you mad fox.
“Thea, let me at least help you get him into a cab.”
I take Vasco’s arm from around her shoulder, pretending to support him. Pretending, because as soon as he is not inconveniencing his niece, he holds himself up.
“Jesus, tío,” she mutters. “Why didn’t you wait for me?”
It takes some doing to get Vasco folded up into the cab. He makes it as difficult as physically possible for the two of us, and twice, he almost topples to the ground. Thea crawls in next to him, and while she buckles him in, he stares at me standing on the curb like a dolt.
I run around to the front passenger seat.
“Where are you going, Thea?”
“Penn Station? I’ve got to get him home. He lives in Southampton.”
I open the door and slide next to the driver, who is not happy to be moving his coat, his coffee, his Tupperware, and his Post to accommodate my oversize frame. I drag my legs in and fold them up.
“There’s a lever on the side of the seat,” the driver says. “To push it back.”
“Thanks, I’m good.” I click my own seat belt into place and bend low over my knees, unwilling to crush Vasco sprawled awkwardly behind me, his metal leg stretched across the hump.
“Penn Station,” I say before Thea’s hand pushes through the divider.
“You don’t have to do this.”
“I know. I’m just going to help you get him on the train. Then it’s an easy subway ride back to the apartment.”
The driver checks his rearview mirror and whispers harshly, “He’s not going to hurl back there, is he?”
“No.” I catch a glimpse of my shrewd ally in the mirror. “I think I can safely promise you that.”
• • •
Between the two of us, the wolf and the fox, we manage to make things just difficult enough for Thea to require my assistance all the way to the Montauk-bound train from Jamaica.
“I don’t know what to say. He doesn’t drink. Not really,” Thea says. “But thank you, Elijah.”
“It was nothing.” I stall, unsure what to do. “It was really, really nice to see you again.” I should be getting off now. “Maybe we—”
Then Vasco leans forward, gagging. We both leap to help him, but I get there first. “Take me to the bathroom,” he mutters softly.
Brilliant! The bathroom!
Vasco refuses to go in but stays in a corner where Thea can’t see him until the train pulls out of the station. Then we jerk back to the four seats facing each other.
Thea is mortified and so apologetic.
For my part, I check my reflection in the dark window just to be absolutely sure that I’m not grinning like a fool.
“Don’t worry.” I look at my phone. “I didn’t have anything tomorrow morning anyway.” With a few jabs of my finger, I make it true and slide my phone back into my breast pocket. “I’ll help you get him into a car and hop the late train back.”
• • •
She looks tired and disheartened. She balls up her coat against the cold of the train window and stares out into the night. The lights inside the train are so bright that Queens and Nassau are invisible, except for the glare of the occasional high-intensity halide streetlights.
Leaning my own head back, I pretend to sleep, but there’s no way I could. Instead, I revel in her nearness. In the smell of damp earth, in the anorak, the worn backpack, the black untamed hair slipping over her shoulder, the lines decorating the corners of her eyes like fine lace.
When she falls asleep under the bright lights, surrounded by vinyl and the smells of stale coffee and old doughnuts left from a million morning commuters, I move my leg so when she relaxes, her knee touches mine. I hold it there.
A couple of hours into the trip, a train passes us going the other direction. The stone-cold sober Vasco opens an eye and jerks his thumb toward the New York–bound track.
Last train, he mouths.
Somewhere inside me, my wild sits, head up, ears perked, legs taut.
“Thea?”
The train is almost empty by the time we reach the South Fork. In three months, it will be crowded. In five, it will be unendurable.
“Thea?” This time, I stroke the back of her hand. “We’re here.”
She jolts upright, craning to look out the window. Vasco makes a commendable show of looking sick and bleary as the wooden overhang and the sign for Southampton creep into view.
We steer his deadweight toward the parking lot, a long, narrow strip of asphalt populated by three cars: a slightly shabby, salt-eaten Mercedes, a rusted Fiat Spider, and that well-tended GMC truck of a vintage that requires a metal key that fits into a metal lock.
While Thea goes around to the driver’s side, I plant my feet, ready to lift Vasco into the high cab. “Clear off,” he hisses. And with a stuttering leap, he gains the seat, then lifts his metal leg with both hands, fitting it into place.
His niece is barely in the driver’s seat before I vault over the side panel and lean against the back of the cab. Thea bumps over the low curb and onto the road while I stretch out my legs and breathe in the grass clippings and wood chippings and motor oil and damp salt air. I listen to the waves crashing on a distant beach and stare at the stars. Ecstatic.
• • •
At the big wooden fence belonging to the absent Susannah Marks, Vasco continues to pretend to need my support while Thea fumbles with yet another key. As soon as she scrapes it against the lock, a dog starts barking furiously.
“Oh, shut up, Brutus,” Thea mutters. The door finally opens, and once again, Brutus comes running around the corner.
“Tío?” Thea says worriedly.
We are slightly stuck here. With Vasco playing at being unconscious with drink, Brutus may assume we have harmed the man. He slavers through the last few feet and then is caught short by a harsh growl and an Alpha stare. The mastiff skitters to a stop, his legs flailing as he tries to turn. What’s left of his tail droops, and with a low whimper, he twirls away.
“Allergies.” I bark out a cough and ostentatiously clear my throat. “Where are we going?”
Thea keeps looking toward the break in the hedge where Brutus disappeared, but Vasco starts to topple again, and she motions toward the small building beyond the cold frames.
A motion sensor turns on the light, a sure sign that Southampton is largely stripped of animal life. If we had motion sensors controlling lights at the Homelands, they’d be blinking on all night, every night, forever.
Vasco’s home is divided into two parts: one half is windowless and looks more like a large toolshed, and the other half is a tidy house.
It’s small like Thea’s place, but it has two doors leading to what I can only assume are a bedroom and a bathroom. It has a TV and a sofa and a microwave. And it is not a cabin in Buttfuck, New York. It is an open-concept bungalow in the Hamptons.
Thea whispers something to her uncle. He stumbles toward what smells like artificial lemons and hence is clearly the bathroom. She pauses and looks my way. A moment later, I’m there leaning over to hear her voi
ce. “Can you stay here for a second? Just listen. In case he needs help,” she says. “I’ll be right back.”
As soon as she goes through to what I assume is the bedroom, the door cracks open. “She tell you to stand there?” asks Colina.
“Hmm.”
“Well, don’t. Don’t need someone listening to me in the john.”
I stand back, not that it does anything. I can hear him in the bathroom from the living room.
“So,” he says, checking for Thea’s whereabouts, “now you owe me, right?”
“Absolutely. Anything.”
“If she’s still talking to you by the end, don’t you go screwing my niece on my sofa bed.”
A drawer closes, followed by the creak of floorboards under Thea’s feet.
“Did you hear me?”
“I heard you. She’s coming.”
The bathroom door closes softly.
“I think he’s okay. I mean, I haven’t heard anything.”
“Thanks, Elijah. Really. I’ve got it now.”
Please, Thea.
“Tío?” She waits until he opens the door.
Unsure what to do now, I head toward Colina’s refrigerator and the Montauk schedule attached to the front by a magnetized bottle opener. Running my finger down the list confirms that the last train is long gone. Next to it are phone numbers for the Long Island Veterans Center and the Northport VA Medical Center.
Thea leaves the bathroom, holding something that looks like a truncated rubber windsock.
“Is he okay?”
Please, Thea.
“He’ll be fine in the morning.” She turns on the faucet and pulls the sock inside out, squeezing soap on it.
“The last train is already gone.”
Please, Thea.
Her eyes flick to the schedule, and she makes a little tsk of disgust. “I’m so sorry. I forgot the last one is so early off-season. I could drive you back—”
“Of course not. I’ve got nothing in the morning, and it’s nice out here this time of year. I’ll just find a hotel.”
Please, Thea.