MICHELLE
She decides to skip the cereal in the end. With their parents still away, Rose and Tommy haven’t exactly been vigilant in things like making sure the milk in the fridge isn’t expired.
“Don’t you guys basically have coffee for blood, though?” Michelle asks, leaning against the counter and eating a pop tart instead.
Tommy shrugs. “We have it black if there’s no good milk. You still wanna watch the Muppets?”
“Hell yeah.”
“I think our DVDs are down in the basement. C’mon.”
Michelle avoids the basement whenever possible. She wishes she had more control over the privacy of her own room, so she wants to at least give Rose what she can’t have herself. But Tommy’s holding her hand, and Michelle doesn’t want to let go, so she follows him down the stairs.
As has always been the case when she enters the basement, Michelle’s eyes are immediately drawn to the easel.
The painting on it is quite clearly only half-finished, swathes of canvas still the white of the undercoat. Books are piled on the bench-top beside the paints and brushes, and there are photos held to the edges of the image with bulldog clips: the two boys from Elephant embracing in the shower, Mickey and Mallory Knox from Natural Born Killers.
There’s a photocopied page from exactly the kind of true crime book that Michelle used to have nightmares about; this one has one line of the text highlighted in neon yellow. It reads “When the two shooters at Columbine High School entered the campus with their guns, they were each wearing one glove from the same pair.”
There’s another piece of paper, this one in Rose’s handwriting, which says “You gave the troubled, angry teenager who lives in a basement full of horror movies and paintings she’s done of women being burned at the stake a gun to take to school? You two are the worst mentors I’ve ever met.”
The self-portrait painting on the canvas itself is done like a yearbook picture, if yearbook pictures involved Rose’s face staring out, sketchy and pleading, with her hands – one uncovered, one gloved –pressed to the sides of her throat, trying to stop the blood which is gushing out from unseen wounds. The blood is matting her hair and running in rivulets down her arms, splattering her shirt. The digital numbers on her wristwatch, which glow white-gold through the blood, read 00:00.
Below the picture, where in real yearbooks an inspirational quote or a message to friends might be printed, Rose has written “Your mouth is gone but I’m still bleeding”.
Michelle turns away from the picture, to Tommy. “You might be right. Your sister might be kind of a train wreck.”
The rest of the room, apart from the art studio area, is a complete wreck. Michelle’s got a kind of distant appreciation for how messy Rose is in how she lives. Michelle would be a slob if she had the option, but so much of her life is organised and controlled for her— cleaners, doctors, school uniforms— that she sort of just follows the pattern set before her, and keeps things in the ordered state they’re set in.
Rose is anything but ordered. Everything about her, from her uncombed hair to her ragged singing voice to her room’s chaotic state is disordered, strange. Unique.
Tommy is standing stock-still. “Something’s wrong. Something’s happened.”
“What?” Michelle asks, not understanding.
“There was a fight here. It’s all—” Tommy waves his hands at the mess in front of them. “Disarrayed. Like there was a struggle.”
Michelle can’t see any difference between the current mess and ones she’s seen here in the past. She trusts Tommy, though. “Fuck. Okay. You try calling her, see if this is a false alarm. I’ll—” What? What can she do? When did her world turn into the kind of place where this was stuff she needed to think about?
The idea comes to her like a thunderclap. “I’ll call Ash,” she tells Tommy, who’s already got his phone to his ear as he tries to contact his sister.
Ash answers on the third ring. “Hey.”
“Hey,” Michelle replies. “Are you at home now?”
“Yeah, but I’m going to head back out in a couple of minutes. Going to Scrimshaw, do you want to meet me?”
“Can you come to Tommy’s? Don’t tell anyone you’re going, or act like anything’s weird. But get here as fast as you can.”
“See you soon,” Ash promises without question, and ends the call. Michelle feels grateful that Ash is weird enough herself to accept weirdness in others fairly easily, and agrees to their odd demands. If something bad has happened, the last thing they need is the whole population of the townhouse getting involved and making everything worse.
“No answer,” Tommy tells Michelle, shoving his phone back into his pocket, mouth a thin worried line.
He doesn’t suggest calling the police, or even his parents, so it’s obvious his thoughts are in the same direction as Michelle’s. Rose has no real enemies— bullies and bitches at school who make life miserable don’t count; they wouldn’t come to her home, ransack her room. This has to have been done by someone else. Someone from the life Rose is trying not to lead anymore, and that means it’s someone that police and parents would be no help against.
“We should go upstairs until Ash is here,” Michelle says. “So we don’t…” disturb the crime scene, she doesn’t say, but Tommy and Michelle are one of those couples who click, who’re on a shared wavelength, who can finish each other’s sentences. So even though she didn’t say it, she still knows that Tommy hears. Michelle squeezes his hand and moves closer, willing silent support to him.
While they spend twenty of the most awkward, worried minutes of Michelle’s life waiting for Ash in the kitchen, sitting unmoving and unspeaking at the table together, Michelle wonders if that’s the real secret to some of the powers the vampires have.
Maybe their senses are sharp and sensitive enough, their minds quick enough, that they can catch a person’s quirks and personality so fast that they can accurately guess their thoughts and feelings. That same uncanny level of perception that lovers have between them, but formed instantly.
Michelle shudders. If she’s right, that makes it even worse that vampires kill so mercilessly and so casually. It was bad enough when she thought they didn’t care about humans, didn’t think of them as proper people.
But killing them if they know them, understand them, are as close to their hearts and souls as Michelle is to Tommy… somehow, that seems worse. Because it means that vampires comprehend the lives they’re devouring. And they swallow anyway.
“Ash will be able to tell if there’s blood in the basement,” Tommy says to himself, like he’s testing the concept to see how deeply it cuts.
“It’s lucky we’ve got her,” Michelle murmurs. “Otherwise we’d have to call Lily and Will.”
“Like calling in a bull to investigate a china shop,” agrees Tommy. “They’d charge straight over to Blake’s and start yelling and throwing punches.”
“Yeah,” says Michelle, and then her mild front crumbles. “God. What’re we going to do?”
His hand’s shaking, just a little, as it envelopes hers against the wood of the table top. “Right now, we’re gonna wait for Ash to get here.”
~
They don’t have to wait long. Ash’s hair and clothes are windswept when she arrives, making it clear that she’s run the whole way, but her cheeks are winter-pale, no flush from the exertion, and she doesn’t have breath to be out-of-breath with. Michelle damps down on the instinctual revulsion she feels at Ash’s obvious inhumanity. She hates how viscerally her senses scream ‘predator!’ around Ash, because all it does is remind Michelle that Michelle is that predator’s favourite kind of prey. Michelle is nobody’s fucking victim.
Tommy and Michelle stay in the kitchen while Ash goes down to the basement. Michelle can’t hear anything of the other girl, not even footsteps on the stairs, but she can imagine it easily enough. Needless breaths inhaled to search for scents, diamond-clear eyes searching for tiny details and their
meanings.
The ringtone of Michelle’s cell startles her so badly that she jumps as if struck. It’s the tone she has set for Jay, a recording of him saying, flatly and faintly sardonically, “Answer your phone, Michelle, it’s destiny calling”, with the sounds of the mall a dull roar in the background. She’d recorded him saying it one afternoon when they were hanging around doing nothing. She can still remember the judgemental arch of his eyebrows as he gave in to her pestering.
“Hi, you,” she says as she answers the call, more grateful for him than she’s ever been before.
“Chelle,” Jay says, voice raw and scared and damp, as if he’s trying not to cry. He sounds completely unlike the Jay of the recorded ringtone. “We’re at my place.”
“Who’s at your place? Jay, you’ve gotta be careful, something’s maybe happened to Rose and—”
“Rose is here,” he interrupts. “She’s… she’s here. It’s okay; I don’t think Cora knows where I live. Get Ash to come here. Not Blake or Bette or Lily. Not Sofie.” He sounds like he’s struggling to breathe. “I’m sorry, Chelle.”
“We’ll be there soon as we can. You just wait for us there,” she says, because she’s in completely over her head and has no idea what you’re supposed to say to somebody in this kind of situation. It’s not like there’s an instruction book on what the correct procedure is when your life loses the floor from underneath it.
Jay makes a wordless sound of relief at her assurances, and then ends the call. Michelle turns to Tommy. “Rose is okay,” she tells him, even though she knows that isn’t what Jay said. It’s what Tommy needs to hear. “They’re at Jay’s place. I guess Cora made the mistake of trying to kidnap one of the only kids in the world who’s ever broken out of a vampire lair before.”
Michelle gets to her feet, using the momentary nervous energy she’s flooded with to get as much done as possible. “Ash,” she calls from the top of the stairs down to the basement. “Jay and Rose are at Jay’s. Come on.”
They call the same car service that the vampires usually use, because they’re faster than cabs and Ash is paying. Michelle’s never had to live without money, but she knows people who have, and she’s heard that stupid line about how money doesn’t buy happiness over and over. But it’s not true, not exactly. Like, obviously money doesn’t make a person’s problems just go away: Michelle is still mentally ill. Ash still got kicked out by her parents. Even expensive schools have bullies and assholes to deal with in them.
But money makes everything smoother. To be mentally ill and to not be able to afford all the medicine and doctors she has, that would be a thousand times worse. To be kicked out and not know a household who can afford take you in would be horrific.
To have to wait for a cab, and then to have to be quiet or talk in code in the back seat, or to not be able to even get a cab in the first place—those situations would make this night more complicated than Michelle can stand. Having money takes away considerations like that.
Michelle’s dad always says that money brings security, but Michelle thinks what it might really bring is freedom.
“We need to stop and get Sofie,” says Ash, once they’re in the car and moving.
“Jay said not to,” Michelle tells her.
“I don’t care. I knew it was Cora before you got that call—I could smell her all over Rose’s basement.” Ash trails off, staring down at her hands, at the scars visible on her wrists below the cuffs of her shirt. “Cora’s some serious, final-boss-of-the-video-game shit here, okay? And Sofie’s the only person I know who’s ever taken her on and won.”
Michelle hasn’t heard the full story of what happened in Colorado, but even with only the fragments she knows, she knows that isn’t true. Sofie didn’t even get out of there alive without Alexander’s help.
And the game clearly wasn’t done then, anyway, or they wouldn’t all be where they are now.
She opens her mouth to argue with Ash, but Tommy cuts her off. “Yes. We’ll get Sofie,” he says quietly.
They may not be close like Tommy and Rose are, but Jay and Sofie are still brother and sister. And if they’re running to help Jay and Rose, then Tommy’s really the only one qualified to make the call as to whether Sofie gets included or not. So Michelle just nods, and gives the new directions to the driver.
ALEXANDER
“Gretchen has never forgiven herself for it, you know. It would mean a lot to her if you’d give her a chance to apologise to you.”
“It’s not my responsibility to nurse Gretchen’s conscience.” Nicole moves a piece. “I win.”
Alexander looks down. It’s a classic two-pawn checkmate. He sighs and shakes his head. “I thought for sure I’d beaten you this time.”
“Everyone always forgets the pawns,” Nicole gloats, putting the pieces back into their drawers below the board. “I haven’t played chess in a long time. It’s nice to see I’m still naturally better at it than you.”
“Why haven’t you played? I thought you loved it?”
Nicole shrugs. “I used to play it with Algy. After he died, I didn’t want to anymore. You never met him, did you? No, you never had the chance, we lived in Canada and never made it down here before he was killed. It was in the Great War.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It was stupid and human of him to go. We hardly ever had serious arguments, but that was our worst. He demanded to know what the point of him was, if it wasn’t to be stupid and human. I had no answer for him. We were still angry when he left.” Nicole looks down at her hands, as white as the white squares on the chessboard below them. “We exchanged letters, of course. Said sorry for the words we’d thrown. But I never saw him again.”
Shaking the memory off like water droplets, she flips the top of the gaming table over to its green felt side. “I like this house, by the way. If you decide to sell, let me know.”
“Thinking of making yourself a summer home?” Alexander asks. Nicole snorts, shuffling a deck of cards like a seasoned sharp.
“I’m as likely to become a city girl – even a part-time one – as you are to become a country boy, Alex. But it never hurts to have spare hideaways. Speaking of which, I like the lock system on my walk-in closet. It’s got that charming ‘paranoid militia stockpiling canned food’ touch to it.”
“I completely agree. It’s overkill. I just picked the most comprehensive security system I could find. After all, as everyone says, if I can break into it—”
“Then Cora can break into it.” Nicole rolls her eyes, laying out a game of poker between them. “You give her too much credit. She’s not nearly so smart as she styles herself to be, or as cunning. Her only good trick is that she’s got an eye for the weaknesses of others. It makes it seem as if she has no weak points of her own in comparison.
“Anyway, enough of that. Let’s play a while, then go hunting, and then go see that little girl you want me to look at.”
Alex grins and picks up his cards. Nicole has always beaten him at chess, but at this game they’re better matched. They’re both skilled at playing the hand they’re dealt to best advantage.
MICHELLE
Jenny and Sofie’s downstairs neighbours are a middle-aged black couple who are more than happy to do emergency babysitting duty when Jenny asks. The curt, self-assured nod that the little girl gives Sofie as she says goodbye makes Michelle think that there are probably things which aren’t toys in the Dora the Explorer backpack that Min wears. Usually, that would give Michelle pause, but right now she’s just glad that they aren’t leaving one part of themselves vulnerable as they race to protect another.
When they finally, finally get to Jay’s apartment building, Michelle tells the town car to wait downstairs until she personally comes out and tells the driver to do otherwise. Whatever’s upstairs, she needs to know that there’s an escape method ready before she can face it.
The front door is ajar by a few inches when the five of them reach it. The apartment beyond the door is small, and
smells like teenage boy. Rose is on the bed. Her pants are too dark for Michelle to tell the extent of the bloodstains, but Rose’s white shirt is marred by several large brown-red blooms in various stages of drying out. She isn’t breathing.
Jay’s clothes are much the same as Rose’s. He’s sitting with his back against the side of the bed, his phone still in his hand. It looks like he died while looking out of the small window, which doesn’t have much of a view beyond it. His eyes are still open.
Michelle moves before she’s aware that she means to. She crouches beside Jay and closes his eyes carefully. His lashes are wiry and damp against her fingertips.
There are six or seven bites on Rose’s arms that Michelle can see, plus another three on her throat. Some of them are still bleeding.
“She has a pulse,” Michelle says, her voice sounding like it belongs to someone else.
The words seem to jolt life back into Jenny, even as the rest of them remain frozen. Jenny moves quickly to the other side of the bed from where Michelle is still crouched beside Jay, and tilts Rose’s head back. She checks her mouth for blockages, and tosses something aside before breathing into Rose’s mouth.
Michelle stares at it on the floor where it lands, unable to pull her gaze away for long seconds, as if staring hard enough will make it something else, something that isn’t bloodied spit and eyeteeth.
“Jenny, stop,” Sofie pleads, trying to push Jenny away from where she works at resuscitating Rose. “Jen, she’s already got fangs, she’s chang-”
“She’s still alive,” Jenny snaps, bending down again to push more air into Rose’s lungs.
“Then let her die!” Sofie’s voice is almost a scream. “Don’t leave her stuck in between.”
“Call the paramedics,” Jenny says to the rest of them. She’s returning to her work when Rose coughs and chokes suddenly, spewing blood over herself. She’s still unconscious when the spasm passes, but breathing on her own in an uneven, harsh rattle.
The Wolf House: The Complete Series Page 81