The Wolf House: The Complete Series

by Mary Borsellino

  Ash is the one who moves, who dials the number. Sofie is staring at Jenny with a look of furious, hopeless rage, as if Jenny has betrayed her terribly.

  Ineffectually, Tommy tries to wipe some of the worst of the blood off Rose’s face.

  Sofie looks away from Jenny, focusing on Michelle instead. “We need to hide the body,” she says. “Before the paramedics get here. Help me get it into the closet.”

  The closet’s mostly empty, because Jay leaves his clothes scattered on the floor, so the three of them should fit without a problem. Michelle knows she should be thankful for small mercies, but she’s climbing into a tiny enclosed space with the dead body of her best friend and his creepy sister, so she’s not really in a thankful mood.

  Jay’s body is cool, but not stiff. Michelle doesn’t think she’d be able to hold herself together if she touched a body that had gone into rigor. There’s not much gore, either. Not that Michelle can see anything now— with the door closed, the closet is pitch-dark— but she noticed while they were moving him. There are cuts on his arms, but not many. Not like Ash has. Not like Rose has. Jay’s wounds are deeper, more deadly. Cora must have realized that he’d escape if she kept him alive.

  Michelle feels a flutter of dark, horrible triumph that Jay managed to ruin even Cora’s curtailed plans.

  Sofie is quiet and still in the closet, almost as quiet and still as the body on her crossed legs. She’s cradling Jay’s head, clearly knowing without asking that Michelle couldn’t handle that task. Jay’s feet are on Michelle’s lap, bare and dirty and bloodied. That seems so awful and unfair, in a way deeper and bigger than words can describe. Jay was her friend, he was funny and clever and cruel and fucking brave, he saved Rose’s life, and he died barefoot. Michelle has to press her palm over her mouth and bite down hard to stop herself from howling.

  Time crawls, until Michelle is sure with every breath that she’s break before the next one. She’ll scream or punch the flimsy closet door beside her or wet herself, give their hiding place away.

  The rational part of her mind knows that it won’t be the end of the world if they get discovered. It’ll mean questions and complications, and Ash calling in even more favors than she’ll have to for Rose at the hospital, but that’s all. Nothing truly awful. Just difficult.

  But staying quiet gives Michelle something to do, a job to focus on because if she doesn’t have something required of her, a silence to accomplish, then everything will fall apart. She bites her palm again, and breathes.

  It occurs to her, as she hears the paramedics arrive in the room outside the closet, that she isn’t scared of Cora. Rather, Michelle knows with a sureness hard as diamond that if Cora arrived at Jay’s apartment now then Sofie and Michelle would kill her.

  The knowledge feels different to the other terrible thoughts Michelle’s had, the other times she’s known she was capable of something awful. There’s passion and contempt and fury in her heart, of course— she’s still holding Jay’s bare, dead feet, for fuck’s sake— but as well as those burning emotions there’s a soft, steady certainty, a simple part of who she is from this moment on: her name is Michelle, she loves her friends, she loves music, and she will kill Cora.

  Tommy and Jenny and Ash all go with Rose when the paramedics wheel her out. Michelle thinks she’s glad about that. The rest of this should belong to just the three of them, the ones here in the smallness of the dark.

  “We can move him now,” Sofie says. Her voice is hoarse, as if they’ve been sitting without speaking for even longer than the reality: for days, months. Maybe Sofie is trying not to cry. That’s such an odd thought to think about her, because Michelle can’t imagine Sofie crying. She just doesn’t seem like someone who does. She’d fight and despair and run away, sure, but crying’s too vulnerable, too useless.

  Maybe the old Sofie wouldn’t have the problem of trying not to cry. Michelle has heard about the old Sofie, but never met her. That Sofie faded once she met Will and Jenny, rediscovered Jay, took Min under her wing.

  That’s the real cost of love, Michelle thinks. The cost of loving people is loving people. They get inside you where you’re soft, where you can be hurt.

  They put Jay on the bed. He still looks just like Jay, but at the same time he looks so still, like it would be ridiculous to imagine that his limbs ever moved, his mouth ever smiled. He’s like a sculpture or a doll.

  Sofie’s shoulders are slumped, one hand touching aimlessly at Jay’s unmoving chest, skimming over the buttons of his shirt and the skewed angle of his collar. The paling pallor of his skin makes his hair and lashes seem darker than they did when he was alive.

  “He used to steal my dolls,” Sofie says quietly, the flat affect of her voice sounding even colder and more passionless than usual. “I never had that many. Liam bought us everything we needed, but we always travelled light. So I only had a few, and Jay stole almost all of them. I’d do things to them. Make them fucked up. He’d steal them and try to glue their legs back on and wrap tissues around where I’d hacked all their hair off, dress them up so it wasn’t so obvious that I’d cut off their fingers and burned holes in their chests.”

  Michelle barely hears her, too caught up wondering what horrors still lie in store. What is there’s nothing left of Jay’s mind when it comes back from being dead? Will they destroy him if he’s a speechless, savage monster? Do they even have the right to do that, if that’s what they decide they have to do? Michelle can’t imagine Blake looking after Jay through the years to come if Jay returns as dependent, defenceless, but maybe she’s underestimating Blake.

  Maybe. But she doesn’t think so. And Sofie clearly thinks that death is kinder than a damaged life, which makes Michelle want to punch her. Michelle’s brain might spend a lot of time trying to convince her to end it, but that doesn’t mean she’s going to let anyone else tell her that her life isn’t worth having. Broken as she is, Michelle knows she’s fucking worthy.

  “It won’t be long,” Sofie says. Her voice is calmer now, smoother, the hoarse tremble schooled out of it with the icy self-control Michelle expects from her.

  Even if Sofie’s beyond crying, Michelle sure as hell isn’t. She looks down at Jay’s body and begins to sob.

  ALEXANDER

  “If you don’t mind me asking, what is it that you so strongly object to about city living? Not the whole year round, of course—not with your horses to consider—but not at all? Really?”

  “Light pollution,” Nicole tells him. “I can’t stand not being able to see the stars if I want. I like the way we measure the distance to them by time, not space. I find it comforting. You know—they’re this many years of light away. After a while time and space start to feel like different names for the same distance anyway.”

  “I know what you mean,” Alexander agrees. “We are this many miles and this many years away from a moment or a person, both in a direction we can never travel.”

  “Our steps are always forward.” Nicole gives him a sudden broad smile. “And thank heaven for that. Now let’s go see the child that Cora dumped on you, the one you think she’s trying to manipulate me with.”

  “You don’t need to sound sarcastic. Cora’s got something in motion, and I’m sure you’re a part of it.”

  Nicole shrugs. “Let her bring it on. I’ve got better things to lose sleep over. Now hurry up and call the girls who’re looking after the young one.”

  Alexander hits Jenny’s name in his phone’s address book. She answers on the third ring.

  “Alex, I’ll call you back in a second. I didn’t realise I still had this on. One second.”

  It’s about five minutes before she rings back. “Sorry. I had to go outside the building and I couldn’t find my jacket.” Jenny takes a deep breath. “Alex, I’m at the hospital. Rose is having a transfusion and dressings done. Cora got her and Jay.”

  Alex musters every particle of diplomacy inside himself, trying very, very hard not to raise his voice or get demonstrably an
gry at her. He succeeds maybe halfway.

  “When something like this happens, you contact us immediately,” he tells her, icy and absolute. “Before you do anything else. You do not let me find out when I call you for an unrelated reason sometime later.”

  “Ash is here,” Jenny says, as if that’s a reasonable excuse. Instead, it just gives Alexander someone else he’s angry at as well.

  “Is Jay there with you as well? Where’s Min? I’ll send guards to each location, and come to you myself. Blake will go to Jay and Tim to Min, if they’re in different places.”

  “You don’t need to send anyone, it’s—”

  “I’m not asking you.” Alexander keeps his voice as level as he can. “I’m telling you.”

  “Min is with the people in the apartment below us,” Jenny answers, her own voice now as steely as Alexander’s. “Jay is at his own apartment. Sofie and Michelle stayed with him. He got himself and Rose away from Cora. He saved Rose’s life.” The steel in her words warps, trembling on the edge of tears. “He died, though, Alex. Jay died. He’ll probably be waking up soon.”

  Alexander bites back a tirade of berating; there’ll be time for that conversation later. Instead, he says “All right. Give me the exact address of all three places, and then wait for me.”

  When he’s got the information he needs, Alex ends the call and contacts Mikhail, arranging vampires to be sent to each location but to remain concealed, watchful for any signs of Cora.

  With that task out of the way, it’s time to call Timothy and Blake. Alexander hesitates, composing himself.

  “I can call Tim,” Nicole offers, efficient and gentle. “And go to that same site myself, where the girl is. You just call Blake.”

  “Thank you.” Alexander squeezes her hand. She nods, collecting her own phone from a shelf by the door and moving away to make the call.

  Alexander hits Blake’s name in the phone. It rings once, and then he can hear Cora laughing.

  “That took much longer than I expected. Whatever happened to instant communication? The boy broke the girl out almost two hours ago and word’s only getting from you to Blake now? I should have started lending a hand years ago. You clearly need the help. And more secure cell phones.”

  “Blake will kill you for—”

  “No he won’t,” Cora cuts him off cheerily. “I’m doing exactly. What. He. Wants. What he was too weak to do himself. When the fuck did you all get so bogged down with niceties and moral codes? Outrage at bitten children, angst over aging lovers? What the hell happened to you guys?” she sniggers. “You changed, man. You sold out. It used to be about the music. You’ve gone straight.”

  “If Blake had wanted to kill Jay, he was perfectly capable—”

  “No he wasn’t. That’s why I did it. Now he gets all the benefits, none of the blame. I’m the perfect scapegoat. The best of all possible worlds. You’ve got your lover next to your heart again, and now Blake will have his. That wretched little artist girl Nell has her eye on got in the way, so I decided that Nell deserved to get what she wants too. After all, if she hadn’t killed Blake, Blake wouldn’t have killed me.”

  “Bullshit,” Alexander snaps. “You’ve never done anything for anyone’s benefit but your own. What’s the game, Cora?”

  She giggles. “You’ll see.”

  The line goes dead for one second, then begins to ring again.

  “Hello?” Blake says. Alex takes a deep breath, and begins to speak.

  MICHELLE

  When Jay’s eyes open and he rolls onto his side, vomiting blood and eye teeth onto the carpet near her feet, the first thing Michelle thinks is this is like the most fucked up Hansel and Gretel ever.

  It’s because of the teeth, lying there on the floor like the stones left in a trail by the kids in the story. But once the thoughts are in her head, all Michelle can see is the end of the fairytale, when the children push the witch into the oven.

  Cora tried to burn Will to death in Colorado. She herself, however, seems to Michelle to be indestructible.

  Michelle forces herself to remember what Gretchen said. Vampires are vulnerable. Perhaps as much as humans are.

  Jay’s down to dry heaves now, so Michelle helps him sit up on the edge of the bed. He coughs shakily, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Rose?”

  Sofie visibly relaxes when she sees her brother is still capable of coherent speech. “Alive, when the paramedics took her,” she tells him. “She should be at the hospital and out of the woods by now.”

  No, Michelle thinks. We’re none of us out of the woods yet. And dark things are waiting between the trees.

  “You need to get away from me,” Jay says abruptly to Michelle, grabbing at the edge of the bed and bowing his head, not looking at her. “Please.”

  She steps backward until she hits the far wall, keeping her eyes on Jay the whole time. Not that she’s actually moved that far, since it’s a small room, but hopefully it’s enough to make a difference.

  “If I try to… hurt her,” Jay says to Sofie haltingly. “You have to stop me.”

  She nods, but Michelle doesn’t really believe her. She doubts that Jay does either.

  There’s no chance for it to become a problem one way or the other, though, because less than a minute later Blake arrives.

  “Alexander spoke to Jenny,” he explains as he enters the room, walking over and dropping to his knees in front of where Jay sits, cupping the boy’s face with his slim hands carefully.

  “Oh,” Blake says, his tone almost reverent as he looks at Jay’s changed face. They stare at one another, unspeaking. Michelle can’t look at them—it’s too raw, too private. She drops her gaze and notices that the pants of Blake’s immaculate pale grey suit are ruined from the bloodied carpet.

  The moment shatters as another heaving shudder makes Jay curl in on himself. He holds an arm across his thin belly and gasps in pain.

  The flesh of his arms is marked now, the deep cuts healed to scars like Ash’s. But even more than what’s there, what Michelle sees is what’s missing. Jay used to have a dusting of pale freckles across his forearms, but now the skin under the scars is smooth and white. That small loss alone is enough to make Michelle want to cry again.

  She doesn’t, though. She’ll let herself cry again when all of this is finished and Cora’s dead. Not before.

  “This won’t help much. After turning, it’s human blood you need. But it’s something,” Blake tells Jay as he brings one hand away from Jay’s face and to his own throat, slashing open a vein with one quick motion.

  Jay leans forward and locks his mouth against the wound. His hands move, restless and aimless, over the fabric of Blake’s shirt and vest, grasping at his shoulders and sliding down his arms. Blake holds his head in place, stroking his hair gently. Jay whimpers. Michelle can see his throat moving as he swallows.

  “I’m going where Jenny is,” Sofie says, walking out of the apartment without a glance back. After a second of indecision, Michelle follows her.

  The town car is still parked down on the street, waiting for them. Michelle gives the driver the name of the hospital that the paramedics said they were taking Rose to. Then she sits back against the leather seat and stares out the window, just as Sofie’s doing on the other side of the car. Neither of them can think of anything to say.

  ALEXANDER

  Ash and Jenny are sitting together in the waiting area of the emergency room, which is just as depressing to look at as such places traditionally are. Alex can hear their conversation before they become aware that he’s there; they’re made unobservant by exhaustion and stress.

  “I don’t believe in ghosts, not like that,” Ash says. “I mean, if I’m even allowed to say that, since I guess I’m technically part of the afterlife myself. But I had this dream once, when I was going through a really bad time. About my sister. It was like it was really her, not just a part of my own subconsciousness. She said there hadn’t been anyone there to sav
e her, or to save me, but that one day I’d have a chance to save another sister. So… so Rose has gotta live. She’s got to. Otherwise it didn’t mean anything.”

  Jenny sees Alexander then, her expression going closed-off and pinched. “Tommy’s in with Rose,” she tells him. “Their parents are on the way. Driving back from an out-of-state work thing. The nurses told us that they think she’s going to be okay.”

  “Come on, then,” Alexander says. “We’re going to go have a very serious conversation.”

  ~

  They go to the hospital’s 24-hour cafeteria. Even the light seems washed-out and tired here, to say nothing of the sparse scattering of people. Nobody ever listens to other people’s conversations in places like this, for fear of tragedies they might overhear and catch like grief-borne pathogens.

  The three of them sit down in one corner, armed with foam cups of hot water garnished with limp tea bags. None of them braves a sip.

  “You’re self-sufficient,” Alexander says, deciding to address Jenny first. “It’s an admirable quality. But it makes you an easy target. This time, I’m just angry at you because you didn’t let me know about things for which I should have been your first call. You thought you could handle it yourself, because you’ve always had to handle it yourself, because there are always children whom the world forces an early growing-up upon. You’re one. So was I. That’s how I know.

  “But it’s better that I get angry at you now than for you to learn the hard way. People like you are the easiest prey in the world for people like Cora. Fuck, even their name says it all: con artists. Confidence artists. You’re so easy to trap, because they make you so goddamn confident that you’re smarter than they are. Then, your pride can’t let you admit when they’ve got you in over your head. Cora conned us all, and look at all the destruction she’s been able to bring down on us just because we were so damn cocky, so sure that she couldn’t get the better of us.

  “You’ve spent so long having to look after yourself that you don’t know how to ask for help when you need it. Maybe you can’t even tell when you need it anymore, because you’re so used to doing without. But you aren’t on your own, Jennifer. You don’t need to handle every challenge alone.”