“He’s not a real boy anymore,” the me on the video said, half asleep. “He only finks he is.”
Was I talking about Roane?
“Who, baby?” Ruthie asked.
“The boy who died. He keeps licking me.”
Ruthie stilled on the video.
I stilled in real life.
“Sweetheart, what do you mean? Who keeps licking you?” she asked.
“The boy who finks he’s a boy, but he’s not.”
Ruthie looked back at the chief, who wasn’t the chief quite yet, as he filmed, her face full of concern. “And he licks you?”
I nodded. “He licks my fingers when I’m asleep, because he’s not a boy anymore. He doesn’t remember he’s dead. I keep telling him, but he keeps forgetting.”
Ruthie looked up again. “I’ll have Mark and Kerry keep an eye on her,” she said, referring to my dads. “We can’t put this off. I’ve already cast the spell.”
Houston agreed, and the screen went black.
“That’s it! I am so out of here!” Pushing the laptop toward Nette, I jumped off the bed and sprinted back to my suitcase.
Eight
If I’m ever known as the one who got away,
it will be from an asylum.
-Meme
Five minutes later, the suitcase temporarily forgotten, I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, my lungs still stuck in overdrive. “You’re a rock, remember? Nothing fazes you.” Not a lie when I’d said it to Ruthie earlier. Definitely a lie now. “Dead children licking my fingers? No, thank you. No. Nuh-uh. No siree bob.”
Annette stood beside me, Lamaze-ing me through my panic attack.
“I didn’t understand what you meant at first.” Ruthie stood on my other side. “Not until I met a certain young man who could shapeshift into a wolf. Who’d once been a wolf.”
“Roane,” I said his name, calming just a little. The man had two polarizing effects on me. He either soothed my nerves or spiked my adrenaline. Most often it was the latter.
“Think about it,” Ruthie said.
I was thinking about it. A two-ton truck couldn’t stop me from thinking about it. Yes, I’d turned a wolf into a boy. But he’d been alive. “In the video, I said the little boy was dead.”
“True. But I have a theory.” She always had a theory. And, more often than not, it was right.
“I have a theory too,” Annette said.
I looked at her expectantly.
She immediately backtracked. “Oh, no. I want to hear Ruthie’s first. See if mine holds water.”
“Then I shall proceed,” Ruthie said. “From what I’ve been able to gather, to create a living being from something no longer living, you need spirit and flesh.”
“Like when I brought you back from the veil.”
“Yes.”
I drew in a deep breath. “Okay.”
“You did save that boy that night—something I didn’t even consider until you saved me.”
I squinted. “I’m kind of following you.”
“Me neither,” Annette said. “Kind of.”
“I think you unknowingly pulled his soul out of the veil. But that was only half the equation. You needed flesh. You needed a physical mass.”
“The wolf cub?”
“Exactly.” Her gaze held a hint of astonishment, like I was some amazing being she was just getting a glimpse of. Just beginning to understand. “You extracted the boy’s spirit from the veil and used the wolf cub to recreate him.”
“But why didn’t Roane remember who he was? He only remembered being a wolf.”
She crossed her arms. “Trauma.”
“Of course,” Annette said. “Think about what happened to him just before you changed him, Deph.”
It was a horrible story. Roane’s parents were in a violent custody battle. His father, in an unforgivable act of depravity to make his mother pay, to make her regret ever leaving him, killed his own son. By the time my magics found them, Roane the boy was already gone, so the magics turned the wolf into the boy. Or so I thought. Maybe there was more to it than that.
“It makes sense.” Rather astonished myself, I turned and leaned against the sink. “Especially knowing what we know now with you. That pulling a spirit from the other side is possible.”
“There are spirits wandering the Earth veil-free all the time. So why am I flesh as well?”
I chewed a thumbnail for a moment. “I had to use something living to create you.” I could almost see the pride swelling inside her. “But if that’s the case, Ruthie, what are you?”
The grin that lit up her beautiful face had Annette and I both drooling. “Are you sure you can handle it?”
“Yes!” Annette shouted a little too loudly, her excitement echoing off the walls.
“I think?” I was a little more wary. Live and learn, right?
“You used the closest living creature near us.”
“And that would be?” I braced myself. Literally. Against the sink.
“A mouse.”
I blinked.
“There must have been one under the stove or under the floorboards.” Nette almost squealed.
It had happened in the kitchen, so that made sense. “I made you from a mouse? Because the laws of physics—”
“Don’t apply,” she said.
“Good thing Ink wasn’t around.” Annette snickered. “Oh! Can you shapeshift into a mouse like Roane can a wolf?”
“I’ve had a couple of very long conversations with Roane about that. It took him years, and I think something triggered it.”
“Probably puberty,” I teased.
“I think that’s it exactly.”
“He told you that?”
“Not in so many words. He just said he was thirteen the first time he shifted.”
“Poor guy. To go through all of that alone, not knowing what happened to him.”
“I think we’re all forgetting something very important here,” Annette said.
Ruthie and I looked at her.
“What does any of this have to do with a dead boy licking Deph’s fingers?”
“I think it was Roane,” Ruthie answered.
Okay, there was some potential here for the whole dead boy thing becoming less disturbing. “What makes you say that?”
“After you brought me back, I was connected to you in your dreams as well. I still am.”
I turned toward her. “You were the light. You helped Percy keep the warlock from finding me.”
“I did. Only a little. Your grandfather did most of the heavy lifting.”
“So, you think Roane came into my dreams and licked my fingers.”
“Of course,” Annette said in an aha moment. “He thought he was still a wolf cub. He would absolutely lick you to show affection.”
We all stopped and let that sink in.
“Is it just me or is this room a little warm?” I asked. “And a little crowded?”
They both fanned themselves, feeling the heat as well.
Ruthie led me out of the bathroom and back to the bed, and we both sat.
Annette tagged along. “Did you think like a mouse when you materialized, Ruthie? Because that would be crazy.”
“No, but a part of me knew, if that makes sense.”
“I think the real question is”—I narrowed my eyes—“did you crave cheese?”
A hiccup of laughter escaped her before she could stop it. “I did have a sudden desire for Cheez-its.”
After a solid round of teasing, Annette left for her room, which I had yet to actually see. We’d decided to order takeout, but not till later, still satiated from our delicious lunch.
After telling me the chief was dropping by to check on things, Ruthie retreated back to her chamber under the stairs.
I’d wanted to ask her what was going on, why she didn’t want to see him, but she’d seemed tired. No, exhausted. I could only hope bringing her out of the veil hadn’t damaged her in some way. Although the fatigue
had only hit when she’d mentioned Houston.
As for me, I went into the bathroom again. Looking into the mirror, I gave up on the pep talk and studied my reflection. My dark hair, only mildly ravaged after the girls-gone-wild session earlier, fell back to reveal skin that was ghostly pale, eyes that were feverishly bright.
But that’s not why I barely recognized myself. I’d aged twenty years over the last twenty years. It was so unfair to feel like a late-twenty-something and be stuck in a forty-something body. I leaned forward and whispered, “What kind of woman are you, Defiance Dayne?”
Was I the kind of woman who ran from a fight?
Yes.
Yes, I was.
Was I the kind of woman who let down her family and friends? Who abandoned them and put their lives in danger? Was I the kind of woman who ignored other people’s suffering? I thought about all of those messages. All those people asking for my help. Then I lifted my chin.
No.
No, I was not.
After yet another shower—I just couldn’t seem to get the stench of lethargy out of my hair—I donned my favorite black maxi dress, an oversized button-down that was barely one step up from a robe, and threw on a pair matching black slouch socks. It was getting cold out, and I needed to snuggle up with a good book and a cup of hot chocolate as the fall weather demanded.
One quick hair check later—wet with an eighty percent chance of tangles—I descended the stairs in search of a big bad wolf. I wanted to know more about what happened to him. What it was like to suddenly become a boy. Or a wolf, depending on one’s perspective. Did he know his spirit was the boy’s? Did he recall his previous life as a human? Did he remember stealing into my dreams? Crawling close to me? Licking my fingers?
Something brushed past me again on the stairs. Closer this time. More aggressively.
Slowly but surely, I was learning to pay closer attention to the little things. For example, did whatever brushed past me seem to want to rip out my soul and sup upon my guts? The answer to that question was a disturbing and resounding yes.
“Get in line, buddy.”
And yet there was nothing magical about the energy from the entity that had, if Ruthie was correct, followed me from the witch bottle. It was more like a shadow. A poor replica of what it had once been. An echo. Either way, Sir was angry and wanted my blood. Ingrate. I’d set him free, after all.
I found Roane on the back porch, feeding wolves of all things. Watching him from the glass door, I started to step out until I saw the wolves emerge out of the trees and into the low light of dusk. Done filling a huge bowl with raw meat and bones, he set it down and backed toward the door.
Without looking away, he reached behind him, opened the door, and took my hand.
Clearly, I wasn’t as stealthy as I thought.
He tugged, encouraging me to come out.
The wolves padded forward, heads down, gazes wary.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, mesmerized. “My presence is worrying them.”
He pulled me beside him and draped an arm around my waist. “Just give them a minute.”
“They’re beautiful.” Five in all, they were all shades of gray. A couple had patches of black. “I didn’t think there were any wolves left in the state.”
“There weren’t. Not in the wild. These are escaped wolves.”
“Escaped?” That wasn’t suspicious at all. “Escaped from where?”
He lifted a muscular shoulder. “Here and there. Mostly zoos. Possibly from people who obtained them illegally.”
“And are you one of those people who obtained them illegally?” I slid him a sideways glance.
He, in turn, gave me a once-over. “You wearing a wire?”
“An underwire. It gets horrible reception, though, so you have nothing to worry about.”
“Maybe I should frisk you.”
Maybe he should. An exhilarating heat pooled in my abdomen. I looked back at the wolves. “What if someone tries to trap them?”
“I’ve told them what to watch out for. When to come out. When to stay hidden.”
“You . . . told them?”
“Yes,” he said, his voice whiskey smooth.
“You speak their language?”
“Only when I’m in wolf form. And it’s more like a system than a language. Warning growls and such. I’ve simply trained them what to watch out for. Not that they didn’t already know most of it before I came along. They’re smart.”
A couple of the wolves hung back while others came into the circle of light coming from the porch to eat.
“I should go. I’m making them skittish.”
“Just give them a minute to get used to your scent.”
I resisted the urge to lift my wet hair and sniff. According to the bottle, I was supposed to smell like a Brazilian rain forest. Not sure if that was a good thing or a bad one.
“It’ll mix with mine. They’ll be okay.”
Sure enough, the last two came forward after a couple of false starts. They would ease closer, then jump back and study us until, slowly, they inched toward the bowl, took out a meat-laden bone, and tore off into the dark.
“I’m still worried someone will hurt them. Humans can be such dicks.”
“Me, too. Your grandmother protected them for me. But when she died, I’m assuming the protection spell she had over them evaporated the way the one she had over you did.”
“Has she re-upped it since her . . . reawakening?”
“Nah. She’s got a lot on her plate right now.”
I made a mental note to talk to her. Then I made another mental note to pay attention to my mental notes. I so often ignored them. “Has she told you her theory about the boy? About you?”
After a long pause, he answered. “Yes.”
“Do you think she’s right?”
“Yes.”
I turned to him. “Really? So, in a way, the boy did survive?” Somehow that made the whole incident slightly less soul-crushing.
“I think so. I had instances growing up where I remembered things. Things I couldn’t have known. It had to be him. I have to be him.”
“You didn’t talk until you were seven.”
He seemed to bristle.
I squeezed his hand. “Roane, I wasn’t judging. I would never.”
He dropped his gaze. “I know.”
“No, you don’t.” I needed him to understand. “I can’t imagine how hard that must’ve been for you. I only meant that perhaps the reason your speech was delayed was not because you were a wolf, but because your father . . . well, killed you.”
The muscles in his forearms flexed as he curled and uncurled his hands into fists.
“Maybe that’s why the boy withdrew, and the wolf emerged as the dominant personality. The ruling psyche.”
“From trauma?”
“Yes.” I stepped closer. “Roane, you were literally killed by your father. That had to leave a mark.”
He nodded.
“Hey.” I elbowed him in the name of camaraderie. “My mother tried to kill me too.”
His gaze traveled back to me at last. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” I ignored the pang in my chest. “I don’t remember it.”
We watched as the last wolf ran into the dark, his jaws full of a late-night snack.
“Now that I think about it, how did the boy’s father trap you? Wolves haven’t inhabited this area in decades.”
“He trapped me on the outskirts of a wolf sanctuary near Ipswich.”
“For real?”
“For real.”
“See? Dicks.”
The air took a decidedly chilly turn, and he grabbed the bowl, checked a water tank near the back porch, and headed inside.
I followed.
Without looking at me, he set the bowl in the sink. “Does it make me more palatable?”
“I’m sorry?” I leaned against the counter. Our counter. The file folder with the messages still sat on the table, t
he seams glowing brighter than before.
When he turned, his olive gaze was harder than I’d ever seen. “Does knowing I was once a real boy make me more palatable? More acceptable?”
He started to walk away. This perfect being. This stunning entity who’d lived a life I could hardly imagine.
I stepped in front of him.
He kept his gaze downcast.
Was he embarrassed? Again? We’d gone through this when I first discovered what he was. “Don’t you dare.” I whispered the threat, hoping to soften the delivery.
Other than his jaw flexing under the pressure of his ire, he didn’t move. A dark red lock of hair brushed a wide shoulder.
“Don’t you dare think me so shallow.” I reached up and pressed a palm to his stubbly beard, and he let me. It was softer than I’d imagined. “Don’t you dare believe you are ever unworthy because of your incredible past. Do you know how many people would kill for such an existence? The fact that you are the boy as well as the wolf? Icing on the cake, but only because, in a way, he lived. His mother did get to see him grow up. Her dream came true. And you would honestly think me so shallow, Roane Wildes, to be repulsed by your heritage?”
He winced, but just barely.
“You’ve clearly never met a female. Of either species. There’s not a single one of us who would be repulsed by you. Quite the opposite. Or did you completely miss the longing gazes today in the café.”
“Why?” His glittering olive gaze locked with mine.
His question felt genuine, like he honestly couldn’t understand how I would not only not be swayed against him due to his history but would find it appealing. And it was the most adorable thing I’d ever seen.
I looked down at his ankle. Or, more precisely, at the scars on his leg above the top of his work boots. Where the trap had been. Where his life had taken a drastic turn. I dropped my hand to his abdomen.
It hardened beneath my touch. And yet, he made the softest, softest sound.
Encouraged, I stepped closer, rising onto my toes. It was my turn to nibble. When my mouth reached his ear, he wrapped a large hand around the back of my neck and held me to him. His other snaked around my waist. Pulled me closer. “I just have one question,” I whispered.
Bewitched: A Paranormal Women's Fiction Novel (Betwixt & Between Book 2) Page 11