by Lish McBride
“Where did our forest-loving friend flit off to?” Ezra asked, swiping a donut.
“He’s probably doing what he can to make things a little more comfortable,” I said. “This is a summer cabin, so it’s most likely been winterized. Water turned off. Maybe power.”
“He’s like a punk-rock mama bear. I love it.” He stole the last donut. “Let’s face it. Someone has to keep us from falling apart.”
The lights came on, and a few seconds later Lock’s footsteps thumped up from the basement. “We’ve got power and water. Luckily they didn’t shut things off completely.” He looked weary as he rested against the cabinets, dark circles under his eyes. Lock had probably driven for hours before, exhausted, he’d been forced to pull over and find this place. We shouldn’t have stopped, but then again, we hadn’t had much choice. It’s not like I was in a position to take my turn at the wheel, and neither was Ez. My mind flashed to the giant trees Lock had grown last night. He probably wasn’t in great shape either.
He rubbed a hand over his face. “Woodstove for heat. I’ll get some wood from the pile on the side of the house, but after that I’m afraid it’s up to you, Aves. I know you’re tired, but…”
I shrugged. “A little fire like that isn’t going to kill me.” We left Ez at the table and went to work. The house was full of flammable things: sheets covered the furniture in the living room, and the paintings and paperback novels were on the cheap side, the kinds of things you put in a house you didn’t live in. Lock filled the stove with logs, stacking the rest off to the side. He didn’t bother with kindling or paper. I lit it up, jump-starting it until it was blazing merrily on its own.
The room was just starting to get cozy when Ezra joined us. Lock patted Ez’s back, and though Ez tried to cover it, we both saw him wince. Without a word, Lock rolled up Ezra’s shirt. Like every other part of him, Ezra’s back is usually something fit for an art exhibit. Not now. It was lumpy and misshapen. I ran a finger lightly over one protrusion, and Ez’s eye twitched.
“What happened?”
I knew that tone in Lock’s voice. I caused it, more often than not. Punk-rock mama bear in full effect.
“I had to drop and roll in the pool. Lots of glass and things, and I guess a few cut deeper than I thought.”
“And your body healed over them?” Lock asked. Ezra nodded.
Lock released Ezra’s shirt. “I’ll go see what I can dig up. We’d better go back in the kitchen.” The linoleum floor would be easier to clean.
Lock found a razor blade in the toolbox, but not much in the way of medical supplies in the house. No bandages, and only an expired bottle of hydrogen peroxide. We didn’t need much, not with Ezra’s healing ability, but it wouldn’t do to have him bleed all over the place either. Once his shirt was off, Lock tucked a towel into the back of Ez’s pants to catch anything that dripped. Then we went to work, Lock with the razor, me with the peroxide and a smaller rag.
Lock placed his hand on Ezra’s back, the blade hovering just below the biggest lump. “Sorry,” he said. And then he cut.
Ezra let out a sharp hiss. It turned into a shout when Lock pressed gently down on the glass until it slid out of Ezra’s body. Then I poured peroxide and dabbed at the gash with a rag. It took only few seconds maybe, but they felt like long glimpses into forever. I counted the other distorted shapes on my friend’s back. Eight. I hoped they all came out that easily.
They didn’t. The last one was a chunk of wood that had broken into large pieces. Ez’s grip on the countertop was white-knuckled as Lock pulled them out, but he was quiet. Lock caught my eye and nodded. We were done. Even though a few of the gashes were deep, we wouldn’t bother to stitch them. Weres healed too fast to bother. I had to place a hand on Ezra’s cheek to rouse him from whatever self-induced trance he was in. Lock placed the razor blade carefully on the counter right before he turned and walked out the back door, letting it close softly. Lock was not a door slammer. That was usually my role. I curled one arm around Ezra, not caring if he bled all over my gas station T-shirt.
“He just needs a minute. Tonight was hard for him.” Says the guy covered in gashes and fresh blood. “I don’t know if you’ve realized this, but between the two of us, we’re kind of a hot mess. Emphasis on the hot.” He gave me a ghost of his usual grin. “It’s difficult for him to watch.”
As I stared at the door and thought about all the messes Lock had cleaned up and how many times he’d kept our act together, I had to agree with Ezra. We were a hot mess.
Ezra kissed my forehead and unwound himself from me. “I’m taking first shower.”
The bathroom was only a short jaunt down the hallway from the living room. I sat in front of the fire and looked at the dried blood on my hands, going over the night in my head. I heard the shower start. Normally Ez sang in the shower. Not this time.
“Ava?” Ezra’s voice was muffled by the door and all the noise from the water.
Steam billowed as I opened the bathroom door and turned on the fan. “Don’t tell me that, even wounded and demoralized, you’re going to try to invite me into your shower.” I expected my friend to peek out, a lascivious grin in place. Instead, Ez’s hand popped out from behind the curtain, the trembling fingers gripping an already bloodstained washcloth.
“I can’t reach my back.”
It was his voice that really punched me in the gut. Impromptu surgery in the kitchen? No problem. But Ezra’s shaking voice? I was used to Ez sounding like a lot of things—cocky, brash, sly, arrogant—but never, in the entire tenure of our friendship, had I heard him sound small. I stripped out of my clothing and grabbed the washcloth. The shower wasn’t huge, but luckily it wasn’t tiny, either. The wounds were already looking knit together, the skin still pink and raw. Most of the blood was gone off Ezra’s back. The water had done the work, really. But the problem was, he could still feel the weight of it there. Until someone washed him and double-checked, Ez would feel dirty. So I lathered up the washcloth in soap that smelled like oranges and spice, and I scrubbed the hell out of his back. Then I grabbed the cheap shampoo that had been left behind by the owners and set to work on his hair. He had to lean back so I could reach. While foxes don’t have packs like wolves do, they aren’t entirely solitary, either. Mates, family—they groom each other. Ezra’s family was no different. They might squabble like a bunch of spoiled brats sometimes, but if anything happens, they circle the wagons and anything not inside that circle gets destroyed. Besides, were-creature or not, there’s something soothing and reassuring about someone else taking care of you.
I pretended to not notice the slight jerk of Ezra’s shoulders as he cried. Until he turned around and buried his face in the crook of my neck. Then I held him until he pulled away.
“If anyone asks about this later, tell them I made a hell of a pass at you,” he said. “I have a reputation to protect.”
“Of course. Now rinse that conditioner out of your hair and do me.” I handed him the washcloth.
The leering grin that spread across his face lit him up from inside, and my old friend was back. “I’m going to tell everyone you said that.”
“I meant wash my back, you perv.”
“Sure you did.”
I WAS tucked under a light quilt that smelled like cedar, probably from the trunk it had been stored in. Someone had shoved a chair under the knob of the flimsy door as a last-ditch precaution. Lock was passed out next to me on the bed; Ezra was on the other side of him. They hadn’t even made it under the covers. Even as he slept, Lock’s face looked pinched and worried, dark circles under his eyes.
I slipped out of bed slowly, trying not to wake my friends. They barely stirred when I put the quilt over them. After chugging some more of the sports drink that Lock had left on the counter and popping a few of my electrolyte pills, I dug my cell phone out of my pocket. The battery was almost dead. No messages. Not from Cade, not from Ryan. Not even a mocking one from Brittany.
I called home, and
when I didn’t get an answer, I tried Cade at work. I was hoping Glen was working instead of Sylvie. No such luck.
Glen was an older retired gentleman who filled in at the shop occasionally and took his pay in paperbacks. I was hoping for him because he’d be easier to handle than Sylvie. Sylvie is my friend, and she would want to talk, and right now I desperately needed to hear Cade’s voice and know that he was okay. So naturally it was Sylvie who greeted me with a chirpy “hello” and then immediately asked if Lock was with me. I hadn’t actually caught her doing it, but I’m pretty sure she named all her gaming avatars “Mrs. Sylvia Lock.” (Yes, I know, it should be his last name, but Sylvie doesn’t know it’s Treadwell. Lock goes by one name, like Cher.) Actually, she was probably a hyphen type of girl—Mrs. Sylvia Martin-Lock. Under the layers of pink, glitter, and wild-cherry lip gloss beat the heart of a feminist. Maybe she’d go all progressive with it and give him her last name—Mr. Lock Martin had a good ring to it. It made him sound like a brand of boot.
As long as Sylvie didn’t teeter into obsession and show up with an I HEART LOCK tattoo on her chest, I was okay with her crush.
“You are so lucky to be traveling with all that hotness all the time.”
“Ezra?” I asked, pretending I didn’t know what she meant.
“No way. Ezra is one hundred percent dreamy, but he’s totally a ramblin’ man. If you want a whirlwind romance, he’s your guy, so long as you don’t expect him to be there the next day. But I bet Lock would write poetry and hold open doors. He’d stay home with the kids while I get my Ph.D. Progressive, but totally a gentleman.”
“Wow, you have really planned this out. Is Cade around?”
“Yeaaaah he is.”
“I don’t like the way you dragged that out. He’s mad at me, isn’t he? Has he said ‘I told her so’ at all today?”
“I think he feels that it didn’t need to be said, considering the situation. Or maybe he’s been saving it for when you called to check in.”
I searched through the bags on the counter to see if there were any donuts left. None. Damn it. “Please. You don’t even know the situation.”
“No, but I know you and Cade, and I’m pretty sure the setup was him giving you advice and you ignoring it and nose-diving outstandingly.”
“Naturally.”
“So how does my boyfriend look today? Rumpled bed head? You know that just-tousled-enough look with sleepy eyes…” She actually sighed. I kid you not—an honest-to-goodness he’s-so-dreamy sigh. Gross.
“Earth to Sylvie. Come down from your strange planet and get Cade for me.” Though I couldn’t see her, I knew she was scrunching her cute nose at me. Everything about Sylvie was cute. She was just one of those girls. I bet even when she vomited, it was adorable. It probably came out rainbow and smelled like sunshine. If it didn’t already, she could figure out the chemical compounds to make it happen.
“You wish you could live on my planet,” she said. “It’s only terraformed for extremely awesome alien species.”
“Yes, I do wish I could live there. Boss-man, please.”
“Fine, I’ll get him. He’s in the back room pouting. What did you do? He only pouts like this when you did something. Stop making him sad, Ava! I hate it when he’s sad. I tried to show him pictures of kittens on the Internet, but he said that didn’t work for him, so I tried to switch to otters, because c’mon, otters, they’re like the kittens of the sea, but he just looked at me like I was a crazy person, so I showed him my list—”
“List?” Sometimes Sylvie talks so fast, there aren’t any spaces between her words.
“The one where I compare kittens and otters. It’s a good list. There are illustrations and infographics.”
“Sylvie. Cade, please.”
“I wouldn’t talk to him if I were you,” she said in a little singsong voice. “You are in danger of being trampled like a teeny Asian person underneath the rampaging feet of Grouchasaurus rex. I should draw an illustration of that, too! Don’t worry. I’ll make you look good.”
“Sylvie.”
“It’s your funeral,” she said, handing the phone over. In the background, I could still hear her yelling. “Remember, Grouchasaurs have poor vision and minimal turning capacity! I recommend running in a serpentine pattern!”
Cade grunted into the phone. The grunt might have been the word hello. I’m not sure. “I hear you’re on the rampage, Bosszilla,” I said.
He grunted. “Sylvie?”
It was so good to hear his voice, I almost cried. “Yeah. I left you a message. You didn’t call me back.”
“Was it on my cell? You know the cabin can be kind of a dead zone. Sometimes I get bars, sometimes I don’t. Let me check.” There was a pause, and I could almost see him unearthing things from his pockets. “Ah. There it is—a message.” The phone went quiet for a moment. “I’m not going to want to listen to the message, am I?”
“Probably not.” I filled him in on the night’s adventures.
Cade is not a yeller. When I mess up, he likes to take his time and think it through before he punishes me. We’ve been through the process many, many, many times. This might seem like a soft approach, but by the time Cade gets around to talking to me, I usually feel pretty crappy about whatever it was I’d done, and I’m also ready to listen to whatever he has to say by then. Sometimes I think it might actually be less painful if he’d just let loose and scream.
Not that I didn’t yell at him sometimes, but I tried not to, and honestly it was pretty hard to get mad at Cade. His criticisms were usually well thought out and difficult to argue with. Or there were times like this, when I was so grateful to be talking to him, that I wouldn’t have cared if he was screaming the whole time.
So I went over the night, telling him what had happened, smoothing over some of the more embarrassing points. He’d probably guess the embarrassing bits anyway. At least I knew he wouldn’t interrupt me until I was finished.
“Duncan’s okay?”
“As far as I know. I don’t think she’s ready to confront him on her own.”
The line went quiet while Cade thought over what I’d said. “Why’d you eat the appetizers? You don’t eat anything at the Inferno that wasn’t handed to you by Lock or Ezra.”
“Ryan made a big fuss.”
“Why?”
“I honestly can’t tell you why boys do anything.”
“Then tell me why you caved.”
I thought for a moment. “I felt bad. We’d been arguing, the evening was a disaster, and he was already sensitive about Lock and Ezra. It seemed to mean a lot to him, so I ate one. Why?”
“What happened after you ate it?”
I shrugged, then realized he couldn’t see that. “I got thirsty?”
“Exactly,” Cade said. “They were spicy. You drank whatever you were given next, and you were even less likely to ask questions about that because your mouth was on fire. If it tasted weird, you would just dismiss it because your sense of taste would be off.”
Cade’s logic was dead on, as usual. In retrospect, I’d been incredibly stupid. I knew better than to accept food at a Coterie establishment unless it came from someone I trusted. It should have passed directly from Lock’s or Ezra’s hands to mine before I took a bite. I should have turned down those appetizers.
“But how would they know I was going to eat them? It’s not like I ordered them.”
“But Ryan did,” Cade said. “And he guilted you into eating one. Then he handed you his drink. He took you to the Inferno in the first place and then made sure you didn’t leave.”
I hadn’t thought it was possible to feel worse than I already did. You’d have thought by then I’d have known I could always feel worse. “You can’t be saying what I think you’re saying.” My gut felt leaden, and I worried for a second that the donuts from earlier were going to make an encore performance.
“But he’s human,” I said. “Normal. How would he even … why would he?”
; “I’m human,” Cade said. “And yet I know all about the Coterie. How do you know he doesn’t? How do you even know he’s human? Do you really know that much about him besides what he’s told you?”
“You think he tricked me?”
“I don’t know,” Cade said, the connection crackling as he breathed into the phone. “All I know is everything is going back to him, and I don’t like that one bit. Heaven is a dance club, Ava. I bet drugs are easy to come by. I don’t know what was planned, or if anything was planned at all. Maybe he was trying to get back at you because of Lock and Ezra, or maybe he was acting on Venus’s orders. We don’t know, and I’m not sure it matters. But what would have happened if Lock hadn’t gotten there first? Would Ryan have taken you to Venus as an offering? You were unconscious in a public bathroom. Anything could have happened.”
I didn’t have an answer for him. I wasn’t sure I wanted one.
Cade sighed. “Have you checked on your little friends today?”
I felt my blood chill. I told Cade I’d call him back, but I didn’t wait for the response. The text I sent Brittany was short, just asking if they’d made it home okay. It was even polite.
The response I got was not. An image of Ryan appeared on my screen. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew Ryan’s back. I couldn’t see his face because he was being led away by Venus, her arm around him possessively. She probably hadn’t even known the picture was taken.
After the image came the text part of the message. Ryan didn’t make it home last night. Who knew he was into mature women?;) Didn’t take him long to forget you, huh, homeschool? Lol.
My hands burst into flame, and I dropped my phone on the counter. I turned on the faucet by hitting the lever with my elbow, then thrust my hands under the icy-cold running water. The water hissed and steamed, but I felt better doing this than trying to clamp down on my rage. When I’d finally calmed down, I toweled off my hands and texted Brittany back.