by A. L. Tyler
“I understand,” he said, with another unnerving show of confidence. “It’s okay. I understand if they have to kill me.”
I stood up. Grabbing the nearest hand towel, I gave it to him so that he could wrap the leaves on to his arm tighter. Then I turned and marched into the living room.
He was being matter-of-fact about the situation, and that was nothing new. He always went to a place of cold logic when he was under stress; it had helped him get great marks on almost every test we’d had in school. He wasn’t offering to die for me because he feared what he would do when he turned into a werewolf. He was doing it because he had presumably seen his roommate turn into a wolf, bite him, and then use him as a weapon in some fight he didn’t understand. He was a bomb, and logically, bombs needed to be diffused before they killed everybody.
Vince knew that he was a bomb now. He knew the score.
But God, when I looked into his eyes, I wished he was doing it for me.
“We’re not killing him,” I said.
Charlie, Lyssa, and Gates broke off from the whispered fight they were having, cramped into the farthest corner of the living room.
“We’re not equipped to handle this,” Charlie finally said. “He can’t stay here.”
Lyssa and Gates didn’t say anything, and I realized the vote had already taken place.
“You can cure him,” I said stubbornly. I fixed my gaze on Charlie. “There’s a cure for everything. Get me what we need to cure him.”
“Thorn…”
“There’s a cure,” I repeated. “There’s a cure for everything.”
“There’s no cure.”
“There’s a cure for everything!” I shouted in dismay.
If Charlie could bring me back from being a demon, then surely werewolves were a small matter. I wanted him to snap his fingers and fix it. It never should have happened. Vince wasn’t even a part of this.
Charlie had me by the shoulders, and I thought he was going to shake me, but instead he directed me to the couch and forced me to sit.
“He is a ticking bomb—”
“Slow down time in the bathroom,” I said miserably. “You can keep him in a sort of stasis until we—”
“—no.” Charlie shook his head, frowning. “Thorn… Not just because I don’t believe in a cure. I’ve been at this a long time and I would know. I would tell you if there was even a rumor or a theory. There is no cure. I can’t slow down time for him because werewolf hide is impervious to just about everything I can do. Same reason I can’t just heal his wounds, and it’s why warlocks hunt them for their skin. The gloves are good for handling certain objects you wouldn’t want to touch otherwise, and I’ve seen some impressive armor—”
“Please stop.” I felt like I was going to faint. The thought of making anything out of human skin was disgusting. “I don’t understand. You can kill him, but you can’t help him?”
He looked at Lyssa before he answered. She turned away.
“There’s nothing magical about a knife in the heart,” he said. “Does what you’d think it would.”
I closed my eyes and shook my head. “There has to be another way.”
The bathroom door creaked, and we all looked over to see Vince. His complexion was pale and there were dark circles under his eyes.
“When someone has a moment,” he said wryly. “I would really like some things explained.”
Lyssa’s mouth opened a little, and then she firmly set her jaw and rummaged in the kitchen before returning with an armful of herb jars and hand towels. She laid a hand on Vince’s shoulder to turn him back into the bathroom before shaking her head at Charlie.
“Find a way to make this work.”
Charlie stared after her before turning his gaze back on me. Gates jumped up beside me on the couch, swishing her feline tail.
“He can be stabbed by a knife,” she mused. “Any knife? Even a knife you conjure? I mean, the knife can have magical origins, it just won’t have any magical effect on him?”
I looked down at her, hoping she had a point coming, and then back at Charlie.
“Yes,” he said hesitantly. “I know where you’re going with this.”
“Why not just make him a cage?” Gates finished.
I felt hope spring up inside of me, but the look on Charlie’s face wasn’t encouraging.
“Because it would be cruel,” he said.
“You were just talking about turning him into gloves,” I said flatly. “A cage is cruel?”
“For a wild animal? Yes, Thorn. A cage is cruel, and it won’t solve anyone’s problems. The animal is likely to get frustrated if we contain it too long, and that means one half will start fighting the other, and we may not like the outcome of that.”
I bit my lip, considering our lack of options. “Do it. If it gets us through one full moon, we’ll have another month to fix this.”
“There’s nothing to fix,” he said in exasperation. “Your boyfriend is screwed, Thorn. I’m sorry it happened. I’m happy you had the opportunity to say goodbye, because Stark could have just sent us body parts instead. He’s done it before.”
Lyssa slipped back out of the bathroom, and I heard the shower turn on just before she closed the door.
“He’s going to need clean clothes,” she said quietly. “And you might want to lower your voices, because he could hear you. That bite is bad.”
“Is it healed yet?” Charlie asked.
Lyssa shrugged. “No. I doubt it ever heals right.”
“It will,” Charlie dragged a hand over his face. “It should have healed by now, but I guess Walter went shallow to make it last longer. He’s more pathetic this way. It appeals to your sympathy.”
“That’s shallow?” Lyssa raised her eyebrows.
“Did he say anything about the cage idea?” I asked, still hopeful.
Lyssa looked at me and made a face, crossing her arms. “Annie, I don’t know a ton about werewolves, but I do know that the calmer ones—if you can call them that—like to roam. Cruel is the right word here. It would be better to kill him. And frankly, when the moon hits, he won’t be Vince anymore. He’ll just be the wolf, and he’ll be just as ready to kill us. Probably more so if we keep him locked up in this apartment.”
“Cage him,” Gates said again. “He can handle it. He took the ACT on day two of the flu and still managed to kick Annie’s ass.”
“He didn’t kick my ass. We got the same score,” I said quietly. “But I agree. When we find a solution, he’ll thank us.”
Lyssa looked to Charlie, but he raised his hands.
“I think it’s cruel, but I’ll do it,” he said. “This vote is between you three, and it looks like you’re losing.”
“Us four,” I corrected, narrowing my eyes at Lyssa. “What did Vince say about it when he heard us talking?”
Swaying a little with her arms still crossed like she was debating whether or not to lie, she finally spoke. “He thinks he wants the cage. In a few days, that won’t be the case.”
Charlie disappeared back to the Other Side for a little while to research. Even knowing as much as he did about werewolves, he had never been asked to build a humane cage for one before. It was of the utmost importance that he got it right on the first try, or it all would have been in vain.
While he was gone, Vince came out of the shower, and I was happy to see that Charlie had remembered to get him some clean clothes before he left. The rest of us had forgotten.
Lyssa offered to draw sticks with me, but I waved off the notion and volunteered instead. I wanted to be the one to tell Vince.
I looked at his arm when he came out, and while the flesh was still torn and ragged in places, it had stopped bleeding, and parts of it already looked like they were melting together to mend.
“Hey,” he said nervously, rolling down his sleeve.
“Hey,” I said back. Lyssa and Gates had retreated to the kitchen to give us as much privacy as possible, but I wished they would have talke
d or something. Just standing in the other room, I knew they were listening in, and Vince probably did, too.
“So, I guess Lyssa told you?”
Vince sat down on the couch, and I followed.
“Yeah,” he said. “Lyssa told me.”
I nodded, looking down at my hands, and thinking that they looked odd just sitting at my sides. I wondered if they always looked like that, and for a moment I wasn’t sure what to do with them. I turned my attention back to Vince.
“You’re taking it very well.”
He laughed darkly. “My roommate just grew fur and mauled me. It kind of makes you rethink the things you thought you knew.”
I nodded, and caught a glimpse of Lyssa from the other room before she paced away again. “So, I know this isn’t…I mean, I don’t know how to say this, really, but…”
“Are they going to kill me?” he asked bluntly.
“No,” I said, finally finding the courage to look him in the eye.
“The cage?” He gave a resolute nod, and took a deep breath. “And no cure.”
“I’m not giving up,” I said. “It’s only for a few days. The week before the full moon, and then after…you’ll be normal again. Normal-ish, I mean.”
I did the math in my head, and realized that he might just make the first day of class, but that was if he was lucky. Afterward, it was going to be hard to keep a job or a class schedule missing an entire week every month.
Vince’s priorities must have expanded beyond academics, because he didn’t seem to care. “What’s the cage going to be like?”
I pursed my lips and shrugged. “I told Charlie to make it as nice as he could, but he said you probably won’t care once…” I took a deep breath, hardly able to believe the words coming out of my mouth. “Once you’re a werewolf. But you should have everything you need, and you’ll be safe from Walter and Stark.”
He nodded, and when a small smile crept to his lips, I knew his sense of humor hadn’t abandoned him. I was grateful for that.
“Was it this traumatic for you?” he asked. “When you became a witch? Lyssa said you were kind of new, and kind of bad at it anyways.”
“Oh, she did not!” But I didn’t hear Lyssa denying it from the other room.
Vince cracked a wider smile and even laughed a little. “Am I supposed to trust you to get me out of this?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm.” He raised his eyebrows. “We always did have each other’s backs. Are you going to let me out of the cage to go on that date?”
“Date?” I said, blindsided. “You’ve got a date?”
He cocked his head. “Yeah…the one Jennifer Wilmot kept pushing on your behalf. Three days straight in gym class. Very classy, Annie.”
Horror washed over me, and my cheeks burned hot as I looked down. “Oh! That wasn’t really—”
“I know,” he said good-naturedly. “Geez, calm down…I know. I was the shortest kid in our class until the ninth grade, and I know a bully when I see one. She tried to get me to buy her a latte one time and I told her to buy her own, and then she started in asking if I already had a girlfriend. She started teasing me by saying that I must have a crush on you, and then she started asking if I wanted to date you…you get the picture. She started in on it in French and I shut her down in front of her friends. I told her I would love to go on a date with you, because you had a lot more class than she did.”
I stared at him in shock. Just as I felt my smile slip, I saw his do the same.
“Annie?”
There are moments in life when you can either laugh or cry, and this was one of them. I had long since given up on finding out why Jennifer had dumped lattes into the open windows of my car on that hot day. That had been the event that started everything, and I had never understood why she had chosen to pick on me.
It had been Vince. Jennifer had a crush on Vince, and she thought that I was somehow standing in her way.
“Annie?”
I cringed, but tried to laugh it off. “It’s…nothing. It’s a long story, and it was pretty dumb, anyways. Thanks. For thinking I’m classy, I mean.”
He shrugged. “I wanted to talk to you about it afterward and tell you to watch out for her, but then Gates went missing, and you were never around anymore. I thought we would sit down and plan our fall classes together. Healthy competition works for us, so I figured…” He took a deep breath, and seemed to realize what I already had about his future. “Worked for us, I mean.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but the sound of a loud, gong-like bell made me jump. With a start and adrenaline pulsing through my veins, I turned around to see Charlie standing behind me.
“Thorn,” he said, looking grave. “I’m going to need more blood.”
End of Preview
Hawthorn Witches Novella #3: Werewolves & Wisteria
Coming December 2015
Pre-order now available
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About the Author
I grew up in Broomfield, Colorado, reading and creating art. (But mostly reading.) I am a second generation trekkie, a fan of obscure anime and most science fiction and fantasy on television today, and I have dressed up to attend the conventions. I proudly have a time turner and a tribble sitting next to the VHS copies of Star Wars on my shelf at home--still seeking a sonic screwdriver to add to the mix.
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