“Ummm…okay. I was hoping we could start the conversation out some place less hostile.”
“I’ll bet you were. I don’t share the sentiment, unfortunately. Now what is it? I’ve got things to do.”
“Well, Hal called. He mentioned you’d been visiting and that you didn’t seem to be doing too well. He was worried.”
“And he called you? Lotta good that’ll do.” Becca snorted. Here was a reasonable target for the roiling emotions that were twisting her up. It was so like Ed to be out of touch for a whole year, then assume that she needed him. “I could’ve been dead for the last while for all you knew, Ed Thornton. But be that as it may, I’m fine. We done now?” She made a mental note to block his calls somehow; did her phone have some kind of “auto ignore” button?
“I need to talk to you about the house. I’ll be in town on Friday. Will you meet me for lunch?”
Becca’s mood sank lower. “What’ve we got to talk about these days, oh ex-husband mine? Last I heard, you said I could keep the house. And it’s not like we’re buddies.”
“Things change, Becca. Will you meet me on Friday?”
Becca blew a breath out between her pursed lips and tried to recover her equilibrium. What was the harm, after all? It’s not like things could get that much worse. She’d just suggest some place for lunch that she never went to normally so no one she knew would get to watch the show. “All right. I suppose so. Meet me at noon at the Riverside Bar.” Then she actually did click off and turn the phone off. It was fun being rude to Ed, even now. She grinned down at the water for a moment.
Then she stopped grinning and turned to head back into town. It was nearly time to get to work; all the other crap would still be there later and she could deal with it then. She hoped. She had a niggling worry about what he’d said about the house. True, he still owned half after the divorce but she’d taken over the mortgage. Wasn’t possession nine-tenths of something or other?
Lizzie Blackhawk pulled up beside her in a sheriff department’s car just as she started walking along the side of the road. “Miz Thornton, can you get in please? Shelly asked me to show you something; she and Pete know that you might be a bit late for work.”
Becca froze. It was all very well to think about turning herself in for murder or attempted murder, but actually doing it was something else again. But she couldn’t outrun the deputy’s car and there wasn’t anywhere to run to. Shoulders tight with apprehension, she walked over, opened the door and got in. “I suppose you know what happened the other night by now, huh?”
Lizzie waited until she buckled herself in before she pulled forward. She was headed toward the highway at the end of the bridge where they’d first seen the slayers’ van. “I’ve got a pretty good idea. But what I know or don’t know isn’t our biggest problem right now.”
“Will that guy, Stuart, I think she said his name was, live? The one in the hospital from the other night?”
“Yep, probably. Barring someone doing something they shouldn’t with a pillow or eating him the next time he shoots at a wolf. I’m not sure what you heard but he just got chewed up kind of bad. A lot of stitches and rabies shots and he’ll have some interesting scars. Maybe learn a lesson or two from it, if we’re lucky, and find himself a new hobby.”
Becca collapsed against the seat sighing with relief. “But you still need to book me for assault?” It sounded pretty silly after it rolled out of her mouth.
Lizzie laughed, a short dry snort of amusement. “Now how would I explain that, Miz Thornton? Man’s covered with bite marks, and had his throat chewed on. Town ain’t that big so most folks who know you know you don’t have a dog. What exactly would I tell Sheriff Henderson?”
“If you’re not taking me in, what’s this trip about?”
“Shelly wants you to see something and I volunteered.” Lizzie subsided into silence and turned out onto the highway.
They drove quietly for a while, Becca looking out the window and Lizzie thinking who knew what thoughts behind her mirrored shades. Finally Becca broke the silence. “How’s Shelly’s mom doing? She’s your aunt, right?”
“My ex-husband’s aunt, but close enough. Not too good. My cousins are all keeping an eye on her down at the hospice.”
A spasm of pure guilt went through Becca. No wonder Shelly was at sixes and sevens. She hadn’t even asked how bad her mother’s health was. “Oh no! I’m so sorry!” Becca looked for other words, a better way to express her feelings, but Lizzie just nodded, her lips turning down in a slight grimace. She didn’t seem to want to talk more about it so after a few tries, Becca gave up and looked back out at the road.
They were headed into the mountains, Becca realized after a moment. Lizzie was taking a road that she didn’t recognize, one that wandered off the main road through the pine forests, then upward. Where were they were going?
Becca fidgeted, trying to answer her own question with landmarks, before she broke the silence with another question. “Did you mean what you said the other morning? About it being an honor to be called?”
Lizzie slipped her glasses up to rest on her glossy black hair and glanced Becca’s way quickly before going back to watching the road. “I did. That’s one of the reasons I got into law enforcement. I’m hoping I get called when I’m old enough. I like the idea of helping folks in trouble and righting wrongs, but I didn’t want to wait. I’m not the only one around here who feels that way either, not that it’s common knowledge.”
Becca stared at Lizzie, trying to imagine the young women of Wolf’s Point, respectable and otherwise, wanting to run through the woods on all fours, chasing who knew what, every full moon when they got to a certain age. She just couldn’t wrap her brain around that picture. “Really?” She managed at last.
“Miz–”
“Call me Becca, seeing as you’re not arresting me.”
The younger woman hesitated a moment, as if she wasn’t quite ready to know her passenger that well, then continued with a brief nod. “All right. Becca, the Pack has a long and ancient history in this valley, going back into prehistory even. The Indians and Europeans who came here originally came from different tribes, different traditions, different countries. They moved here because the magic called them, one way or another. And it changes you if it touches you.”
“You can say that again. I’d be just happy with never changing that way again.” Becca shuddered.
“Maybe we can fix that.” Lizzie pulled into a clearing where the road ended with a track. Becca looked up the narrow pathway as it wound up the rest of the mountain. “We have to do a little hiking. I brought water.”
Becca felt something build inside her as she looked upward. Whatever it was told her that there was something she needed to do and she shivered a little, nervous about what that might be. Finally, she got out of the car, her steps slow and reluctant. “Against my better judgment, lead on.”
They began walking, and after a bit, climbing upward. It was a steep, dry path and Becca could feel her feet slide on the pebbles from time to time. Her shoes weren’t up to this, and she worried that neither was she. She was panting already. There was some scrub brush growing here and there along the way but not much to hold on to if she slipped. It didn’t seem to bother Lizzie though; she moved easily and powerfully up the trail, her muscular thighs bulging in the pants of her police uniform.
Before she could stop the thought, Becca found herself thinking that Lizzie would make a much better werewolf than she did. Great. Werewolf insecurities. Just what I need. She shook her head and said something else instead. “Just how far up are we going?” she gasped as Lizzie reached a ledge next to a large boulder.
“We’re almost there. Stop a minute and have some water.” Lizzie handed her the flask and looked back down the mountain. She crinkled her nose like she was breathing in something Becca couldn’t smell. Becca studied her a moment, then collapsed on a flattish rock, water bottle held tightly in her hand. There was a light, cool breeze d
ancing down the mountain and she let it play with her hair and dry the sweat on her forehead.
Then she too, drank the air into her lungs, pulling the valley’s different scents in with it. There was exhaust from the cars on the highway, pine and birch and soil from the woods below, early snow from some distant high peak. There was water trickling in a nearby stream and a wood fire burning somewhere further away. There were animal scents too, and part of her brain seemed to be able to sort out whether each was predator or prey. She could smell humans as well, Lizzie and herself included.
She didn’t know how long she sat like that, sniffing the breeze until she could feel Lizzie stir, moving restlessly and fidgeting. Becca scrambled up. “Well, let’s keep going,” she said, a little surprised at how tired her voice sounded.
But Lizzie didn’t go up as far as she feared. A few more yards and she turned off and walked along the ledge behind another boulder. Becca followed her through a narrow crevice between the rocks and into a large, shallow cave. Then she stood in the entrance with her mouth slightly open while she stared at the walls.
There were paintings on them, running in seemingly chronological order in a circle around the walls. The ones to her right looked the oldest, clearly done by hand with some sort of vegetable paint or something like it. They had a primitive quality to them, but there was something familiar about the shapes they depicted.
She walked closer to try and make out what that was, looking from painting to painting. Then it struck her: they all showed women transforming into wolves. It was harder to tell with the earlier paintings, but there was clearly a theme here. There were wolves with human faces, humans with wolf heads and all points in between.
Lizzie sat down on a rock at the entrance, her head bowed reverently. Becca wasn’t sure, but she seemed like she might be praying. Becca began following the semicircle of paintings around the cave.
She noticed as the pictures changed mediums and styles, and stopped and wondered at the ones where the wolf-woman was clearly sacred, gleaming with her own light, as well as the ones where she was terrifying. The paintings glowed with power, pulling her in to them somehow. They ended a little short of the entrance on the cave’s left side. She stopped at the last one, a graffiti artist’s rendition of a woman in a hot pink suit with a wolf’s head.
“My cousin did that one,” Lizzie volunteered from her perch.
“I like it. It’s very strong.” Becca stepped back to look at it some more. Then she remembered that Shelly was Lizzie’s cousin too. “Is it Shelly’s painting?”
“Nope. It’s Kira’s work, Kira’s vision of what her mom looks like when she changes. I think it’s pretty cool, though the high school art teacher didn’t like it when she brought the early sketches into school. I think it freaked him out.”
Becca could see why. If you didn’t know anything about the wolves, this would be a pretty intense drawing from a fifteen-year-old girl. She tried to imagine Shelly and Pete’s taciturn daughter with her ever-present earbuds doing paintings like this. But she knew about the wolves and Becca didn’t. What else hadn’t she figured out yet? It all seemed to hit her at once and she caught at the bare rock for support as her knees got weak. “I think I need to go to work now.”
“Have some more water and eat this first.” The deputy handed her an energy bar and the water bottle before she took her own walk around the cave. The mirror sunglasses were perched on her head and as Becca eased down to sit on the rock floor, she was finally able to see the other woman’s eyes. Her expression was solemn and respectful and every now and then she sighed a little or reached out to lightly touch one of the paintings.
“You come up here a lot?”
“Just once in a while. It’s a sacred place and I don’t belong here all the time, at least not yet.”
Becca looked at one of the other paintings, one of a woman with white hair and a wolf’s paws. This was her future. She wondered what happened to geriatric werewolves. Did they ever get Alzheimer’s? Did they just keep changing until they couldn’t change any more?
The thought depressed her and made her aware of how much the cave was starting to get under her skin. “There’s something eerie about this place, like it’s alive or something.” Becca wondered where that notion had come from, but it was true. She could feel this place in her blood. It didn’t feel like changing under the moon, but she could see how it could end up in the same place.
“Generations of wolf women and their people coming up here to paint what they see will do that to a place. I think this was the old ritual space, back before there was a Women’s Club or anywhere else to meet in town. All of them came here to change when the moon was full,” Lizzie’s voice was filled with longing now.
“It’s scary, you know, changing like that. And it hurts. And you do things you don’t want to do, things you can’t help.” Becca gulped some more water. “I’d stop it if I could.”
Something else occurred to her a moment later. She looked around at the paintings once more. “Why are they all women?”
Lizzie shrugged and pulled her glasses back down on her nose as if to block Becca and her questions and her doubts out. “They say it’s how the magic works. Ask Shelly. She knows all about this kind of stuff. Let’s head back. My shift starts in an hour.” She didn’t say another word all the way back to town.
Chapter 9
~
By the time the next Friday rolled around, Becca felt like she was trapped in some weird sitcom. She saw Erin and helped her out around the house, but couldn’t bring herself to talk to her neighbor about anything but the weather and the blandest of town gossip. It was like her brain was boiling every time she was over there and her body kept joining in. The words just wouldn’t come, what with all the turmoil.
Then to make things worse, Shelly was still gone since her mother’s condition was growing worse. Becca felt horribly alone in a way that she hadn’t felt since after the divorce. The only good part was that she didn’t feel like she was going to turn into a wolf in broad daylight, at least for the moment. That was something.
Even so, lunch with Ed was likely to be even more of a treat than she had anticipated. Becca could feel that already. Her body seemed to be trying to melt away, which made it difficult to wait on customers and even harder to concentrate. She made two mistakes while making change and very nearly recommended that Al Watkins paint his garage hazard orange and that was just the first hour of Friday morning.
Pete stopped over in time to turn Al’s colorblind attention to a more neutral color, then stood behind Becca as she rang him up. The minute the door closed after Al, he stepped to Becca’s side and leaned on the counter. “You doing all right? Maybe it’s time for a break.”
Becca glared up at him and started to snap. But just then the bright orange hunting gear hanging above Pete’s head caught her eye and the fight ran out of her. “Oh crap. I’m sorry, Pete. What between one thing and another and Ed calling about lunch today, my head’s just a mess. It won’t happen again.”
“Wait, you’re having lunch with Ed?” Pete’s eyebrows rose.
Becca could almost read his thoughts. Pete’s opinion of Ed had really plummeted right before the divorce when he heard about her ex cheating on her. It was nice to see that it wasn’t making a comeback.
She hid a smile despite the way she was feeling and looked down at the counter. It was good to know that there were still nice guys out there. “Yeah. He wants me to meet him for lunch to talk to me about the house. Or so he says. Maybe he decided that there’s something to be said for experience after all.” She bared her teeth in an almost smile and Pete snorted.
“So are you going to meet him?”
“Might as well. I’m guessing he’ll keep calling otherwise. Besides, I’m curious to find out what he wants.”
Pete nodded. “Seems like a good idea. You going to be okay here until then?”
“Aye, aye, Captain. Everything will be shipshape for the rest of the
day, before and after Ed. I promise.” Becca gave him a chipper salute. She was surprised to realize she felt a bit better. Maybe she’d just needed to get it out of her system. After all, it was just lunch. How bad could it be?
She kept telling herself that as she walked down to the Riverside an hour and a half later. Her stomach was uncomfortably fluttery and she kept replaying her last fights with Ed before the divorce was finalized. Now she wished he’d left well enough alone and kept giving her the silent treatment. They were better off done.
But that just wasn’t her luck. He was sitting in a booth toward the back, waving to her as she came in. She made herself keep moving, walking as if she hadn’t a care in the world. He looked different somehow, even with the same old bald patch and the small paunch.
Finally, it struck her: he looked happy. He even smelled happy. She twitched a little at that thought, then decided she’d analyze that part later. His shoulders were tense, but it was clear that it was temporary, not their natural state. He realized that she was studying him and gave her an uncertain smile that crinkled the edges of his eyes.
She hadn’t seen him look happy in a long time, years maybe. Maybe he was looking at her the same way. She hoped she looked happy to him, even if she wasn’t right now. After all, they had loved each other once, she was sure of that much. How did we come to this? The thought showed up unexpectedly and sent a pang through her. Maybe it was time to bury the pain of his affair and the divorce.
“You look great, Becca.” Ed said with the kind of fake enthusiasm he used to reserve for talking to elderly relatives.
Or maybe it’s too soon for that. “Yeah, I’ll bet. Let’s get lunch ordered so I can find out what you want and we can get this over with.” She ordered a salad and soup the minute the waitress showed up, deliberately hurrying Ed into ordering the first thing he saw on the menu.
Silver Moon (A Women of Wolf's Point Novel) Page 7