I took a deep breath and tried to pull myself together. “Just...be careful. Please.”
Vali shrugged and pulled me close to his chest. His back tightened under my arms and his breath caught in his chest. I had just enough time to wonder what I’d done wrong when he spoke again.
“I also have a warning for you,” he said.
I pulled back, suddenly feeling cold. Vali hesitated; his wild, golden eyes looked lost. “I...I enjoy you, Karen. Very much. But you shouldn’t come here again.”
It was so far from what I expected him to say that I felt like I’d jumped in the stream in Yellowstone again. A dark, cold shock sank into my arms and legs, chasing away the post-orgasmic bliss.
“What?” I stuttered.
Vali stared at the sky. “I’ve appreciated the companionship. But it would be best if you did not come again.”
“You’re dumping me?” I started to blink furiously against a fresh flood of tears. “Wouldn’t it have been better to dump me before you fucked me?”
Vali frowned in an adorable way that made me feel seriously pissed me off. “What do you mean? Did you not enjoy yourself?”
“That’s not the point,” I snapped, pulling away from his touch.
“Let me explain—”
“Stop. Don’t even fucking say it. It’s not me, it’s you, right?”
“No,” said Vali, sounding confused. “It’s not me or you. It’s—There’s something wrong here. Don’t you sense it?”
I wiped my cheeks and turned to him, my heart hammering against my ribs. “What are you talking about?”
“Not here. Not in dreams. Out there in...what do you call it? The ark?”
I took a deep breath as my heart stuttered. “The park? You mean Yellowstone?”
He nodded. “Something’s gone wrong. I may be able to help, but Karen, it’s very unstable right now. You should leave this place. Go somewhere far away.”
“Vali, I can’t leave. I live here. I work here. I mean, I study the wolves—”
My voice cut off as I remembered Zeke’s charts with those overlapping circles. The black emptiness in the middle of the park, in what should be prime wolf habitat.
“Oh, shit.” A cold shiver ran the length of my spine and the hairs on my neck prickled. “Vali, is this why the wolves are leaving Yellowstone? Is it the volcano?”
“It’s more than that.” His golden eyes darkened. “I’ve warned my brothers and sisters to leave this place. And now I’m warning you. If I can’t correct what’s gone wrong, I at least want you as far away as possible.”
I tried to breathe as a maelstrom of conflicting emotions churned my heart and mind. “But...if you’re still here, you’re in danger.”
“I’ve lived a thousand years. I’ll be fine.” His smile was not very convincing.
“Can you...can you change?” I whispered. “Come home with me?”
My head spun as I remembered his naked body in the Lamar Valley, pressing my lips against his as the thunderstorm rumbled over Druid Peak.
“I could find you in the park,” I said frantically. “I could shoot you with another tranquilizer dart. I could be there by this afternoon, in the valley—”
“No. No, you don’t understand.”
“But, if you’re in danger here, you would be safer—”
“No!” Vali leapt to his feet, backing away from me. “Karen McDonald, I don’t want you near me!”
I felt like the air had been forced from my lungs. My head dropped to my knees, and I hoped Vali couldn’t see my shoulders trembling.
“I—I apologize.” His voice sounded oddly thin. “Karen, listen to me. If I can’t stop this, I want to at least know you escaped. That you’re safe.”
His hand touched my shoulder, and I lifted my head. Vali crouched in front of me, looking pale and miserable.
“Karen, my beautiful Karen, I—”
His face began to fade, pulling away from me into a thick, white mist. I reached for him but my hand was caught, tangled in something rough and scratchy. I yelped, opening my eyes to see the mottled yellow of the motel room ceiling above me.
“Goddamn it!” I screamed, sinking my fist into the anemic pillow next to me.
What’s crazier than having a boyfriend you can only meet in your dreams?
Losing him.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“So, when exactly are you coming to Bozeman?” I asked again. I was finally talking to Professor Laufeyiarson, from Stanford, and she was driving me insane.
“Arriving November nineteenth,” she said. “Departing the twenty-second.”
“You realize that’s almost Thanksgiving?”
“Yes,” she said, sounding impatient.
“And you want to see wolves?”
“Yes.”
I sighed. “Listen, have you ever been to Montana in November?” I didn’t wait for an answer; of course she hadn’t been to Montana. “The weather is unpredictable. We could have a foot of snow that time of year, and almost all the roads in Yellowstone will already be closed.”
“My talk is on Friday,” she said, “and my flight leaves on Sunday. I thought we could go on Saturday—”
“Yes, I understand,” I said. “But November - look, it’s rare to see wolves in Yellowstone at any time of year. I just don’t want you to set yourself up for a disappointment.”
“You do track them, don’t you?” she asked.
I balled my hand into a fist, crunching the curly cord of my office phone between my fingers. When I meet Professor Laufeyiarson, I told myself, I am not going to punch her in her smug face. I am not.
“Yes,” I said, slowly. “Which is why I know it can be very hard to see them. But I’m happy to work with you, and with Stanford. We’ll just do the best we can.”
“I don’t think it’ll be a problem,” she said. “I look forward to meeting you.”
I took a deep breath before responding. “I look forward to meeting you, too,” I lied, as calmly as I could manage.
I hung up my office phone and reached for my cell, scrolling until I found Diana’s name. My finger hovered above her name as I tried to remember the last time I’d called her. It was a Tuesday now, so it must have been...Monday. Last Monday. Good. The last thing I wanted was to be so irritating I chased her away. I bit my lip and tapped her name. She answered almost instantly.
“Karen,” she said, her voice breezy and light. “And how are you this beautiful morning?”
“Fine, thanks. Just checking on the pack. Any new movements? Anything unusual?”
“Nothing at all,” she said. “The Leopold pack is still by Specimen Ridge. A few of our wolf trackers got to see the pack take down an elk on, oh, must have been Thursday. Quite a treat. You should check out the pictures on the website.”
“Ah. Thanks.”
“You have a further question for me?” Diana asked, sounding amused.
“Yeah,” I said, shifting in my seat. “I’m wondering if you - I mean, if any of the wolf trackers - If anyone has seen that, uh, that big, black male. The lone wolf. From the Lamar Valley.”
“Ah,” she said, and damned if she didn’t sound like she was smiling. “No, I’m afraid he doesn’t want to be found at the moment.”
My heart ached. “Well, thanks anyway. I won’t keep you, then.”
“It’s no problem,” she said. “You take care. Oh, and Karen, do be careful.”
The line went dead before I had time to realize what a weird thing Diana just said. I shrugged, trying to ignore the dull ache in my chest. And wishing my one and only link to Vali wasn’t some crazy hippie living by herself in the woods.
“WHO THE HELL COMES to Montana in November?” I asked my bowl of instant oatmeal.
I was due to pick up Professor Laufeyiarson in an hour, and I was running through a mental checklist of all the things I wanted to bring. The weather forecasts were not promising; already the sky outside my kitchen window was gray and heavy, and all the weather reports ca
lled for precipitation. Chances were good it would be snow.
I’d packed an extra pair of boots and a jacket. I didn’t trust a Stanford professor to dress for a November trip to Yellowstone. She’d probably be wearing something fashionable and absolutely impractical that would provide zero protection from the elements. As always, I tossed in a few granola bars, my emergency flares, and an avalanche shovel to dig the car out of a snowbank in case things really went south. Although if that happened, I’d probably be ready to strangle Professor Laufeyiarson with my jumper cables.
As I started the car, I tried Diana one final time. I knew I was being ridiculous, but I really, really wanted to be able to spot some wolves. It felt like my professional reputation was hanging on it.
Diana’s line went straight to voicemail, just like it had for the past two weeks. I bit the inside of my lip, trying not to add worrying about crazy hippie Diana to my already extensive list of reasons why I had trouble falling asleep at night.
“Satellite tracking says the Leopold pack is near Cooke City,” I told myself as I backed out of my driveway. “We’ll find them. We’ll see the wolves.”
I parked my car outside the Holiday Inn and walked to the lobby. Professor Laufeyiarson stood when I entered, folding her copy of the New York Times and tucking it neatly under her arm.
“Professor McDonald?” she asked, extending a hand.
Professor Laufeyiarson was not at all what I expected. She was young. Younger than she looked on her faculty webpage, and much younger than I expected. She must have been in her early thirties, maybe only a few years out of grad school. Around my age, actually.
“That’s me,” I said, shaking her hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“Thank you so much for doing this.” Her voice was more halting and awkward in person than it had been over the phone.
As I expected, she was wearing a stylish jacket that looked about as warm as tinfoil and a fashionable necklace with a strange, shimmery pendant. She turned to pick up her huge book bag, and I saw the swell of her stomach. Professor Laufeyiarson was pregnant. Very pregnant, by the look of her. My heart seized as tears prickled behind my eyelids.
That will always hurt, I thought. Always.
“Let me get that for you,” I said, reaching for her bag. There was an awkward moment when we both held the straps, and then she let go.
“Thanks.” She smiled, and her cheeks flushed.
“I’m sorry I missed your talk,” I said as I navigated my Subaru out of the parking lot.
I had meant to make it to her talk, I really had, but I’d gotten carried away plotting Zeke’s data. Over the past two months the trend had only gotten more obvious. The wolf packs really were leaving Yellowstone. It was enough to make me nervous.
“Can you give me the highlights?” I asked. It was a long drive to Yellowstone, and asking a professor about their research is usually a sure fire way to fill two hours.
“Of course!” She took a deep breath, and the car filled with a shrill metallic jangle. Her cheeks flushed again as she pulled her enormous book bag to her knees and dug around the side pockets, finally fishing out a bright pink iPhone. She tapped the screen and the ringing stopped.
“Sorry about that,” she said, sliding her bag back to the floor.
“No problem.”
“So, my talk was about the connection between the prose Edda—”
Her phone jangled a second time, and she sighed. “Ugh, that’s my mom again.”
It took another minute of awkwardly shifting the bag off the floor, onto her knees, and around her pregnant belly before Professor Laufeyiarson found her phone again. By then it had stopped ringing. She glanced at me.
“Wait for it...” she said.
Her phone rang again, and we both laughed.
“I think you’d better take it this time,” I said.
She swiped the screen and held the phone to her ear. I could hear a shrill voice on the other end of the line, although I could only make out her side of the conversation.
“Hi, Mom—No, I’m fine.—Yes, fine. F.I.N.E. Dr. Singh said ‘perfectly healthy,’ remember?—No, Mom, he had a meeting.—Well, it was a meeting at a conference.—No, why would I even know that? I don’t keep tabs on him.—”
I rested my elbow on the car door, bringing a hand to my mouth to cover my smile. I’ll admit, I was intimidated by the thought of entertaining a Stanford professor. But driving together through the wide vistas of Paradise Valley, listening to her getting henpecked by her mother...well, it was almost enough to make me like Professor Laufeyiarson.
WE SAW THE FIRST SNOWFLAKES as we approached Yellowstone’s Mammoth entrance. The two hour drive had flown by. It turned out Professor Caroline Laufeyiarson and I actually had a lot of common ground, and she seemed genuinely excited to see Yellowstone. It was a nice change. Usually the only people who come with me to Yellowstone have already seen it a thousand times. So those few, tiny flakes drifting out of the dark, low clouds made me feel irrationally irritated. I wanted to show off the wolves, damn it.
We both fell silent as my Subaru passed through the massive stone gates reading For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People. I took a deep breath and decided to forge ahead with the question that had been bothering me for the entire drive.
Or since August, if I was being honest with myself.
“So...since you’re a mythology expert. Are there any Norse myths about werewolves?”
“Werewolves?” Caroline asked.
“You know,” I said, trying to keep my voice light and casual, “wolves turning into people. People turning into wolves. That sort of thing.”
She was quiet for a moment as she stared out the window. The snowflakes increased, swirling silently outside our windows.
“Oh!” she said, suddenly. “Is that a hot spring?”
We’d crested the bluff, and the imposing pale pink and white terraced steppes of Mammoth Hot Springs rose before us like a medieval fortress. Steam filled the air above the springs, obscuring the top of the formation. I smiled. It was pretty damn impressive, after all.
“Yeah, that’s Mammoth,” I said.
“Can we stop?” she asked, leaning forward to peer out the windshield.
I tried not to grin at her enthusiasm. The streets of Mammoth were deserted, so it felt like we had the entire park to ourselves. I parked at the foot of the boardwalk circling the hot springs and tried to tell myself the snow wasn’t getting heavier. We’d only gone a few steps when I noticed Caroline shivering in her fashionable California fake jacket.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve got a jacket in the car for you. Hang on, I’ll go grab it.”
“Wait.” She reached for her strange, shimmery necklace and wrapped her hand around it. Her eyes turned strange and distant. Then she shook her head. “No, let’s go.”
“Are you sure? Mammoth is pretty impressive. It’s the biggest geothermal feature in the park, in terms of—”
“I’m sure.” She walked past me, the snowflakes twirling in her wake.
I shrugged and followed her. It suddenly occurred to me she hadn’t answered my question about werewolves.
Caroline seemed nervous as we left Mammoth to follow Route 212’s lonely two lanes through the northern part of the park. The snow was getting thicker, but it wasn’t sticking to the roads yet. Still, I supposed light snow might be more than enough to freak out someone from California. Light snow and being miles from civilization, in Yellowstone National Park, in late November. I tried to think of something I could say to put her at ease and drew a complete blank.
“Hey, we can turn around whenever you’d like,” I said.
She was holding her necklace in both hands, and her eyes were almost closed. “No,” she murmured. “Not yet.”
“Okay. We’ll keep looking for wolves, then.”
I peered through my windshield at the thin black line of the road and the dancing snowflakes beyond. We were in the sagebrush flats of the Lamar
Valley now, my research grounds, but the light was fading and our visibility was dropping by the second. At this point, we’d probably be lucky to spot a damn mule deer, let alone a wolf.
“Here,” Caroline said, her voice loud in the small space.
“What?”
“Pull over!”
I turned to Caroline. “What? Why?”
“Just pull over!”
I guided my Subaru to the side of the road, put it in park, and turned on my flashers. Caroline leapt out of the car. Well, I thought, maybe she needed to pee. I gave her a minute of privacy before climbing out of the driver’s seat. The wind was much stronger now, and biting cold against my cheeks. The road felt slippery too. I popped my trunk to pull out my binoculars and the extra jacket.
“Did you see something?” I asked, walking to Caroline’s side of the car and handing her the jacket.
“Thanks,” she said, pulling my jacket onto her shoulders. “Look for yourself.”
I brought the binoculars to my eyes and stared through the falling snow, adjusting the focus. I glassed the tree line where the lodgepole pines met the sagebrush flats, figuring that was where the wolves would be seeking shelter from the snow. I didn’t see anything, so I dipped my binoculars toward the far side of the river. There were several fallen logs, a jumble of bare willows branches, a man in a black suit—
“What the hell?” I gasped.
I dropped the binoculars and turned to Caroline. She was smiling at the horizon, a totally rapt, unselfconscious, blissful smile. Her arms wrapped around the swell of her pregnant belly. I picked up the binoculars again.
There he was.
There was a tall man with long, flaming red hair walking by himself in the middle of Yellowstone. In a snowstorm. And—I adjusted the focus on my binoculars—he was wearing a fucking suit. A black business suit. I blinked and lost my focus.
“Karen?” Caroline asked. Her voice sounded like it was coming from somewhere far away.
I turned my binoculars back to the river and jumped. The man was gone. But I could have sworn I just saw someone wearing a black suit in a snowstorm in the middle of the fucking wilderness.
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