by Lori Drake
“Let’s go have dinner. It’ll take your mind off things for a bit. Besides, you’re probably out of things at home to clean.”
Joey snorted softly, but shook her head. “I appreciate it, really, but I want to go home. I want to be there when he gets home.”
“But—”
“Please, Cher. Just take me home.”
It was about seven-thirty when Cheryl pulled her car into the parking lot outside Joey’s apartment. It was fully dark by then, but the street and building lights provided plenty of visibility and Joey lived in a decent part of town. She never worried about coming or going after dark.
“Thanks for the lift,” Joey said, leaning down to look in through the passenger’s side door. “Give the wifey my regrets, okay? You know I love her cooking.”
“Anytime, babe. Hang in there, okay? He’s bound to turn up soon,” Cheryl replied. “Hopefully with flowers. And chocolate.”
Joey let out an anxious chuckle. “Flowers wouldn’t hurt. I’ll call you when I hear something.” She closed the car door, then stepped away from the car and watched her friend pull away before turning to head up the stairs.
She saw them the moment she stepped onto the third floor landing: two men, standing on one of her neighbors’ doorsteps. It was a little late for Jehovah’s Witnesses, but they didn’t look the part anyway. Only one was fresh-faced, for starters. The other was older, his lined face a topographical map of aging peaks and valleys. They glanced over at her as she drew closer, but their attention didn’t linger.
It wasn’t until she continued past that she heard a woman’s voice beyond them announce, “That’s her!”
Joey paused, pivoting to cast a wary glance in the direction of the strangers.
The older man turned toward her, looking her over more closely now. He wore a cheap suit, tie askew, and held a brown fedora in one hand. A badge hung on a stainless steel beaded chain around his neck.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” he said, politely. “Are you the resident of unit number 1310?”
Joey hesitated a moment before answering. “Yes.”
The older cop leaned in and said something quietly to the younger one before stepping away, leaving him there to finish up talking with the neighbor while he moved toward Joey.
“I’m Detective Harding with the San Diego P.D. May I have a moment of your time?”
“Oh god, is it Chris?” she blurted, too anxious to play it cool. “Did something happen?”
There were no answers on the older cop’s face. His expression was unreadable, but somber. “May I ask your name, Miss?”
“Joey—Josephine Grant.”
Detective Harding nodded slightly. “May I ask your relation to Mr. Martin?”
Joey’s hands started shaking. She bit her lip. “I’m his sister. Please, what’s going on?” Her voice grew tight with emotion as she spoke, the fine hairs on her arms standing up as her skin prickled with goosebumps.
The detective studied her for a long, weighty pause before something subtly shifted in his expression.
“Miss Grant, I’m afraid I have some bad news.”
3
It had to be a mistake. Chris couldn’t be dead.
“I understand this comes as a great shock—”
“No, you don’t understand. It can’t be him.” It wasn’t the first stage of grief that fueled Joey’s fervent denial. Her mind’s eye conjured an image of Chris: young, vibrant, full of life. A young wolf in his prime. Right before the full moon. It would have taken a small army to take him down.
Or an army of one, armed with silver.
The thought sent a chill down her spine, but she couldn’t voice it and she had no other evidence for her argument.
Detective Harding studied her for a long moment, turning his hat over and over in his hands. “Ma’am, we’ve got a positive fingerprint and photo ID match. I assure you, we’re not wrong.”
Her eyes narrowed, flicking between the two detectives. The younger one frowned openly. This probably wasn’t going at all like it had in training.
“Take me to him,” she told them. “You need someone to identify him officially, right? Next of kin? That’s me.”
“Well, not in this case, no…” Harding replied.
“I don’t care. Take me to him.”
“Miss Grant, that’s really not how this works.”
Her restraint cracked. A low growl escaped her throat. She clenched her fists at her sides. Both men took an involuntary step backward.
“Take. Me. To. Him.”
For whatever reason, they complied.
An hour later, Joey walked down an impossibly long hallway toward a frosted glass door with “AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY” stenciled on it in black lettering. Impatient, she fought the urge to push aside her escorts and rush ahead.
At the end of the hall, the two detectives escorted her through the door and into a side room with a large window along one wall. On the other side of the window was a larger room with a single defining feature: a stainless steel table. A body-shaped outline beneath a pristine white sheet lay upon the table.
Joey folded her arms and waited. An attendant in gray scrubs walked into view and approached the table. Without pause, he turned down the sheet so the body was exposed from the shoulders up, then walked away again without so much as a glance toward the window.
Her breath caught in her throat. She knew that face as well as her own—better, even. Countless hours up close and personal in the studio had seen to that. She knew that nose, that mouth, the tiny mole under his left ear. His skin was pale, lips tinged a faint blue, but it was still him.
This isn’t real, this isn’t real, this isn’t…
Her mouth felt dry and her stomach churned as she stood there, staring at the unfathomable sight before her. One of the detectives cleared his throat softly.
“Miss Grant?” It was Detective Harding, his tone gentle. He put a comforting hand on her shoulder; she shrugged it off.
Even facing the truth, she didn’t want to believe it. It couldn’t be him. Everyone has a doppelgänger, right? Pain chased confusion, chasing disbelief in an endless loop.
“It’s him,” she said, eventually. Her voice was calm, despite the tumultuous emotions simmering beneath the surface. But sheer willpower and good breeding would only get her so far. “Can I have a moment alone please?”
She could almost feel the pair of detectives exchanging glances again. They did that a lot. But a few seconds later their footsteps retreated. The door opened and closed quietly.
It wasn’t until she was alone that the dam finally burst. It started with a low keening and ended in a torrent of tears. When she couldn’t stand the sight before her any more, she turned away and slid down the wall to sit on the floor. Curling her arms around her legs, she rocked back and forth, crippled by an overwhelming sense of loss.
Time passed. Someone came for her, managed to get her settled in a room with a grief counselor, a stale cup of coffee, and a telephone.
She knew that she should have called her parents, but instead she called a cab.
Everyone should have a friend that will take it in stride when you show up at their door at midnight, without warning. Within minutes of Joey’s arrival, Cheryl had her wrapped in a blanket on the sofa. Joey’s shaking hands curled around a mug of fragrant hazelnut coffee, but it held no interest. She worried if she tried to sip it she might throw up.
“Can I get you anything else, sweetie?” Cheryl asked, perched on the edge of the sofa beside Joey at an angle, their knees touching.
Joey wished her friend would put her arms around her again, hug her as tightly as she had when she’d shown up with her terrible news. Wolves comfort one another with touch, but Cheryl was human. Humans comfort with blankets, food, comforting pats, and the occasional hug.
“No, thanks.” She had managed to calm down a bit before leaving the medical examiner’s office, but as soon as she’d seen Cheryl the floodgates had opened again and
that empty space inside her had filled back up with choking emotion.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Cheryl’s dark eyes were warm with sympathy and wet with shared grief—Chris had been her friend too.
“Not yet. You should get some sleep,” Joey replied, glancing over her shoulder toward the stairs. Light slanted out of the partially open door at the top. No doubt Emma was awake, waiting for Cheryl to come back to bed. “I’m sorry I woke you.”
Cheryl shook her head, breathing a sigh so faint that Joey might not have caught it if her hearing weren’t a little more keen than most. “Don’t be silly. You lost your best friend tonight.”
“Don’t you mean my second-best friend?” Joey said, sniffling.
“Something like that,” Cheryl said, as she plucked the untouched coffee from her friend’s trembling hands. “Did you call your parents yet?” She set the mug on the coffee table.
“Tomorrow,” Joey said. “I can’t face them, not yet. We were supposed to look out for each other—” She choked on a sob.
Joey thought Cheryl would press the issue, but she didn’t. Instead, surprising her even more, Cheryl drew her down to lie with her on the couch. Joey hugged her back tightly, feeling her friend’s arms wrapped snugly around her and listening to the steady beat of Cheryl’s heart beneath her ear. It would be a long time before she would feel even remotely okay again, but somehow… it helped. Maybe humans knew a thing or two about comforting after all.
At first, he knew nothing but the burning. The pain seemed to come from everywhere at once, scorching every nerve ending, searing his very soul. There was no source, nothing to pull away from, nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. He couldn’t escape it, only endure it. He lost all sense of time, of purpose, of self. It was a torment without beginning or end, simply a state of being that left no space for anything else.
Gradually, that terrible pain began to subside and he slowly became aware of other things. Colors at first, but muted. Blurry, like smears of watery paint across an empty canvas, forming indistinct shapes that he couldn’t fully focus on. Sounds came next, distant and muffled as if hearing them with ears stuffed full of cotton.
It was disorienting as hell, this washed-out smear of color without form, sound without clarity, and on the edge of it still that sensation of being dipped in fiery acid. Wet and cold but burning, eating away at the frayed edges of his existence.
When he was finally able to make sense of his surroundings, he found himself alone on a darkened corner of an empty street. The world was shrouded in misty fog; he couldn’t see farther than a few feet in front of him. The pain was a dull but constant presence in the back of his mind. He’d become a bit numb to it by now. As that thick skin formed, the colors around him coalesced into shapes but remained washed out. There was too much gray, not enough red or yellow, like the contrast on the world had been turned down. He looked around him, but all he saw was mist and sidewalk. The occasional street lamp glowed dimly in the fog, not quite able to illuminate much more than a tight halo around itself.
Where am I? What time is it?
He patted his pockets but his phone was gone. His wallet, too. He walked down the sidewalk, hoping to come across an intersection with a sign that would tell him where he was. His footsteps were exceptionally loud on the concrete. It took him a moment to realize why. It was, quite literally, the only sound he could hear. Living in a city, there was always a constant hum of white noise, especially to his extra-keen perception. Most people went about their lives, never giving much thought to the hum of electricity or passing traffic. Some might stop to enjoy bird song, or a street musician. But he heard none of these things, just an eerie quiet blanketing the world as heavily as the thick fog.
Once or twice, he glimpsed movement in the gray but dismissed it as a trick of the mind. It must have been really late for the streets to be so empty. Yet, there weren’t even any cars parked along the curb. That was a rare thing, even downtown at night, and he wasn’t sure he was downtown anyway. He wasn’t sure where he was at all, until a familiar building emerged from the fog ahead. Every window was dark, but he didn’t need the neon sign to recognize Santiago’s.
Something tickled at the back of his mind. Something about the dance club. Something important. He couldn’t quite place it, so he kept walking. Now he knew where he was, so he’d be able to find his way back to his car and head home—if he could manage to drive in this pea soup, anyway. He might have to spend the night in the car. That’d be a first.
Suddenly, he heard a second set of footsteps behind him. He glanced over his shoulder, and for a moment he thought he could make out another shape in the fog. When he stopped, the other footsteps stopped too. The gray fog hung heavily, without shape or form. He resumed walking. The footsteps behind him resumed too. Uneasy, he hastened his steps. The footsteps behind him grew fainter and vanished, filling him with relief.
It was short-lived relief, however, because he soon realized that he’d passed the garage where he’d parked his car and had to backtrack. This time his progress was slower. Wariness filled him as he peered into the fog, but no shapes came out of it. All was quiet. When he reached the parking garage, it was as empty as the streets. His car was gone.
“Christopher…”
He whirled at the sound of his name, spoken from somewhere off to his right. The voice was female and familiar yet… not. It scratched at the edges of his memory, tiny claws pulling and tearing.
“Where have you gone, Christopher?” There was mockery in her tone. His stomach twisted in response.
“Who’s there?” he called, standing his ground. He was many things but not, by his estimation, a coward.
Rich, feminine laughter seemed to come from everywhere around him, all at once.
“What do you want?” he demanded, turning in a circle, trying to look everywhere at once. He felt cornered, even though he was standing out in the open. It made him uneasy; he wasn’t used to feeling like prey.
“Answers,” she said.
No sooner had the word been given voice, the blinding pain ramped up again. His hands formed fists, every fibre of his being tensing against the onslaught of agony. It was no use. He screamed, and for a brief instant he remembered everything. The girl, the club, the alley, the knife… but then the world went away again and there was nothing once more.
Nothing, but the burning.
4
Joey woke to hushed voices and the smell of frying bacon the next morning. It wasn’t the first time she’d surfed Cheryl and Emma’s couch, but waking up there was still disorienting. The events of the previous night came rushing back once enough synapses were firing. Less fresh, but still raw.
Sitting up, she extracted herself from the tangled blanket and rubbed her face.
“Good morning,” Emma offered, from behind the couch.
Joey jumped, startled. She’d assumed Emma and Cheryl were off in the kitchen, what with the sounds and smells of breakfast and the hushed voices coming from that direction. After a moment, she realized that the hushed voices were actually coming from the radio in the kitchen, turned down low. Emma was an NPR junkie. It probably wasn’t supposed to be audible to Joey in the living room—they didn’t know about her wolf ears.
“Yeah,” Joey said, startled and trying not to growl. It wasn’t polite, especially when one was a guest in someone’s home. “What time is it?”
Emma drifted into peripheral view, approaching as cautiously as one might a wild animal. She had experience dealing with Joey before her first cup of coffee.
“About nine-thirty,” Emma answered in her usual soft-spoken manner, holding out a steaming mug of java. “Cheryl had to step out. She had a morning appointment.”
“Thanks,” Joey murmured, accepting the cup automatically. Once it was in her hand she just stared into its milky brown depths. The smell of hazelnuts, sugar and cream tickled her nostrils, but failed to entice her to drink.
“Want some eggs? Bacon?” Emma lingered n
ear the end of the sofa and brushed her chin-length brown hair back from her face, hovering like a mother hen.
“I’m not really hungry,” Joey said, glancing over at her.
Emma frowned, twisting her wedding band on her finger absently. It was a recently acquired habit—she and Cheryl had been married barely a month. “You need to eat, Joey. Please, just a little.” Emma was always trying to feed her, convinced she was too skinny and didn’t eat properly when out of her sight… and that was in the best of times.
Joey dithered, screwing her face up in a grimace. The thought of food just didn’t sound appealing, even though she’d barely eaten the night before.
“It’ll go to waste,” Emma wheedled. She did have a point. Emma was a strict vegan; the fact that there were eggs and bacon at all meant that she’d bought it and cooked it just for Joey.
“Okay,” Joey said, but without enthusiasm.
Emma smiled, revealing twin dimples in her plump cheeks. “I’ll make you a plate.”
While she moved off, Joey lingered on the sofa, looking down at the coffee in her hands.
I can’t believe he’s gone.
The thought surfaced unbidden, and with it a wave of sorrow that set her hands to shaking. She set the mug on the coffee table and stood, tucking her hands under her arms in an unconscious effort to still them.
Wandering over to the living room window, she looked out. It was another sunny California day, like countless others before. On the street below, cars passed, ferrying their human cargo while pedestrians walked or jogged along the sidewalk, all going about their usual daily routines. She envied those people.
We’d be in the studio by now, hard at work. He’d probably want to tweak the choreography again. We’d argue, because I’d rather focus on perfecting what we already have…