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My Five Guys burger had to wait.
As soon as I pulled into the driveway that led to the back of Gisselle’s house, I knew something was wrong. From the driver’s seat of my truck, I stared at the ajar back door. The leather under my fingers groaned as I tightened my grip on the wheel. I exited the truck and took the stairs two at a time to the door, stopping when I reached the threshold. I inhaled, and a growl from my wolf escaped my throat. We recognized the scent from the werewolf that attacked us.
The back door opened into the kitchen. A quick glance around confirmed the intruder left the room in order. Listening to the silence that filled her home confirmed he no longer lingered inside. Neither sound, nor smell told me how long ago he left. He could have been sitting outside, but I hadn’t noticed any occupied cars out front.
Armed with a butcher knife from the block in the kitchen, I cleared the house from the basement to the attic. Based on my hearing, I didn’t expect to find anyone, but considering stitches helped to keep my side closed, I played it moderately safe. Whoever entered left most of the house untouched, but thoroughly ransacked all the bedrooms, especially Gisselle’s, and the attic. The basement was in a mild state of disarray. Almost like searching there was an afterthought.
The feeling of violation stoked mine and my wolf’s anger. She wanted to rip him apart. She wasn’t alone in that desire. Who the hell did this werewolf think he was, and what did he have against my family? In the kitchen, I returned the knife to the block, pulled out my phone and stopped while I debated who to call.
My thumb hovered over Candace’s name but moved away without touching the screen. With Elias stirring up support for taking over the pack, she needed things removed from her plate, not added to it. The obvious choice of 911 became less obvious considering the break in, the murders, and my attempted murder were all linked.
I went to my favorites and tapped Bodhi’s name.
“Everything all right?” He asked when he picked up.
Well, shit. Is that what our relationship had become? I only call when something is wrong?
“Ace? You there?”
“Hi. Um...” I paused. An echo accompanied his words, letting me know he wasn’t at home or work. “Wait, where are you?”
“The Planetarium,” he answered. “Pippa’s class is learning about constellations so I—”
“—Damn. Right. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. What’s going on?”
“Nothing. I mean it’s not nothing,” I corrected before he could comment. “I’m sorry, I forgot you had Pippa this week.”
“It’s all right, Ace. You’re not breaking any rules by calling me.” His voice took on a gentler tone. The echo remained but lessened.
I paused and caught myself from apologizing again and cringed. Was this the new norm of our relationship? The delicate eggshell stage? “Someone broke into Gisselle’s place. I wasn’t sure who to call. I was going to call the police, but with the ongoing investigation—”
“—Where are you? Are you still at Gisselle’s?” Urgency replaced his softened voice.
“Yes.”
“You need to get out of there. Now.”
“Relax, Bodhi. Whoever broke in is long gone.”
“Good, but it’s still a crime scene,” he stated. “I’ll call Lourdes and let her know to send a forensic team over, but you should still wait for them outside.”
“All right. Fine.”
“Ace?”
“I’m heading outside now.” I assured him.
I caught myself just before I grabbed hold of the handle to pull the back door close. Sure, they might be able to pull prints, but if the werewolf wasn’t in the system they would be as useful as shipping snow to Antarctica. Bodhi’s hearing may not have been strong enough to let him differentiate me speaking inside to outside, but when I slammed the door to my truck he spoke again.
“Good. I’m going to hang up and get the ball rolling. I’ll call you back in a bit, okay?”
“Bodhi?”
“Yes.”
“Nothing. Thank you.”
I dropped my phone into the cup holder, leaned back, and closed my eyes. I decided I would call Candace when I had something to tell her beyond ‘someone broke into auntie’s home. It didn’t take two of us to wait for a forensic team.
If Elias became alpha, what would that mean for their relationship? Would Candace stay with him? Would she stay with the pack? I had a hard time imagining my eldest sister slipping quietly into a non-leadership role of a pack her mother pulled together.
For me, if Elias became alpha, my options were clear. Join his pack or move to a different city. Most alphas didn’t tolerate non-pack werewolves living inside their territory. Mother was the exception to the rule, but only because I was her daughter.
Without asking I knew what my wolf wanted. She accepted not being a proper part of the pack because the monthly full moon hunts created enough of an illusion, but she didn’t understand my refusal to join. Life was simpler for her. In Hamburg we fought our best, lost, and mourned those that died. If we ever found the beings responsible for their deaths, we would fight harder and kill them all.
Simple.
Thinking about the changing of the guard for the Chicago pack, my thoughts drifted to Bodhi. He wouldn’t move, and I wouldn’t ask that of him. So, what did that mean for us? I opened my eyes and stared at the closed garage door. I held no illusions of what moving out of Chicago meant for the future of our relationship. The only question would be if he suggested trying to maintain it over the distance, or end it right away.
Two weeks ago, hands down I would have said he’d go for the former. Staring at the phases of the moon design on Gisselle’s garage door, I was much less certain. Not that it mattered. I wasn’t built for long distant relationships.
If I left Chicago, where would I go? I lived in quite a few cities around the world. Galway, Bogota, Hamburg, Sydney and a few others. Outside of Hamburg, none of them felt like home, and I wouldn’t go back there, so where? Which did I want to do less? Join the pack. Or find someplace else to live.
I didn’t think either of my sisters would forgive me if I chose the latter.
Lourdes arrived twenty minutes after I hung up from Bodhi. By the time I finished walking her through what happened upon my arrival, the forensic team arrived. I relocated from my truck to the sun-drenched front porch, while strangers combed through Gisselle’s home room by room.
The unseasonably warm weather encouraged the outdoor option, which allowed me to transition from the bench swing to pacing out my agitation of strangers in my aunt’s house. It felt sacrilegious. She enjoyed entertaining guests, just not in her bedroom. At least not in this fashion.
I had just settled back onto the cushions of the swing, when Bodhi’s car pulled into the driveway and propelled me to my feet once again. He exited the vehicle alone and jogged up the five stairs to embrace me. For those brief seconds I relaxed into him. I closed my eyes and leaned in when his lips found my forehead.
“How are you holding up?” He asked. He cupped my cheeks and tilted my face up to his.
“Holding,” I confirmed with a shrug. “I’m glad to see you, but what are you doing here? Where’s Pippa?”
“I dropped her off at Bella’s for a couple hours. What? You thought I wouldn’t come over?”
I answered him with a shrug, and he let his hands drop to his side.
“I didn’t expect you to drop everything and rush over.”
“Maybe not under normal circumstances, but these are unusual times, Ace.”
I nodded. “Thank you.”
I reached out and squeezed his hand. He returned the gesture with a tender smile.
“Let’s go in and see where they are.”
He opened the door for me, nudging it closed with his foot once we entered.
“Huh.”
I looked over my shoulder at Bodhi with an elevated eyebrow. “What?”
“Nothing. It’s not what I was expecting. This is the neatest ransacking I’ve ever seen.”
Powder residue remained on the tables, walls, and other flat surfaces where they dusted for fingerprints. We moved from the living room to the kitchen where it looked like a cooking class turned into a black flour fight. Anger at the violation leeched back into my mind.
“The first floor got off lucky,” Lourdes stated. She stopped scribbling in a notepad when we entered the kitchen and tucked a small book into her back pocket. “The unsub or unsubs tossed the second and third floors.”
“What does that mean? Unsub?”
“Unknown subject,” Bodhi answered. He looked up the stairs where I heard the idle chatter from the techs, and the occasional shutter click of a camera. “Can we head up?”
“They’re almost done,” Lourdes stated, and then turned her attention to me. “I can send a crew back and clean up all of this,” she said, gesturing to the residue left behind on the countertops.
I shook my head and replied, “It’s fine.”
The number of unknown scents overlaying each other already had my hackles up. No way was I about to sign off on more strangers afoot. And yet, my wolf chuffed her approval of Lourdes. She wasn’t alone in her assessment of the investigator as ‘good people’. Under different circumstances we could have been friends. We still could, of course, but it seemed unlikely our relationship would progress beyond acquaintances. Still, I respected her professionalism, and appreciated her candor without insult.
“Do you have any idea what he was looking for?”
I raised my shoulders in a deep shrug. “Not a clue.”
“We’re all done, detective.”
One by one all five of the techs descended from the second floor carrying an array of cases and bags with them. A few made eye contact, but most of them left with their gazes downcast.
“Can you head up and take a look around?” Lourdes asked. Her voice pulled my attention back to her. “See if you notice anything missing?”
I nodded and headed up. Bodhi remained in the kitchen with Lourdes. I heard them talking. Bodhi shared the information he learned from his interviews with the pack. From the snatches of conversation I heard, nothing he learned helped the case.
For the next fifteen minutes I went through the second-floor rooms and the attic, checking on valuables that might have been targeted.
“Her laptop is gone.” I announced upon my return to the kitchen.
The sight of them brought me up short on the bottom step. They both seated themselves at the table so neither of them sat with their backs to the door or the stairs. Bodhi spent a lot of time in that same seat, but without my aunt it felt surreal. Almost disrespectful.
“Ace?”
Only after my knuckles cracked did I realize my fingers formed fists of my hands. I reminded myself they didn’t know. That their sitting hadn’t been done with impertinence.
“I’m sorry. What did you ask?”
“Is there a chance her laptop might be somewhere else? In her car, or at your mother’s?”
I shook my head. “The furthest it traveled was from her study upstairs to the living room. I’ll check the basement but...”
“We won’t hold our breaths,” Bodhi concluded. He drummed his right thumb on the table while Lourdes pursed her lips in thought.
“What kind of laptop was it?”
“It wasn’t worth much if that’s what you’re getting at. Five, maybe seven years old.”
“I don’t suppose you know what she kept on it?”
I shook my head and straight up lied to Lourdes. “No idea.”
Telling them Gisselle began transcribing some of her völva lore, recipes, and rituals on to the computer didn’t feel like relevant information. The werewolf left the originals in the attic, and I didn’t want to share that with the humans. I didn’t want to explain things to them.
“Do you know if it was password protected?” Lourdes pushed.
“Maybe. Gisselle lived by herself, but the pack came and went.”
The theft flared my anger, and anger wanted them to leave. Two more scents invading my aunt’s home. I headed to the basement to avoid further questions. The solitude gave me the chance to pull myself together.
I expected to find less in the basement than in the upstairs room. Gisselle kept a neat house for the most part, but the bottom level was a bit of a disaster. Plastic bins stacked against the walls crept out to the center of the room and created pathways between them. Whoever broke in started off searching through them, dumping contents here and there.
After wading through old clothing, papers, empty boxes, and various other items scattered about, I headed back to the stairs, only to stopped when I passed the washing machine. My eyes drawn to a clean empty spot on the concrete.
“Bodhi?” I called.
Above me, chairs moved against the floor and footsteps sounded.
“Bodhi?” I heard Lourdes question. Amusement added a musical note to her voice.
I heard the smile in his voice when he answered, “It’s a long story.”
Once they joined me, I pointed to the spot.
“There used to be a safe there.”
“You’re sure?” questioned Lourdes.
“Positive.” I measured up to my calf. “About this high. Black. Maybe two feet wide, and just as deep. It had a...” I made a motion with my fingers, “One of those spin dials on the front.”
Lourdes used her phone to capture photos of the area. Bodhi moved closer until he stood behind me.
“Any idea what she kept in it?” She asked.
“The deed to this house and the one in Germany. Um... birth certificates, neutralization documents, death certificates...” I thought back to the last time she opened it. “Mostly it was just paperwork that wouldn’t mean a whole lot to anyone unless they’re trying to steal her identity.”
“So, nothing of value?” Bodhi confirmed.
“No, well, wait, she did keep some items from her dad, and her grandparents in there. I remember seeing a pocket watch and an old, ornate pocketknife, but I’m not sure what else. Like I said, mostly it was paperwork that needed to be fireproof. I’m not sure if the items had value beyond sentimental.”
“How heavy was it?” Lourdes asked.
“No idea.”
“Could a werewolf carry that out?” Bodhi asked.
“Yes.”
Lourdes slow blinked in surprise. “You sound pretty confident considering you don’t know how heavy it was.”
I shrugged. “It had to get down here somehow. Given the size, I doubt it would be a struggle for one of us.”
Lourdes nodded.
We returned to the first floor but remained in the living room. Lourdes tucked her notebook into her jacket after she slipped it back on.
“We don’t have anything official, but I think it’s safe to say this wasn’t random,” she stated.
“It was the same werewolf that attacked me, Detective Perez, I’m sure of it. It’s the same smell.”
Her and Bodhi exchanged a look. I inhaled the scent of his anxiety.
“It’s probably not a good idea for you to stay here,” Lourdes stated.
“I was just checking on the place.”
She nodded. “I’ll keep you posted on what we find. We got a lot of clean prints. We’ll have to eliminate those from the family and pack, but after that I’ll let you know if we have a hit.”
“Thank you, Detective.”
She offered a tight smile and nodded.
“I’ll see you out,” Bodhi offered.
While he walked Detective Perez to her car, most likely to discuss the case, I headed to the kitchen, putting on a kettle of water and placing two mugs on the table. A presumption that Bodhi might stay long enough, but a safe bet. He’d been itching to talk for days, and we finally found ourselves alone. I dropped teabags in the cups and had filled them with water by the time he got back inside. I spent a good portion of the day wondering where we stood in our relationship. With the opportunity to find out upon me, I dreaded it.
“Are you heading out?” I asked.
“Soon,” he said. He draped his jacket on the back of the same chair he occupied earlier and sat. “I promised Pip we would build a fort in the living room and camp out tonight.”
“Sounds like fun,” I placed a mug in front of him and took a seat in the adjacent chair. “I’m sorry I pulled you away.”
“Don’t be. I’m glad you called me.”
I brought the cup to my lips, but only blew on the contents before I returned it to the table. Bodhi sat there staring at me with the intensity of studying a calculus textbook. His hands cupped around his mug.
“What?” I asked and committed to a sip.
“It’s just, that’s a significant enemy. What if this isn’t about your mother?”
“What else would it be about? Gisselle was universally well esteemed.”
“What about Hamburg?”
“That was a murder of demons, not werewolves.”
Bodhi’s lips parted, and then closed, leaving the unspoken question between us.
“A group of demons is called a murder.”
He smoothed down the mustache portion of his rough beard. “That’s not ominous at all.”
“Not my naming convention,” I stated. “And their stench is not on this.”
“They could have used werewolves to throw you off, right?”
“In theory, but demons have a very distinct smell, and it’s like cigarette smoke. It saturates clothing, hair, skin... everything. It would have been impossible for a werewolf to be around a demon for the amount of time it would have taken to plan this and come away scent free.”
“They didn’t have to meet face to face.”
“Fine, the possibility exists,” I conceded. “But this isn’t the same.”
Lacing my fingers together kept the left ones from reaching for the scars that started on the upper portion of my back. Bodhi’s eyes dropped to my hands for a few moments before our gazes locked again. Not often did I see the raw seriousness in those chocolate depths.
“Is this what you really want to talk about?” I challenged.
If his goal was to end things between us, I needed him to get on with it. Since I couldn’t prevent my life from sliding into chaos, I wanted to hurry it along.
In silence, he watched me with the unrelenting gaze of a werewolf, except the end goal for Bodhi wasn’t to prove himself more dominant than me. It allowed me to stand and break eye contact without long term ramifications. Something I wouldn’t have been able to do with a werewolf. Being with Bodhi made that part of my life simpler.
I placed my mostly full cup of cooled tea into the sink and leaned against it. Hands resting on the counter behind me.
“Not telling you felt like protecting you.” I confessed.
“From what?”
“Everything.”
“I was a cop. Being in harm’s way is nothing new for me.”
“A human cop.” I pointed out.
At my words, his demeanor shifted. A subtle change, but I watched his face close down a little. “Is that the draw for you? Dating a human?”
“You know it’s not, Bodhi.”
He folded his arms over his chest and made his demand. “Explain it to me.”
“Dating werewolves can be exhausting,” I began and reclaimed my seat. “Between two dominant werewolves the push back and forth is a real thing. Yes, it is exciting, and passionate, and all the other sexualized stereotypes humans associate with dating werewolves. But it can also be emotionally debilitating, exhausting, and dramatic. So dramatic.”
“All werewolf relationships?”
I let my mind drift a moment on the question. Gisselle never used either of those adjectives to describe her marriage to Uncle Friedrich. On the other hand, from the morning conversation with Candace... Did it get more dramatic than a mate challenging another?
“No, not all. But a fair amount.”
“That doesn’t explain why you shut me out.”
“When did you ever ask?” I questioned, going for the easy way out.
“Don’t.” Bodhi warned. “Don’t you dare put this on me like I didn’t want to know. I asked. After every full moon hunt, I asked.”
“Passively, but you never pushed. It felt like the equivalent of ‘how was your day, dear’. Going through the motions, but content at not really knowing.”
“And that’s what you wanted?” The incredulous tone pitched his words into a higher range. “For me to make you tell me? To force you to open up to me?”
We both knew the answer to his rhetorical question. If he tried to force me, we would have argued, and that would have been twelve arguments a year I wouldn’t have tolerated.
Tell, my wolf insisted with growing impatience.
“Shut up.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m not talking to you.”
His expression morphed into confusion. “There’s no one else—”
“—my wolf, okay? I don’t know how to explain to you, the duality that exists in my mind. My wolf isn’t just something I transform into... she’s a part of me. Do you... can you even comprehend that? An entity that exists in my head. That I have conversations with. Argue with. That has her own agenda, and wants, and needs, and... I can’t... how do I explain that to a human in a way that doesn’t make me sound completely, fucking insane. How? If you knew what was in my head...”
“Ace—”
“I don’t tell you things because I can’t breathe when I think about losing you!”
I maintained his gaze even though every word that fell out of my mouth sliced open gaping wounds that would never heal if he walked out the door.
“I get nauseous when I think of the day where you won’t defend me against the horrible things your mother and your friends say about me. It terrifies me to know the more I tell you, the more you’ll put two and two together and come to the same conclusion. I am a monster. A killer. The thing that exists in nightmares. Every vile thing they say about me is true.”
I sniffed and used the meat of my palm to wipe the tears from my cheeks. My wolf snorted in satisfaction, but with him sitting there, staring at me, maybe judging me, I felt vulnerable and raw. Bodhi defending me to the people he loved, to those whose opinion mattered, meant more to me than having him start a fight with some random who calls me outside my name.
“You’re not a monster,” he whispered.
“Don’t patronize me.” I snapped the words at him. “I’m not having a Louis de Pointe du Lac moment.”
“Who?”
“Louis from Interview with the Vampire. He hated being a vampire. Bemoaned it the entire book. I don’t hate who I am, but I know what I am, and I own it.”
“So do I, Ace,” he replied and offered me a napkin.
I expected him to fold me against his chest, smooth his hand along the back of my hair and assure me everything would be okay, but that wasn’t our relationship. He gave me the space I needed. The realization that he knew me that well forced me to dab away more tears cascading down my cheeks.
“I’ve been in law enforcement in Chicago for twenty plus years in some form or other. I’ve encountered monsters. Supernatural and human alike. I’ve seen the carnage and the destroyed lives they leave in their wake. The excitement that hurting others gives them. That’s not you. Monsters don’t have nightmares, Ace.”
I took a beat. Sat with his words. In my silence, he continued.
“I won’t lie to you. What happened at the reception scared the shit out of me. And not just because of the pheromones.”
“I never wanted you to see me that way. I never wanted you to be afraid of me.”
“I’m not.”
We stared at each other. Watched each other.
“You keep telling me you couldn’t control it,” he stated.
“I couldn’t.”
“You controlled it enough to get the hell out of there so you wouldn’t hurt anyone. That’s why I’m not afraid of you, and that is why I am in love with you.”
Returning to my seat, I discarded the napkin to the side of the table and leaned forward.
“Beto. I. Am. Dangerous.”
I spoke scarcely above a whisper, but with deliberate punctuation at the end of each word. I searched his eyes, unclear as to what I thought I might find. Realization? Fear?
“You don’t need me in your life.”
“And yet I’m not looking for a life without you in it.”
I pulled my hands back when he reached to cover them.
“Unless...” he visibly swallowed and pulled his hands back across the table. “Is that what’s happening?”
We need him to stay, my wolf commanded. She was right. My heart screamed she was right. I lost my aunt and my parents. I lost an entire pack, and my mentor. I couldn’t lose Beto, and yet something inside taunted me. A cruel voice in the back of my head. Not my wolf. Something darker and foreign. Something that mocked the thought that I deserved something, or someone who loved me.
“Fuck.”
We both sprang to our feet. Bodhi’s action driven by my own.
“I walk in two worlds. Human and animal. The animal side is dangerous and savage, and... what if you can’t handle it.”
“Neither of us knows if I can handle it, but you gotta give me a chance. I’m not going to run just because things get messy.”
I turned from Bodhi and paced to the other end of the kitchen. I twisted my fingers together and wrung my hands to keep them from violent actions. I wanted to break something. A glass. A plate. The back door.
“I’m terrified.” I blurted out. A second, a minute, an hour could have passed with us standing in the middle of my aunt’s kitchen, staring at each other. The admission surprised us both. “I feel like I don’t... like this, our entire relationship is some... how you feel about me is a farce.”
I censored my words. Telling him I felt unworthy of his love made me sound too broken.
You are broken. He can mend you if you allow it.
Immediately, I picked up on my wolf excluding herself from her statement. I never thought about how much of the strength I projected I drew from her until that moment.
“I am in love with you.” Bodhi stated. “Plain. Simple. True. Are you in love with me?”
“Yes.”
The quickness of my reply visibly relaxed his shoulders and smoothed the concern lines wrinkling his forehead.
“Do you want us to work?”
I hesitated, even with my wolf growling at me to say yes. She wanted me to seize the flesh on the back of his neck. That spot just above the spine. To bite down until I left a mark that professed him as ours. Telling him no appeared more and more like the coward’s way out, than the high road.
“Amina?”
“Yes.” I whispered. “We want us to work.”
Bodhi shoved his left hand into his pocket, but it didn’t remain there. When he extracted it, he placed the red velvet ring box on the kitchen table. He placed a finger on top and slid it towards me, but left it closed, stepping close enough for me to see the black pupils in a sea of brown.
“I meant it when I asked you to marry me.”
“But?”
In his eyes, I saw more thoughts swirling in his head.
“You’ve got to let me in. All of it. Even the parts you think I won’t understand. There’s not an aspect of my life that I don’t share with you. I need the same in return for this to work.”
“I’ll...”
No try. Do. My wolf warned, channeling her inner Yoda.
“...I will.”
“If you really mean that, this belongs to you.”
He captured my face between his hands after I gave an affirmative nod. The love in his eyes, the way he looked at me hadn’t changed. The sweetness in the kiss he whispered against my lips lingered like a phantom touch even after he departed.
Bodhi only left after I promised I wouldn’t stay the night. An easy agreement to make since the break-in changed my intentions of trying to summon Gisselle’s ghost with the talking board.
I left shortly after Bodhi, but returned an hour later and set about installing the home security system I picked up at a local electronic store. A handful of YouTube videos later, and I managed to install contact sensors at all the ground level windows, both doors, motion detectors in the basement and second floor hallway, and two cameras positioned to cover the exterior side and back of the home.
Darkness descended by the time I sat down at the kitchen table. I logged into the system with my phone to check the camera feed, but my eyes kept going back to the ring box. Pandora levels of curiosity made my fingers itch to open the velvet container. At least it would only release curses upon Bodhi’s family, and not the whole of the world.
What had Blanca’s reaction been to his proposal? For that matter, what about Pilar’s? I couldn’t imagine the thought of a werewolf being stepmother to her child sat easy with her.
With great effort, I returned my attention to my phone’s screen. Viewing the live feed, I headed back outside and adjusted the angle of the cameras until I saw the view I wanted. Nothing I installed that night would prevent a werewolf from breaking and entering again, but it would alert the police and myself if he decided to return.
Back in the kitchen feeling slightly less violated and extremely accomplished, I traded my phone for the box. I gasped when I flipped up the lid. I expected something simple, understated, and elegant. A direct reflection of Bodhi’s style. The ring propped up inside succeeded in the last element beautifully, but there was nothing simple or understated about the multiple diamonds cut and set on the band to imitate the crescent and half-moons, set on either side of the full center one.
I slipped the ring out of the box and onto my finger. A perfect fit. The reason behind all the questions Arsinoë asked a few months back became crystal clear. I rested my hand on the table while I stared at my new jewelry. It looked beautiful. Odd and out of place, but beautiful. Not the perfect proposal by a long shot, and not exactly a happy occasion either. I sat in the kitchen of one of the people I would have shared the news with but couldn’t.
I placed the ring back in the box and set it in the middle of the table. Tilting my head back, I wiped more tears away. A romantic in her core, Gisselle would have loved the symbolism. She never married or took another mate because, she already experienced the greatest love of her life.
“No one can compare to your uncle Friedrich,” she would say whenever I asked if she thought about settling down with one of her lovers.
I rested my forehead on the warm wooden tabletop. What started as a dull ache in my side an hour ago, spread through the whole of my body. I wanted to soak in a tub of hot water, but exposing the wound to that much prolonged moisture wouldn’t do it any favors. Nope. A soak would have to wait for at least another week.
I shivered and breathed in cold air. The sudden shift in temperature caused me to bolt upright in the chair. I intended to whirl around and face the door. Assuming someone, or something had opened it to create the sudden shift from warm to cold.
Gisselle’s disfigured ghost sitting in the chair across the table, staring at me, ceased all movement. We locked eyes. My right leg bounced my knee up and down at the speed of a terrified rabbit. My left thumb and forefinger squeezed the fatty part of my right hand. The pain I caused myself was the only way I managed to keep my eyes fixed on her disfigured face.
Gisselle’s lips moved and sound left her mouth, but just as before, I couldn’t understand what I now knew to be dead speech.
“Gisselle.” It took me several tries to find my own voice. “I...”
My aunt raised her right hand, pointed it at me, thumped her fingers against her chest, and then pointed at me again.
“I don’t understand.”
Point, thump, point. Point, thump, point.
“Your heart?” I asked. “My heart?
She repeated the gesture over and over again. On the end of the fourth round of her pointing to me, I touched the spot she pointed to. Under my sweater, my fingers brushed the last thing Gisselle gave me. I looked down as I pulled the pendant out from under my clothing.
“Is this...” my words trailed off.
When I looked up, Gisselle’s ghost had disappeared.