| |
There was nothing to do but obey Luke’s wishes. If the only way I could help was by disappearing, then I’d disappear in earnest. So I fled north and east, hundreds of miles away until I reached the closest thing I had to a home.
The apartment complex where my family was denning. New York City. The last place skinless would look for a missing wolf.
Which is why I woke, four months later, to the thunk of a throwing knife hitting its target. Ten seconds, then the sound reasserted itself, louder and closer.
If there hadn’t been a wall between us, the blade would have flown straight and true...into the side of my head.
Rather than reacting, I curled into the scent of cinnamon that emanated from the crook between my neck and shoulder. I hadn’t washed the wound, and I was glad of that omission. Because, when caught between sleep and waking, the scent intensified. I could almost imagine I was there with Luke...or rather, there inside Luke’s head the way I’d been yesterday and the day before and the day before that.
I didn’t get to enjoy every moment of his life, of course. Just whatever tidbits were being cemented—I guessed—into Luke’s long-term memory while he slept.
This morning, the dream-vision involved Michael snarling at a girl six inches taller but not much older. “Don’t call me that!” Luke’s brother was furious. It probably didn’t help that he had to tilt his head back to look the girl in the eyes.
“But you are my Uncle Mikey.” The girl fluttered short eyelashes. “Aren’t you?”
“I’m your uncle, but not....” The boy tripped over his words before stuttering to a halt.
“Carly, don’t tease him.” My hand—Luke’s hand—came down on Michael’s shoulder. “Michael, one of these days you’ll learn that what she’s trying to say is ‘I love you.’ Right, Carly?”
Carly hadn’t known Luke was present. I realized that when she shriveled in on herself, her eyes flying to the dirt. “Yes, sir.”
Luke’s disappointment was visceral. He’d meant to treat his niece to a small dose of her own medicine, not to overpower her. He took a step back...and the next knife’s thunk pulled me all the way awake.
Awake to the ever-present sound of New York City traffic. Unlike the green and red and brown of Luke’s habitat, Justice’s apartment was gray from reflected streetlights. On the other side of the wall, my furious sister let fly yet another knife.
I rubbed grit out of the corners of my eyelids. Stretched and started my morning. “I get it, Grace.”
“Do you?” She spoke normally, knowing I would hear her through the paper-thin walls that separated the apartment she shared with Bastion from the one I shared with Justice.
“I’m no longer part of your family. You want me out of your building, out of your city, out of your turf,” I confirmed while yanking on jeans and dragging a brush through my curls.
“Bastion is yours. Justice is mine,” I continued. “Never mind that neither of them belongs to anyone except themselves.” For someone who lacked her pelt and thus couldn’t turn lupine, Grace had an extremely territorial bent.
“But,” I continued, lacing up leather boots that were high enough to hide slender knives while also protecting my ankles during foot chases, “someone needs to make money. New York City is good hunting. It’s expensive sending out feelers for lost pelts.”
Because everyone in my family except me had lost their pelts when I was a child—my fault, and something I’d since come to terms with. Still, when we regained Bastion’s pelt last summer, I learned that the killer’s mother had bought the shed skin during an estate sale.
Justice and Grace’s pelts might be equally accessible. I just needed to hire enough private investigators and buy up enough animal skins to track down the missing items. An expensive proposition, but one I’d focused on with a vengeance once Luke kicked me out of his life.
“My pelt is none of your business,” Grace snarled. Another knife flew, the words following it yet sharper. “Does your hero complex allow you to drop the issue?”
“Justice’s pelt is my business,” I countered. Speaking of which....
“Are you awake?” I asked the dark shape nestled down in his sleeping bag three feet away from me. The clock read 5:13—only seventeen minutes before my alarm would have woken me if my twin hadn’t decided to practice her marksmanship before going to bed.
“No,” Justice grunted. Like Grace, my cousin considered this the end of a long day rather than the beginning of the next one. Until this past summer, he would have kept similar hours to my sister—minus the passive-aggressive knives.
But he’d chosen to den with me, and I was very much a morning person. Which meant that Justice had begun falling into slumber early and dragging himself out of bed when I awoke.
That was the thing about woelfin. We didn’t have one designated leader, so we shifted our habits to match each others’ lives.
Maybe not today, however. “I’m gonna practice, then head out,” I warned my cousin. “If you want to join me, I’ll be in the hall.”
As usual, Justice pulled the hood of the sleeping bag up over his head and declined to answer. Also as usual, I gathered up my gear and left him to his stolen sleep.
***
OPENING THE DOOR, I stepped out into the dim light of an interior hallway. Our third-floor walkup had a landing running the length of the floor, leading from the down staircase to the up staircase. It was a public space, somewhere even Grace couldn’t growl about me and Bastion interacting. Plus, it was the only area inside our apartment building where I had room to draw my sword.
Which is exactly what I did. Clearing my mind, I worked my way through my usual morning practice. My muscles warmed and loosened, the scent of spice emanating from the scar in the crook of my shoulder warming also.
All the while, I ignored the gaze boring into the back of my skull.
Only when the piercing shriek of an alarm clock rolled out of my apartment did I turn and accept the mug Bastion held out to me. We were no longer members of the same family—Grace had seen to that. Still, the cousin I’d spent the last decade partnered with sank down on the top step in perfect synchrony with me. Together, we cradled the hot tea he’d provided while he asked his usual question.
“Bounty hunting today?”
I nodded then took a sip. “You could come with us.”
As predicted, Bastion shook his head. Never mind that he’d regained his pelt and could run in wolf form just like I could. He and Justice had divided me and Grace between them like children splitting up Halloween candy. He wouldn’t grab out of his brother’s stash.
He wouldn’t grab...but he just might tattle. I lowered my voice. “How’d it go last night?”
While Grace’s internship still didn’t pay any bills, she had finally reached the level where a creation she’d helped design had hit the big time. A model had worn her black-lace confection down a runway the previous evening. If I understood which websites were worth reading, I would have checked on its reception first thing this morning. Instead, I went straight to the source.
Bastion’s smile was all the answer I needed. “Pretty excellent. She...”
His mouth snapped shut as both doors on our level swung open in tandem. On one end, Justice emerged, clad in his I’m-now-officially-a-lawyer black suit. From the other end, Grace glowered out at us, her diaphanous nightie accessorized with a knife clutched in her right hand.
“Do you intend to talk all night?” she demanded.
I shook my head in lieu of an answer even as Bastion yawned and reached up to hand off his mug to my angry twin as a peace offering. “It’s decaf,” he promised.
Grace took a dainty sip, her anger deflected. Rage would return if I lingered, however. I knew that from hard experience.
So I rose and wrapped my pelt around my shoulders. The magnetic closure Bastion had bought for me last week clicked together at my throat, turning the pelt into a hooded cloak...with dangly claws and tail, of course.
Not fashionable, but thoroughly functional. I turned to Justice.
“Let’s hunt.”