CHAPTER EIGHT

To find The Wolf, one must think like a Wolf. Wolflet Marie looked in her mirror one dark night for the last time. She was saying goodbye.

Goodbye, dark hair. Goodbye, soft eyes. Goodbye, lips that quivered and trembled and did everything but speak and eat. Goodbye gentle, hard-working hands.

Her smoothly curled ears grew sharp and hard, pointed at the ends. Her nose elongated into a snout. Her teeth sharpened, her eyes darted and watched and threw back light in the darkest of the night. Fur ran across her mother’s skin, tufted at her collar. Her hands grew, stretched, and were tipped with claws. Wolflet Marie howled and shattered the mirror. She didn’t want to chance seeing weak Human Marie in there ever again.

She stayed up late doing batches of work. She smiled at the cashier when she picked up her few groceries. She donned her sunglasses and looked like any other woman when she traveled to and fro on the bus line. Deceptions. A wolf in human skin. She was on the prowl for a hunter.

But before finding the hunter, she had to find prey. This was harder.

Marie had never noticed that the city was alive with lithe, coltish, beautiful girls. Their teeth were white and strong, or bucked and adorned with braces. Their eyes were almond and round and narrowed and beautiful. Their mouths. Oh, their mouths. They sneered and trembled and wrapped themselves around cigarettes and Coke bottles and words words words.

The words floated like bubbles. Laughter with friends. Insults. Annoyance with parents. “Leave me alone” and “Wait for me!” and “I don’t like sushi but let’s get cheeseburgers.”

“Do you think he likes me?”

“If she finds out, she’ll kill me.”

“I hate my hair sooooo bad.”

“Whatever.”

Words were currency. Marie wanted to save each syllable, stuff them in her pocket like the precious things they were. They were tossed around here and there like spare change, but she felt the weight, the beauty of each one.

Aleta had been full of words once. Given out like pretzels, thrown into the sky like confetti. Each word said and resaid, tasted and then abandoned like cardboard boxes by the side of the road. What Marie wouldn’t do for them now! Prize each one. Squirrel them away to feast on later.

The Wolf. What did he think of words? Perhaps he didn’t think of them at all. He would focus on their gazelle-like legs. The muscles that bunched under their thin jackets as they hoisted backpacks and bags on their shoulders. Words were nothing. Meaningless.

No words, just meat.

Look for the meat. Bait the trap to catch The Wolf.

Over the course of weeks, she taught herself how to hunt. How to smile. How to be unassuming and even friendly. Because a little girl around Aleta’s age really wasn’t a little girl anymore. She had become far too wise too soon. She wouldn’t have anything to do with a frightening man near the bus stop. Marie knew this.

But a kind man? Possibly, although still unlikely. An old man? Perhaps, especially since she was off to see her grandmother. A sickly man? More likely still, especially if she had a thermos of soup on her. Perhaps if she gave this sickly man a thermos of healing homemade chicken noodle soup, she could call her mother from the hospital and ask Marie to bring more for Grandmother. There was more on the stove. Aleta could give up her bowl. This could be.

A sickly man. Or perhaps a woman. A woman with a child. So many possibilities.

Think like the hunted. Think like the hunter.

Hunt the hunter. Kill the Wolf. Save little girls. Do all of these things.

Huntsman Marie donned herself in the Wolf’s clothing and stalked her prey.

This girl was with friends. So no. This girl has a sour attitude and a cell phone firmly to her ear. No again.

This little girl walks with her head down. She seems to be alone. Something is broken about her, something missing. Something wisping out behind her, either pouring from her hair or being kicked up by her worn sandals, and shattering upon the filthy pavement.

Her soul. It was her soul.

This. This was the girl. This was the prey, the rabbit not yet in a snare, but soon. Soon enough.

She howled in her soul. It tasted like blood and revenge and broken little girls. Then she looked around.

Passengers in line for the bus. People looking for their bus card or counting their change. Staring in store windows or walking by far too fast. People talking or dreaming or scheming. Men on benches. Women with strollers. Couples running by, jogging in place while they waited for the light to change, trying to keep their heart rate up.

Marie feared she would never have a slow heart rate ever again.

All of these people, all of these lives, and nobody noticed the girl with the broken soul trailing behind her. Nobody except Marie.

And one tiny man standing underneath a thin tree growing in a weedy open spot near the bus stop.

Marie studied him through her dark glasses. She studied him studying the girl. His facial expression was one of disinterest, of casual waiting, of taking a breather on a nice every day type of morning.

But his eyes.

His eyes were intense. Focused. Watching the girl. Wanting the girl. His want was so palpable that Marie gasped, and that tiny sound made his eyes dart from the girl to her.

She covered the gasp with a cough, and then casually strolled up toward the bus. Behind the girl with the broken soul and shoes. She climbed the bus to wherever, and rode until the girl got off. She memorized the stop. Realized that The Wolf would really have followed the girl home, or at least as close as he could, but she wasn’t him. She was herself, Simply Marie, and she was tired, and a bit sickened, and she needed to go home after a very long day.