8.50 p.m.
AVA KNEW WHAT SHE HAD to do: lead the Wolf down the mountain. She must do it soon, before the police brought guns. Last time police brought guns to Rubery it hadn’t gone well.
Once upon a time, there had been Nathaniel. He’d been warm, funny, expressive, kind. Now, Nathaniel lived in the skin of the Wolf and whatever was left of Nathaniel wasn’t strong enough to throw it off. Ava suspected it was because he didn’t want to; he’d not so much given in to his savage side as acquiesced. The world of the Wolf was the world he preferred, and returning from it was an option cast aside. Despite this, or because of it, he still liked Ava.
There was a cordial respect; a connective understanding with Ava because he believed her to be kith or kin . . . but she wasn’t either. She certainly didn’t feel chosen: she couldn’t imagine what he wanted from her, and he probably didn’t know why either. It wasn’t her understanding because she figured he’d resist being understood. He’d developed a taste for losing control with violence, savagery was his high, and he wouldn’t want her interrupting him. There was nothing else because she’d nothing to give him. She was just a highly strung weirdo; and all the other things bullies said about her. Being female, however, was an inexplicable advantage: she had power because the Wolf didn’t kill girls. The Wolf had just attacked a boy in the open. It was desperate. It meant Nathaniel was losing his good Nathaniel-ness. She doubted she’d be able to reach into the Wolf and bring Nathaniel back, but she might. A caveat in her courage: because it wouldn’t harm her didn’t mean she wouldn’t harm it, if she had to – and she might have to. She wouldn’t consider that she might want to.
* * *
Ava pulled on boots, hat, and Nathaniel’s sheepskin gloves. She waited until Paul’s car was rumbling slowly down Cock Hill Lane then she was out.
No people about: too cold, too dark; too thick with snow. The few cars moved so slowly along the road she wondered if the occupants would be faster walking. Ava ran up the hill as the fresh powder lent her traction, and her breath steamed. When she slid to a halt outside Dowry House foyer, it was snowing again; fat flakes tumbled in lattice patterns. She eschewed the elevator – the Wolf might hear it. She took the stairs, noting the melting paw prints every fourth step until she reached the top floor.
The turret door was wedged open, and she pushed through the gap onto the roof. As her eyes adjusted, she stepped onto a frozen realm of daggered drifts swept either side along the roof ridge, leaving the centre free as a path in a Narnia stage-set; the snow emanating an ethereal cyanic phosphorescence. The gale screamed as she braced against it in defiance, the ground crackling beneath her boots. Her heart sank as she looked down: bones again: the feathers blown into the ether. She pulled her hood further over her forehead and she peered out through streaming eyes at the jagged plane.
One of the drifts created a tall corner around which she was careful to sidle. The Wolf had cleared the roof edge of snow, and was staring into the black void beyond. Its fur ruffled and its tail billowed in the bullying wind, but it was still as still. Adrenaline coursed through Ava at what felt like a thousand miles per hour, making her fingertips tingle and her pulse throb like a bass drum in her throat. Time was a hand pressing on her back, urging her forwards: she lifted her nose to the sky and howled.