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The park. Trees, leaves. Birds, squirrels, and open air.
I ran, loving it. I hated myself for loving what my family couldn’t take part in.
I forced myself to continue past pleasure and into heel-drumming exhaustion, until I was so tired I could barely drag myself back in the direction of Luke’s car.
There, I found my clothes, keys, and cell phone behind a tree just where I’d left them. They weren’t the way I’d left them, however. Instead, they’d been unfolded and subtly pawed through. Perhaps by a raccoon searching for a granola bar?
No, not by a raccoon. There was something missing. Not my cash or credit cards. Not the car keys. Instead, my half-wolf-paw necklace was gone. The one I’d worn since childhood, the one that matched another half-wolf-paw dangling around my sister’s neck.
“No! Really?” The jewelry was small, shiny, worth no more than five bucks when brand new, which it very much wasn’t.
It was worth far more to me, though. I hovered for a moment, tempted to shift back to wolf form so I could sniff at each item with lupine nostrils.
But Bastion needed every ounce of my stored energy. Each shift drained the battery.
“Grace will understand,” I lied to myself, pulling on the little black dress she’d picked out for me.
Then I slid behind the wheel of Luke’s sleek, modern car and headed over to the faded opulence of Walmart.
***
NEAR THE BUILDING’S entrance, the parking lot was hopping. But off in one corner, our family’s car sat silent and alone.
Urban car camping was Bastion’s and my backup plan when we needed a free place to stay while out bounty hunting, but I wouldn’t have dreamed of dragging my twin and Justice into anything so lacking in amenities. Bastion must have mentioned the trick in his letters, though, because they’d chosen it for themselves when our joint credit card refused to operate and our pooled pocket change came to only sixty-three bucks.
Now, I pulled into the same camera-free zone they’d selected, nodding a silent greeting at Grace and Justice before giving in to the need to check on Bastion. The shadows in the back seat at first made it impossible to pick him out amid the jumble of unfolded sleeping bags. Then I stepped out of the glow of a streetlight and saw that the top sleeping bag stopped just beneath my cousin’s chin.
Despite the fact that I was soaked with sweat from my recent run and the heat of the evening, Bastion was shivering. Shivering, red-cheeked...and entirely unaware of where he lay.
This was the cousin who loved mountaintops and wide open spaces. The times we’d had to camp in our car previously, Bastion had rebelled against the close confines and had slept out on a street bench, leaving me the entire interior. Now, he was too far gone to even chafe at the cramped confines.
I took a step closer, swallowing against the pain of memory. I’d barely seen this stage of our parents’ illness. When the first three faded, Aunt Promise had handled their decline behind closed doors. She’d chosen Grace and Bastion as the most able to assist her when she neared her own end.
Now Justice was the one who drew back the sleeping bag to reveal Bastion’s unclothed torso. I was the one who spread my pelt atop our fading pack mate.
I clenched my teeth, knowing we were failing just like everyone else had failed before us. A stolen pelt was a death sentence.
Pain rocked me, but Bastion didn’t so much as stir.
***
AN HOUR LATER, WE HAD to admit the energy transfer wasn’t going to revive Bastion. There was no point bringing him to the Smythewhite residence if he wasn’t conscious. United momentarily, Justice, Grace, and I padded over to Luke’s car, far enough away from my cousin so we wouldn’t disturb him while we talked.
I cleared my throat. “If he wakes up, call me. Night or day. I’ll find a way to get him in there.”
As I spoke, ice splinters slid through my veins. But I ignored them. Pain was good. It meant the pelt was doing something even if there was no obvious change in Bastion’s coloring.
Rather than answering, Grace swiped one finger across the slick paint job on the side of Luke’s vehicle. I couldn’t tell if she coveted his ride or was nurturing anger at me for not explaining where it had come from.
I hoped she hadn’t noticed my missing necklace....
Only when my twin looked up, tears pooling in her eyes, did I realize she wasn’t thinking about either possibility. She swallowed then said what we were all thinking. “He’s fading faster than Aunt Promise did.”
Justice swore low and foul. Then he left us. Turned on his heel without a word of farewell and stalked back toward his twin. If we didn’t have even the three full days we’d counted on, he didn’t want to spend another second away from his twin.
I couldn’t blame him. I didn’t want to leave either. But the Smythewhite house called me. The house, with its promise of a stolen pelt and Luke’s sturdy strength to guide me through finding it.
I shook my head, knocking loose that extraneous moonbeam. This wasn’t about Luke. This was about Bastion.
Opening the driver’s side door, I waited for Grace to step back and let me do my duty. But she just hovered there, as if we still had something to talk about. As if, for once, she needed something I was able to provide.
My twin didn’t say anything, though. So I was the one to fill the silence. “I’ll tear apart the house until my pelt stops working. Then I’ll come back and recharge it. We’ll repeat the maneuver as often as we have to. We’ll make this work.”
Grace nodded, but it might as well have been a shrug. She didn’t move, even when I sank into the seat and turned the key in the ignition. Didn’t step away as tires rolled by inches from her feet and the side mirror bit into her gut.
Just stood there and watched me disappoint my pack.
***
IT WAS STRANGE TO CREEP back into the Smythewhite home without my pelt slung across my shoulders. Strange not to see Luke or anyone else when I entered.
To ease my mind, I cracked open the door to the teenager’s bedroom. Padded closer until I was sure the lump beneath the sheets was human and alive.
A tiny red light on the bedside table caught my attention. The indicator LED on a baby monitor, the other half of which I suspected sat in Luke’s bedroom.
So Clarence was taken care of. Time to return to my primary objective—finding Bastion’s pelt.
The bedrooms were off limits at the moment, but this was my opportunity to tear apart public spaces I’d been forced to avoid the previous evening. So I searched. Picked up vases and stuck my hands inside them until dust bunnies rubbed against my fingers. Dug through the kitchen, peeking behind boxes of oatmeal and jars of peanut butter. Pawed through the linen closet, not quite managing to refold the fitted sheets when I was done.
Bastion’s fur had to be here, but it wasn’t. The house had felt endless when I started, but there were only so many places large enough to stash a full wolf pelt.
By three in the morning, I’d gone through all potential hiding spots twice and had stopped noticing pins and needles of pain where my own pelt propped up my cousin. No wonder I spoke aloud to nobody, alone in the dark.
“Time to run.”
My left foot fumbled a step as I followed the main stair’s sweeping curve upward to check the second-story hallway one last time before heading back to Walmart. I was exhausted. The idea of snagging my pelt then hunting in lupine form for a few more hours was inconceivable.
But I’d do it. I had to do it. When all of this was over, I couldn’t afford any additional regrets.
Not like last time when I’d chosen to stay home while the rest of my family went out to a dinner party. “It doesn’t matter that they’re not woelfin. Kind people are kind people,” my mother had told me.
Her self-name was Charity. Perhaps that’s why she was always trying to see beyond differences? At fifteen, I’d considered the trait a weakness rather than a strength.
“Just go,” I snarled, fingering my necklace. In retrospect, it was probably relevant that Grace had pretended not to see me between classes that morning. Once we hit high school, she ran with the in crowd. I hovered around the borders of the geeks.
At home, of course, Grace was still my sister. But I was confused by her behavior. An evening alone with my favorite TV show sounded like a beach vacation.
“You’ll mind our wolfsfells?” Uncle Reason’s focus on the tangible always calmed me.
“Of course,” I promised. “I am Honor.”
His trusting assent was enough to send me to bed early. I slept deep and dreamlessly...right up until the front door slammed so hard against the wall behind it that the knob broke through the drywall....
Now, my fingers slid to my pelt for reassurance. Only, of course, the pelt wasn’t present. This wasn’t ten years ago. This was the time to focus on correcting my decade-old cowardice.
I’d already started turning back the way I’d come when a flicker of movement stilled my footsteps. I strained my eyes against the darkness—did the wealthy not believe in night lights?
My own breathing was so loud I couldn’t hear anything else in the hallway. The air was still and damp, the earthy aroma of leaf mold clinging to my nails from my earlier run.
I was imagining things. Spooking at shadows. Being just as cowardly as I’d been a decade earlier.
Then, ever so faintly, a dark silhouette became visible stalking out of Clarence’s room.